Canada’s Residential Schools:

The History, Part 1
Origins to 1939
The Final Report of theTruth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada
Volume 1

Canada’s Residential Schools
Volume 1 • Part 1

Canada’s Residential Schools:

The History, Part 1
Origins to 1939
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 978-0-7735-4649-3 (v. 1, pt. 1 : bound).

ISBN 978-0-7735-4650-9 (v. 1, pt. 1 : 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

Statement from the Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair......................................

vii

Statement from the Commissioner, Dr. Marie Wilson.................................

xi

Statement from the Commissioner, Chief Wilton Littlechild......................

xiii

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

3

Section 1: The historical context for Canada’s residential schools.............

7

1.

Colonialism in the Age of Empire..........................................................

92.

The churches and their mission of conversion.....................................

25

3.

Residential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763............................

39

4.

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s
Aboriginal policy....................................................................................

49

5.

Pre-Confederation residential schools.................................................

63

6.

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880...............................

83

7.

Confederation, colonization, and resistance........................................

105

8.

National and international models for Canada’s
residential schools.................................................................................

133

Section 2: The Canadian residential school system, 1867 to 1939.............

149

9.

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system....................

151

10. Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939........................

169

11. Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939..............................

197

12. The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939..............................................

247

13. The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939...................

293

14. The student as labourer: 1867–1939......................................................

329

15. Recreation and sports: 1867–1939.........................................................

353

16. The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939................................

375

17. Building and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939...............................

453

18. Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939...........................................................

465

19. Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939..................................

487

20. School clothing: 1867–1939...................................................................

511

21. Discipline: 1867–1939............................................................................

517

22. Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939...................................................

559

23. Student victimization of students: 1867–1939......................................

571

24. Truancy: 1867–1939...............................................................................

577

25. Separating children from parents: 1867–1939......................................

599

26. Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939.....................................

615

27. Separating children from their traditions: 1867–1939..........................

629

28. Separating the sexes, arranging marriages,
establishing colonies: 1867–1939..........................................................

643

29. The Lytton school: 1902–1939...............................................................

663

30. Parents respond and resist: 1867–1939.................................................

669

31. The staff experience: 1867–1939............................................................

675

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

739

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

929

Statement from the Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair
The residential school system established for Canada’s
Indigenous population in the nineteenth century is one ofthe darkest, most troubling chapters in our nation’s history.
While some people regard the schools established underthat system as centres of education, they were, in reality,
centres of cultural indoctrination. The most alarming aspectof the system was that its target and its victims were themost vulnerable of society: little children. Removed fromtheir families and home communities, seven generations
Photo: Galit Rodanof Aboriginal children were denied their identity through asystematic and concerted effort to extinguish their culture, language, and spirit. The
schools were part of a larger effort by Canadian authorities to force Indigenous peoples to assimilate by the outlawing of sacred ceremonies and important traditions. It isclear that residential schools were a key component of a Canadian government policyof cultural genocide.
That any Indigenous person survived the culturally crushing experience of theschools is a testament to their resilience, and to the determination of those membersof their families and communities who struggled to maintain and pass on to them what
remained of their diminishing languages and traditions. As each generation passed
through the doorways of the schools, the ability to pass on those languages and traditions was systematically undermined. The schools and Canada’s overall treatmentof its Indigenous peoples have seriously affected Indigenous pride and self-respect,and have caused individuals and communities to lose their capacity to cope with thedaily tasks of living. The evidence of that is seen in the serious social conditions that
Canada’s Indigenous people face.
Many children did not survive. Thousands of children died in the schools.
Thousands more were injured and traumatized. All were deprived of a measure of
dignity and pride. We, as a country, lost the opportunity to create the nation we could
have been.
The legacy can be seen in the myths, misunderstandings, and lack of empathy many
Canadians openly display about Indigenous people, their history, and their place insociety. Canadians have been educated to believe in the inferiority of Indigenous peoples and in the superiority of European nations. This history and its aftermath, therefore, should not be seen as an Aboriginal problem; it’s a Canadian one.
Ultimately, the schools became the focus of numerous lawsuits. Thousands ofSurvivors sued for their losses and mistreatment. The legal actions were joined intoa massive class action, resulting in the largest legal settlement in Canadian history.
The Settlement Agreement called for the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation

viii • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Commission. Despite many challenges, the Commission and the groups supporting
us worked tirelessly to uncover and face the difficult truths of Canada’s residential
school system and its tragic legacy still felt today by Survivors, those close to them,and in communities from coast to coast to coast.
Starting in 2008, we collected millions of documents, visited more than 300 communities, and heard testimony from thousands of witnesses. We heard of the effectsof over 100 years of mistreatment of more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
children placed in these schools.
The Survivors showed great courage, conviction, and trust in sharing their stories,
which, collected here, are now a part of a permanent historical record, never to beforgotten or ignored.
The next chapter in this story, which begins with this report, is reconciliation.
Reconciliation will not be easy and it will take time, but to make it happen, we mustbelieve it should happen. Without a deliberate and thoughtful will for reconciliation,and the sustained action that manifests that will in meaningful, measurable change,
we will not achieve the task the Survivors have given all the people in Canada: torepair the damage done to the relationship that was promised as far back as the Royal
Proclamation of 1763.
Reconciliation also is not an Aboriginal problem. It is about creating a relationshipof mutual respect as was promised in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and in the assurances given at, and reflected in, the many Treaties signed between the Crown andCanada’s Aboriginal people, most since Confederation. All people in Canada, including newcomers, have a role in this relationship-building process. While we may not
all share a past connected to the residential schools, we share a future. We must all
call for an ongoing process of reconciliation, regardless of political affiliation, cultural
background, or personal history.
We must all accept the challenge of enacting effective solutions to the disproportionate cycles of violence, abuse, and poverty experienced by Aboriginal people. We
must strive to become a society that champions human rights, truth, and tolerance byconfronting, not avoiding, the history recounted in the following pages.
To achieve this, we must bear witness to the past and join in a vision for the future.
Our Calls to Action, therefore, should not be viewed as a national penance, but as asecond chance at establishing a relationship of equals. This final report marks not theclose but the beginning of a journey towards a more just, fairer, and more courageouscountry. We all have the opportunity to show leadership, courage, and conviction in
helping to heal the wounds of the past.
What we do now and in the years ahead matters not only for us today, but also forthe generations to come and the spirit of those who are no longer with us. The wordsof truth and expressions of apology are vitally important, but there is still much work
to do on the journey ahead.

Statement from the Chair, Justice Murray Sinclair • ix

During the course of our work as a Commission, we encountered thousands ofCanadians who saw the wrongs of the past as an opportunity to do good for the future.
Dozens of Honorary Witnesses joined us in listening to the stories of the Survivors andcommitted themselves to continue to bear witness into the future. The members of ourSurvivors Committee stood by our side as we went about this work, advising and supporting us as we listened. Cultural and health supports strove tirelessly to ensure we
all worked in a safe and positive environment. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
My colleagues, Commissioner Chief Wilton Littlechild and Commissioner Dr.
Marie Wilson, and I have have approached this work as a sacred trust. Our families
have supported us in every step of this very difficult journey. Our children and grandchildren have been our driving force and our daily reminder of the importance of what
we do. I dedicate my work on this Commission to my wife Animikiquay, my children
Miskodagaginquay, Niigonwedom, Beendigaygeezhigoquay, Kizhay Wahdizi Quay,
and Gazhegwenabeek, and my grandchildren Nimijiien Niibense, Misko Banaishe,and Miigizens.
Because of our families, we, as Commissioners, are committed to making this abetter country. For the sake of yours, I hope you will join us.

Justice Murray Sinclair (Mizana Gheezhik)
Chair, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Statement from the Commissioner, Dr. Marie Wilson
When is a job really over?
We, as Commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada (TRC), have repeatedly said over the
past six years that the completion of the TRC mandate will
be just the beginning of reconciliation, after 130 years of
imposed, church-run, residential schools. So much work isneeded to repair the self-imposed damages to our country;
to Indigenous peoples, families, and communities; and to
our founding relationships.
Photo: Amos Scott
We offer a road map for that continuing work in our
ninety-four Calls to Action, based on an unprecedented depth of public consultation. Seven thousand people spoke up from every region of the country. That has
been the heart of our work … giving voice to those never before heard or believed.
Former students, Survivors, bared their souls in remembering what so many had
spent lifetimes trying to forget. In doing so, they created a public responsibility to now
remember what happened in Canada in the name of education: decades of children
feeling alone, silenced, too often hungry, cold, sick, afraid, abused, ashamed, angry;
little ones feeling forsaken, abandoned, unloved; thousands who did not survive; theanguish of parents left behind.
Such courageous voices unveil shame on the presumptions of superiority, transplanted government, and superimposed religion of my ancestors. Yet, resilient voices
have also lifted up, proclaiming the right to be happy; reclaiming personal names overnumbers; battling addictions and learning self-care; receiving, as failed parents, thegift of first-time words from their child: ‘I love you, and I forgive you.’ Spiritual ceremonies formerly outlawed by Canada have been welcoming to all, with an offering that
there is no wrong way to pray. Prominent Canadians from all sectors have pledged
themselves to ongoing reconciliation as TRC Honorary Witnesses.
We can never ‘un-know’ what has been revealed. Canadian laws created residential schools. It belongs to all, including newcomers, to do something about thebetter-understood consequences today. I hope what we have learned will be widely
heard, respectfully taught, and perpetually commemorated, lest we forget. I hopethat patience, compassion, and skilled care will support those still in the midst ofgut-wrenching healing journeys; that school-threatened languages revive; and thatIndigenous and publicly elected leaders begin to meet regularly in normalized spaces
for collaborative decision making, respecting sacred covenants and binding Treaties.
I hope that we acknowledge the real ‘Two Solitudes’ of Canada today—the Indigenous
and non-Indigenous peoples—and devote ourselves to closing the glaring educational, economic, and socio-political gaps between them. May Canada be enriched inxii • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

national wisdom and international reputation by the rebalancing of a shared country.
And may we come to be known as a country that learns from past failings; that feels
outrage at present injustices; that acts for what is still possible; and that believes in
the power of truth and reconciliation to transform everything: a life, a relationship, acountry.
It is a sacred job, barely begun.
With infinite love to Stephen, Kyla, Daylyn, Keenan, Maslyn, Tydzeh, Sadeya, andRy’den. This work is for you and all the children of Canada.

Dr. Marie Wilson
Commissioner

Statement from the Commissioner, Chief Wilton Littlechild“When you work for our community, you must do everything you can to make it better, then pass it to the next
one....” These were my late grandfather’s (Chief Dan Minde)words to me in Cree as a twelve-year-old. I was and had
been a residential school student for six years already. The
true meaning of this instruction really took on full significance for me during these past six years. Thank you to myfellow Commissioners—Justice Murray Sinclair, Dr. Marie
Wilson—and all those who helped me focus our work as a
Photo: Simon Bedford
sacred trust. What a blessing it has been.
We have listened very carefully to many courageous individuals in our search forthe truth. Through pain, tears, joy, and sometimes anger, they informed us about what
happened. My gratitude and admiration of your strength and resilience to those whoshared your views on how we can and how we must work together very hard for reconciliation going forward. The encouraging advice from one of my schoolmates was, “Itstarts with me, I need to make things right with our Creator, the Great Spirit.”
The one recurring message for me throughout the public hearings was the necessity for the essential step of returning to spirituality through our languages, cultures,and land. We have all been guided in our journey by the seven universal gifts, sacredteachings towards having good relations or better relationships with mutual respect.
In the many different ways we gathered stories in a safe setting, thank you to those
who provided medical, cultural, and spiritual support. Also, to the many who prayed
for us throughout the years, hai hai! Thank you.
While there are many significant highlights, for me, four solutions for “making
things better” stand out. I believe Treaties are a solution. They are a basis for a strengthened partnership that calls on us to work together. I believe that the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a global consensus, offers us a trueframework for reconciliation. I believe the greatest opportunity for positive change isin lifelong learning, holistic education. I also believe these are best achievable if wework very, very hard on unity. We now know from many Survivors’ testimonies thatin building on the strengths of our people, the power is in family. Reconciliation will
come through concrete action on these priorities.

xiv • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Finally, let me conclude by extending the best I learned from fellow Survivors to myown and extended family for their sacrifice, patience, and being there for me: Helen,
Megan, Neil, Teddi, and my grandchildren Shaynna, Cleveland, Summer, Keeshon,
Nea, Jack, Ava, Jaylynn, and Konnar. The seven most powerful words: “I’m sorry, I love
you, thank you.”Chief Wilton Littlechild
Commissioner

Canada’s Residential Schools
Volume 1 • Part 1

IntroductionFor over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties;
and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease toexist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The
establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”
Physical genocide is the mass killing of the members of a targeted group, and biological genocide is the destruction of the group’s reproductive capacity. Cultural genocide
is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue
as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political andsocial institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forciblytransferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value areconfiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are
disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.
In its dealing with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.
Canada asserted control over Aboriginal land. In some locations, Canada negotiated Treaties with First Nations; in others, the land was simply occupied or seized. The
negotiation of Treaties, while seemingly honourable and legal, was often marked byfraud and coercion, and Canada was, and remains, slow to implement their provisions
and intent.1
On occasion, Canada forced First Nations to relocate their reserves from agriculturally valuable or resource-rich land onto remote and economically marginal reserves.2
Without legal authority or foundation, in the 1880s, Canada instituted a “pass system” that was intended to confine First Nations people to their reserves.3
Canada replaced existing forms of Aboriginal government with relatively powerlessband councils whose decisions it could override and whose leaders it could depose.4
In the process, it disempowered Aboriginal women.

4 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Canada denied the right to participate fully in Canadian political, economic, andsocial life to those Aboriginal people who refused to abandon their Aboriginal identity.5
Canada outlawed Aboriginal spiritual practices, jailed Aboriginal spiritual leaders,and confiscated sacred objects.6
And, Canada separated children from their parents, sending them to residential
schools. This was done not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to theirculture and identity.
These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will.
Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott outlined the goals of thatpolicy in 1920, when he told a parliamentary committee that “our object is to continue
until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the bodypolitic.”7 These goals were reiterated in 1969 in the federal government’s Statement of theGovernment of Canada on Indian Policy (more often referred to as the “White Paper”),
which sought to end Indian status and terminate the Treaties that the federal government had negotiated with First Nations.8
The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wishedto divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control
over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been “absorbed into thebody politic,” there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights.
Residential schooling quickly became a central element in the federal government’s
Aboriginal policy. When Canada was created as a country in 1867, Canadian churches
were already operating a small number of boarding schools for Aboriginal people. As
settlement moved westward in the 1870s, Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries
established missions and small boarding schools across the Prairies, in the North, and in
British Columbia. Most of these schools received small, per-student grants from the federal government. In 1883, the federal government moved to establish three, large, residential schools for First Nation children in western Canada. In the following years, thesystem grew dramatically. According to the Indian Affairs annual report for 1930, there
were eighty residential schools in operation across the country.9 The Indian Residential
Schools Settlement Agreement provided compensation to students who attended 139
residential schools and residences.10 The federal government has estimated that at least
150,000 First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students passed through the system.11
Roman Catholic, Anglican, United, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches were themajor denominations involved in the administration of the residential school system.
The government’s partnership with the churches remained in place until 1969, and,
although most of the schools had closed by the 1980s, the last federally supported residential schools remained in operation until the late 1990s.
For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Buildings were poorly
located, poorly built, and poorly maintained. The staff was limited in numbers, often

Introduction • 5poorly trained, and not adequately supervised. Many schools were poorly heated andpoorly ventilated, and the diet was meagre and of poor quality. Discipline was harsh,
and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. The educational goals of the schools were limited and confused, and usually reflected a low regard for the intellectual capabilities of Aboriginal
people. For the students, education and technical training too often gave way to thedrudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Childneglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations wherestudents were prey to sexual and physical abusers.
In establishing residential schools, the Canadian government essentially declared
Aboriginal people to be unfit parents. Aboriginal parents were labelled as being indifferent to the future of their children—a judgment contradicted by the fact that parents
often kept their children out of schools because they saw those schools, quite accurately, as dangerous and harsh institutions that sought to raise their children in alienways. Once in the schools, brothers and sisters were kept apart, and the governmentand churches even arranged marriages for students after they finished their education.
Despite the coercive measures that the government adopted, it failed to achieve
its policy goals. Although Aboriginal peoples and cultures have been badly damaged,
they continue to exist. Aboriginal people have refused to surrender their identity. It
was the former students, the Survivors of Canada’s residential schools, who placed theresidential school issue on the public agenda. Their efforts led to the negotiation of the
Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement that mandated the establishmentof a residential school Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The Commission’s final report is divided into the following six volumes.
Volume 1: The History
Volume 2: The Inuit and Northern Experience
Volume 3: The Métis Experience
Volume 4: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials
Volume 5: The Legacy
Volume 6: Reconciliation
The first volume, The History, is divided into three sections and, due to its length,
is being published in two parts. The first section places residential schooling for
Indigenous people in historical context and examines the pre-Confederation roots of
the Canadian residential school system. The second section describes the history andthe student experience of residential schools from Confederation to 1939. This was
the period in which the system was established and expanded. It was also the periodof the most intense health crisis. By the end of the 1930s, government officials hadcome to question the value of the residential school system. The final section covers
the years from 1940 to 2000, by which time the system had been brought to an end.

6 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The volumes The Inuit and Northern Experience and The Métis Experience address
topics that are often ignored in the discussion of residential schooling. The 1950s saw
a dramatic expansion of residential schooling in northern Canada and the creationof a system in which Inuit children were sent to residences that could be hundredsof kilometres from their home communities. Constant changes in government policy meant that, at some times, Métis children were barred from residential schools,
while, at other times, residential schools were the only schools that would accept
Métis children.
The Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Report addresses three interrelated
questions that were added to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s mandate: how many children died at the schools, what were the conditions that led totheir deaths, and where were they buried? The report demonstrates that Aboriginalresidential school students died at rates higher than non-Aboriginal students. It also
demonstrates that the government failure to provide adequate funding, medical treatment, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and clothing contributed to this elevated death
rate. In addition, the report makes it clear that the government had been advised of
the implications of its policies and presented with options—which it chose to ignore—
that would have reduced the school death rates.
The Legacy volume examines the devastating effects the residential school system
has had on former students, their families, and on Canadian society as a whole. It
explores the loss of language and culture suffered by Aboriginal people as well as thesignificant gaps they experience in health, education, and employment outcomes. The
Legacy volume also analyzes in depth the dramatic overrepresentation of Aboriginal
Canadians in the child welfare and correctional systems. In each of the volume’s fivesections, the Commissioners present a series of Calls to Action intended to redress theinjustices and inequities that are the legacy of the residential school system and thelong-standing policies of assimilation that gave birth to it.
The Reconciliation volume establishes guiding principles and a framework foradvancing reconciliation in Canadian society. It identifies the challenges that must
be overcome if reconciliation is to flourish in the twenty-first century and highlights the critical role that Aboriginal peoples’ cultures, histories, and laws must playin the reconciliation process. The volume demonstrates that although apologies
from Canada and the churches were important symbolic events, reconciliation also
requires concrete measures to repair the damaged relationship between Aboriginal
peoples and the Crown and to establish respectful relationships between Aboriginaland non-Aboriginal peoples. Individual chapters in the volume examine the potential for Indigenous law, public education, dialogue, the arts, and commemoration,
and Canadian society more broadly, to contribute to reconciliation. Based on thesefindings, the Commission makes specific calls to action that, when implemented, will
ensure that reconciliation has a strong foundation in Canada, moving into the future.

1
The historical context for
Canada’s residential schools

CHAPTER 1

Colonialism in the Age of Empire

The whole part of the residential school was a part of a bigger scheme of colonization. There was intent; the schools were there with the intent to change people, tomake them like others and to make them not fit.
And today, you know, we have to learn to decolonize.
—Shirley Flowers, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada1

I

n 1933, an Anglican missionary described the All Saints School at Aklavik in the
Northwest Territories as the “most northerly residential school in the British
Empire.”2 This proud claim is a reminder that Canada’s residential school system was part of a global imperial process that brought states and Christian churches
together in a complex and powerful fashion. The men and women who established theschools celebrated this link between their work and the growth of European empires.
The spread of those empires, the modern age of imperialism, was set in motionin the fifteenth century when the voyages of maritime explorers revealed potential
sources of new wealth to the monarchs of Europe. By the 1440s, the Portuguese hadreached the Gulf of Guinea. Soon after, they were bringing slaves, gold, and ivory fromAfrica to Europe. The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and the Incas gave Spain, andultimately all of Europe, access to the precious metals of North and South America.
This not only enriched the Old World, it also unleashed an unceasing wave of migration, trade, conquest, and colonization.3 It marked the beginning of the creation ofa European-dominated global economy. Although it was led initially by Spain andPortugal, this era of imperial expansion came to be directed by Holland, France, and,in the end, most spectacularly by Britain.4
The Age of Empire saw powerful European states gain control of other peoples’
lands throughout the world. It was an era of mass migration. Millions of Europeanscame as colonial settlers to nearly every part of the world. Millions of Africans weretransported across the Atlantic Ocean in the European-led slave trade, in whichcoastal Africans collaborated. Traders from India and China spread throughout the10 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Red Sea and Indian Ocean, bringing with them servants whose lives were little different from those of slaves.5 The activities of explorers, farmers, prospectors, trading
companies, or missionaries often set the stage for expansionary wars, the negotiationand the breaking of Treaties, attempts at cultural assimilation, and the exploitationand marginalization of the original inhabitants of the colonized lands.6
To a large extent, the colonists were extending beyond their own borders the social
values they had practised at home. In England’s case, for example, during the transition away from feudalism in the fourteenth century, landlords, seeking to benefit
from new, more efficient farming practices, forced hundreds of thousands of peasantsoff their land and then did the same thing in the conquered colonies of Ireland andScotland. Since, by British standards, Indigenous people were not using land as productively as possible, the colonizers acting under British laws and British conceptionsof ‘possession’ believed they had the right to the land wherever they took measures to‘improve’ it.7
Although the formal European empires finally collapsed in the last half of the twentieth century, their legacy remains: it is visible in the unequal distribution of global
resources; in the civil wars that have marked the histories of many former colonies;
and in the social, economic, educational, and health conditions of peoples whoselands have been colonized. On one day in February 2012, in the international news
were stories of Malaysians protesting the opening of an Australian refinery in theircountry, the working conditions in an American computer plant in China, the killingof American soldiers in Afghanistan, the impact of tourism on Indigenous people in
the Amazon, and controversy over British oil exploration in Somalia. Each of thesestories is but the latest event in a worldwide story with an imperial pedigree.8
Canada is also the product of this history. It was initially colonized by the French
Empire, and was one of the prizes in a lengthy inter-imperial conflict between France
and Britain. Once established as a state in 1867, it remained part of the British Empire.
In its westward and northern expansion, Canada wrote its own chapters in the history of colonialism, albeit with continued investments from Britain and later from theUnited States. The relationship between colonists and Indigenous peoples is long andcomplex, reflecting changes in the interests of both and shifts in the balance of power.
Throughout their encounter, both colonizer and colonized pursued their own, oftenchanging, goals. At the beginning of this period in what is now Canada, Aboriginal
peoples were in a dominant position. Not only were the European newcomers outnumbered, they also counted on Aboriginal people for their very survival. Their journeys of exploration depended on the support of Aboriginal guides. The fur trade, themajor European economic activity in the region, could not have functioned without
Aboriginal labour. Aboriginal people, for their part, valued many of the new trade
goods and engaged in a complex set of diplomatic relations with both French andEnglish colonial powers. In the end, however, the experience of Aboriginal people

Colonialism in the Age of Empire • 11

in Canada had much in common with that of Indigenous peoples in other colonizedlands throughout the world. As the balance of power shifted, their rights to land andself-government were brushed aside, and they were pushed onto reserves and cut
off from participation in the dynamic sectors of the economy.9 This colonial history
has profoundly shaped Canada’s political culture and national identity, and continues to shape relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The residential
school system and its legacy must be set in the larger international context of colonial policies that predated the schools and have continued on after their closing. This
chapter provides brief introductions to the idea of empire and colonialism, the justifications for imperialism, and the role of education in imperialism.

Empire and colonialism
The word empire has its origin in the Latin imperium, which originally meant theright “to wage war, and to make and execute laws.”10 Over time, the word came to referto lands far distant from Rome over which the Romans had extended their militaryand political authority.11 The Roman Empire was formed through military conquests
that allowed imperial officials to exploit conquered lands.12 This expansion was justified by the claim that the empire was spreading a universal law for humankind, thatto be incorporated into the empire was to make the journey from barbarism to civilization.13 In this way, the Romans provided future emperors with a model for imperial
expansion and a language with which to legitimize their actions.14
Each European empire gathered together a set of colonies, usually by force or the
threat of force, into an unequal political union. The imperial homeland dominatedand exploited the colonies. The classic European empires were, usually, ethnicallyand religiously diverse and geographically extensive, at times spanning several continents. They were maintained by both the threat of violence and the collaboration ofsome of the local elites.15 The terms imperialism and colonialism are closely boundtogether—and the words often are used interchangeably. Imperialism can be said todefine the policy of acquiring and maintaining an empire, while colonialism refers to
the practices involved in the transforming of the acquired territories into colonies,
most commonly by transferring settlers from the imperial power to the colony.
Imperialism is not a solely European practice. China, Japan, and the Ottoman
Empire, for example, all placed assimilationist pressures on the people who lived
within these increasingly centralized states.16 Europeans did not reserve colonialism exclusively for non-Europeans; the process was, in many ways, an extension ofdomestic policies through which the modern European states were created. In thisprocess, for example, in Britain, the Cornish, Welsh, and Gaelic languages were
marginalized.17 The First World War was preceded by a ferocious and often violent12 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

competition between the European powers to secure foreign colonies, particularly in
Africa, and the Second World War was driven, in large measure, by German ambitions
to create a European empire.
It has sometimes been argued that empires established law and order and maintained lengthy periods of peace. But the idea of a Pax Romana or Pax Britannica—
extended eras of peace established under the benevolent rule of the Roman or British
empires—is largely a myth, the product of imperial self-promotion. Empires were
established militarily, and engaged in extensive and violent wars with one another,maintained a military presence on their frontiers, and conducted innumerable military campaigns to put down nationalist uprisings.18 To cite only a few examples fromthe history of the British Empire: as many as 10,000 Singhalese died as a result of the
British campaign of destruction and starvation following a revolt in Sri Lanka in 1817;
two wars were fought to keep the Chinese market open to opium that the British were
producing in India; the repression of the Indian Mutiny left thousands dead; andBritish gunships were used around the globe to advance British interests. At various
times, troops under British control saw duty in the Persian Gulf, Ethiopia, Afghanistan,
Egypt, Burma, Nyasaland, the Sudan, and Canada. By the early nineteenth century, under the protection of the British navy, the British Empire was established inWest, South, and East Africa; India; Ceylon; Singapore; Australia; New Zealand; theCaribbean; and Canada.19
Colonies were established to be exploited economically. Benefit could comedirectly in the form of tax revenues, precious metals, or raw materials for industries in
the homeland. Colonies often were required to purchase their imports solely from thehomeland, making them a captive market.20 New forms of economic activity in Europe
had fostered a new type of business person, the entrepreneur with surplus capital in
search of an investment opportunity. Colonies provided them with the opportunities
they sought.21 Exploiting these conditions usually involved the expropriation or marginalization of Indigenous labour.22 The benefits of empire went largely to the imperial
power rather than to the conquered nation. Profits were not retained in the colony,and spending on education and social welfare was kept to the minimum needed tomaintain social order.23 In a colony, the fundamental decisions about the lives of thecolonized were made by representatives of the empire, who were implementing policies that had been created in the imperial centre for the benefit of imperial power.
There are Canadian examples of this process; for example, throughout most of their
history, the Yukon and Northwest Territories have been internal colonies, ruled byappointed administrators living in Ottawa.24
There was no one, single, colonial model. In some cases, the colony was run by achartered company; in others, the colonizing state ruled directly; in yet others, local
leaders were recruited to lead local governments. In what could be called “colonies ofoccupation,” imperialists sought to exploit natural resources using Indigenous labour.

Colonialism in the Age of Empire • 13

The number of colonists was limited: usually, only little more than the military andthe personnel needed to control and exploit the colony. After their term of service had
expired, most often the colonists returned to the homeland.25 In India, for example,
the British presence did not exceed 10,000 in a colony of 400 million.26 When manyof these empires collapsed in the 1940s and 1950s, the colonized peoples proclaimed
their sovereignty while most of the remaining colonists left.
These colonies of occupation can be contrasted to settler colonies such as Canada,
the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Although these colonies might havebeen initiated with an intention to simply exploit resources, over time, the focus
shifted to large-scale, permanent migration of agricultural settlers. From 1830 to 1840,
for example, European immigration to North America rose by 40%. Between 1815 and1912, two and a half million people emigrated from the British Isles. So extensive wasthis migration that, by 1900, only a third of the English-speaking people in the world
lived in Europe.27 These immigrants frequently were driven by famine, religious or
ethnic persecution, and the changes brought about by mechanization of agriculture
and manufacturing.28
The increase in the number of colonists was often matched by dramatic decreases
in Indigenous populations.29 The Maori population dropped from 80,000 in 1842 to
40,000 in 1896.30 The population of the Belgian Congo dropped by over nine million
people in the wake of colonization.31 In North America, the population decline began
upon contact and continued until the twentieth century. Estimates of the rate of population decline for North America range from 53% for some groups to 95% for others. New and deadly diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza dramaticallyreduced Indigenous populations. Colonialism had rendered Indigenous people especially vulnerable to epidemics by disrupting their relationship to the environment.
The poor living and working conditions often associated with colonialism not only left
people prey to epidemics, but also made it far more difficult for Indigenous populations to recover from an epidemic.32
The reception that colonialists received from Indigenous peoples varied according to time and place, depending on respective interests and needs. The variables
included the level of Indigenous interest in European trade goods and the colonists’need for Indigenous support and assistance for their very survival. The potential
existed for co-operation and exchange. In comparing the French and English in North
America, one group of Iroquois observed in 1754 that if one were to look at the forts
established by the French, “you will see that the land beneath his walls is still hunting
ground, having fixed himself in those places we frequent, only to supply our wants;
whilst the English, on the contrary, no sooner get possession of a country than thegame is forced to leave it; the trees fall down before them, the earth becomes bare,and we find among them hardly wherewithal to shelter us when the night falls.”33 The

14 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

statement highlights the reasons not only for co-operating with the French, but also
for resisting the English.
Conflict and resistance were common throughout the history of imperialism.
Resistance could come from the Indigenous peoples: in 1577, when British explorer
Martin Frobisher tried to take two Inuit hostages on Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island), theInuit fought back, leaving Frobisher with an arrow wound in the buttocks.34 Two hundred years later, in 1788, when British captain Arthur Phillips landed at Botany Bay inAustralia, he was greeted by Aboriginal people chanting “Warra, Warra,” which has
been translated as “Go away.”35 An Elder on Vancouver Island told colonial official
Gilbert Sproat that “we do not want the white man. He steals what we have. We wish
to live as we are.”36 In other cases, the Indigenous people questioned the colonizers’
claim to the land. First Nations leaders in the Nass River area of British Columbia
told a government commission in 1887, “What we don’t like about the governmentis their saying this: ‘We will give you this much land.’ How can they give it when it isour own? We cannot understand it. They have never bought it from us or our forefathers.”37 Resistance also came from the peoples who had been dragged away fromtheir homelands: slaves on the British island of Trinidad, in preparation for a revolt,sang that “The bread we eat is the white man’s flesh / the wine we drink is the whiteman’s blood.”38 And, as the American War of Independence demonstrated, even settlers themselves could rebel, particularly if imperial policy attempted to curb the rateand speed at which they took the lands of Indigenous people.39 Indigenous resistancecontinued after colonization, taking such varied forms as guerrilla warfare, strikes,
and even refusal to assimilate. Such a refusal did not mean that colonized peoples
rejected every aspect of colonial society, particularly if they were able to control thepace of change. In Canada, for example, Aboriginal people valued many of the goods
they received through the fur trade and were able to exploit their position as the suppliers of furs to their economic benefit.40
In settler colonies, the mere presence of Indigenous people blocked settler accessto the land.41 Herman Merivale, a future British permanent undersecretary of theColonial Office, noted in his 1840 Lectures on Colonization and Colonies that there werefour basic approaches an imperial power could take in its relations with Indigenous
people. It could exterminate them, enslave them, separate them from colonial society,or assimilate them into colonial society.42 At one point or another, just about everycolonial power experimented with each of these alternatives. Peoples who made theirlivings as hunters, fishers, and herders, who held land communally, or who lacked astrong and protective state were marginalized economically and socially.43 To accommodate settlers, Indigenous people were separated from their land (and the sourceof their livelihood). Settlers felled forests, overfished rivers, and fenced and ploughedplains, effectively disrupting the economic base and asserting dominion over the landof Indigenous peoples around the world.44 To separate Indigenous people from theColonialism in the Age of Empire • 15

land, settler colonialism negotiated Treaties where possible, waged wars of extinction, eliminated traditional landholding practices, disrupted families, and imposed
new political and spiritual order that came complete with new values and cultural
practices.45 The outcome was usually disastrous for Indigenous people, while the chief
beneficiaries of empire may well have been colonists in the settler colonies and theirdescendants. Many of the colonies they settled grew to be among the most prosperous
societies in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century world.46
Settler colonies often went on to achieve political independence. In the case of
Canada and the United States of America, these newly created nations spread acrossNorth America, creating land-based empires and continuing to colonize Indigenous
peoples. Settler colonialism remains an ongoing process, shaping both the structure
and the quality of the relationship between the settlers and Indigenous peoples.

The Doctrine of Discovery
At their height, the European empires laid claim to most of the earth’s surface andcontrolled the seas.47 Numerous arguments were advanced to justify such extravagant
interventions into the lands and lives of other peoples. These were largely elaborations
on two basic concepts: 1) the Christian God had given the Christian nations the rightto colonize the lands they ‘discovered’ as long as they converted the Indigenous populations, and 2) the Europeans were bringing the benefits of civilization (a conceptthat was intertwined with Christianity) to the ‘heathen.’ In short, it was contended
that people were being colonized for their own benefit, either in this world or the next.
The Roman Catholic Church, building on the traditions of the Roman Empire, conceived of itself as the guardian of a universal world order.48 The adoption of Christianity
within the Roman Empire (which defined itself as ‘civilized’) reinforced the view thatto be civilized was to be Christian.49 The fact that Christ was born during the reign ofAugustus, the founding Roman emperor, was interpreted as a sign that the Romans
had been preparing the way for Christianity.50 Subsequently, a narrative was fashioned that claimed that the fourth-century Emperor Constantine donated the Roman
Empire to the Pope, who in turn bestowed it upon the Holy Roman Emperor. Thiscame to be known as the “Donation of Constantine,” later demonstrated to be basedon a forged document that had been created several hundred years after Constantine’s
death. The Donation of Constantine was used to buttress papal authority to bestow
sovereignty over North and South America to the Portuguese and Spanish crowns.51
The papacy was already playing a role in directing and legitimizing colonialism
prior to Columbus’s voyages to the Americas in the 1490s. In 1433, Pope Eugene IV
granted spiritual authority over a number of islands in the Madeira archipelago insouthwest Portugal to the Portuguese Order of Christ, a religious and military body

16 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

then led by Prince Henry of Portugal.52 In doing so, Eugene claimed an interest inseeking the salvation of all the people of the world.53 The papacy continued to legitimate and control imperial expansion through a series of papal bulls. (A papal bull is acharter issued by the Pope; it takes its name from the Latin word for the mould used toseal the document.) In 1455, Pope Nicolas V issued a bull (Romanus Pontifex) giving
Portugal rights to the African coast from Cape Bojador (in the present-day Western
Sahara) south. The bull also granted the Portuguese the right to reduce the inhabitants of Africa to slavery, in large measure as a result of the Portuguese explorationand possession of these lands.54 A 1481 bull (Aeterna Patris) gave Portugal the rights
to lands and islands yet to be discovered from the Canary Islands “toward Guinea”(in Africa).55 With these bulls, the papacy was granting the lands of Indigenous peoples to the Portuguese Crown on the basis of discovery and conquest. These bulls
helped shape the political and legal arguments that have come to be referred to as the“Doctrine of Discovery,” which was used to justify the colonization of the Americas in
the sixteenth century.
Portuguese King João sought to use the bulls, which gave Portugal the right to“lands yet to be discovered,” to argue that the lands that Christopher Columbus had
claimed for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain actually belonged to him. For their part,the Spanish argued that the Portuguese had no claim to the lands in what is today
known as the “Americas,” since they were not “toward Guinea,” as the 1481 bull had
stipulated.56 To keep the Pope’s support, the Spanish made a number of promises.
On the spiritual level, they promised Pope Alexander VI that the people Columbus
had encountered would be converted to Christianity. Their efforts bore fruit. In 1493,
Alexander issued the first of four bulls dealing with the Spanish claim to the Americas.
The first bull (Inter Caetera Divinae) gave Spain the rights to any lands it had discovered (or would discover), provided they were not already in the possession of another
Christian power and that the Spanish converted the Indigenous populations toChristianity. The second bull (Eximiae Devotionis) supported the Spanish claims, anda third (also named Inter Caetera) stated that Spanish dominion commenced at a line
100 leagues (a league was a unit of measure, approximately five kilometres) west of the
Azores Islands. A fourth bull (Dudum Siquidem) further extended the Spanish claims.
It also prohibited other Christian nations from trading in the waters granted to Spain
without Spanish permission.57 This division was intended to give much of North andSouth America to Spain, while allowing Portugal to claim Brazil and the south Atlantic
as part of its rights to any of the land along the westward route to Asia from Europe.
The bulls of 1493 and 1494 are often referred to as either the “Alexandrine Bulls” or the“Bulls of Donation.” 58
Subsequent conflicts with the papacy prompted a number of prominent Spanish
writers and theologians to attempt to condone the conquest of the New World as theoutcome of a just war. Arguing that a war was just if it was fought in self-defence orColonialism in the Age of Empire • 17

in defence of universal values, these authors held that Indigenous people were natural slaves and that they were committing crimes against nature, such as humansacrifice, for which they needed to be punished. War against Indigenous peoples in
the New World was also just, they argued, because it would prevent the future sacrifice of innocents and spread Christianity to people whose souls would otherwise becondemned.59
While the bulls buttressed Spanish and Portuguese colonial ambitions, rulers who
had been left out of the papally sanctioned scramble for empire did not accept them.60
French kings such as Francis I and Henri IV also rejected the validity of the Bulls ofDonation.61 They argued that the Pope did not have jurisdiction over pagans and could
not give away half the world, any more than he could give away their own kingdoms.62
Those who rejected the bulls or the authority of the papacy did not necessarily
reject the Doctrine of Discovery—they simply modified it. To make a claim stick, theEnglish argued, it was necessary to discover lands and take possession of them.63
Harman Verelst, who promoted the colonization in the eighteenth century of what is
now the southern coast of the United States, wrote that “this Right arising from the first
discovery is the first and fundamental Right of all European Nations, as to their Claimof Lands in America.”64 As time went on, a theory about land in what is today America
developed in Europe, whereby the right of discovery created the right of pre-emption;that is, the right to acquire title by purchase or conquest.65
Even at the time, some critics pointed out that the right of discovery presumably
gave the Tahitians and the Japanese the right to discover and, therefore, lay claim toEurope.66 The Spanish theologian Franciscus de Victoria (also referred to as Vitoria),
in his 1532 lecture “On the Indians Lately Discovered,” wrote that there was no justification for the Pope’s granting the Americas to Spain and dismissed any right toestablish by discovery, noting that “the barbarians were the true owners, both fromthe public and from the private standpoint.”67 Despite this, 300 years later, in Johnson
v. M’Intosh, a case denying Native American land rights, United States Chief JusticeJohn Marshall held that “all the nations of Europe, who have acquired territory on
this continent, have asserted in themselves, and have recognized in others, the exclusive right of the discoverer to appropriate the lands occupied by the Indians.”68 The
Johnson v. M’Intosh case, which is based on the Doctrine of Discovery, was still being
cited in American courts in the twenty-first century, as is noted in a paper prepared for
the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.69 The Canadian Supreme
Court also cited Johnson v. M’Intosh in two Aboriginal rights cases, R. v. Sparrow in
1990, and in 1996 in R. v. Van der Peet.70
The Doctrine of Discovery was linked to a second idea: the lands being claimed
were terra nullius (land belonging to no one) and therefore open to claim. On thebasis of this concept, the British government claimed ownership of the entire
Australian continent. There, the doctrine of terra nullius remained the law until it18 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

was successfully challenged in court in 1992.71 Under this doctrine, imperialists could
argue that the presence of Indigenous people did not void a claim of terra nullius,
since the Indigenous people simply occupied, rather than owned, the land. True ownership, they claimed, could come only with European-style agriculture. Seventeenthcentury British political thinker John Locke held that ownership of land belonged
only to those who improved its productivity. When one considered the profit that a
Native American received from the produce of a fertile acre of land in North America
compared to what an English landlord received from an acre in England, it was clear,
he wrote, that the American acre was not worth one-thousandth of the English acre.
Given such a disparity, the North American acre under Aboriginal control was little
more than waste. Under this logic, it was not only permissible to seize the Aboriginal
land; it was virtuous if, by so doing, the land would be rendered more productive
and therefore more profitable.72 The legal writer Emeric de Vattel in 1758 argued thatsince the people of the Americas “rather roamed over them than inhabited them,” theFrench colonization of their land was “entirely lawful.”73
Underlying every one of these arguments was the belief that the colonizers werebringing civilization to savage people who could never civilize themselves. This argument was used in the seventeenth century to justify an intensification of the Britishcolonization of Ireland, which was marked by widespread dispossession, religious
persecution, and the settlement of British and Scottish landlords and farmers.74 In
1610, Sir John Davies, who oversaw the colonization of Ireland, claimed that the Irish“would never, to the end of the world, build houses, make townships or villages, ormanure or improve the land as it ought to be.” To leave Ireland to the Irish meant theland would “lie waste like a wilderness.” Since the British king was “bound in conscience to use all lawful and just courses to reduce his people from barbarism to civility,” Davies wrote, he had little choice but to colonize Ireland.75 Similar arguments weremade by colonists around the world. In this way, colonizers convinced themselves
they were spreading not only agriculture, order, and trade, but also civilization.76
The ‘civilizing mission’ rested on a belief of racial and cultural superiority. European
writers and politicians often arranged racial groups in a hierarchy, each with theirown set of mental and physical capabilities. The ‘special gifts’ of the Europeans madeit inevitable that they would conquer the lesser peoples. Beneath the Europeans, indescending order, were Asians, Africans, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas
and Australia. Some held that Europeans had reached the pinnacle of civilization
through a long and arduous process. In this view, the other peoples of the world had
been held back by such factors as climate, geography, and migration. Through a civilizing process, Europeans could, however, raise the people of the world up to their level.
This view was replaced in the nineteenth century by a racism that chose to cloak
itself in the language of science. This view held that the peoples of the world had differing abilities. For genetic reasons, there were limits on the ability of the less-developedColonialism in the Age of Empire • 19

peoples to improve. In some cases, it was thought, contact with superior races could
lead to only one outcome: the extinction of the inferior peoples.77 In 1910, Jules
Harmand, who had helped oversee the French colonization of Indo-China, wrote:
It is necessary, then, to accept as a principle and point of departure the fact that
there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior race and civilization, still recognizing that, while superiority confers rights, it
imposes strict obligations in return. The basic legitimation of conquest over native
peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic,
and military superiority, but our moral superiority. Our dignity rests on that quality,
and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity. Material power is nothing
but a means to an end.78

Attitudes of superiority gave rise to bold and sweeping generalizations: Islam wassterile; “Orientals,” fatalistic, when not corrupt, lazy, or, in the case of the “Chinaman,”simply inscrutable; the Japanese were liars, gifted but immoral; Africans, happy andcarefree, even when bound in slavery, which freed them from the white man’s burdenof thought.79 Speaking of the Zulus, among whom he was carrying out his missionary
work, Presbyterian Daniel Lindley wrote, “In Africans the elements of improvement
are, it seems to me, fewer and feebler than in any other portion of mankind. Theirdegradation is unfathomable—it has no bottom.”80
This sense of superiority provided a powerful justification for intervening in the
lives of others, since, it was argued, these people were not civilized enough to govern
themselves and achieve civilization on their own.81 On the basis of his involvement in
the nineteenth-century wars fought to open China to the British opium trade, British
admiral and explorer Sherard Osborn recommended in 1860 that the Chinese shouldbe treated “as children; make them do what they know is for their benefit, as well as
our own, and all difficulties with China are at an end.”82 Twelve years later, British historian and explorer Winwood Reade argued, “The great Turkish and Chinese Empires,the lands of Morocco, Abyssinia, and Thibet, will be eventually filled with free, industrious, and educated populations. But those people will never begin to advance until
their property is rendered secure, until they enjoy the rights of man; and these they
will never obtain except by means of European conquest.”83
These ideas shaped global policies towards Indigenous peoples. In 1883, Britain’s
Lord Rosebery told an Australian audience, “It is on the British race, whether in GreatBritain, or the United States, or the Colonies, or wherever it may be, that rest the highest hopes of those who try to penetrate the dark future, or who seek to raise and better the patient masses of mankind.”84 In that same year, the Canadian government
opened its first industrial residential school for Aboriginal people at Battleford on the
Canadian Prairies. The schools were a living expression of these ideas.
Lewis Henry Morgan, the leading American anthropologist of the nineteenth century and an advocate of the assimilation of Native Americans, wrote in 1877, “The

20 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Aryan family represents the central stream of human progress, because it produced
the highest type of mankind, and because it has proved its intrinsic superiority by
gradually assuming the control of the earth.”85 Canadian politicians were not immune
to these sentiments. In 1885, when denying the vote to people of Asian ancestry,
Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald warned that if Asian Canadians had
the vote, they would “send Chinese representatives” to Parliament, where they would
enforce “Asiatic principles,” which he described as “immoralities” that were “abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.”86
These views remained respectable and common well into the twentieth century.
The commemorative book produced in 1926 after the British Prince of Wales’s tour ofAfrica said that West Africans had “accepted the superficial attributes of civilization,
but would straightway shed them and relapse and revert to primitive savagery if their
white mentors withdrew.”87

Imperialism and education
At the outset of the colonial era, there was no free public school system in Europe.
Those schools that did exist were operated by either religious organizations or private
instructors or groups. In most cases, parents had to pay if they wanted their children
to attend these schools. Religious study, along with reading, writing, and arithmetic,
constituted the curriculum. Children were trained primarily by their parents and theygenerally followed in their parents’ occupations. However, during the nineteenth century, urbanization and industrialization so changed the world that, for many countries,
public schooling became both a possibility and a necessity. The Industrial Revolution
drove people off the land and into the cities. It was no longer the case that children
would follow in their parents’ occupations. Schools came to be seen as the solution to
the needs of parents, who could no longer provide their children with the skills theyrequired; of employers, who were looking for workers who could follow instructions
and accept discipline; and of elites, who feared that without education the newly created industrial working class would not accept the existing social order and their placein that order.88 The function of the public education system was to create a workforce
that was productive and loyal to the existing political regime. In eighteenth-century
Britain, charity schools were praised for teaching “Industry, Frugality, Order andRegularity.”89 In 1770, a British social reformer urged that four-year-old children living in poverty be sent to workhouses. There was, he wrote, “considerable use in their
being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours a day, whether
they earn their living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation
will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable
and entertaining to them.”90

Colonialism in the Age of Empire • 21

The stated goal of education in the colonies was no different from the overall colonial goal of bringing Christianity and civilization to the colonized. In practice, colonial
schooling was established to consolidate colonial rule, extend foreign domination,and enhance economic exploitation.91 The type of education offered, if any, depended
on whether the colonists were committed to policies of extermination, enslavement,
segregation, or assimilation. In colonies of occupation, where the colonists depended
on Indigenous labour to exploit local resources, a typical educational goal would be toprovide students with the skills needed to be good farmers or artisans. In such cases,
education might be offered broadly. Elsewhere, it might be provided largely to the children of local elites, who were expected to assist in the administration of the colony.92
For example, while the British East India Company initially banned missionaries from
India, educational services were extended to allow the colonial administration to staff
the lower ranks of the civil service with Indians.93
Many settler colonies took steps to separate children from their parents whileproviding them with some measure of a Western education, usually with the goal of
assimilating the children into a subordinate role within colonial society. Colonists at
Jamestown, Virginia, were urged to take Native American children into their homes
to educate them. Authorization was even given to the colonists to imprison Native
American religious leaders, so as to prevent them from opposing the missionary work.94
In the nineteenth century, authorities in Australia began separating Indigenous children from their parents, raising them in dormitories until they were fourteen, when
they were to be found jobs as farm labourers or domestic workers.95 In the twentiethcentury, the Soviet Union operated residential schools for members of the twenty-six
so-called small nationalities, not with the goal of Christianizing and civilizing them,but with the Soviet equivalent of these goals: converting them to socialism and forcing
them to settle in communities.96
Many colonists thought that, when it came to Indigenous people, a little learning was a dangerous thing. George Simpson, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s North
American governor, wrote in 1822, “I have always remarked that an enlightened Indianis good for nothing; there are several of them about the Bay side and totally useless,even the half Breeds of the Country who have been educated in Canada are blackguards of the very worst description, they not only pick the vices of the Whites uponwhich they improve but retain those of the Indian to the utmost extent.”97 In 1873,
the British colonial secretary issued an instruction that in West Africa, “I would havenothing to do with the ‘educated natives’ as a body. I would treat with the hereditarychiefs only, and endeavour as far as possible to govern through them.”98 The curriculum of French schools in Vietnam was similarly limited, for fear that the supposedly‘devious’ Vietnamese would surely convolute and misconstrue their learning.99
The general attitudes of the colonizers shaped the curriculum. In the early twentieth century, the French, convinced that Africans had little capacity for abstract22 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

thought, provided only a basic education in the primary schools they operated intheir West African colonies.100 Indigenous languages were also judged as inadequate.
Thomas Macaulay, a British politician, lawyer, and historian, served as the secretaryof the Board of Control, the government agency that supervised the British East India
Company. He took the lead in a campaign to make English, rather than Sanskrit andPersian, the language of education in government-supported schools in India.101 His
1835 paper supporting this policy argued that “a single shelf of a good European library
was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” The languages of India, in
his opinion, were irrational, giving support to barbaric and false beliefs. English, on
the other hand, offered “access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest
nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations.”
Although he was a gifted linguist, Macaulay managed to reach these conclusions without having bothered to familiarize himself with any of the languages he was judging.102
This attitude towards languages spread to culture. In school, the Vietnamese
were taught that, compared to dingy, unhealthy, poorly ventilated houses of theVietnamese, French houses were large and well planned. Colonialism itself was
explained as arising from France’s desire to protect the Vietnamese “from themselves
and their own shortcomings such as gambling, excessive superstitions of all sorts andtheir love of chicanery which ruins both their savings and their health.”103 General
Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the head of the Hampstead Institute in Virginia, held
similar views. He believed that the African American and Native American students
who were sent to his manual training school in the 1880s were members of races thatwere a “thousand miles behind us in moral and mental development.”104
Not surprisingly, it was not uncommon for this sort of education to breed self-hatred, alienation, and cultural instability.105 In his book Decolonising the Mind, Kenyan
writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o argues that this education annihilates “a people’s belief intheir names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in
their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see theirpast as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.”106 Writing of the North American experience, Mohawk
activist Taiaiake Alfred describes how colonialism disconnected Indigenous people“from our responsibilities to one another and our respect for one another, our responsibilities and our respect for the land, and our responsibilities and respect for our culture.”107 Colonialism also impacted the colonists. In 1857, the British executed those
who had taken part in the Indian Mutiny by firing cannons at them at point-blankrange. One young British soldier wrote to his mother, “You can’t imagine such a horrible sight.” A month later, however, he confided that “I … think no more of stringing up
or blowing away half a dozen mutineers before breakfast than I do of eating the same
meal.”108 Aimé Césaire, who led the anti-colonialist movement in the French colony ofMartinique, called this colonization’s “boomerang effect,” arguing “that the colonizer,

Colonialism in the Age of Empire • 23

who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an
animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively totransform himself into an animal.”109
Non-Indigenous people were taught to be proud of the empire. Henrietta Marshallwrote a series of history books that were used in schools throughout the British
Empire. At the beginning of her 1908 history of the empire itself, Our Empire Story,
she acknowledged, “The stories are not all bright. How should they be? We have mademistakes, we have been checked here, we have stumbled there. We may own it without
shame, perhaps almost without sorrow, and still love our Empire and its builders.”110
Throughout her works, Indigenous peoples are either savages or misguided children(although a Maori chief was “no ignorant savage, for the missionaries had taught him
much”).111 In Canada, according to her chapter on Louis Riel, “the Métis were very
ignorant” and Riel was “a clever but half-educated man” who, in 1885, was able to get
not only the Métis but also the “Red Man” to follow him. “Tribe after tribe smeared
their faces with war-paint, danced the war-dance, and set out to join the rebels. The
North-West was full of the nameless horror and terror of the Red Man, as Canada had
been long years before.”112 Marshall’s books remained in print into the 1950s. And
their attitudes had a far longer life: a 1969 study of 143 Ontario school texts observed,“To take the term most frequently applied to each group, we are most likely to encounter in textbooks, devoted Christians, great Jews, hardworking immigrants, infidel
Moslems, primitive Negroes, and savage Indians.”113 A decade later, the Manitoba
Indian Brotherhood released The Shocking Truth about Indians in Textbooks, a study
that underscored the continuing stereotypical portrayal of Aboriginal people in textbooks.114 Writing in 2007, Penney Clark, a Canadian educator, identified the following six categories into which Aboriginal people were still being slotted by Canadian
textbooks. They could be spectators who were not part of the main story of Canadianhistory; exotic, savage warriors; uniquely spiritual people; members of the ‘Indianproblem’; protestors; or simply invisible.115 In short, much of Canadian education has
been colonial education.

Conclusions
The Canadian residential school experience is part of the history of imperialism of
the past 500 years. In particular, it is part of the history of settler colonialism—and that
history is not over. By the twentieth century, colonized people throughout the world
began turning one European concept—mass nationalism—to their benefit. Wars ofnational liberation and campaigns of peaceful protest led to the collapse of the era offormal political empire. Between 1945 and 1965, the British, French, Dutch, German,
Belgian, and what was left of the Spanish empires collapsed. Others, such as the24 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Portuguese and Russian empires, lingered a little longer, but were gone by the end of
the century. This period gave birth to over 100 new sovereign states.116 Those states arestill living with the legacy of empire, and engaged in the difficult work of decolonizing
their societies and grappling with their place in an economy that imperialism madeglobal. The Indigenous people in settler societies have also participated in this global
reaction to colonialism. In the 1980s, American Indigenous activist Edward BentonBanai wrote of a generation of Indigenous people who were seeking to rescue andrevive “what was left by the trail” by collecting and recording teachings, learning andreviving languages, participating in once-banned spiritual practices, and asserting an
Indigenous right of self-government.117 So, while the age of territorial empire may beover, we are not yet living in a post-colonial world.
No process of reconciliation or decolonization can take place without first recognizing and addressing the legacy of colonialism. To begin this process, the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada wishes to make explicit a number of points.
Colonialism was undertaken to meet the perceived needs of the imperial powers.
The justification offered for colonialism—the need to bring Christianity and civilization to the Indigenous people of the world—may have been sincerely and firmly held
beliefs, but as justifications for intervening in the lives of other peoples, they do notstand up to legal, moral, or even logical scrutiny. As Spanish theologian Franciscus deVictoria stated nearly 500 years ago, the papacy had no authority to give away lands
that belonged to Indigenous people. The Doctrine of Discovery cannot serve as thebasis for a legitimate claim to the lands that were colonized, if for no other reason
than that the so-called discovered lands were already well known to the Indigenous
peoples who had inhabited them for thousands of years. Extending the Doctrine of
Discovery to say that occupation provides a claim is merely saying that colonial claims
were legitimate because colonists were successful in establishing colonies. The warsof conquest were not just wars; Indigenous peoples were not subhuman, and they
were not living in violation of any universally agreed-upon set of values. There wasno moral imperative to impose Christianity on the Indigenous peoples of the world,
they did not need to be ‘civilized.’ Indigenous peoples had systems that were complete
unto themselves and met their needs. Those systems were dynamic; they changed
over time and were capable of continued change.118 There is no hierarchy of societies. Taken as a whole, the colonial process was justified on the sheer presumptionof taking a specific set of European beliefs and values and proclaiming them to beuniversal values that could be imposed upon the peoples of the world. This universalizing of European values—so central to the colonial project—that was extended to
North America served as the prime justification and rationale for the imposition of aresidential school system on the Indigenous peoples of Canada.

CHAPTER 2

The churches and their
mission of conversion

C

hristian missionaries laid the foundation for Canada’s residential school system. On their own, missionary organizations established the earliest residential schools for Aboriginal people in Canada. From 1883 on, they operated
the national residential school system in partnership with the federal government.
Although the government and the churches would sometimes clash on a variety ofissues, the fact that the churches administered most of the schools until 1969 meantthat their values and their goals and methods were dominant throughout much of thesystem’s history. Wherever throughout the world they worked, missionaries sought totransform existing cultures. This often involved undermining traditional spiritual leaders, banning traditional cultural practices, and imposing a new moral code and belief
structure. For them and for the people they sought to convert, culture and spiritualbelief were intertwined. The schools they operated had a central purpose: conversion
to Christianity.1
The conversion of the ‘heathen’ lies at the heart of the Christian gospel. In the KingJames Version of the Bible, Christ told his followers to
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo,
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.2

The Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, took their inspirationfrom this passage from the Bible’s Book of Matthew. It was, they asserted, a Christian
duty to spread the gospel to the peoples of the world. In the process, they were to makethe Christian church a universal church.3
Indigenous people in Canada were the objects of a strategy of spiritual and cultural conquest that had its origins in Europe.4 While they often worked in isolation andunder difficult conditions, missionaries were representatives of worldwide organizations that enjoyed the backing of influential individuals in some of the most powerfulnations of the world and that came to amass considerable experience in transforming26 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

different cultures.5 Residential schools figured prominently in missionary work, notonly in Canada but also around the world.
Christian missionaries played a complex but central role in the European colonial
project. Their presence helped justify the extension of empire, since they were visibly spreading the word of God to the heathen. If their efforts were unsuccessful, themissionaries might conclude that those who refused to accept the Christian message
could not expect the protection of the church or the law, thus clearing the way for theirdestruction.6 Missionaries attempted to protect Indigenous people from elements ofthe colonial process of which they disapproved. For example, they might lobby traders
to give fair prices, urge government officials to provide relief in times of need, and lecture settlers on the need to respect the land rights of Indigenous peoples. However, they
were also committed to making the greatest changes in the culture and psychology of
the colonized as they worked to undermine Indigenous relationships to the land, language, religion, family relations, educational practices, morality, and social custom.7
From a British perspective, the society that Aboriginal people were to be integrated
into by way of this ‘civilizing’ process was associated with the social and cultural institutions of Great Britain.8 For French Catholics, British Protestantism was itself a threat
to civilization, one best fought by adherence to the Catholic faith.9 Though the two
perspectives were at odds, they also held much in common. Both approaches held
Christianity to be the only acceptable religion. Both focused on individual shortcomings as opposed to social and economic failings.10 Both brought women to the serviceof their respective causes. Both approaches also singled out children as the prime targets of their efforts.11
This missionary impulse was one of the chief characteristics of the imperial age.
As one of the hymns of the nineteenth century put it, the ‘Christian soldiers’ were
off to liberate humanity from their chains of error. The field of battle stretched fromGreenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand. Many, like the American Student
Volunteer Missionary Union, laboured toward the goal of “the evangelization of theworld in this generation.”12

The Catholic missionary movement
Prior to the age of European colonization, the church as a whole saw the spreading of the faith as a primary task—and there were few ‘missionaries,’ as we have cometo understand the term. This changed with the Age of Empire at the end of the fifteenth century. Just as successive Roman Catholic popes gave the kings and queens ofEurope the right to colonize the New World, the papacy also charged the monarchs ofeach Catholic nation with the responsibility of ensuring that the populations of their
new colonies were converted to Christianity. When Louis XIII of France created theThe churches and their mission of conversion • 27

Company of One Hundred Associates in 1627, the first trading company in Québec,he proclaimed a French mission to “discover in those lands and countries of New
France, called Canada, some habitation capable of sustaining colonies, for the purpose of attempting with divine assistance, to bring the people who inhabit them tothe knowledge of the true God, to civilize them and to instruct them in the faith andApostolic, Catholic and Roman religion.”13 The 1609 Charter of the Virginia Company,
which was granted by the British Crown to colonize what is now the southern UnitedStates, declared that the company was to propagate the “Christian religion to such people, as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worshipof God, and may in time bring the infidels and salvages [sic] living in these parts tohumane civility and to a settled and quiet government.”14
In Catholic countries such as France, the day-to-day responsibility for this work
was assigned to various religious orders: the Récollets and Jesuits, for example, went
to Québec at the behest of the French King and could, similarly, be ordered to return.15
Members of these orders did not marry; took vows of charity, poverty, and obedience;and often lived a communal life with others of their own sex. There were religious
orders for the rich and for the poor, for men and for women. The women’s orders cameunder the close supervision of men, as women were not eligible for ordination andtherefore could not occupy the ordained positions that supervise lay orders. This hierarchy mirrored the structure of most European societies’ rigid social divisions.16 Whenthe kings of Europe, who claimed to rule by divine right, sent out colonial expeditions,
missionaries accompanied the soldiers, sailors, and settlers. This partnership between
the missionaries and the military was neither easy nor straightforward, but it was present from the outset.17
The Catholic missionary endeavour was also a response to the great break in the
Catholic Church created by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. The reformers originally sought to end what they identified as corrupt practices and to correct false
doctrines, including the authority of the Pope and the bishops, the role of the monastic
orders, and the cults of devotion surrounding the Virgin Mary and the saints. Their
campaign for change in the church led to 150 years of strife in Europe and resulted in
the creation of numerous new Christian faiths, usually termed “Protestant” because of
their origins in the movement of protest and reform within the Catholic Church. While
the various Protestant churches evolved in different ways, they were similar in that they
were less hierarchical than the Catholic Church, placed a greater emphasis on individual interpretation of the Bible, and gave greater priority to the concept of personal salvation through faith. Committees of church elders rather than priests and bishops weremore likely to govern the Protestant churches. Protestant services were carried out inthe local language rather than in Latin, and ceremony and ritual gave way to simplicity.
The two Roman Catholic orders most involved in missionary work in Canada
were the Society of Jesus (better known as “the Jesuits”) and the Oblates of Mary

28 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Immaculate. The Jesuits’ direct involvement in residential schools in Canada was limited. However, their work around the world served as a model for both the Oblates
and many Protestant missionaries. Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish nobleman and soldier,founded the Society of Jesus in 1534. Ignatius had turned to religious life while recovering from a serious battle wound. His conception of the Society of Jesus as a militantorganization was mirrored in Pope Julius III’s bull sanctioning the order, whose missionary activities were conceived of as expeditions in a global war against Satan andpaganism. Victory would entail global conquest in Christ’s name.18 The Jesuits differedfrom many other religious orders in that they did not withdraw from the world to live acontemplative life. Thoroughly trained, persistent, well educated, and engaged in theworld, they attacked corruption within the clergy and the lack of involvement among
the faithful.
One of the first Jesuit foreign missionaries was Francis Xavier, who followed
Portuguese traders to India, Japan, and finally China, where he died. His letters homeand his success at baptizing thousands of people in India served as an example andinspiration to future Jesuits.19 Operating throughout the Catholic world, the Jesuits
often found themselves in conflict with secular authorities: in Brazil, Jesuits denounced
the vicious subjugation of the Indigenous people by the Portuguese colonists, and, inSpanish South America, they established reducciones to which the Guarani people, theIndigenous people of the region, withdrew in search of protection from the Spanish
colonists. The reducciones were so named because it was expected that. within thesecommunities, the Guarani people would be ‘reduced’ to civilization while being isolated from it. By 1700, it is estimated, at least 80,000 people were living in the reduccciones. When slave hunters from Brazil began to target the Guarani for capture andsale into the South American slave market, the Jesuits provided the Guarani with arms
that allowed them to fight back. This Jesuit support for the Guarani contributed to their
expulsion from the Spanish Empire and their being suppressed by order of the Popein 1773. While the Jesuits acted on behalf of what they perceived to be the interests
of Indigenous peoples, their work was intended to encourage Indigenous people toaccommodate themselves to European colonization.20
In North America, following the British conquest of New France in 1763, the Jesuits
were not expelled, but they were not allowed to train or import new members. The
order was reconstituted in 1814. It was not until after the uprisings of 1837 that the
British government, seeking to reinforce order and stability, allowed the Jesuits toreturn. Their missionary work took them to northern and northwestern Ontario,
including Manitoulin Island and Spanish, where they established residential schools.21
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate was founded in the early nineteenth
century in southern France by the future Bishop of Marseille, Eugène de Mazenod. (Anoblation is an offering to God; an oblate is one who offers himself to a religious life.) Like
the Jesuits had been before them, the Oblates were part of a broad movement to revive

The churches and their mission of conversion • 29

the Catholic Church. This time, it was in response to the social disorder, decline in the
power of the French state, and rise of secularism that followed the French Revolution
and the defeat of Napoleon. The Oblates stressed the importance of unity, discipline,
and submission to papal authority. In France, the people to whom they ministered
were usually illiterate, had sometimes gone long periods without a parish priest, andspoke a distinctive dialect. To address their needs and try to win back Protestants to
Catholicism, the Oblates and other missionary groups developed specific skills andapproaches in what was termed their “home” missionary work. These skills, which
included the use of rote learning, the delivery of highly emotional sermons, and thecomposition of hymns set to familiar melodies, were later adopted in their foreign missionary work. Like the Jesuits, the Oblates saw themselves as part of a militant church,
engaged in a daily struggle with evil and temptation for the souls of weak and susceptible humankind. It was not a theology that tolerated other creeds or cultures, or internaldissent.22
While the Oblates originally focused their attention on the poor and working classesof Provence, from the 1830s onwards, they engaged in overseas missionary work. They
established themselves in eastern Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Ceylon, Texas, andAfrica. In carrying out this work, the Oblates developed a reputation for their willingness to travel, perform manual labour, live for lengthy periods of time in isolation fromothers of European background, and learn new languages.23 In 1828, the French government had placed restrictions on the Catholic Church that made it difficult for the
Oblates to expand their work in France. As a result, the order responded positively to
an invitation from Montréal Bishop Ignace Bourget to come to Québec. Soon after, they
were active not only in Québec, but also on the Prairies, in the North, and on the Pacificcoast.24 Although their mandate did not include the provision of education, as a resultof their dramatic expansion throughout the Canadian West and North, the Oblates
established and managed the majority of church-run Canadian residential schools.
Two French missionary fundraising bodies funded their work: l’Oeuvre de la
Propagation de la Foi (Society for the Propagation of the Faith) and l’Oeuvre de laSainte-Enfance (Society of the Holy Childhood). The second fund was intended tosupport the baptism and education of children deemed to be infidels. In Canada, theOblates used the funds to pay parents to have their children attend boarding schools.
By the 1860s, the fund was supporting forty-two Aboriginal children in four Oblate
schools and two orphanages in western Canada. A donation of 15,000 francs from the
Propagation de la Foi fund kept the Oblates from having to close their school at Fort
Providence in the North-West Territories.25 (By comparison, during this period, a lawyer just starting his career might expect to earn between 16,000 and 20,000 francs.)26
Their work would have been impossible without the support of a number of female
religious orders. The Sisters of Charity (also known as the “Grey Nuns”), the Sisters ofProvidence, and the Sisters of Saint Anne, all Montréal-based female orders, provided

30 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the missions with teachers and nurses. By 1900, over 6,000 women were enrolled inthese orders in Québec. Many of them would work in schools across the country, usually for little more than room and board. The Sisters of Charity, founded in Montréal in
the eighteenth century, were the Oblates’ preferred partners in missionary activity. The
Sisters of Providence, founded in 1843, initially focused on services to the urban poorin Montréal, but were drawn into missionary work by the end of the nineteenth century. The Sisters of Saint Anne were founded in 1850.27 The Missionary Oblate Sistersof the Sacred Heart and of Mary Immaculate, a teaching congregation established in
Manitoba in the early twentieth century, sent sisters to a number of western Canadianresidential schools.28

The Protestant missionaries
In the two decades following the British conquest in 1763, Catholicism remained thedominant Christian religion in the former French colonies that were now part of a larger
British North America. This began to change after the British defeat in the American
War of Independence, when more than 36,000 Loyalist settlers, most of whom wereProtestant, came north to Canada.29 Their arrival marked the beginning of British colonial settlement of what is now Ontario and reinforced the already Protestant nature of
the Maritime colonies. The major Protestant denominations included the Anglicans(Church of England), the Methodists, the Presbyterians (Church of Scotland), theCongregationalists, and the Baptists.30 Of these, only the Congregationalists and theBaptists did not become involved in the operation of residential schools for Aboriginal
children in the nineteenth century.
The Protestants, like the Catholics, were involved in missionary work on a global
basis. Lacking the religious orders that provided the Catholics with missionaries,
they established missionary societies. In 1649, the British parliament chartered theSociety for the Propagation of the Gospell in New England (more commonly known
as the “New England Company”) to support the work of a missionary, John Eliot, in
Massachusetts.31 Dr. Thomas Bray, an Anglican clergyman and social reformer, helped
found the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698. After spending time asa missionary in Maryland, he participated in the establishment of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701.32 Other organizations followed,
such as the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society,and the Colonial and Continental Church Society.
One of the most significant of these societies was the Church of England’s Church
Missionary Society, which was officially founded in 1812. It grew out of the Society
for Missions to Africa and the East, which had been established in 1799. The Church
Missionary Society’s leadership came from the Clapham Sect, a group of wealthy,

The churches and their mission of conversion • 31

reform-minded Anglicans.33 These “evangelicals,” as they were known, stressed theneed to accept one’s state of sin and the necessity of salvation through Christ and theauthority of the Bible, and emphasized the importance of a sense of personal conversion. Dramatic sermons, revival meetings, and immersion in social-reform campaigns,
ranging from the abolition of slavery to the prohibition of alcohol, were among thehallmarks of their work.34 Religion was not to be reserved for Sundays, and neither was
it simply a guide to personal behaviour. They felt a ‘Godly approach’ to all human activity could be found through close study of the Bible. Once the approach was discovered,it was the duty of the faithful to follow that way.35
The Anglican Church Missionary Society sent out its first missionaries in 1804.36 By
the middle of the nineteenth century, it had missions across the globe in such places
as India, New Zealand, West and East Africa, China, and the Middle East. The society’s
Highbury College in London provided missionaries with several years of training inarithmetic, grammar, history, geography, religion, education, and the administrationof schools.37 As part of their training, the missionaries worked in urban missions in
London. Many saw their future work among the Indigenous peoples of the world as anextension of their work among the urban poor.38 A well-organized international support network provided them not only with funds, but also with advice and a sense ofcommunity through correspondence, annual letters and reports, and a series of publications that shared experiences across the mission field through articles, illustrations,and extracts from a voluminous international correspondence.39 By 1901, the Church
Missionary Society had an annual income of over 300,000 pounds. (By way of comparison, this is the amount that the Hudson’s Bay Company received for Rupert’s Land
thirty years earlier.) It used this money to support 510 male missionaries, 326 unmarried females, and 365 ordained pastors around the world.40
The Protestants, like the Catholics, encouraged church members to make regularcontributions to overseas missionary work. From many such small donations, significant funds were accumulated.41 The financial support the missionaries received fromoutside Canada was considerable: in 1895, the Church Missionary Society spent 18,000
pounds on its Canadian work.42 Construction of the Church of England (Anglican) residential school at Chapleau, Ontario, for example, was paid for with money raised inEngland in 1907.43
The Reverend Henry Venn oversaw the Church Missionary Society for much of thenineteenth century. Venn’s long-term goal was the establishment, not of separate
branches of the Church of England, but of national churches throughout the world.
He believed if the missionaries respected the habits of the people they converted,the churches they established would come to be seen as part of the way of life ofeach community, rather than as the Europeans’ church. In his view, it was desirable
for Indigenous ministers to be responsible for a self-supporting church and for theEuropean missionaries to move on to new challenges.44

32 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Methodist Church grew out of an evangelical reform movement within the
Church of England at the end of the eighteenth century. John Wesley was the leading figure in this reform movement. He developed a theology that stressed personal
conversion, good works, and prayer. This was all done with such regularity by its practitioners that it came to be known as “Methodism.” Wesley rejected the doctrine ofpredestination that some Protestants held: to him, each individual had the power toaccept or reject God, thereby assuring salvation or damnation.45
Members of the Methodist Church were expected to avoid the world’s temptations,while living in the world and creating an ever-growing Christian community.46 Wesleycalled the world “his parish.” It was inevitable that the Methodists would undertake
missionary work and, as urged by Wesley, would “make disciples of all nations.”47
Indeed, Wesley had started his career as a missionary in North America. In 1735, heand his brother Charles sailed to Georgia as missionaries for the Anglican Society for
the Propagation of the Gospell.48 Before their departure, they told a friend in Englandthat they intended to “further their spiritual Progress by going amongst the Indians.”49
To his frustration, Wesley spent most of his time ministering to the colonists.50
The term Presbyterianism originally referred to a type of church governance in the
Reformed Christian tradition in which presbyters (elders in the church or ministers),
rather than the congregation, or bishops and the Pope made the key governing decisions. The churches that formed the Church of Scotland adopted this model in 1560, thewhole coming to be known as the “Presbyterian Church.” The religion came to Canada
with Scottish immigrants in the eighteenth century. In both Scotland and Canada, thechurch underwent a number of divisions and attempts at reconciliation. By 1875, most
Canadian Presbyterians were members of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.51
Although the Moravian Church never rivalled the other Protestant churches in size,
it played a significant missionary role in Labrador. It had been founded in the mid-fifteenth century in what is now the Czech Republic. By the end of the eighteenth century,
the Moravian Church (also known as the “Unitas Fratrum” or “United Brotherhood”)
had become the world’s largest Protestant missionary body. Its first missionaries set
forth in 1732 for destinations as disparate as Greenland and the Dutch West Indies.
Later in the eighteenth century, Moravian missionaries travelled from Greenland,
where they had learned to speak Inuktitut, to Labrador. An agreement with the British
Crown had given them the responsibility for converting the Inuit of Labrador andkeeping them north of Hamilton Inlet—thereby preventing the Inuit from coming into
conflict with the European coastal fishing fleet.52
Women played an important role in Protestant missionary work. In many cases,
male missionaries were accompanied by their wives, who often found themselves
working as volunteer nurses and teachers. By the end of the nineteenth century, all the
major Protestant churches in Canada had established women’s auxiliaries or women’s

The churches and their mission of conversion • 33

missionary societies. These organizations both raised funds and sent women to workin the mission field, in Canada and internationally.53
While significant divisions often existed between the Protestant churches in theirwork in Canada, they could be united by their rejection of the Catholic Church.54 To
the Protestants, Roman Catholics were superstitious worshippers of false idols. Roman
Catholics, in turn, saw Protestants as heretics. In each other’s eyes, both were doomed
for their sins.55 The divisions extended beyond religious differences: Protestants saw
Catholics as agents of foreign (by which they meant non-British) powers. The Catholic
bishops reinforced this impression by flying the French flag at their missions and on
their boats. To the Catholics, the Protestants, particularly the Anglicans, were agentsof Anglo-conformity and the British Empire.56 These conflicts, and the competition that arose from them, would help shape the growth of the Canadian residential
school system.
The Anglican hostility towards Catholicism was heightened in the early nineteenth
century by the internal challenge it faced from what was known as the “High Church
movement,” centred in Oxford University. Beginning in 1833, this movement placed agreater emphasis on the sacraments and obedience to ministers and bishops. The conflict peaked when a number of the leaders of this movement became Roman Catholics,
leading many Anglicans to conclude that an aggressive Roman Catholic Church wasseeking to displace the Anglican Church’s authority. This increased suspicion and conflict between Anglican and Catholic missionaries in Canada.57
European missionaries, Catholic or Protestant, were very much products andmembers of the societies from which they came. They were proud of their society’s
civilization and intensely committed to its faith. But, by the nineteenth century, many
missionaries felt that European society, with its increasing emphasis on secularism andindividualism, was falling away from true Christianity. In the simple act of engaging in
missionary work in distant lands under trying conditions, for no material reward, themissionary was at odds with the dominant value of European society. Not surprisingly,
missionaries often expressed the view that the worst vices found among Aboriginal
people were those they had learned from Europeans.58

The missionary at work
No matter how benevolently missionaries conceived of their task, their mission was
one of social disruption. While they could be flexible or willing to accommodate certain
elements of Aboriginal culture, the missionaries of the nineteenth century were nottrained to view all cultures as being of equal value.59 They believed firmly in European
cultural superiority. From India, John Smith described the people he was working withas “obsequious, deceitful, licentious, and avaricious,” virtually “destitute of all that is34 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

good, and distinguished by almost all that is evil.”60 From the Canadian west coast,
William Duncan reported, “I cannot describe the conditions of this people better thanby saying that it is just what might be expected in savage heathen life.”61 The Moraviansin Labrador wrote that Inuit cultural practices were “too tedious to mention.”62
The missionaries claimed possession of an exclusive truth and held that all otherreligions were either in error or sinful. Outside their own church, be it Catholic orProtestant, there was no salvation.63 Their goal was to convince people to change not
only their religious beliefs (faith in dreams, and sacrifices to spirits), but also their ceremonial dances and sweat lodges, their social and marriage practices, the way theyraised their children, and the way they buried and mourned their dead. When thechiefs at Nanaimo asked Methodist missionary Thomas Crosby if they could continue
with their dances while sending their children to school, he responded that “the dance,
the potlatch etc., it is all bad.”64 The meaning of life, from its beginning to its ending,came under question. Spiritual leaders were belittled and described as conjurors who
preyed on people’s needs. The missionaries wooed those they identified as Aboriginalpolitical leaders and sought to discredit spiritual leaders. They endeavoured to train a
Christian faction within Aboriginal communities. It was a highly divisive strategy that
aimed at doing away with the existing order.65 When the implications of the missionary
approach had become clear to him, one Huron chief told Jesuit missionary Jean deBrébeuf that “you are talking of overthrowing the country.”66
The missionaries didn’t just believe that Aboriginal souls were in need of saving;
many had also concluded that Aboriginal people were at risk of physical extinction.
Writing from the Yukon in 1906, Selina Bompas, the wife of an Anglican missionary,concluded, “The poor Indians are nearly swamped by the white man. You have invaded
their territory, cut down their forests, thereby driving away their moose and caribou,
and depriving them of their very means of subsistence.”67 It was up to the missionary toensure that contact with expanding Western civilization did not lead to their destruction. The honour of the imperial project was at stake.68
Imperialism itself, however, was rarely questioned. The Spanish priest Bartolomé delas Casas spent much of his life campaigning for the proposition that the Indigenous
people of the Spanish colonies in the Americas were actually human beings, deservingof treatment as Spanish subjects. His book, A Short Account of the Destruction of theIndies, catalogued the sins of the Spanish colonialists. Despite his opposition to the
mistreatment of the Indigenous people, however, he was a firm believer in the empire
and colonialism, so long as it sought to bring to the colonized the dual benefits of civilization and Christianity.69 As one early North American colonist put it, the Europeans
were giving Indians Christianity for their souls and civilization for their bodies.70
In his 1889 book The Indians: Their Manner and Customs, based on his years asa Methodist missionary in the Canadian West, John Maclean wrote that while the“Canadian government wanted missionaries to ‘teach the Indians first to work andThe churches and their mission of conversion • 35

then to pray,’” the missionaries believed that their role was to “Christianize first andthen civilize.”71 As much as they may have debated separating the task of conversion
from that of civilization, in daily practice, the nineteenth-century missionary, whether
working in North America, Africa, or Asia, generally undertook both tasks at once.
The Church Missionary Society recognized this dual role when it spoke of the coming
day when, thanks to “the grace of God, the African will no longer be a byword andoutcast from civilization.”72 The civilization to which they should aspire, in the mindsof the British-based Church Missionary Society missionaries, was that of mid-nineteenth-century Victorian England.73
Most of the nineteenth-century Jesuit and Oblate missionaries to Canada wereFrench-speaking Catholics from France or Belgium. They did not share the Protestants’commitment to the British Empire or an Anglo-Saxon identity. Nevertheless, they did
see themselves as the vanguard of the spread of la civilisation chrétienne. Although
they might define Christianity and civilization in ways that were different from theProtestants’ definitions and were less likely to encourage Aboriginal people to give up
hunting and trapping for farming, their work still had significant social and cultural
impact.74 Many of the Protestant missionaries came from a lower middle-class background. They believed that success could be achieved through education and generalself-improvement. Discipline, reflection, self-control, and abstinence from alcohol
were among the virtues to be cultivated, both in and of themselves and for the benefits
they would bring.75 The missionary then sought to instill a new character in Aboriginal
people and provide them with the education they would need to adopt the Christianfaith and the Euro-Canadian work ethic, and join Western society. In practice, thisindoctrination was to prove both complex and contradictory.
The missionary could conceive of no civilization other than European, but he wasalso well aware of the fact that colonialists themselves often posed a direct threat toAboriginal people. As a result, the missionaries, following on the Jesuit model, oftensought to protect Aboriginal people from European culture, creating separate, isolated
communities modelled on the Jesuit reducciones of South America. In nineteenth-century British Columbia, the Oblates established what came to be known as the “Durieu
System” (named after the system’s developer, Bishop Paul Durieu) of model Aboriginalvillages. The residents of the villages were to be kept separate from what were seen as
the corrupting influences of both white people and other Aboriginal people who continued to practise their traditional culture. Under the supervision of the missionary,appointed chiefs, subchiefs, and police officers enforced a legal and moral code developed by the Oblates. Those who sang traditional songs, visited traditional healers, orviolated the strict sexual code were subject to punishment. One missionary recorded,
after one sitting of the village court, that “the whip functioned for two days.”76

36 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The residential schools would take this one step further, separating children fromparents, in order to ‘protect’ the children from their parents’ supposedly corrupting
cultural practices.
Because they might be dispatched to any part of the world, missionaries were nottrained in Aboriginal languages in their home countries, but were expected to learn
languages on arrival. The Jesuit constitution recommended they learn the languagesof the people whom they sought to convert. The Jesuits also made themselves familiar
with Aboriginal beliefs and practices, and were flexible and creative in their efforts toincorporate elements of those practices into the conversion process.77 De Mazenod,
the founder of the Oblate order, stressed the importance of being able to preach topeople in their own language, and instructed the Oblates, “The Gospel must be taught
to all men and in a way in which it can be understood.”78 Oblate missionaries to western Canada devoted considerable time and energy to learning Aboriginal languages.79
In sending J. William Tims out to the Canadian West, the Church Missionary Society
instructed him that he was to “let no day pass without the acquisition and the use ofIndian words and phrases.” He was not to rely on a translator, but become fluent in thelanguage and able to converse with the Aboriginal people on all subjects.80
Language and literacy were crucial to conversion. To the Protestants, in particular,
the Gospel was a miraculous document: exposure to it would lead to conversion. This
logic required European education to allow newly literate people access to the Bible.81
Bishop John Horden of Moosonee viewed his translation of books of the Old Testament
into syllabics as the “crowning work of my life.”82 Catholics and Protestants preparedcatechisms—statements of the fundamental beliefs of the church—in Aboriginal languages. European education was required to provide Aboriginal people with the skills
required to read and learn these translated works. Whether or not it was to be carriedout in Aboriginal languages, missionary education was education in the service of conversion. It stressed the doctrines of sin, salvation, and obedience, and it undermined
the foundations of Aboriginal culture.
Most missionaries also sought to settle Aboriginal people into an agricultural lifestyle, believing that a “nomadic” people could not support churches and schools or
survive the impact of European settlement. Because it encouraged private property,
stability, and industry, farming was seen as the ideal economic activity. Missionaries
in Sierra Leone spoke of the need to bring Indigenous people to the work disciplineof the industrial age, since “they only cared for eating, drinking and sleeping. To diligence and industry they had to be roused by the efforts of the Missionaries.”83 In 1853,
de Mazenod instructed the Oblates, “Every means should therefore be taken to bring
the nomad tribes to abandon their wandering life and to build houses, cultivate fields
and practise the elementary crafts of civilized life.”84 Thomas Foxwell Buxton, a leading
figure in both the Church Missionary Society and the anti-slavery movement, told thefirst anniversary meeting of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for theThe churches and their mission of conversion • 37

Civilisation of Africa, “It is the Bible and plough that must regenerate Africa.” The Bible
stood for conversion to Christianity; the plough stood for the adoption of Western-styleagriculture, complete with the private ownership of land.85
Training in manual labour was to be an essential part of missionary schooling. In the
1850s, Rev. Venn of the Church Missionary Society reported, “In India, New Zealand,
and all our missions, an industrial department is being added to our schools.”86 In
developing plans for a residential school in the Canadian Northwest, Roman Catholic
Bishop Vital Grandin drew on a visit he had made to a reformatory prison in Citeaux,France. In his view, the controlled and disciplined environment that he observed there,
coupled with the instruction in trades and the musical education the students received,transformed the young French prisoners and would do the same for Aboriginal children in Canada.87
Missionary life was not easy. Anglican Bishop Isaac Stringer became known as “TheBishop Who Ate His Boots” after a 1909 trek through the Mackenzie Mountains. Afterrunning out of food, he survived by boiling and eating his sealskin boots.88 Food shortages were so severe at Fort Providence in the North-West Territories in 1881 that the
Grey Nuns announced they were transferring their nuns to more southerly missions.
Bishop Taché intervened before the decision could be implemented. He said that it
would be “a great misfortune” for the Grey Nuns to withdraw and pointed out that
despite food shortages, “No one died.”89 In the face of this criticism, the Grey Nuns
stayed.90
Some missionaries were attracted to the mission field precisely because of its dangers. For many years, Nicolas Coccola was a Catholic missionary and residential school
principal in British Columbia. He wrote in his memoirs, “The desire of foreign missions
with the hope of martyrdom appeared to me as a higher calling.”91
Missionaries also brought with them elementary medical care and early forms ofsocial assistance.92 The Aboriginal people to whom they preached often were open to
new forms of religious experiences, but did not feel that this required them to abandon long-standing practices.93 Many resisted the missionaries’ messages, while others
adapted Christian ideas into their belief systems. But, over time, the missionaries succeeded in gaining converts. An 1899 Indian Affairs census reported that over 70,000 of
the 100,000 First Nations people identified in the census were Christians.94 The missionaries had hoped to establish self-sustaining Aboriginal churches, but Aboriginal
people had limited opportunity for promotion in the churches. Although they could
aspire to positions of local leadership, they rarely played a role in determining the policy or practice of national missionary organizations. The failure to recruit Aboriginal
people into the clergy in the Canadian West was a topic of ongoing concern for the
Roman Catholic missionaries, for example, from the 1820s to the 1940s.95
Missionaries viewed Aboriginal culture as a barrier to both spiritual salvationand the ongoing existence of Aboriginal people. They were determined to replace38 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

traditional economic pursuits with European-style peasant agriculture. And they
believed that cultural transformation required the imposition of social control andseparation from both traditional communities and European settlements. Given these
beliefs, when they turned their attention to schooling, they quickly became proponents of an educational world that separated children from the influences of their families and cultures, imposed a new set of values and beliefs, provided a basic elementary
education, and created institutions whose daily life reflected Europe’s emerging work
discipline. In short, they sought to impose the foreign and transforming world of theresidential school.

CHAPTER 3

Residential schoolingin French Canada:
1608–1763

In 1541, French King Francis I commissioned Jean de la Rocque, Seigneur deRoberval, to lead an expedition to North America. De Roberval was under orders
to “inhabit the aforesaid lands and countries and build there towns and fortresses, temples and churches, in order to impart our Holy Catholic Faith and Catholic
Doctrine, to constitute and to establish law and peace, by officers of justice so thatthey … [the Aboriginal peoples] may live by reason and civility.”1 De Roberval arrived
in Stadacona (near today’s Québec City) in 1542, but abandoned his settlement effort
the next year. The settlement’s brief history was marked by hunger, internal disputes,
and death. As a result, the settlers devoted little time to Christianizing and ‘civilizing’
the Aboriginal people they encountered. Indeed, in these encounters, the settlers wereas likely to mistreat Aboriginal people as to attempt to convert them to Christianity.2
Canada was eventually colonized by traders and explorers armed with similarcommissions that gave them the sole right to trade in lands they were claiming for
the French Crown. In exchange for freedom from competition, these colonists were
pledged to “provoke and rouse” the Aboriginal people “to the knowledge of God andto the light of the Christian faith and religion.” In other words, they were to convert
them to Christianity. In addition, the Aboriginal people were to be brought to “civilization of manners, an ordered life, practice and intercourse with the French forthe gain of their commerce; and finally their recognition of and submission to theauthority and domination of the crown of France.”3 To Christianize and civilize were,in the European mind, intertwined tasks. And, to the French, to be civilized was to be
French. The challenge was to find the best way to francize or Frenchify the Aboriginal
people. In the early seventeenth century, Samuel de Champlain, the first commanderof Québec, envisaged a North American colony that would be both Christian andFrench. The colony would, he expected, be populated largely by Aboriginal converts.
To this end, he hoped that as Aboriginal people learned to speak French, “they may
also acquire a French heart and spirit.”4

40 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Christianizing and civilizing were formidable tasks for the small group of colonists, who had a greater interest in first eking out a living and then developing the furtrade—tasks that required considerable Aboriginal co-operation—than in converting
Aboriginal people to Christianity.

Permanent settlement
The colony Champlain established in 1608 at what is now Québec City was thefoundation of a permanent French colony in North America. With one brief interruption, the colony, which was given the formal name of New France in 1663, was thedominant European presence in what is now eastern Canada until the British conquest of New France in 1760. The boundaries of New France were never fixed. The colony was governed from what is now Québec City. At times, it laid claim to a territorythat stretched from the Maritimes to the Rocky Mountains and from Hudson Bay to
the Gulf of Mexico.5
Until the British conquest of New France in 1760, the Récollets, the Jesuits,
Ursulines, and other Roman Catholic orders all attempted at various times to convert
the Innu (“Montagnais,” as the French referred to them), Algonkian, and Iroquoian
peoples of New France to Christianity and to the settled agricultural lifestyle they
associated with civilized life.6 As distinct from the Spanish or English colonial empiresin the Americas, the fur-trading French were largely able to achieve their economic
goals without having to coerce Aboriginal labour or make extensive appropriations of
Aboriginal land. The fur trade, unlike the mines in New Spain, depended on a skilled
and independent workforce. It did not require the surrender of Aboriginal lands—
indeed, it could be carried out only if Aboriginal people continued to occupy and use
their lands as they had in the past. This meant that Aboriginal people maintained ahigh degree of autonomy and were, from the missionaries’ perspective, much moredifficult to convert.7

Arrival of the Récollets
The missionaries travelled to Aboriginal communities and sent a number of young
Aboriginal children to be educated in France in the hopes that they would, upon return,provide educational leadership in their communities. They established reserves withday schools, and operated boarding schools for Aboriginal children in what is now
Canada.8 For the most part, Aboriginal people resisted these efforts, while the missionary orders at times clashed with one another and with the colonial government.
Each of the boarding schools of the French regime operated for only a few years andResidential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763 • 41

never had more than a handful of students. During their brief history, those schools
were marked by the same conflicts and failings that eventually became the hallmarkof the Canadian residential school system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In 1615, seven years after Champlain’s establishment of a trading post at Québec,four Récollet friars arrived in the colony. The Récollets were members of a branch of
the Franciscan order, and were inspired by the intense Roman Catholic revival underway in France at that time.9 These early missionaries concluded that Aboriginal peoples had no religion and that conversion would be a simple matter. In the Spanish
American empire, Franciscan missionaries baptized tens of thousands of Indigenous
people and established hundreds of convents.10 But, after a series of strenuous journeys among the Huron and the Innu, the Récollets concluded they were not going
to be able to repeat the Franciscan success in Canada.11 They also concluded thatthe cultural gap between French and Aboriginal people was so great that it would
be necessary “to make them men before we go about to make them Christians.”12 In
other words, the Récollets proposed turning Aboriginal people into Frenchmen firstand only then Christianizing them. Initially, the Récollets sent six young Aboriginal
people to France to undergo such a transformation. The experiment proved to be a
failure. Four of the six students died, all were missed by their parents, and the two
who returned had difficulty fitting into either the French or Aboriginal world—and
did little to convert others to Christianity. One young man, Pastedechouan, studied
in France for five years and worked with missionaries as a translator on his return.
He never readjusted. He led a tumultuous personal life, never feeling comfortable ineither colonial or Aboriginal society, and eventually succumbed to alcoholism anddied in his mid-teens.13
In 1620, the Récollets opened a boarding school for Aboriginal students at NotreDame-des-Anges, near the Québec settlement. Although they referred to the school
as a “seminary,” it was not a separate structure: the first nine students, six of whomwere Aboriginal, lived and studied in the Récollets’ convent. The goals were simple:
to teach the boys—and all the students were boys—their letters and their prayers. On
return to their home communities, the Récollets hoped, the boys would lead others
to Christianity.14
The Récollets were among the first of a long line of observers to speak of thelove and affection that Aboriginal people had for their children and of the lack of
restraint or discipline that characterized Aboriginal childhood.15 It was surprising tothem that this affection was evident even in the case of children whom they viewed
as illegitimate:
They love their children dearly, in spite of the doubt that they are really their own,
and of the fact that they are for the most part very naughty children, paying little respect, and hardly more obedience; for unhappily, in these lands the young have no42 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

respect for the old, nor are children obedient to their parents, and moreover there
is no punishment for any fault.16

Aboriginal resistanceFrench colonist Nicolas Denys used similar words to describe the bond between
Aboriginal parent and child: “The father and mother draw the morsel from the mouth
if the child asks for it. They love their children greatly.”17 One Jesuit wrote that the
Aboriginal world was one in which people are “born, live, and die in a liberty without
restraint; they do not know what is meant by bridle or bit.”18 For the Récollets and theother missionaries who followed them, religious education—the only type of education they were interested in providing—meant trading this world of apparent licencefor one of hierarchy, order, and obedience.19
The boarding school’s prospects were limited from the start. Neither parents nor
their children saw much to be gained from a European education. Attachment to
Aboriginal spirituality was strong, and the children far preferred to be with their families—where, through the activities of daily living, they learned the skills and knowledge required to survive in and interpret their world—over being confined to thetedium and discipline of a classroom under the control of the missionaries. Those
Aboriginal people who survived trips to France were unimpressed by the level of social
inequality in European society and the high value placed on personal gain. One young
Aboriginal man, Savignon, who travelled to Paris in 1611, said that while he had been
well treated, he had no desire to return: the country was filled with beggars, and boththe innocent and the guilty were subject to terrible punishments. Although Aboriginal
people valued many of the goods they received through trade with Europeans, they
did not see Europeans as possessing a superior civilization, and were often appalledby such aspects of missionary life as celibacy.20
Parents gave their children up to the boarding-school system under persistent pressure from missionaries and as part of furthering a political alliance.21 The Récollets
had to refrain from imposing too severe a discipline for fear the boys would simply
run away. In the words of one of the Récollets, the boys were “all for freedom.” Mostof them did run off, and their school soon closed.22 The dispirited Récollets moved
from speaking of the more settled Aboriginal people in admiring tones that referred totheir charity, strength, and patience to referring to them as being savage, brutal, andbarbarous.23
The Récollets closed their seminary in 1629, after just nine years of operation. In
that same year, English forces captured Québec and the Récollets were sent back toFrance. When the Treaty that ended hostilities between France and England returned
Québec to France three years later, the French government placed the colony underResidential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763 • 43

the control of the Company of New France (also known as the “Company of One
Hundred Associates”). The company’s charter required it to settle the colony and toprovide these settlers with cleared land, seeds, and priests. The relatively recent end
to toleration for France’s large Protestant minority, or Huguenots, was reflected in thecharter’s provision that only Roman Catholics were eligible to settle in the colony,a restriction on immigration to New France that continued in force throughout theremainder of the French regime in North America. This reflected the determination of
the Crown and the church to make Québec, in terms of both its white and Aboriginal
populations, an outpost of Roman Catholicism. Only practical considerations would
force compromises in that regard with respect to Aboriginal peoples over time. One
charter provision foreshadowed the future Canadian government policy of enfranchisement (described in a later chapter of this volume): Aboriginal people who converted to Catholicism were to be seen as having all the rights of Frenchmen. Since
these included the right to buy firearms at better prices and to be granted more honours by the French in diplomacy and during trading, this provision can be seen as afinancial inducement to convert.24
The French government also gave the Jesuits exclusive responsibility for missionary work in Québec, denying the Récollets the right to return to Québec.

The Jesuit era
The Jesuits soon encountered many of the problems that had frustrated the
Récollets. In 1633, Jesuit Father Paul Le Jeune noted that Aboriginal parents “cannot
punish a child, nor allow one to be chastised. How much trouble this will give us incarrying out our plans of teaching the young!”25 Since parents were likely to remove
their children from school if they believed they were not being well treated, the Jesuits
concluded it was best to educate children at a distance from their families. There wasanother political and economic benefit to residential schooling: traders and missionaries could operate without fear in the countryside if Aboriginal children were,in effect, ‘held hostage’ in a Jesuit seminary.26 With these considerations in mind—
along with their own commitment to train and convert—in 1635, the Jesuits opened aseminary for Aboriginal boys at the site of the earlier Récollet seminary. A hopeful Le
Jeune reported, “The Savages are beginning to open their eyes, and to recognize thatchildren who are with us are well taught.”27 In the end, his earlier worries proved far
more accurate.
It was expected that the first year’s enrolment at the seminary would include adozen Aboriginal children, all of whom were to be transported from the Huron territory. However, in response to their mothers’ and grandmothers’ objections, mostof the children originally promised to the school stayed home. Only three children44 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

joined the Jesuits on the long trip from the Huron country to school and, after thefamily of two of these boys changed their minds during the course of the journey, only
one student, who was nearly a grown man, arrived in Québec. Three more students
were recruited but quickly ran away, and two others died after fights with colonists.28
Given the Jesuit emphasis on conversion, it is not surprising that the Jesuit curriculum was largely religious. Schooling, which was conducted in both Latin andAboriginal languages, was intended to turn the boys into Christians who would thenassist the Jesuits in their missionary work. Like the Récollets before them, the Jesuits
loosened their discipline in an effort to keep the boys from leaving the school, offering
them traditional foods and opportunities to hunt and fish. For the Jesuits, among themost educated people in Europe at that time, education consisted of memory work,
constant repetition, and examination. The boys rebelled against this rigid, hierarchical regime—which started at 4:00 a.m.—and often ran away. The school was judged
to be a costly and ineffective experiment: the Jesuits complained that the boys were
hard on their clothes and they ate too much, and that parents who surrendered theirchildren to the school expected presents in return. By 1640, the school was used toeducate only non-Aboriginal students. When the Jesuits eventually concluded that
Aboriginal parents were not inclined to convert to Christianity at the urging of theirchildren, they shifted their attention away from children and began to focus on the
direct conversion of adults.29
To this end, they sought to establish what amounted to a reserve at Sillery, a few
miles outside Québec City. There, they expected the Huron and Innu would abandon
hunting and trapping—which the Europeans believed left far too much time for idleness—and take up farming. It was hoped too that, as they adopted a settled lifestyle,
the Aboriginal people would also adopt the Catholic faith. One missionary, Father
Louis Hennepin, recommended “it should be endeavour’d to fix the Barbarians to acertain dwelling Place, and introduce our Customs and Laws amongst them.” Afteran initial period of success, which was marked by harsh discipline and the openingof a day school, the Sillery reserve was largely deserted during the winter months,
and French settlers began to occupy reserve lands. By 1663, few Aboriginal people
remained there.30
Unlike the Récollets, the Jesuits made a point of learning Aboriginal languages
and living among Aboriginal people, rather than attempting to convert them from thecomparative security of a French trading post. At the same time that the Jesuits established the reserve at Sillery, they also took their missionary activities into Huron andInnu territory.31 Responses ranged from hospitality to hostility.32 In carrying out thiswork, although their commitment to conversion remained strong, the Jesuits cameto question the wisdom of their attempt to turn Aboriginal people into Frenchmen.33
Much of the Jesuit work revolved around communities such as Cap-de-la-Madeleine,
Lorette, Caughnawaga, and Oka, or around itinerant missionary work—sometimes

Residential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763 • 45

referred to as “flying missions”—among the Innu. Although the reserve at Sillery had
been located close to Québec City, the Jesuits made sure that future missions were ata distance from French settlers, many of whom were seen as only too willing to corrupt, cheat, and debauch Aboriginal people. A policy originally intended to francize
now involved keeping Aboriginal people away from the society into which they were
supposed to be integrated. This contradiction would not go unnoticed by the colonial
government.34
The Jesuits oversaw the education of a limited number of Aboriginal girls.
Initially, the girls boarded with colonists rather than living at the school residence.
This changed in 1639 with the arrival in Québec of three Ursuline nuns, led by Sister
Marie de l’Incarnation. The reports of the work the Jesuits were undertaking in North
America inspired her to devote her fortune to the ‘missionizing’ of Aboriginal people
there. When she fell seriously ill, she vowed that if her health was restored, she would
travel to North America to open a convent and mission school. Upon her recovery,
she devoted her life to educational work in Canada.35 The Ursulines started teaching Aboriginal girls soon after their arrival in 1639, but it was not until 1642 that theyacquired a building that was to serve as a boarding school. The majority of students
were non-Aboriginal, and the number of Aboriginal girls who lived at the school wasnever large: for example, there were only three in 1668 and nine in 1681. The intention
was to train the girls to be Christian wives and mothers. However, for all the Iroquoianand Algonkian dictionaries and catechisms the Ursulines produced, Aboriginal girls
never felt at home in the convent.36 In 1668, Sister de l’Incarnation could only lament:
It is however a very difficult thing, although not impossible, to francize or civilize
them. We have had more experience in this than any others, and we have remarked
that out of a hundred that have passed through our hands scarcely have we civilized
one. We find docility and intelligence in them, but when we are least expecting it
they climb over our enclosure and go to run in the woods with their relatives, where
they find more pleasure than in all the amenities of our French houses. Savage
nature is made that way; they cannot be constrained, and if they are they becomemelancholy and their melancholy makes them sick. Besides, the Savages love theirchildren extraordinarily and when they know that they are sad they will do everything to get them back, and we have to give them back to them.37

Not all children were returned to their parents. In a 1646 letter, Sister de l’Incarnation mourned the death of five-and-a-half-year-old Charity Negaskoumat, who had
died at the convent of a lung infection. Sister de l’Incarnation thought that, at best, she
had francized about seven or eight women, who had subsequently married French
men.38In Montréal, which had been founded in 1642 as a colony dedicated to Catholic living, the Sulpicians and the Congregation of Notre Dame had responsibility for training Aboriginal boys and girls, respectively, and experienced the same frustrations

46 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and lack of success as the Récollets, Jesuits, and Ursulines. Indeed, when the French
finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, presented the Sulpicians with a significant
endowment for the school they supposedly were operating for Aboriginal students,
they actually had no such children in attendance.39
Following the establishment of New France as a royal colony in 1663, the French
civil authorities noted with disapproval that Jesuit policies appeared to be aimed at
isolating the Aboriginal people from French society, rather than integrating theminto it. The colonial officials, worried by the slow growth of the French population in
the colony, believed the missionaries should not only be converting Aboriginal people, they also should be civilizing them and settling them alongside the French. To
set an example, Governor Frontenac brought a handful of Iroquois children into his
household, while depending on the Jesuits and Ursulines to educate them.40 Bishop
François de Laval arranged accommodation at a seminary residence for Aboriginal
students who were to attend a Jesuit day school. He too found difficulty in recruiting
students, commenting:This enterprise is not without difficulty, on the part of both the children and theparents; the latter have an extraordinary love for their children, and can scarcely
make up their minds to be separated from them. Or, if they do permit this, it is very
difficult to effect the separation for any length of time, for the reason that ordinarily
the families of the Savages do not have many children, as do those of our Frenchpeople—in which there are generally in this country, 8, 10, 12 and sometimes as
many as 15 and 16 children. The Savages, on the contrary usually only two or three;and rarely do they exceed the number of four. As a result, they depend on their children, when they are somewhat advanced in years, for the support of their family.
This can only be gained by the Chase, and by other labors for which the parents are
no longer fit when their children have the years and ability to help them; to do so atthat time, the Law of nature seems to constrain the children by necessity. Nevertheless, we shall spare no pains on our part, to make this blessed undertaking succeed,
although its success seems to us very doubtful.41

He was correct. Only one boy stayed more than a year and five years later, none
were left. By the beginning of the 1700s, the missionary experiment with residential
schools for Aboriginal children in New France was over.42
All these efforts to educate a limited number of young Aboriginal people wereat a time when the majority of Europeans had little experience of schooling. Mostof the education that was provided in this period took place under the auspices of
the churches. From the founding of the colony in the early seventeenth century to
the British conquest in 1760, there was no official school system. Instead, in a ruraland scattered community, the church established des petites écoles that provided arudimentary education. These schools were mainly for boys. When girls were to be
educated, care was to be taken to keep the sexes separate. The Jesuits established unResidential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763 • 47

collège in 1635 and un grand séminaire in 1663. Both were intended for the training of
religious leaders. In 1668, un petit séminaire (residence) was established for students
attending the grand séminaire.43

French colonial strategy
Throughout this period, families (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) assumed
primary responsibility for educating their children: many communities had no schools
and, as in France itself, there was no law requiring school attendance. Habitant farmers passed on the skills needed to work the land from one generation to the next. They
also learned how to make a living off the land from the Aboriginal people with whomthey were in contact.44
The French in Québec, always limited in numbers and bordered by hostile powers, were not in a position to dictate to the Aboriginal people or force them to send
their children to school. Trade, military alliances, and support for all matters of dailyliving depended on the colonists’ maintaining good relations with Aboriginal peoples. Efforts to assimilate Aboriginal people had failed. Programs intended to insulate
Aboriginal people from the worst elements of French culture continued with limited
success. In reality, during this period, Aboriginal culture was much more attractive toyoung Frenchmen than French culture was to Aboriginal people. Keeping the commercial and political loyalty of Aboriginal nations became the primary goal of New
France’s Aboriginal policy. This was evident in 1679 when, despite the long campaign
of Bishop Laval to prevent the use of liquor as a trade commodity with Aboriginal people, France ruled that liquor could be traded within the French settlements.45 In theeighteenth century, as the profitability of the traditional fur trade fell, France sought
to extend the fur trade through to the South, in order to prevent the expansion of
Britain’s North American colonies. The policy included the creation of close tradingand political relations with Aboriginal groups throughout the Ohio Valley. 46 Any effort
to impose European cultural and religious norms would have impeded this strategy.
As long as this remained the case, the conversion and civilization of the members of
those nations—particularly in the face of the opposition of Aboriginal parents andchildren and the settlers’ lack of interest in such a project—would remain a secondary concern. The British conquest of 1760 brought the period of French rule to an
end. Another half-century would pass before the new British colonists felt politicallyand economically secure enough to embrace an assimilationist Aboriginal policy.
Residential schools became a fundamental part of that strategy. Roman Catholic religious orders, which drew much of their funding and personnel from Québec, would
play a central role in establishing and running those schools.

CHAPTER 4

Treaty-making and betrayal:
The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policyCanada’s residential schools had their roots in the country’s broader Aboriginal
policies. During the period in which Britain went from treating Canada as acolony to recognizing it as a nation, Aboriginal policy evolved in the opposite direction. Initially, Aboriginal people were treated as members of independent
nations, military and diplomatic allies, and trading partners with rights to their lands,
cultures, and languages. However, they came to be treated as colonized peoples
whose lands existed to be exploited and whose lives were to be transformed in every
way, and who were expected to live under laws they had no hand in formulating.
Although Aboriginal people negotiated Treaties with the British in what is now
Ontario from the 1780s onwards, the terms of those agreements often were ignoredby the British North American authorities, or interpreted in ways that left Aboriginalrights unprotected. It was in this period of transition that the country’s first permanent
residential schools were established. This chapter frames the transition of Aboriginal
policy, and the following chapter traces the development of residential schooling,
during this formative period. Canadian Aboriginal policy was based largely on policies already established in the colonies of Ontario and Québec, when they were stillreferred to as the “United Canadas” before Confederation in 1867. Different policies
were followed in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, and the impact of those policies continues to the present.

The nation-to-nation policy: From contact to 1820
Aboriginal peoples in North America had a long history of diplomatic relations.
For millennia, Aboriginal nations had established and maintained Treaty and tradealliances to govern their relations with one another. Alliances were cemented throughclearly defined rituals and ceremonies. In the years preceding contact with theEuropeans, responding to incidents of warfare and skirmishes, several First Nations
developed increasingly sophisticated forms of diplomatic engagement. In the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) developed a Great50 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Law of Peace that bound the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca (and,later, the Tuscarora) nations, located south of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, into a single
confederacy. The confederacy’s Grand Council regularly brought together fifty Elders
and chiefs who reached decisions through consensus.1
The Huron League, whose formation began in the fifteenth century, brought
together the Attignawantans, the Attigneenongnhacs, the Arendarhonons, andthe Thahontaenrats in the area southeast of Georgian Bay. (A fifth nation, theAtaronchronons, may not have achieved full membership in the league.) The league’s
diplomatic leaders met regularly to ensure that disputes did not erupt into violent
conflict. A system of interrelated clans established a set of mutual obligations basedon kinship ties among members of the Huron nations.2
Each nation had distinct diplomatic protocols involving ceremonies and theexchange of gifts that established, maintained, and repaired relationships, which were
often expressed in the terms of a family relationship.3 In short, First Nations had alreadydeveloped their own diplomatic traditions prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The
concept of nation-to-nation relations was not new to them.
European diplomatic relations were similarly complex. The French and English
both claimed sovereignty over the lands they were colonizing in North America. But,
within the colonies themselves, they were obliged to treat Aboriginal peoples as sovereign nations. They fought wars with them, negotiated Treaties with them, establishedtrade relations, allied with them in struggles against other First Nations, and sought
their alliance in wars against other imperial powers. Diplomacy was not always
diplomatic. Beyond reasoned argument and appeals to self-interest, colonists also
made use of bribery, coercion, and threats in their dealings with Aboriginal nations.
However, like the French, the British did not act as though they were in a position to
give Aboriginal nations the sorts of orders that could be given to subjects.4 In short, for
Britain and for France, early Aboriginal policy was a foreign policy.
The priority of the European powers was to establish trade monopolies and agricultural settlements in the eastern part of North America. The contention between
imperial powers created new tensions and challenges for Aboriginal people. In New
France, where farming and settlement were limited to the St. Lawrence valley, and theeconomy depended largely on Aboriginal involvement in the fur trade, the conflict
was muted. The French did not apply French law to First Nations people, and sought
to respect their hunting and fishing rights, along with other land-use rights. However,in their dealings with other European powers, the French asserted they had sovereign
rights over their North American colony.5 In the British colonies to the south, agriculture played a stronger role in the economy from the outset. By 1760, there were
1.6 million English colonists in North America.6 As a result, pressure on Aboriginalland was intense and unrelenting.7 Land was often purchased prior to settlement, but
the sales themselves were frequently contentious. Land transfers often were coerced,

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 51

with settlers making it clear that if Aboriginal people did not sell the land, it would
be taken by force. In other transactions, Aboriginal people were deliberately left with
the impression that they would be allowed to continue to use the land, particularly
for hunting and fishing, after the sale. Purchasers also misrepresented the amount ofland being transferred and even forged documents of sale. In still other cases, land
was purchased from people who had no right to sell it.8 These practices were so common that the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 referred to the discord created by
the “Great Frauds and Abuses [that] have been committed in purchasing Lands of the
Indians.”9While they were sometimes driven to war with the colonists, First Nations recognized that direct military confrontation was risky, as was an alliance with only one
power. Aboriginal diplomacy sought to preserve a balance between the English andFrench that would contain both powers and allow First Nations to retain their autonomy. The Iroquois maintained diplomatic and trade ties with both British and Frenchcolonists.10 In the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal, for example, they pledged their neutrality in any conflict between France and England.
The French and English also saw the advantage of diplomatic relations with First
Nations. This task was always more difficult for the British, given their colonists’ hunger for more land. Colonial administrators were caught between settler demands formilitary action to acquire or protect newly, and sometimes illegally, settled land andthe costs that such action entailed. In 1676, colonial officials refused to send troops
out against the Doeg Nation, which had been provoked into military action by settler
raids on Doeg communities in the Maryland and Virginia colonies. The settlers, outraged by this lack of military support, took up arms against the colonial government
in what became known as “Bacon’s Rebellion.”11
To forestall conflicts of this sort, the British began appointing special Indian commissioners to serve as ambassadors to the First Nations. One of the first, Arnout Veile,
was appointed special commissioner to the Five Nations in 1689.12 In what is now
the United States, the Iroquois and the commissioners developed a complex alliancethat came to be known as the “Covenant Chain.” This was an extension of Iroquois
diplomatic practices that had developed out of their relationships with Europeans.
Its maintenance and modification required annual meetings to discuss military andtrade agreements, and eventually involved numerous Aboriginal nations and colonial
governments. The Iroquois and representatives of the New York colonial government
played leadership roles in maintaining and developing the covenant. As Onondaga
Chief Sadekanarktie said in 1694, “We have made a Generall and more firme covenant
which has grown stronger and stronger from time to time, and our neighbours seeing
the advantage thereof came and put in their hands into the same chain, particularly
they of New England, Connecticutt, New Jersey, Pensilvania, Maryland and Virginia.”13

52 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1756, the British Colonial Office appointed William Johnson, a trader and landowner who had extensive experience living and working with the Mohawk, as superintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern colonies. Edmund Atkin, also a trader,became head of the southern department.14 Johnson emphasized the importance ofa nation-to-nation approach to Aboriginal people. He challenged the references toAboriginal people as British subjects, saying they “desire to be considered as Allies
and Friends, and such we may make them at a reasonable expense and thereby
occupy our outposts.”15 The diplomatic nature of Johnson’s and Atkin’s appointments
was underscored by the fact that both reported to the commander of British forces inNorth America.16 The appointment of these two superintendents and creation of theiradministrative offices marked the origins of what eventually would become Canada’s
Indian Affairs department.
As Indian Affairs superintendent, Johnson’s most immediate task was to renew,
recruit, and retain Aboriginal allies in the Seven Years’ War with France. (The war
became a worldwide conflict that involved several European powers and their overseas colonies. It ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763.) Johnson had to renew theCovenant Chain, since the colonists had already neglected its provisions. He sought toconvince the First Nations that the “French and Indian War,” as it was called in North
America, was being fought for the protection of Aboriginal rights to land.17 In keepingwith this promise, after their conquest of Montréal in 1760, the British made a commitment that those First Nations that had allied themselves with the French “shall bemaintained in the Lands they inhabit, if they chose to remain there; they shall not bemolested on any pretence whatsoever, for having carried arms, and served his mostChristian Majesty; they shall have, as well as the French, liberty of religion.”18
Under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Britain gained Canada, all French territory
east of the Mississippi, and the islands of Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada, Saint Vincent,Dominica, and the Grenadines. The Treaty also placed restrictions on French trading
rights in India.19 Much of the land in North America that the French ceded to Britain
was, in fact, Aboriginal land. Arguing that they had neither been defeated in war nor
consulted about the terms of the Treaty, many Aboriginal leaders were unwilling toaccept its validity.20 The situation was not eased when cost-cutting measures led theBritish to abandon the gift giving that had long been a central element in the diplomatic relations between Aboriginal people and colonial representatives.21
At the same time, new pressures were placed on Aboriginal lands. The AngloAmerican colonists, who had felt hemmed in by the French, were now looking forward to extending their settlements inland.22 Breaking a promise made to Aboriginal
peoples during negotiations for the Treaty of Easton in 1757–58 that settlement would
not extend west of the Appalachian Mountains (which run from Pennsylvania to
Virginia), the British established a string of forts throughout the territory and opened
the area to settlement.23

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 53

In the spring of 1763, Aboriginal peoples allied under the leadership of Odawa(Ottawa) Chief Pontiac. Together, they sought to expel the British from their own traditional lands that the French had surrendered.24 At first, they were successful but, in
response, the British recalled troops from the Caribbean. As part of their offensive, theBritish experimented with germ warfare, distributing among the Indians blankets thatwere from a smallpox hospital at Fort Pitt.25
Although Chief Pontiac’s rebellion eventually faltered, it helped spur the British
government into action.26 The cost of maintaining a standing army in the British colonies was 4% of the British budget.27 The government feared that the settlers’ ongoing and unauthorized expansion would provoke a series of financially ruinous Indianwars. To control the pace of such expansion, Indian superintendent Johnson recommended a “certain line should be run at the back of the northern Colonies, beyond
which no settlement should be made, until the whole Six Nations should think properof selling part thereof.”28
In response to all these events, in October 1763, the British government issued adocument that is commonly referred to as the “Royal Proclamation of 1763.” It was
intended to control the pace of colonial expansion into Aboriginal land, in keeping with commitments the British had made during the Seven Years’ War to their
Aboriginal allies. To this day, it remains one of the founding documents of Canadian
Aboriginal policy.29
The Royal Proclamation recognized that “Great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of our Interests andto the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians.” British interests and the security of thecolonies required that settlement be banned from lands that “the several nations ortribes of Indians, with whom we are connected, and who live under our protection”
had not ceded or sold to the British Crown. Settlement without the permission of the
Crown was banned in “all the Lands and Territories not included within the Limits of
Our said Three new Governments [Québec, and East and West Florida], or within the
Limits of the Territory granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, as also all the Lands andTerritories lying to the Westward of the Sources of the Rivers which fall into the Sea
from the West and North West as aforesaid.”30
The proclamation not only protected Aboriginal lands, it also limited the conditions under which they might be sold. “If at any Time any of the Said Indians should
be inclined to dispose of the said Lands,” they could do so, but land could be sold only
to the Crown, and the sale had to be at a meeting of Indians that had been held specifically for that purpose.31
The Royal Proclamation, in effect, ruled that any future transfer of ‘Indian’ land
would take the form of a Treaty between sovereigns.32 In this, it stands as one of
the clearest and earliest expressions of what has been identified as a long-standing54 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

element of Canadian Aboriginal policy: the protection of Aboriginal people from settlers; in this case, settlers who might fraudulently seize their land.33
In the winter of 1763–64, the British distributed copies of the proclamation to First
Nations and invited them to meet at Niagara in the summer of 1764, where Johnson
hoped to conclude “a Treaty of Offensive & Defensive Alliance.”34 At that meeting,attended by chiefs representing twenty-four nations, Johnson presented gifts, read the
proclamation, and then invited them to enter into a Treaty that would be symbolized
by the presentation of a wampum belt, the traditional belt of shell beads used to commemorate Treaties and other significant events.35 From the Aboriginal perspective,
the proclamation, in conjunction with the ceremony at Niagara, constituted recognition of their right to self-government.36 Up until the present day, First Nations leaders
have regularly reminded British and Canadian officials of the commitments made at
Niagara.37
The proclamation was of direct benefit to the British. During both the American
War of Independence and the War of 1812, many First Nations allied themselves with
Britain against the Americans, whom they viewed as the primary threat to their lands.38
American colonists, however, were displeased by the proclamation. Some viewed it asa temporary, if necessary, measure and hoped it would be revoked in a few years.
Others, including future US president George Washington, simply ignored it and continued to buy land illegally.39 Anglo-American expansionists such as Washington weredispleased that despite their lobbying against the provisions of the proclamation of
1763, the Quebec Act of 1774 strengthened the hand of the British by giving control
over the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region to the governor of Québec. As a result,the Royal Proclamation and the Quebec Act became items in the catalogue of grievances against Britain that led to the American War of Independence.40
When the American colonies rebelled against Great Britain in 1775, the superintendent of the British Indian Department, Sir John Johnson (William Johnson’s son),secured the support of a number of Aboriginal nations to the British side by committing Britain to protecting Aboriginal land interests. The British betrayed that promise.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the War of Independence and confirmed theexistence of the United States of America, made no mention of Aboriginal claims, andneither did Jay’s Treaty of 1794 between the United States and Britain, which recognized the Ohio Valley as part of the territory of the United States.41
The Indian Department’s most pressing challenge was to find land for more than
6,000 people who had sided with Britain in the war. These “United Empire Loyalists,”
as they came to call themselves, had travelled north to Canada at the end of the war.
To accomplish this, between 1763 and 1841, the department negotiated more thantwenty Treaties with the Ojibway and other First Nations to allow the loyalists to settle
along the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers and the Bay of Quinté. By 1791, there wereso many English-speaking colonists in British North America that a separate colony,

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 55

Upper Canada (the future Ontario), was created.42 At the time, most Aboriginal people
in the old colony of Québec lived either on reserves or in hunting territories that lay
beyond the portion of the colony that was settled by Europeans. In some cases, thereserves had been granted directly to the First Nations; in others, religious orders had
developed the reserves on behalf of the First Nation.43
The early Treaties marked the beginning of a process through which, by 1850, theOjibway of southern Ontario would find themselves confined to a series of small,remote reserves.44 The first Treaties involved one-time-only payments of cash andgoods, and did not establish reserves. Instead, the Ojibway simply moved onto newlands, with the promise that the Crown would protect their fishing rights, which werecrucial to their economies. Although the land transfers were supposed to be voluntary,
there is evidence they were often coerced.45 The Treaties suffered from many of thesame deficiencies as the land purchases in the American colonial period: the meaningof the agreement was not clearly spelled out, neither the boundaries nor the compensation to be paid were well defined, oral promises to allow the First Nations continued
use of resources were not included in the written documents, and agreements werereached with individuals who had no right to give up the land in question.46 Althougha 1794 order from British Governor General Dorchester called for an improvementin the Treaty process, the procedures outlined in the Royal Proclamation—such as
the requirement that a special meeting be held to discuss transfers—were not always
fully implemented.47 It is not surprising that historian L. F. S. Upton concluded thatfraudulent would be the best word to use in describing the dispossession of Aboriginal
people during this period.48
Among the people for whom the British had to secure land within Canada were theAboriginal nations who had fought on their side in the American War of Independence.
Their traditional lands had been claimed by the United States, so they had to relocate
north of the new American border. The British purchased land on the Grand River
from the Ojibway to give to the Six Nations (Mohawk). Land was also acquired fromthe Ojibway for a Mohawk settlement on the Bay of Quinté.49 Two groups of Delawares
also sought refuge in Canada: the Moravians, who had been converted by Moravian
missionaries; and the Munsees.50
One of the most well-known Treaties from this period was the 1787 agreement
involving 101,171 hectares (250,000 acres) of land that includes all the land within
the boundaries of present-day Toronto. The one-time payment for this land was 1,000
pounds in the province’s currency.51 (By comparison, in the same year, the British parliament granted the Prince of Wales a one-time payment of 161,000 pounds to coverdebts from his extravagant lifestyle.)52 The failure to properly record and implement
this and other Treaties meant that they remained subject to dispute into the twenty-first century.53

56 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The value of the nation-to-nation policy to British interests was reinforced once
more when Britain and the United States clashed in the War of 1812. That two-year
struggle threatened the British colony’s very existence. Under the leadership ofTecumseh, a Shawnee from the Ohio territory, the Aboriginal forces played a key rolein securing victories at Michilimackinac and Detroit. After the war, the British foundthemselves once more obliged to relocate Aboriginal allies from the United States.54 In
the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, the British failed to gain American
recognition of a clearly defined Indian territory, but they did require the Americans to
restore to the Indian nations that had fought on the British side all rights, possessions,and privileges they had enjoyed prior to the war.55

The civilization policy: 1820–1867
The development of more positive relations with the United States in the years
after the War of 1812 led the British Colonial Office to re-evaluate its Indian policy.
Officials might have continued to view First Nations people as brave and independent, possessing the skills to extract a living from a harsh environment, but they had
less need for them as military allies than they had had before the war. As the economic
focus of the colony moved from the fur trade to agriculture, settlers became increasingly interested in gaining access to Aboriginal land.56 From 1814 to 1851, the population of Upper Canada increased from 95,000 to over 950,000. During this period, theAboriginal share of the population declined from 10% to close to 1%. Consequently,
the British government grew increasingly unwilling to protect Aboriginal interests.57
As the Indian Department and the churches were becoming ever more closely
allied, they began to treat Aboriginal people as colonized people whose lives it was
their responsibility to control and change, rather than as independent, self-governing nations.
With the end of hostilities with the United States, the British Colonial Office sought
to reduce the cost of the Indian Department. In 1818, it announced that it would nolonger provide colonial administrations with the funds to purchase Aboriginal lands.
In Upper Canada, Lieutenant-Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland solved the financial
challenge of this policy by ending large, one-time payments when negotiating Treaties.
Instead, he offered smaller, annual payments, termed “annuities.” These annuities
were to be paid in goods such as ammunition and blankets, and were to be fundedby the sale of land to settlers. The annuities were not a welfare payment made by agenerous government—they represented a way in which a cost-cutting government
sought to reduce the cost of purchasing Aboriginal land. They represented a deferredpayment of what was owed to Aboriginal people.58 Indeed, as historian J. R. Miller has

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 57

remarked, Maitland had managed to transfer the cost from the Colonial Office to theFirst Nations themselves.59
By the end of the 1820s, Treaties also began to include provisions for the establishment of reserves for First Nations.60 These small reserves usually were located at a
distance from settler communities in the hope this would avoid the negative impact
the settlers could have on reserve life.61 These provisions mark the entrenchment ofanother long-term element of Canadian Aboriginal policy: the separation and isolation of Aboriginal people from Canadian society.
During these years, First Nations had continual problems with the enforcement of
their Treaties. Their fisheries were not being protected, and they could not get confirmation of their rights to the reserves that had been established beginning in the1820s.62
In 1820, in a precursor to what became known as the “civilization policy,”
Lieutenant-Governor Maitland proposed an economic development and education
plan for Aboriginal people at the Grand and Credit rivers. Maitland argued that theplan—which would have included the establishment of boarding schools—would
supposedly pay for itself, open land to settlement, and allow Aboriginal people toadapt to new economic opportunities.63 In the proposed boarding schools, the students were to be converted to Christianity and instructed in reading, writing, andarithmetic, with the boys being taught to farm and work a trade, and the girls taught
in sewing and dairying.64
Nothing was done at the time, but eight years later, the plan was revived. In 1828,
Lord Goderich, the colonial secretary, recommended that the Indian Department be
scaled back and eventually wound down. 65 Major General H. C. Darling, the chiefsuperintendent of the Indian Department, proposed that rather than the department’s being disbanded, it should take on a new role. Instead of serving as an arm of
British diplomacy, it was to be transformed into a domestic bureaucracy whose prime
focus was the control of Aboriginal people. Pointing to what he saw as the progress
Methodist missionaries were making in their work with the Ojibway of Upper Canada,
Darling said the Indian Department could “encourage the disposition now shown
generally amongst the resident Indians of the province, to shake off the rude habits ofsavage life, and to embrace Christianity and civilization.”66 As an agent of civilization,
the Indian Department would settle First Nations in Aboriginal villages; provide themwith the support needed to take up farming; and ensure they received schooling, religious instruction, and vocational training. At annuity time, farm equipment would be
provided instead of hunting supplies. He claimed all this could be done at “trifling”
expense: “a small sum, by way of salary, to a schoolmaster wherever a school may beformed … and some aid in building school houses.”67
There was an element of national security to this plan. The colonial governors,
all members of the Church of England, were pleased by the work the Methodist58 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

missionaries were carrying out among the Ojibway. But, they were alarmed that thesemissionaries were affiliated with an American-based branch of Methodism; thatthey might be instilling “objectionable principles” in the minds of their converts.68
As a result, the next lieutenant-governor, Sir John Colborne, dispatched Anglican
missionaries to Aboriginal communities in an attempt to undermine the work of the
Methodists.69 Since he had greater confidence in the loyalty of British rather than
American Methodists, in 1832, he encouraged British Methodists to send missionaries to Canada.70 He also promised government support to several leading Aboriginal
converts to Methodism if they further converted to the Church of England.71
In 1830, the Colonial Office endorsed the civilization policy, committing thedepartment to “gradually reclaiming the Indians from a state of barbarism, and introducing amongst them the industrious and peaceful habits of civilized life.”72 Separate
branches of the Indian Department were created for Canada West (Ontario) andCanada East (Québec) and placed under civil rather than military control.73 (Thedepartment had also been under civilian control from 1796 to 1816.) The civilization
policy sought to create Christian, Aboriginal farm communities on reserves.74 It wasin keeping with the aspirations of the evangelical revival movement in England thatstressed the importance of converting all of humanity to Christianity.
The adoption of the civilization policy marks the introduction of a third ongoingelement in Canadian Aboriginal policy: the attempted assimilation or ‘civilization’of Aboriginal people into Canadian social and religious values, if not always into thelarger society. The British policies of protection, separation, and civilization were allplaced at the service of the overriding colonial goal of gaining access to Aboriginallands at the least possible expense. The policies were at times contradictory andalmost always underfunded. Taken together, they marked the abandonment of theold policy of nation-to-nation relations. Deprived of control of their land by paternalistic policies of protection, and separated physically and socially from the centres of
economic and political activity, Aboriginal nations were threatened with destruction
as political and cultural communities.
Many of the missionary societies enjoyed support from senior government officials.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, several leading Colonial Office officials
and colonial governors, including Colonial Office secretary Lord Glenelg and Ontario
Lieutenant-Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland, were members of the Anglican Church
Missionary Society.75 The efforts of Protestant missionaries in England contributed in
1836 to the creation of a special parliamentary committee to investigate the treatment
of Indigenous peoples throughout the British Empire.76 The evidence presented tothe committee suggested that colonialists were dispossessing, corrupting, and killing
Indigenous people rather than civilizing them or converting them to Christianity.77
The committee’s report quoted the comments of a Canadian Aboriginal leader thathis people were not adopting European habits because “they could see nothing inTreaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 59

civilized life sufficiently attractive to induce them to give up their former mode of living.”78 The committee concluded that Britain was obliged to civilize Indigenous peoples as a Christian duty. Such a policy would also improve colonial security and be
economically beneficial, since it would prevent Indigenous peoples from becoming
dependent on the state for their survival.79 The committee’s work led to the formation of the Aborigines Protection Society in 1837. Five members of the committee that
prepared the Aborigines Report were among the new society’s founders.80 Egerton
Ryerson, who would play a leading role in Canadian educational history, was the society’s Canadian representative.81
Protestant missionaries, who had a central part in the ongoing implementation of
the civilization policy in Upper Canada, stressed the importance of establishing settled communities of Aboriginal people. The economy of these communities was to be
based on agriculture rather than on hunting, fishing, trapping, and trading. The residents would live in nuclear families rather than in their traditional communal units,
would accumulate wealth, and would own land. It would also be easier to ensure thatpeople were following Christian teachings if they were living in settled communities.82
The establishment of such communities amounted to a major transformation of the
lives of Aboriginal people, a kind of factory for creating ‘civilized Indians.’ They were
given new names and told to abandon hunting and fishing in order to farm, using
European methods.83 These communities were also intended to be places in which
Indians would be protected from Euro-Canadian civilization. Missionaries recognizedthat governments and settlers presented a direct threat to Aboriginal people. Liquor
traders threatened to undermine community morals, while settlers and governments
alike were more interested in taking control of Aboriginal land than in protecting
Aboriginal interests. For this reason, missionaries did not favour letting Aboriginal
people have full control over their land.84
The successful implementation of the civilization policy was hampered by several
factors. For many Aboriginal people, hunting and fishing were still viable and preferable to farming. Their attachment to Aboriginal culture also remained strong. Divisive
conflicts between and among Anglican and Methodist missionaries served to blunt
the effectiveness of the missionary efforts, while the ongoing plundering of Aboriginallands by settlers only increased Aboriginal suspicions of European motives. The government’s continued unwillingness to make a significant investment in Aboriginalcommunities further undermined the project. Throughout the 1830s, for example,
cost-cutting measures led to the dismissal of translators and other departmental staff.85
Those who remained were military men with little background in farming or teaching. Other staff members were corrupt, using their offices to increase their personal
incomes at the expense of Aboriginal interests. Sir Charles Metcalfe, a former governor-general of India, lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces in India, andgovernor of Jamaica, became governor-general in 1843. Before returning to England,60 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

he dismissed most of the Indian Department, including Chief Superintendent Samuel
Jarvis.86 Jarvis, having thus been stripped of his authority in 1844, was, one year later,
forced to pay back more than 4,000 pounds of Ojibway funds that he had diverted tohis own use.87
Despite these problems, the civilization policy was not without its achievements.
Under Aboriginal leadership, the Credit River community had forty houses, a hospital,barns, sawmill, and a two-thirds interest in a harbour, and was the centre of successful mixed farming.88 Communities such as Credit River were praised by LieutenantGovernor Sir John Colborne, but not by his successor, Sir Francis Bond Head, whoconcluded shortly after his arrival in 1835 that the civilization policy was a failure. Tohim, Aboriginal people were a dying people who should be moved aside for settlers. He
proposed relocating them to Manitoulin Island, where he expected them to live their
final years in peaceful isolation.89 To achieve his goal, he organized what amounted toa forced surrender of over 670,000 hectares (1.5 million acres) of the Bruce Peninsulain 1836. In contravention of the Royal Proclamation, Head arranged the surrender ata meeting that had not been called specifically to deal with land issues. He told the
Ojibway that settlers would be moving in, even if they did not agree.90 Head’s attempt
to relocate the First Nations undermined the civilization policy. Throughout what is
now southern Ontario, Aboriginal communities lost their investment in the improvements they had made to their reserves, as they were forced onto less productive land.
Some stopped farming because they did not know if they would be able to keep theirlands.91
The proposed relocation prompted a storm of opposition led by Methodist missionaries in Canada, and the Aborigines Protection Society in Britain.92 At the heightof the campaign, Peter Jones, an Aboriginal convert to Methodism, travelled toEngland, where he met with the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, a vice-president of
the Anglican Church Missionary Society. Glenelg halted the relocation to Manitoulin
Island, but the land surrenders were not reversed.93
Head’s mishandling of colonial politics contributed to the brief and unsuccessful
colonial rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and led to his resignation in
the following year. The Colonial Office issued a statement on Indian policy in 1838(a year after the parliamentary committee submitted its report) that was in keepingwith the idea of a duty to civilize. Under this policy, First Nations people were to besettled and made farmers, their lands were to be protected, and missionaries were to
be encouraged to provide educational services.94
In 1840, Upper and Lower Canada were combined to form the United Provinceof Canada. During the following decade, the provisions of the Royal Proclamation
were generally ignored. Prospectors and mining companies were granted licences toAboriginal lands north of Lake Huron and Lake Superior. In 1846, Garden River Chief
Shingwaukonse complained that miners had been improperly given rights to the land

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy • 61

where his community’s village was located. Three years later, in what became known
as the “Mica War,” First Nations and Métis men took control of a mining operation
north of Lake Superior. Shingwaukonse and three other leaders were arrested, convicted, and later pardoned for their involvement in this protest.95 It was only when
events had reached this dangerous point that the British sent out William Robinson
in 1850 to negotiate what were to become the Robinson-Huron and the RobinsonSuperior Treaties.96 These Treaties committed the government to paying annuities,
and guaranteed First Nations the right to continue hunting, trapping, and fishing on
Crown land that had not been developed.97 These were the first Treaties to commit
the government to setting aside reserved lands for those bands that signed the Treaty.
In justifying his decision to grant reserves, Robinson argued that since First Nations
would be able to continue to support themselves by hunting and fishing on reserveland, they would have no future basis for claiming government support by saying they
had had their means of livelihood taken away from them by the government.98
In 1850, the colonial government adopted An Act for the better protection of theLands and Property of the Indians in Lower Canada, and An Act for the protection of
the Indians in Upper Canada from imposition and the property occupied or enjoyed bythem from trespass and injury. Both Acts were intended to protect Indian lands from
speculators and trespassers. Reserve land was to be held by the Crown, and to be freefrom taxation and seizure for non-payment of debts or taxes. The law dealing withland in Lower Canada contained the first legal definition of an Indian in Canadianlaw: “All persons of Indian blood, reputed to belong to the particular Body or Tribeof Indians interested in such lands and their descendents.” That Act also recognizedthose married into the community and living with them, and the children, including those adopted in infancy, of those recognized as Indians who were living on theirlands. In 1851, the Act was amended to exclude non-Indian males married to Indian
women.99 The colonial government was now assuming both the right to determine
who Indians were, and greater control of what was being described as Indian land, indisregard of the Royal Proclamation.
By 1857, the goal of the civilization policy had changed. The government no longer sought to create separate ‘civilized’ and ‘Christian’ Aboriginal communities onreserves that were self-sufficient. It now sought to assimilate Aboriginal people into
Euro-Canadian society and gradually eliminate the reserves. This was to be done
through a process described as “enfranchisement.” The preamble to the Act for the
Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Canadas stated that “it is desirable
to encourage the progress of Civilization among the Indian Tribes in this Province,
and the gradual removal of all legal distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s
other Canadian Subjects, and to facilitate the acquisition of property and of the rights
accompanying it, by such Individual Members of the said Tribes as shall be found todesire such encouragement and to have deserved it.”

62 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Under the provisions of the Act for the Gradual Civilization, an Indian male who
could read and write in either English or French, was free of debt, and was of goodcharacter, could receive all the rights of a British subject, fifty acres (20.2 hectares) ofreserve land, and a share of band funds. As historian John Tobias has noted, the standard for Aboriginal people to become ‘citizens’ was higher than for white settlers—many of whom were not literate or free from debt, and whose characters remained
unassessed.100 The Act for the Gradual Civilization stood in contradiction to the Royal
Proclamation, which gave the Indian nations control over whether to sell or otherwise dispose of Indian land. Aboriginal leaders recognized the contradiction, calling
the Act a betrayal of the proclamation and an attempt to break their community into
pieces.101 Band councils protested in a number of ways: they petitioned for the repealof the Act, they removed their children from schools, or they declined to participate
in the census.102 There had been considerable Aboriginal support for policies of education and economic development. There was none for assimilation. Between 1857
and 1876, only one man was voluntarily enfranchised. The government did not interpret this lack of response as an indication of the strength of Aboriginal attachment to
Aboriginal identity. Rather, the government blamed the failure of Aboriginal people toseek enfranchisement on the influence of their leaders. This only increased government hostility to Aboriginal self-government.103
In 1860, the British Colonial Office abandoned its responsibility for Indian affairs,
transferring the Indian Department to the United Canadas and making it part of the
Crown Lands Department. As Canada took direct responsibility for Aboriginal peoples, the often contradictory policies of protection, separation, and assimilation would
be further entrenched to gain control of Aboriginal land and to marginalize Aboriginal
people. Schooling and residential schooling in particular were a component of thiscontradictory and frequently ineffective policy approach.
Children were sent to the schools to ‘protect’ them from the influence of their own
parents and culture. Like reserves, the schools themselves were places of isolation inwhich children were to be ‘civilized’ and assimilated. As with all Aboriginal policies,
the schools were funded in such a cost-conscious manner that, no matter what one
thought of their goals, they were doomed to fail from the very beginning.

CHAPTER 5

Pre-Confederation residential schoolsThroughout the pre-Confederation period, European and Aboriginal peoples
approached education and Treaty making with different purposes. Aboriginal
peoples regarded Treaties as a tool to maintain cultural and political autonomy. Education was a means of ensuring that their children, while remaining rooted
in their cultures, could also survive economically within a changing political and economic environment. The British viewed both Treaties and schools as a means of gaining control over Aboriginal lands and eradicating Aboriginal languages and cultures.
They wanted Aboriginal people to abandon their languages and cultures. They also
expected Aboriginal people to become subsistence farmers and labourers, remaining
largely on the bottom rung of the Canadian economic ladder. British rhetoric callingfor ‘assimilation’ of Aboriginal people into British North American society was tempered by a long-standing colonialist view that Aboriginal peoples not only had an inferior culture to their own, but that this alleged inferiority demonstrated that Aboriginal
peoples were simply not as intelligent or as capable as people of European origin.
At the time of Confederation, only two residential schools were in operationin the four Canadian provinces: the Methodist Mount Elgin school at Muncey (orMunceytown), Ontario, and the Anglican Mohawk Institute at Brantford, Ontario.
Of these, only Mount Elgin received government funding.1 In the years to come, theRoman Catholic Church would play a prominent role in establishing and developing
residential schools. Its activities in Canada in the early nineteenth century, however,had been hampered by restrictions the British government had placed on the church
after the conquest of New France in 1763, including a refusal to allow Roman Catholicorders to recruit new members. The last of the Jesuits in Canada had died in 1783,
and the order was dormant here until the 1840s, when the British allowed the Jesuits
and the newly founded Oblate order to send members to Ontario and Quebec.2 By
the end of the 1800s, the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists, along with
the Presbyterians, all would have committed themselves to establishing residential
schools in western Canada. The dramatic expansion was undertaken even though theearlier experiment with residential schools in eastern Canada had been judged to be64 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissiona failure. The schools failed despite the fact that Aboriginal parents often had beeninterested in seeing their children acquire the skills to succeed in what they recognized as changing economic conditions. Residential schooling in the pre-Confederation era exhibited many of the problems that would characterize the system’s entire
history. Parents preferred to see their children at home and were reluctant to send
them to school. At the schools, children were lonely and frequently ran away. School
life was hard and often unhealthy, and education focused largely on work and religion. Those children who completed their schooling often found that their ties to theirhome communities and cultures had been severed, but they had not been given theskills needed to succeed in the broader society. First Nations communities had agreed
initially to provide funding to the schools, but they later withdrew their support, basedon their experience with a system that was unresponsive to their wishes, disparaged
their culture, and failed to deliver the promised economic benefits.

Public education in nineteenth-century Ontario
The residential school system came into being in Ontario as the colonial government was laying the groundwork for a public school system. Education was not amajor concern to the colony’s first lieutenant-governor, John Simcoe, who wrote in1795 that schooling should be reserved for the “Children of the Principal People ofthis Country.”3 To learn what they would need to ‘get by,’ the children of those stationed at the “lower degrees in life” would have to depend on their “connections
and relations.”4 In keeping with Simcoe’s views, the 1807 District Public (Grammar)
School Act adopted by the colonial government authorized the establishment of up to
eight grammar schools. The schools were to be administered by the Anglican Church,
employ only Anglicans, and charge substantial tuition fees. As a result, only the colony’s elite could afford to send their children to school.5 However, the reality was that
education was not necessary for survival. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, most people farmed, fished, and logged. Households were centres of production; children were labourers. In such a world, children learned most of what theyneeded to survive from their parents. As this world gave way to an industrialized society, the demand for public schooling would grow.6
Public agitation for greater access to education led to the adoption of the Common
School Act in 1816, which committed the government to funding any public schoolwith twenty or more students. Individual communities were left with the responsibilityof establishing school boards and building and maintaining the schools. Attendance
was not compulsory. To cover costs, schools had to charge fees, with the result that
education remained beyond the reach of many families. The government granted
100 pounds to cover teachers’ salaries at the elite grammar schools, but the grant toPre-Confederation residential schools • 65

common schools was only 25 pounds.7 As historian J. G. Althouse commented, thismeant “a teaching post was commonly regarded as the last refuge of the incompetent,
the inept, the unreliable.”8 There were no provisions for teacher training or certification, and no standard textbooks. In many cases, there were no schoolhouses. Instead,classes might be held in homes, halls, and, on occasion, in old taverns.9
By 1838, almost 24,000 students were attending 800 common schools in Upper
Canada. Despite this growth, the colonial education system was judged to be inadequate by a number of investigations, and measures were adopted with the goal of
expanding education and placing it under centralized control.10 The leading figure inthis centralizing movement was Egerton Ryerson. Born in Canada of Loyalist parents
in 1803, Ryerson was driven from home by his Anglican father when he was drawn
to Methodism at the age of eighteen. After teaching as an assistant at a local grammar school, then moving to Hamilton to attend the Gore District Grammar School, hebecame a Methodist missionary, working first as a circuit preacher and then with the
Ojibway at Credit River in the 1820s. As a Methodist, he stood apart from the Anglican
elite who dominated the colony. At the same time, he was in many ways a social
conservative who distanced himself from the more radical reformers of the 1830s.
Upon Ryerson’s appointment as assistant superintendent of schools for Canada West
(Ontario), he undertook a year-long tour of Europe, where he studied various educational innovations.11 On his return, he summarized his beliefs in a detailed report.
Education, he held, should be universal and practical: “every youth of the land shouldbe trained to industry and practice,—whether that training be extensive or limited.”12
And it should be religious: this would include “a course embracing the entire Historyof the Bible, its institutions, cardinal doctrines and morals, together with the evidencesof its authenticity.”13 Schools were to do more than instruct people in various skills andknowledge; they were to prepare students “for their appropriate duties and employments of life, as Christians, as persons of business, and also as members of the civilcommunity in which they live.”14 Ryerson argued that since crime was the result of
illiteracy and ignorance, money spent on education would be recouped in a reductionin spending on policing and jails.15
Ryerson’s report became the basis of the Common Schools Act of 1846 and served
as the blueprint for the measures he would spend the next three decades implementing.16 In 1847, a teacher-training school (known as a “normal school” because it wasto establish teaching norms or standards) opened in Toronto, providing Ontario witha local source of trained teachers.17 By 1850, school boards had the authority to tax
property holders, allowing them the option of reducing or eliminating tuition fees
for attending common school.18 In 1871, four years after Canadian Confederation,
grammar schools were replaced by high schools and collegiate institutes.19 The public school system Ryerson oversaw was intended to be Christian, but non-denominational. However, he was obliged also to accept the existence of a separate, publicly

66 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

funded, and largely Roman Catholic religious school system, a subject of ongoing
political conflict throughout the nineteenth century and later.20
From the outset, the goals of education were mixed. The leaders of the rebellions of1837 in Upper and Lower Canada wanted to see educational opportunity increased,
to allow people to better identify and advance their own interests. The employers, particularly the new industrial employers, hoped for the creation of a docile and capable
workforce. The political elite looked forward to the creation of a more harmonious
society, as schools educated students about their civil responsibilities and instilled
loyalty to the existing order. Church leaders expected that both public and Catholicschools would provide students with an education in Christian values.21 Despite thisheavy set of mixed expectations, the schools were given little support. The average
total expenditure in the pre-Confederation British colonies on “charities, welfare, andeducation” was 9% of their budgets.22 It was in this context that the early residential
schools in English-speaking Canada were established.

The New England Company
In 1828, Robert Lugger, an Anglican missionary working for the New England
Company, established a day school at Mohawk Village at the Six Nations settlementon the Grand River, near what is now Brantford, Ontario. By 1834, the school was
known as the Mohawk Institute and began boarding students.23 It would remain in
operation until 1970, making it the longest operating residential school for Aboriginal
people in Canadian history.24 The New England Company was itself one of the oldest
Protestant missionary societies. It had been in operation for nearly two centuries inNorth America. It opened the Mohawk Institute after a failed attempt to establish a
residential school in New Brunswick.
The Puritans who had travelled from England in the 1630s to establish their New
England colonies in what is now the northeastern United States were strong advocates of schooling for all. They believed that without education, it was impossible forpeople to avoid the traps laid by Satan.25 They also claimed a special mission to ‘civilize’ Native Americans. For example, the 1629 seal of the Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay bore the image of a Native American with the legend “Come overand help us.”26 The phrase was a quotation from the Bible’s Book of Acts, in which theapostle Paul had a vision in which the Macedonians requested that he “Come over toMacedonia and help us.”27 The same legend and image were also included on the sealof the New England Company itself.
Two Puritan missionaries, John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew Jr., led the New Englandcampaigns to convert and educate the Native American peoples of that area. To promote this effort, Eliot ensured that a written record of his work was published inPre-Confederation residential schools • 67

England. These pamphlets influenced the British parliament, then under Puritan
control. It passed a bill in 1649 incorporating the Society for the Propagation of theGospell in New England, known in short as the “New England Company.” The English
philosopher, chemist, and theologian Robert Boyle was prominent among the New
England Company’s leaders, and was its long-time president. Boyle also served asa member of the board of the East India Company and was a founder of the Royal
Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.28
The New England Company initially raised and invested funds to support missionary work among Native Americans in New England. In addition to providing financial
support to missionaries such as Eliot and Mayhew, the company employed Native
American people as translators and teachers.29 One of the New England Company
founders, John Winthrop, established a workshop in New England that employed
Native Americans to make goods for the British navy.30 The work was conceived on areligious and political scale: a stronger navy would give Protestant England an advantage over Catholic France and Spain, while Aboriginal workers would be civilized andmore likely to be won over to Protestantism. In addition, the Aboriginal workers would
probably buy British-made products with their wages, improving the British economy.31 The New England Company’s missionaries emphasized the virtues of work, inthe face of what they saw as the ‘idle ways’ of Native Americans. Working in a settled
location was so central to its ideas of civilization and Christianity that the company’s
charter committed it to finding a job for any Native American it converted.32
On his death in 1691, Robert Boyle left most of his considerable estate to an endowment to support “the Advance or Propagation of the Christian Religion amongst
Infidells.”33 The money was used to purchase an estate that would generate an incomeof ninety pounds a year, to be paid to the New England Company. Half the money
was to be used to pay the salaries of two missionaries; the other half went to Harvard
College to support two ministers who would teach Native Americans in or near thecollege. Any amount left over was to go to the College of William and Mary in Virginia
to establish an Indian school.34 The Aboriginal enrolment at the college varied, but attimes was as high as twenty-four. Initially, the students were boarded in private homes
where, according to one observer, “an abundance of them used to die … throughsickness, change of provision and way of life.”35 In 1723, a separate building was constructed to house the students. Within a decade, much of the building was being usedby the college library. Little is known about the students who attended the school.
However, during a Treaty negotiation in 1744, the Iroquois were offered the opportunity to send children to the school. According to Benjamin Franklin, who attended
the talks, the Iroquois negotiator turned down the offer, saying that the young people who had gone to the school in the past “were absolutely good for nothing being
neither acquainted with the true methods for killing deer, catching Beaver or surprizing an enemy.”36 This is one of the first of many blunt Aboriginal assessments of68 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

residential schooling that would be delivered, and ignored by subsequent American
and Canadian governments, over the following 250 years.

The New England Company in New Brunswick
After the British defeat in the American War of Independence, in 1787, the New
England Company transferred its support for missionary endeavours from the UnitedStates to what remained of British North America. The company’s initial venture into
what is now Canada was undertaken in New Brunswick, centred in the communityof Sussex Vale.37 This was not the first Protestant attempt at providing schooling for
Aboriginal people in the Maritimes. In 1765, the Society for the Propagation of theGospell had opened a school for Mi’kmaq (alternately Mi’kmaw) students in Nova
Scotia. Despite the offer of free board, the school was not able to recruit a single student.38 Although the New England Company’s Sussex Vale initiative lasted longer, it
too ended in failure.
In New Brunswick, the company appointed leading figures from the Anglican community to a board of commissioners that was to supervise the spending of what would
turn out to be about 800 pounds a year over the following fifteen years, for missionary work in New Brunswick. For this money, the New England Company expectedthat Mi’kmaq and Maliseet children, whose families were Roman Catholic, would betaught to speak English, and, after initial failures at the schools, apprenticed to local
employers to learn a trade, as well as be converted to the Protestant faith. Upon completion of their education, the children were to return to their communities, where, it
was hoped, they would make further converts to both Protestantism and a settled lifestyle. The company’s expectations were frustrated: parents proved reluctant to send
their children to the schools; those children who did enrol attended only sporadically;
and, by 1803, no child had been apprenticed. Conflicts had arisen between parents
and the school over the use of corporal punishment.39 To fill the schools, the company
recruited the children of non-Aboriginal United Empire Loyalists, who were taught inclassrooms set aside for them.40
Operations were suspended in 1804, only to be revived in 1807 on the basis of a
proposal to separate Aboriginal children from their parents. In the words of one of
the commissioners, John Coffin, “If you do not take the children early they are not
only complete Indians but complete Catholics.”41 Under the new plan, the company
would fund an infant boarding school and an apprenticeship program for Aboriginal
people at Sussex Vale.42 Young people were apprenticed to families who were to board
them and see that they attended school. Parents who gave their children to the school
received a clothing allowance and a weekly cash grant. The early nineteenth century
was a period of economic distress for the First Nations communities in New Brunswick,Pre-Confederation residential schools • 69

and, in the face of this crisis, parents, who were otherwise unenthusiastic about the
Sussex Vale project, turned their children over to the New England Company.43
The local board of commissioners operated the apprenticeship system to their own
advantage, disregarding New England Company policy and paying non-Aboriginal
families who took in apprentices twenty pounds a year.44 Oliver Arnold was both theSussex Vale schoolmaster and the local minister for the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospell. He was paid to keep between four and seven apprentices at his home.45
One young woman apprenticed to Arnold was seduced by his son, and the child bornof this relationship was raised as an apprentice.46 In 1818, of the fifty-three children
who had been enrolled since 1807, two had died, eleven had either run away or beendischarged, one was studying to be a missionary, twenty-six were undergoing apprenticeship, and thirteen had completed their apprenticeships.47
In response to complaints about the school, the New England Company commissioned two investigations, both of which concluded that the children were being usedas cheap labour, were receiving little training, and were not being sent to school. In
his 1822 report, Walter Bromley wrote that the apprentices were “treated as Menial
Servants and compelled to do every kind of drudgery.” He found that the boys
received little schooling; the girls, none. Upon completion of their apprenticeships,
they returned to their home communities and to the Catholic Church. Bromley had
particularly harsh words for Arnold, who, he believed, was using the New England
Company’s money to line the pockets of his dissolute relatives.48 The Sussex Valeschool had been intended solely for the First Nations students. Instead, it was being
operated on a segregated basis, with 50% of the students being non-Aboriginal. The
reports also uncovered incidents of sexual exploitation of apprentices. Those who
managed to complete the apprenticeship were left in a precarious position: manyof their links to their home communities had been severed, but they were still not
accepted by the Euro-Canadian society. By retaining their language and culture, those
who had not gone to school at Sussex Vale were seen to be better off than those who
had gone there.49
On the basis of these reports, the company abandoned its work in New Brunswick
and turned its attention to southern Ontario, where it built on the work that had been
done among the Mohawk people.

The Mohawk InstitutePrior to the American War of Independence, the Anglican Society for the
Propagation of the Gospell had established a mission to the Mohawk at Fort Hunter,
New York. The society followed the Mohawk to Canada after the war and establisheda day school at the Bay of Quinté in 1784.50 When the Mohawk settled on the Grand70 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

River, the British military had promised them twenty pounds a year to support ateacher, whom the Mohawk would select. A school opened in 1786, using readers andprayer books in the Mohawk language. 51 One of the teachers at the school was Major
John Norton (Teyoninhokovrawen). He had a Cherokee father and Scottish mother,was born in Scotland, and was educated at Dunfermline as a child. After migrating
to North America—and being adopted as nephew to Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant—
he served as schoolmaster with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospell.52 The
promised funding for the teacher did not materialize, and the Grand River school
closed. However, in 1822, while in England to lobby on behalf of Mohawk land rights,
Joseph Brant’s son John petitioned the New England Company for a school and a
mission at Grand River.53 The Anglican Society turned its mission over to the New
England Company, and, in 1827, company missionary Robert Lugger arrived at Grand
River.54 The following year, he hired a schoolmaster, and, two years later, he opened amechanics institute, which became the Mohawk Institute. In 1832, two large rooms
were added. In one room, the girls were taught to spin and weave; in the other, boys
were taught tailoring, carpentry, and mechanics. In 1834, the school began to takein boarders, and taught farming, gardening, and trades. The trades included blacksmithing and the making of wagons, sleighs, and cabinets. Lugger died in 1837 andwas replaced by the Reverend Abraham Nelles. By 1840, the school had forty students,
and, in future years, there was a waiting list of students seeking admission.55 During
this period, classes were conducted in English, but the students were allowed to speak
to each other in their own language.56 After 1860, the school farm was used not only toteach children how to farm, but also as a source of food and income for the school.57 By
1840, the students were making all their own shoes and most of their own clothing.58
In the 1830s, a number of “shrewd and intelligent” girls had left the school because
they objected to the amount of menial labour they were required to do. Mrs. Nelles, thenew principal’s wife, took their side, and it was agreed that they would be readmitted
to the school and exempted from certain chores. As a New England Company official
noted at the time, they were to be treated “as boarders to a white school are treated.”59
The school appeared to have limited problems with students running away, although,in 1840, several of the new students, overcome with homesickness, returned to theirparents. However, that year, three boys, including one promising young blacksmith,
were expelled because they had become “very disobedient and unsettled.”60 For hispart, Nelles constantly lobbied the New England Company for money to provide students who were leaving the schools with tools so they could continue their trades.61
In an 1844 address to Anglican clergy in Toronto, the Anglican minister and futurebishop John Strachan spoke of theexcellent School of Industry for boys at the Mohawk village on the Grand River. The
boys are taught useful trades, and the girls knitting, and sewing, and household
work. At the same time, their religious education is carefully followed up. They arePre-Confederation residential schools • 71

found to be docile and quick of apprehension and very soon become clean and tidy
in their persons. Here again is a great advance if diligently improved, towards theconversion of the Indians. The Church can reach the parents through the children;and even should she be less successful with the adults, she can gradually get possession of the rising generation, and in half an age, the tribe becomes Christian.62

A new school building, capable of boarding sixty students, was constructed in 1859
and a farm was added in 1860.63 The Mohawk Institute also employed its own graduates during this period: in 1859, four former students were teaching at the school.64 By
1861, Isaac Barefoot, who had been teaching at the mission school, attended a teacher
training college in Toronto.65 Another former student, Oronhyatekha (baptized Peter
Martin) went on to study at Oxford University in England and graduate from the
University of Toronto medical school in 1867.66
Although the Mohawk Institute was the New England Company’s most celebrated
and longest-lasting boarding school in Ontario, it was not the company’s only suchinitiative. In 1842, a New England Company missionary at Mud Lake, in southern
Ontario, began boarding eight male and female students. Given that none of the students lived more than three kilometres from the school, a decision was made in 1870
to stop boarding students and operate the institution as a day school.67
During the first thirty-five years of its operation in Canada, the Mohawk Institute waslargely a church-run and -funded endeavour. The other major residential schooling
initiative of this era was the product of a partnership between the government and theMethodist Church, and was closely linked to broader government Aboriginal policy.

Methodist residential schools in pre-Confederation Ontario
By 1850, there were two, major, Methodist residential schools in southern Ontario:
the Alnwick school located in Alderville and Mount Elgin in Munceytown. The establishment of these schools represented the culmination of Methodist missionary work
among the Ontario Ojibway since the 1820s. Aboriginal people played a role in funding and establishing these schools. They supported them because they believed theschools would provide their children with the skills needed to navigate looming economic and social challenges. They further believed they would be able to play a prominent role in the operation of the schools.68 When those expectations were frustrated,
Aboriginal support for the schools was greatly diminished.
The work the Methodists carried out in Canada was sometimes hindered by the factthat there were two, separate, and at times feuding, Methodist organizations operating in Canada for much of the early nineteenth century. One branch of Methodism,
the Methodist Episcopal Church, was brought to Upper Canada by United Empire
Loyalists.69 Although they were loyal to Britain, they maintained a connection with

72 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the us-based Methodist Episcopal Church.70 This alliance with an American church
during a period of ongoing hostility between Britain and the United States createdtensions and suspicions.71 In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the British Wesleyan
Missionary Society had also sent missionaries to Upper and Lower Canada.72 For
nearly fifty years, tension would persist between the British and American strands of
Methodism. An initial 1833 merger collapsed in 1840. A lasting union of Methodists in
Ontario was not achieved until 1847.73
Massachusetts-born William Case, one of the leading Methodist missionaries in
Ontario at the time, was the driving force behind the early educational initiatives
among Aboriginal people. After spending the duration of the War of 1812 in the UnitedStates, he returned to Canada in 1815.74 Under Case’s leadership, the Methodist
Episcopal Church undertook extensive missionary work among the Ojibway in the1820s. The American Methodist Episcopal Church provided ongoing financial support
to this work and, by 1829, was contributing $700 a year to Aboriginal missionary workin Canada.75 Special fundraising tours of the United States raised additional funds; an1829 tour brought in $2,400, and an emergency tour the next year raised $1,300.76
By 1830, the Methodists claimed to have converted over 1,000 Aboriginal people
when the Ojibway population of the area stood at just over 1,300, and to have established nine missions and eleven day schools.77 The schools employed the Infant School
System, an educational approach developed by John Heinrich Pestalozzi, a Swiss educator who believed that students should be allowed to learn from their experiencesat their own pace. Instruction was provided in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, astronomy, geometry, natural history, and church history.78 The Methodists had
translated the Lord’s Prayer and numerous books of the Bible into Ojibway, and had
published an Ojibway dictionary and a grammar book, allowing them to provide abilingual education in many of their schools.79 Most of the school-aged children at
Credit, Munceytown, Grape Island, Rice Lake, and Lake Simcoe were enrolled inschool in 1835.80 The schools produced a cohort of Aboriginal leaders, including many
missionaries and teachers.81

The Grape Island and Alderville schools
Case established a missionary reserve on Grape Island in Lake Ontario in 1828.
There, he and the mission’s female teachers opened a small residential school, taking
into the mission home four young girls to be educated in English, religion, sewing,
knitting, housekeeping, and cooking.82 The missionary reserve eventually outgrew theisland and, in 1837, the residents and the school moved to Alderville, Ontario. There,with financial support from Methodists in the United States and Britain, Case established a manual labour school.83 By the early 1840s, the school had thirteen boarders.84

Pre-Confederation residential schools • 73

That year, Alderville Chief John Sunday (also known as Shawundais, or Sultry Heat)gave the following description of the Alderville school day:
The girls spend also six hours a day in school: the afternoon half of which time isdevoted to needle work—During the rest of the day, they are engaged in housework. The following is the daily routine of this department—They rise during thewinter at five o’clock: and in summer at one half past four, the girls proceed to milk
the cows: then prepare the breakfast; attend family prayers; and hear a lecture, or
exposition of a portion of the Scriptures—The singing, and all the exercises are in
English. The girls then set the cheese; and do housework—at nine a.m. they go into
school—At noon dinner. at half-past one p.m.: school recommenses: then as above
mentioned, needlework— school closed at half-past four p.m. At five, supper—atsix, milking the cows prayers at eight p.m.: at half-past eight, they retire to rest.85

Under Sunday’s leadership, the Alderville band agreed in 1845 to a Methodist
request to provide 100 pounds from the band annuity to support the school.86 In
1849, the new Alnwick school was constructed at Alderville, accommodating sixty
residential students in addition to day students.87 By then, it was part of a broader
movement within the church, the government, and portions of the Aboriginal community to establish residential schools. One of the leading figures in that movement
was Peter Jones.

Peter Jones
At a dramatic open-air Methodist revival meeting in 1823, Peter Jones, a young manof mixed ancestry, was converted to Methodism. Jones’s mother, Tuhbenahneequay,
was the daughter of a Mississauga chief. His father, Augustus Jones, was a us-born
surveyor who had come to Canada in the 1780s. Known to the Ojibway as
Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers), Peter Jones was raised in his mother’s family
until he was fourteen.88 One year after he had begun his conversion process, he wasteaching at a day school at the Mohawk community at Grand River.89 He soon wasworking as a missionary, teacher, fundraiser, political adviser, and leader.90 To raisemoney for missionary work among the Indigenous peoples, he travelled to the UnitedStates and Britain and twice met with members of the British Royal Family. His 1831
tour of England raised over 1,000 pounds for missionary work in Ontario.91 He wasalso a hard-working advocate of the interests of the First Nations people of what is now
southern Ontario, defending their fishing rights and holding government to accountfor proper payment of annuities.92 Early in his career, Jones developed a close relationship with Egerton Ryerson, the future Ontario superintendent of education.93 The twomen worked together to establish both a church and a school at Credit River, where
Jones had assumed the position of chief.94

74 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Jones was one of a number of talented young Aboriginal men who converted to
Methodism during this period. John Sunday and Henry Bird Steinhauer both went
on to become ordained ministers, as well.95 Steinhauer, who was from Lake Simcoe,
had been named Shahwahnegezhik at birth. After hearing young Shahwahnegezhik
sing during a Methodist fundraising trip to the United States in 1829, an American
missionary from Philadelphia had offered to pay for his education. As a result,
Shahwahnegezhik took on his sponsor’s name: Henry Steinhauer.96 Another Ojibway
convert, Peter Jacobs, worked with Jones and Sunday to translate hymns and scripture
into Ojibway and create an Aboriginal framework for Christianity. These Aboriginal
church leaders would play an important role in spreading Methodism across Canada.97
Visits to manual training schools for the Cherokee and Choctaw nations in the
United States in the 1830s had left a strong impression on Jones.98 At these schools,
which had been established by missionaries, students spent half their day in the classroom and the other half in workshops, sewing rooms, kitchens, barns, or the fields. 99
The vocational skills taught in these schools could, he thought, serve as the basis of
Aboriginal economic independence.100 By 1841, Jones had concluded that “the children must be taken for a season from their parents, and put to well-regulated Manual
Labour Schools.”101 This was part of a growing missionary consensus. That same year,
fellow Methodist missionary Sylvester Hurlburt called for schools “where the rising
generation can be brought up entirely away from the instruction of their parents.”102 In
an 1844 speech in London, England, Jones detailed his own educational vision:
Our contemplated plans are to establish two Schools; one for one hundred boys,
the other for one hundred girls. The boys to be taught in connection with a common English education, the art of Farming and useful trades. The girls to be
instructed in Reading and Writing, Domestic Economy, Sewing, Knitting, Spinning;so as to qualify them to become good wives and mothers. It is also our intention
to select from each School the most promising boys and girls, with a view of giving
them superior advantages; so as to qualify them for Missionaries and School teachers among their brethren.103

In the 1840s, Governor General Sir John Bagot commissioned a review of the colony’s Aboriginal policy. The report of the policy review, which has become known as
the “Bagot Commission,” concluded in 1844 that the civilization policy had failed. Not
for the last time, day schools were judged to be ineffective: attendance was irregular,
the curriculum was irrelevant, and the influence of the parents was seen to be toostrong. Pointing to what it believed to be successful boarding schools for Indigenous
people in both Sierra Leone and Missouri, the commission endorsed the establishment of industrial boarding schools established in partnership with the churches.104
After the review, Jones called on the government to recognize Aboriginal peoples’ civilrights and land rights, to meet its financial responsibilities to Aboriginal peoples, andto fund industrial schools.105

Pre-Confederation residential schools • 75

Although the report recommended industrial schools, it contained no measuresfor paying for them.106 To find the money to support them, Bagot’s successor as governor general, Sir Charles Metcalfe, discontinued the supply of ammunition to several
Aboriginal communities. The funds saved in this manner were to be divided among
the proposed boarding schools.107 This move, as a subsequent government report
noted, benefited only the bands that sent children to those schools. The other tribes,
including the “Amherstburgh Indians, the Six Nations, and the Mohawks of the Bay of
Quinté,” did not receive compensation for the loss of the ammunition supply, which
was part of their Treaty annuity.108
The creation of the Alderville and Mount Elgin schools became tied to a larger
scheme to relocate First Nations in southern Ontario. A key event in that process wasa meeting held at Orillia in 1846, which became known as the “Conference of the
Narrows” because it was held near the Lake Simcoe Narrows.

Conference of the Narrows
In July 1846, British Assistant Superintendent General of Indian Affairs George
Vardon and Visiting Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Thomas G. Anderson
met in Orillia with thirty Aboriginal leaders and about eighty young Aboriginal men.
They were there to debate a proposal that Aboriginal people abandon their existingsmall reserves for three large settlements to be established in Munceytown, Alderville,
and Owen Sound. Those who relocated would be given deeds to the land in thesecommunities. Indian Affairs officials also made commitments to build manual labour
schools in these communities. In return, the bands were expected to commit a quarterof their annuities for the next twenty to twenty-five years to support the schools. At
the end of that time, Anderson said, “some of your youth will be sufficiently enlightened to carry on a system of instruction among yourselves, and this proportion of yourfunds will no longer be required.”109
Anderson informed the chiefs that the civilization policy had failed. In Anderson’s
words, the “large sums of money” spent on getting the Indians to abandon their customs and adopt “the arts of civilized life” had not yielded the expected results. This
was not the fault of either the government or the missionaries, he told the chiefs, but“it is because you do not feel, or know the value of education; you would not give up
your idle roving habits, to enable your children to receive instruction.” To remedy this,“your children shall be sent to Schools, where they will forget their Indian habits, andbe instructed in all the necessary arts of civilized life, and become one with your whitebrethren. In these Schools they will be well taken care of, be comfortably dressed, kept
clean, and get plenty to eat. The adults will not be forced from their present locations.
They may remove, or remain as they please; but their children must go.”110

76 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Several of the chiefs spoke out strongly against the proposal. Mississauga Chief
Yellow Head said, “I am not willing to leave my village, the place where my Forefathers
lived.”111 Another Mississauga chief, John Aisaans, agreed: “I do not wish to remove. I
have already removed four times, and I am too old to remove again.”112 Others argued
that schooling was necessary. An address presented by the Mohawks of the Bay of
Quinté said that “the white man’s labour is fast eating away the forest, whilst the soundof his axe and his bells is driving the game far away from their old haunts; it will soonbe all gone.” Given these developments, they supported a plan “to improve our young
people by means of Boarding Schools, at which they will not only be taught book andhead knowledge, but also learn to work with their hands; in fact, to make our boys
useful and industrious farmers and mechanics and our girls good housekeepers.”113
Mohawk Chief Paulus Claus said,
As there was a time when the Indians owned the whole of this continent, from thesalt waters; but no sooner did the white men come, than the Indians were driven
from their former homes, like the wild animals. We are now driven far from our former homes, into the woods. I cannot see the end of this, removing from one place
to another, going still farther into the woods, unless we exert ourselves to conformto the ways of the white man.114

Mississauga Chief Joseph Sawyer said, “Suppose I have four dollars in my hand, I
willingly give one dollar for the good of my children.”115
According to a summary of his speech, Peter Jones told the chiefs that he “hadlong been convinced that in order to bring about the entire civilization of the Indian
Tribes, Manual Labour Schools must be established. That I was glad to see theGov. lending their aid in the work.”116 In his closing presentation, SuperintendentAnderson said, “The Government want to see Indian Doctors, they want to see Indian
Lawyers, and Justices of the Peace; Indians of all Professions and Trades; and thatyou should be like the white people. This is what the Government wish to see among
the Indians.”117 Contrary to such stated wishes, it would be well over a century before
the schooling provided to Aboriginal people began to train more than a handful of
Aboriginal professionals.
In the end, most of the chiefs present at the Conference of the Narrows made acommitment to donate one-quarter of their annuities to support these schools. Withina decade, many had come to regret their decision.118 The Methodists also supported
the move to concentrate the Aboriginal population, because it would make their work
cheaper and more efficient.119

Pre-Confederation residential schools • 77

Ryerson report on industrial schools
To assist in the implementation of the decision reached at the Conference of the
Narrows, in 1847, Assistant Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Vardon asked
Egerton Ryerson, who had become superintendent of schools for Upper Canada in1844, to prepare a report on the “best method of establishing and conducting Industrial
Schools for the benefit of the aboriginal Indian Tribes.”120 Ryerson recommended theestablishment of residential schools in which Aboriginal students would be given
instruction in “English language, arithmetic, elementary geometry, or knowledge offorms, geography and the elements of general history, natural history and agriculturalchemistry, writing, drawing and vocal music, book-keeping (especially in reference tofarmers’ accounts) religion and morals.”121 This he thought of as “a plain English education adapted to the working farmer and mechanic. In this their object is identicalwith that of every good common school.” Pupils should be “taught agriculture, kitchen
gardening, and mechanics, so far as mechanics is connected with making and repairing the most useful agricultural implements.”122
Ryerson preferred that these schools be termed “industrial schools” rather than“manual labour schools” because they were to be “schools of learning and religion;and industry is the great element of efficiency in each of these.”123 To Ryerson, theword industry referred to both the mental and physical labour in which students were
expected to engage.
In the proposed industrial schools, Ryerson believed, the goal should be to train
boys to be farmers, and the classroom lessons should be limited to what would support that goal. He thought it did not make sense to train students for any additional
trades, for three reasons: it would be too costly to hire skilled tradesmen as teachers, it would be too difficult to administer a school that provided many different typesof training, and there was not likely to be much demand for Aboriginal tradesmen.
Better, he said, simply to apprentice those youngsters who showed an aptitude andinterest in the trades.124 The problems Ryerson identified were, in fact, to plague theCanadian residential system throughout its history.
The educational model he proposed was based on the Hofwyl School for the Poor,
near Berne, Switzerland. In 1845, Ryerson had visited this school, founded by Philipp
Emanuel von Fellenberg, and had drawn on Fellenberg’s educational reforms in his
1847 Report on a System for Public Elementary Instruction for Upper Canada.125
The schools he proposed would run year-round. During the summer, students
would work eight to twelve hours a day and study for two to four hours. During the falland spring, classes might be cancelled altogether for two or three weeks to allow thestudents to work at either harvesting or planting. During winter, the classroom hours
would increase and the time spent at work would decrease. To keep to this routine, the78 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

day would have to start at 5:00 a.m. in the summer, and perhaps an hour later in thewinter.126 Students were to be enrolled for four to eight years.127
Ryerson wrote that it was necessary for the students to live together, though hedidn’t explain why. “The animating and controlling spirit of each industrial school
establishment should, therefore in my opinion, be a religious one.”128 It was impossible to civilize “the North American Indian” without religious instruction and religious
feeling. Since he believed the schools should be providing religious instruction, theyshould be run by religious organizations, with government involvement limited toappointing the school superintendent, building the school, determining who could
attend, providing ongoing funding, and inspecting the schools.129

Establishing the schools
In 1847, Indian Department officials recommended the construction of residential
labour schools at Alderville and Munceytown, abandoning the proposed school for
Owen Sound that had been discussed at the Conference of the Narrows. These locations were seen as being convenient to the bands that were supporting the schools.
Eighty-one hectares (200 acres) were to be allotted to each school. The officials
also recommended that the British-based Wesleyan Methodist Society be given the
responsibility for supervising the schools, in acknowledgement of their “liberality,
courage and perseverance.”130
The Alnwick school, an expansion of the already existing Methodist school in
Alderville, was completed in 1848 at a cost of $6,328. Over the next decade, a little
over $500 would be spent on repairs. The school took in students from Lake Huron;
Lake Simcoe; Saugeen; Owen’s Sound; Alnwick; Rice, Mud, and Scugog lakes; andsome from Garden River.131 Mount Elgin, the school at Munceytown, was completed
in 1851 at a cost of $5,500. It took in children from St. Clair, Chenail Escarte, Thames,
and New Credit. The Indian Department had committed itself to insuring the schoolbuildings, and paying for student board, clothing, and education on a per capita basis.
The Methodists paid for furniture, books, stationery, livestock, and farm implements.
They also paid salaries for teachers and superintendents, as well as “such assistance as
would be requisite to efficiently conduct the institutions.”132 By 1855, the Methodists
were spending $2,200 a year on the two schools.133
Peter Jones was supposed to become the superintendent of Mount Elgin. In 1847,
he moved to Munceytown to oversee the construction of the school, but, by the time
it opened, he had fallen ill.134 As a result, the first superintendent of Mount Elgin was
S. D. Rice, a Methodist missionary. He saw Aboriginal people as “a once noble, but
now deeply degraded and long neglected race.”135

Pre-Confederation residential schools • 79

Meanwhile, the bands near Owen Sound protested that the school promised fortheir community had never materialized. They went so far as to offer to pay half theirannuity for two years to get the project underway. However, when Wesleyans declined
to contribute to the construction, the proposed school was abandoned and the bands
unhappily started sending their children to Alnwick.136

Life in Mount Elgin and Alnwick
The students put in long, hard days at both schools. Mount Elgin students had lessthan one hour for recreation in a day that stretched from 5:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.
During that day, they were to spend five and a half hours at their desks and seven anda half hours at work. The students at Alnwick, along with one hired man, cared for 105
animals, farmed over thirty hectares of land, cut wood for ten stoves and fireplaces,
made their own clothes, and did their own laundry.137 The Indian Department urged
the schools to cut costs and become self-sufficient by taking advantage of the “availability of the gratuitous labour of the scholars.”138
A Methodist report gave the following description of a typical day at Mount Elgin:
The bell rings at 5 a.m. when the children rise, wash, dress and are made ready forbreakfast. At 5.30 they breakfast; after which they all assemble in the large schoolroom and unite in reading the Scriptures, singing and prayer. From 6–9 a.m. theboys are employed and taught to work on the farm, and the girls in the house. At 9,
they enter their schools. At 12 they dine and spend the remaining time till one inrecreation. At one they enter school, where they are taught till 3.30, after which they
resume their manual employment till six. At six, they sup and again unite in reading the Scriptures, singing and prayer. In the winter season, the boys are engaged in
the Evening school and girls are taught needle-work until 9, when all retire to rest.
They are never left alone, but are constantly under the eye of some of those engaged
in this arduous work.139

Several teachers at both Mount Elgin and Alnwick were graduates of the Toronto
Normal School. They were expected, at the outset, to use the public school curriculum.140 An 1854 report on Mount Elgin said that of the 107 students, 13 had madereal progress in the study of English grammar.141 Religious instruction included daily
prayers, church attendance, and the memorization of scripture; high praise was given
to a student who had memorized thousands of verses of the Bible. Those who transgressed the school rules could be subject to corporal punishment, although one reportfrom Alnwick in 1856 said that this step was seldom required.142
The Alnwick school was plagued by health problems. In 1855, a typhus epidemic
killed one teacher and four students, leading to the school’s temporary closure.143
When it reopened in 1856, the school had an enrolment of fifty-one. By the following80 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

June, so many had run away that only twenty students were left.144 The new principal
was Sylvester Hurlburt, a missionary who had previously indicated that he no longer
wished to work with Aboriginal people.145 From then on, the school never had morethan half its potential enrolment. When thirty-five students from northern reserves
were allowed to visit their parents, less than one-third of them returned.146
An expansion at Mount Elgin in the 1850s had given it a capacity of eighty students,
but it rarely had more than forty during the late 1850s. It took to admitting adults andnon-Aboriginal students to keep enrolment up.147 Some parents found the regime
too harsh and withdrew their children. Other students did not wait for their parents
to take action: they simply ran away. At least one government inspector questioned
whether the First Nations were getting good value for the money they were putting
into the school.148
A Special Commission on Indian Affairs, chaired by Indian Department
Superintendent General R. T. Pennefather, was appointed in 1856. Alnwick school
superintendent Hurlburt told the commission, “I am well aware that the Indians ofNorth America have not an equal capacity for self government, with the Saxon race,
perhaps never will possess the same capacity, hence they will require the oversightand fostering care of their more intelligent friends who have the welfare of the Indiansat heart.” Rev. Anderson from the Bay of Quinté said that parents should be forced tosend their children to industrial schools at the age of four, where they should remain
until they were fifteen. It was necessary to start them at such a young age to “prevent them acquiring the habit of roving about, which habit when once acquired, is
not easily got rid of. The Indians generally take their children from school for the mosttrifling reasons: and perhaps keep them away for months: and when we succeed in
inducing them to go again, they appear dissatisfied, hence the necessity of compelling
attendance.” The Reverend William Ames, who worked with the Moravian Indians at
Sarnia, said, “I think Industrial schools very important: I know of no better course
than that pursued at the Mount Elgin and Alwnick Schools, in which religious instruction and habits of Industry are simultaneously imparted.”149
Although most of the missionaries who were consulted favoured residential
schools, Rev. P. Chonet at Fort William said, based on his “knowledge of Indian character, that it would be utterly useless to establish amongst them industrial schools.”
Chonet said that Indians could already meet their needs—thanks to the training they
had previously received from missionaries. Qualified teachers were hard to recruit,
and, in addition, there was not a great demand for skilled tradespeople.150
The 1858 Pennefather report acknowledged the support the churches had given theschools, but concluded that the “good effects which were expected to result from theestablishment of these schools are not apparent.” Former students were “contented
as before to live in the same slovenly manner, the girls make no effort to improve thecondition of the houses, nor do the boys attempt to assist their parents steadily onPre-Confederation residential schools • 81

the farm.” The school farms were intended to make the schools self-sufficient, but thecommission concluded that, after seven years, “the expectation that by this time theywould have become nearly self-supporting has certainly not been realized.”151 The
commissioners did not attribute the failure to those who ran the schools. In the commissioners’ opinion, they were “eminently fitted for the work” and had “spared nopains to give the undertaking a fair trial.” Rather, the problem lay with the students.152
Because they were too old by the time they entered the school, the report concluded,
the students had already “acquired idle, filthy, and in some cases vicious habits, andhave arrived at an age when it is difficult to attain any control over them, or eradicate
the evil practices to which they may be disposed.” Not only were they too old in coming to the school, but they also did not stay long enough. Parents often “remove theirchildren after a very short residence. The pupils themselves too frequently abscond,
and return to their homes without permission, finding the wholesome restraint of theschool irksome. It is an evil impossible to prevent.” Nor was there much of a future forthose who graduated. Although the government had promised to give every male student a portion of land when he finished his studies, this was not done. As a result, thecommissioners said, “Their children therefor worked without the stimulus of reward,
and learned to regard the establishment rather as a prison than a place where theymight acquire the means of advancing themselves, and of improving their position in
the country.” As well, due to a lack of funds, plans to provide training in the “mechanical arts” were never implemented.153
The commissioners recommended that the deductions from band annuities end
and Alnwick and Mount Elgin schools close, with Alnwick school to be converted to agovernment building and Mount Elgin to be used as an Indian orphanage.154
Although the commissioners concluded that the existing industrial schools had
failed, they did not give up on residential schooling. They recommended industrial
schools and model farms be established among “the more numerous and important
Tribes.”155 At these schools,
Great stress should be laid upon instruction either in French or English. It is truethat the Missionaries in the North-West districts urge the propriety of some instruction being given in the native tongue, and no doubt it may facilitate the important
object of spreading Christianity among the adults. In our opinion however nothing
will so pave the way for the amalgamation of the Indian and white races, as thedisuse among the former of their peculiar dialects.156

Alnwick closed in 1859 as recommended, and the school buildings burned down
within the next few years.157 Mount Elgin remained open but, by 1862, was on the brinkof disaster: the bands had stopped funding it while an infestation of lice had led to an
emergency closure.158 Following the death of Principal Rev. Thomas Musgrove in 1863,
the school remained closed until 1867, when it reopened with almost fifty students.159
An experiment that had started with high hopes and considerable initial Aboriginal82 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

support had been judged, in large measure, a failure. Despite this, within two decades,
the newly formed Canadian government would commit to a significant expansion ofresidential schooling in western and northern Canada. That expansion would buildon the work of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the Northwest.

Inuit resisting attack led by Martin Frobisher, 1575.
Painting by John White, 1585-1593. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Protestant missionary John Eliot’s work in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was supported by the British-based New England Company.
Mary Evans Picture Library, 10005205.

Francis Xavier, founder of the Jesuit Order, picture bringing a dead man back to life in Japan.
Mary Evans Picture Library, 10004975.

The Ursuline Convent, which served as a boarding school for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal girls in Quebec.
Soeur Georgina Vanfelson, Vue du premier monastère des Ursulines de Québec, v. 1847. Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

A Church Missionary Society grammar school, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Mary Evans Picture Library, 10825826.

Roman Catholic missionary giving religious instruction to Chinese children.
Mary Evans / Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo, 10627805.

Mohawk Village on the Grand River, 1793. In 1828, Robert Lugger, an Anglican missionary working for the New England Company,
established a day school at Mohawk Village at the Six Nations settlement on the Grand River. By 1834, the school was known as
the Mohawk Institute and began boarding students.
Painting by Elizabeth Simcoe, Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario, I0006349.

Sussex Vale, New Brunswick, site of the New England Company sponsored residential school in the early nineteenth century.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D. C. 20540 USA, Reproduction Number: LC-USZC2-3058, Currier & Ives : acatalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit, MI : Gale Research, c1983, no. 6395. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b50932.

Kahkewaquonaby (Many Feathers) or Peter Jones in 1832.
Jones was an Ojibway chief who worked with Methodist
officials to establish the Mount Elgin residential school in
Munceytown, Ontario.
X2-25, Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

Egerton Ryerson. In 1837, Egerton Ryerson, the superintendentof schools for Upper Canada, prepared a report recommending
the establishment of residential schools for Aboriginal children
in what is now Ontario. He recommendation that students
be instructed in “English language, arithmetic, elementarygeometry, or knowledge of forms, geography and the elementsof general history, natural history and agricultural chemistry,writing, drawing and vocal music, book-keeping (especially inreference to farmers’ accounts), religion and morals.”
Library and Archives Canada, Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana,
e010957333.

Sakacheweskam (Henry Budd) one of the first students at John
West’s boarding school at Red River.
Courtesy of the Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-A4814.

First Nations leaders and Methodist missionaries from Western
Canada in Toronto in 1886. Left to right: Reverend John
McDougall; Samson, Cree; Pakan, or James Seenum, Cree;
Reverend R. B. Steinhauer; James Goodstoney, Stoney.
Glenbow Archives, NA-4216-33.

Father Lacombe’s ladder.
Missionary Oblates, Grandin Archives at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, Accession PR1971.0442/100A.

Oblate missionary using Father Lacombe’s Ladder to instruct Aboriginal children at Beauval, Saskatchewan.
Deschâtelets Archives/Archives Deschâtelets; Ottawa.

Staff and students at the Fort Simpson, British Columbia, school.
The United Church of Canada Archives, 93.049P142.

This “Sun Dance” ceremony was one of the Aboriginal spiritual practices outlawed by the federal government in the nineteenth century.
Library and Archives Canada, Trueman, C-0104106.

Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt favoured apolicy of aggressive assimilation, saying “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-26798.

The tuberculosis sanatorium at the Phoenix, Arizona, Indian boarding school.
National Archives photo, no. 75-M-27.

Carlisle Indian School Band seated on steps of school building.
National Archives photo, no. 075_EXC-7.

Physical drill class at the Victoria Industrial School school at Mimico, Ontario.
Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, B3-51b.

A boy ploughing at Dr. Barnardo’s farm in Russell, Manitoba, 1900.
Library and Archives Canada, PA-117285.

CHAPTER 6

Mission schools in the
Canadian West: 1820–1880

I

n 1883, the Canadian government established a partnership with the Anglican
and Roman Catholic churches to open three schools in western Canada. The
establishment of these schools, known as “industrial schools,” marked the creation of Canada’s formal Indian residential school system. The system was built on thefoundations established by Catholic and Protestant missionaries who saw it as their
mission to ‘civilize’ and Christianize Aboriginal peoples.
Under that system, the federal role was to fund and regulate schools for Aboriginal
children, operated by Christian churches. Although the system was meant tobe a national one, most of the schools were located to the west and north of Lake
Superior. Most of these schools were operated by the Roman Catholic Oblates of Mary
Immaculate. Many of the residential schools were located at Oblate mission sites that
had been established in the nineteenth century. Oblate missions at Île-à-la-Crosse,
Fort Providence, Fort Chipewyan, St. Albert, Lac La Biche, Fort Alexander, McIntosh,Kenora, and Lebret were all forerunners to Catholic residential schools in these communities.1 Also, the names of many of the nineteenth-century missionaries, both
Catholic and Protestant—Bompas, Grandin, Grollier, Grouard, Horden, and Lejac—
reappear in the twentieth century as the names of schools and residences. As thesenames suggest, the residential school system was, in large measure, the outgrowth of
Canada’s colonization of the Canadian West and the role that missionary organizations, particularly the Oblates and the Anglican Church Missionary Society, played inthat process.

Red River origins
For most of its history, the Hudson’s Bay Company (hbc) ignored the provision inits charter that required it to promote the “moral and religious improvement of the
Indians.”2 From the company’s perspective, there was little to be gained from educating Aboriginal people or converting them to Christianity.3 In 1822, Sir George
Simpson, the company’s North American governor, complained that a plan to expand84 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

schooling opportunities to Aboriginal people at Red River would do nothing morethan fill “the pockets and bellies of some hungry missionaries and schoolmasters andrearing the Indians in habits of indolence; they are already too much enlightened by
the late opposition [the North West Company] and more of it would in my opinion doharm instead of good to the Fur Trade.”4
Simpson believed that exposure to missionaries could lead Aboriginal people toabandon fur trapping for farming.5 However, for their part, even the most daring andindependent of missionaries relied on the Hudson’s Bay Company for transportation,
supplies, accommodation, and companionship.6
By the early nineteenth century, the company was obliged to allow missionaries
into its territory. In the field, the hbc was facing pressure from company officers whowanted teachers for their own children at fur-trade posts. In England, the company wascoming under increasing attack for its lack of support for missionary work. Anglican
missionary William Cockran put the issue starkly when he said that he doubted thecompany could prove it had “ameliorated the condition of one Indian family throughthe whole traffic of 150 years.”7 Pressure even came from evangelical members of thecompany’s board of directors, who began calling on it to support missionary work.
The company took the first step in opening Rupert’s Land to Christian missionaries
in 1811, when it granted a tract of 116,000 square miles (approximately 300,400 square
kilometres) to Lord Selkirk, a Scottish landlord and hbc shareholder. Selkirk proposed
to establish Scottish and Irish peasants, who were being displaced by the introductionof new agricultural and land polices in the British Isles, in this colony. The “Selkirk
Settlers,” as they came to be known, reached Red River in 1812. Poorly prepared forlife on the Prairies and suffering from incompetent leadership, they became caught
up in the commercial conflict between the hbc and the North West Company (nwc)
and the latter’s Métis allies.8 Selkirk negotiated a Treaty with six Aboriginal leaders,
including Chief Peguis, which provided them with an annual payment.9
Although the settlers Selkirk brought over were mostly Presbyterian, a large partof the early population of the Red River Settlement were Roman Catholic, composedlargely of French-Canadian and Métis fur traders who had already been living at Red
River when the settlement was established, or who had moved there to take advantage of the economic opportunities the settlement offered. Early on, Selkirk, the hbc,
and the nwc had asked Catholic officials in Québec to send a priest to the Northwest,
believing that missionaries could play a stabilizing role in a contentious situation. In
1818, Joseph-Norbert Provencher and Sévère Dumoulin arrived at Red River under
instructions to rescue the Aboriginal people from the so-called barbarism they had
come to be living in and to recall the Christian settlers to their duties. The priests were
expected to learn Aboriginal languages, regularize marriages, end polygamy, support the existing political order, and avoid becoming embroiled in the ongoing conflict between the two fur-trading companies. Their arrival marked the beginning ofMission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 85

permanent missionary work in the Canadian Northwest, and prodded the Anglican
Church Missionary Society (cms) into action. Two years later, it provided support toJohn West, the society’s first missionary to the Northwest.10

John West and the Church Missionary Society
In 1820, the Hudson’s Bay Company appointed John West, an Anglican minister,
as chaplain to its trading post at Red River. The company expected him to provide
religious instruction to its employees and to educate their children.11 West, however,had broader ambitions. Before departing England for North America, he approached
the Church Missionary Society with a proposal to provide him with funds to set up aschool for Aboriginal children.12 At the time, the focus of the cms was on Africa andAsia rather than on North America, but since the hbc was already paying West’s salary, the cms agreed to provide him with financial support for his proposed missionary work in Red River.13 West began recruiting Aboriginal students for his school at
Red River shortly after he landed at York Factory on Hudson Bay in 1820. He convinced the northern Chief Withaweecapo to send his only son, the nine-year-old
Pemutewithinew, with him.14 West wrote:
I shall never forget the affectionate manner in which he brought the eldest boy
in his arms, and placed him in the canoe on the morning of my departure fromYork Factory….
I had to establish the principle that the North American Indian of these regions
would part with his children, to be educated in the white man’s knowledge andreligion.15

This belief in the need to separate Aboriginal children from their parents in order tocivilize them would remain an underlying rationale for the residential school systemthroughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At Norway House, West recruited
Sakacheweskam, an eight-year-old boy, whose mother was a widow of mixed heritage.16 West later baptized the boy as Henry Budd.17 Under West, the teaching ofEnglish and Christianity were intertwined. By the time they reached Red River, West
had taught young Pemutewithinew to recite the Lord’s Prayer in English.18
George Harbridge, a schoolmaster who had accompanied West, was put in chargeof the small school at Red River. When Ojibway Chief Peguis asked what would
become of children once they were educated, West replied that “they might return totheir parents if they wished it, but my hope was that they would see the advantage ofmaking gardens, and cultivating the soil, so as not to be exposed to hunger and starvation.”19 Peguis decided not to send his children to the school, but he did arrange for theson of his widowed sister to attend.20 Two of the first five students West recruited were86 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

orphans; the other three had no fathers.21 The underlying tensions of the residential
school system were present from the outset: the schools’ desire to provide trainingthat would discourage children from following their parents’ way of life, and the parents’ unwillingness to part with their children for schooling except in conditions of
economic and social stress.
In some cases, parents relocated to Red River to be near their children in the school.
As the senior missionary, West initially encouraged parents to visit their children, butlater sought to keep them away, having concluded that the children who maintained
an ongoing close relationship with their parents and homes had less success in coming to terms with the school routine.22 In the classroom, Aboriginal children were
given a constant drilling in English, and spent much of their time memorizing andreciting religious texts and hymns.23 The student who had been renamed Henry Budd
wrote a hymn with a verse that reflected both his new language proficiency and the
new attitude he had been encouraged to develop towards his own native culture:
Oh let a vain and thoughtless race,
Thy pardning mercy prove;
Begin betimes to seek thy face
And thy commandments love.24

When they were not in the classroom, the students gardened. According to West:
We often dig and hoe with our little charges in the sweat of our brow as an example and encouragement for them to labour; and promising them the produce of
their own industry, we find that they take great delight in their gardens. Necessity
may compel the adult Indian to take up the spade and submit to manual labour,
but a child brought up in the love of cultivating a garden will be naturally led tothe culture of the field as a means of subsistence: and educated in the principles
of Christianity, he will become stationary to partake of the advantages and privileges of civilization.25

West placed a heavy emphasis on farming, both because he wanted the school to
be self-sufficient and because he believed that Aboriginal people would not survive
unless they abandoned hunting, trapping, and fishing, for agriculture. Eventually,teacher George Harbridge complained that the boys were spending so much time in
the fields, they were rarely in class.26
West’s career at Red River came to an abrupt end. He had become increasingly
vocal in his criticism of the Hudson’s Bay Company, particularly its participationin the liquor trade. On the other hand, Governor Simpson of the hbc thought Westspent too much time on missionary work. On a visit to England in 1823, West filed
an unfavourable report on the company’s activities that led to his dismissal the following year.27 His stay at Red River had been short, yet the students he recruited andtrained were to play an important role in what is often referred to today as the “native

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 87

church.” Henry Budd went on to become the first Aboriginal minister ordained in the
Anglican Church in North America.28 He established and ran a boarding school for
Aboriginal children in The Pas, Manitoba, in the 1840s.29 Another of West’s students,
Charles Pratt, served as a cms-sponsored missionary to the Cree and Assiniboine, andwas one of the interpreters during the negotiation of Treaty 4 in 1874.30
West’s replacement as superintendent of the mission at Red River, David Jones,
kept the school in operation until 1832. After a female student was discovered to bepregnant in that year, the male boarders were relocated to a new mission project that
had begun further downriver at St. Peter’s parish.31
Under the direction of the cms’s Rev. William Cockran, the St. Peter’s school placeda heavy emphasis on education and agriculture.32 Cockran sought to improve what heviewed as the “immoral, capricious, intractable, indolent, callous, prideful, wayward,
extravagant, ungracious, improvident and careless” ways of the Red River Settlement
area.33 The school at St. Peter’s did not become part of the formal residential school
system, and the reserve itself was relocated early in the twentieth century.
In 1833, a new school, the Red River Academy, was opened by Jones on cms land
for the children of the leading figures in the community. But, in the fall of 1835, inthe space of two months, three students at the academy died of influenza.34 Afterthe death of his wife, Jones returned to England. A former teacher, John Macallum,
purchased the academy for 350 pounds in 1837. Letitia Hargrave, the wife of an hbc
trader, commented critically in a letter to friends on the change of diet and disciplinethat Macallum imposed on the students.
Children who have had duck geese & venison 3 times a day are supposed to suffer from breakfasts of milk & water with dry bread, severe floggings, confinement
after any fault & the total want of the following meal. The boys & girls are constantly fainting but MacCallum [sic] won’t change his system. Many girls have
got ill, and as he makes them strip off their Indian stockings & adopt English
fashion it is not surprising. They must take a certain walk every day, plunging
thro’ the freezing snow. They wear Indian shoes, but without the cloth stockingsor leggings over them the snow gets in.35

Macallum also refused to allow Aboriginal mothers who were not formally married to visit their children in the school.36 In 1849, the Anglican Church bought the
Red River Academy from Macallum, renaming it St. John’s.37 Under that name, theformer mission school developed into an elite, private boarding school that continues
in operation to the present day.

88 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Methodist initiative
After its experience with John West, the hbc did little to promote missionary
work in the Northwest for another two decades. In St. Boniface, Manitoba, after his
appointment in 1820, Bishop Provencher had constant trouble recruiting and keeping
Catholic missionaries. Few stayed more than five years and they made little headway
in their work with Aboriginal people.38
This all would change in 1840, when the Hudson’s Bay Company accepted a proposal from the British Methodist Missionary Society to establish a series of northern missions in a territory that stretched from James Bay to the Rocky Mountains.
The fur-trading company expected these northern missions would limit the southern migration of valuable Aboriginal trappers to communities such as Red River topursue their interests in religion or education.39 Church missions varied in size andscope: many of the early missions, like these Methodist initiatives, simply involved
the placement of a missionary at a fur-trade post. Over time, they often expanded toinclude churches, hospitals, schools, orphanages, and convents. Missionaries might
effectively declare their independence by locating the mission away from the local
fur-trade post, and even engage in trade.
Three of the Methodist missionaries from the Missionary Society came directlyfrom England, and a fourth, British-born James Evans, came from Ontario, where hehad already carried out missionary work among the Ojibway at Rice Lake. As mission
leader, Evans was stationed at the hbc post at Norway House, which served as thecentre of the Methodist initiative. The other three worked out of hbc posts at Lac laPluie, Moose Factory, and Edmonton House. Assisting them were two Ojibway missionaries-in-training, Peter Jacobs and Henry Steinhauer. The Methodists were paying the missionaries’ salaries, and the hbc supplied them with food, accommodation,interpreters, and medicine. Given the level of support the company was providing,
Simpson viewed the Methodists as little more than hbc employees, expecting themto consolidate support for the company among Aboriginal people. He did not take itkindly when the missionaries promoted views that undercut company interests.40
In his youth, Evans had trained in the grocery trade and had learned how to writein shorthand. In Ontario, he had used his knowledge of shorthand to develop a system
of Ojibway syllabics, which he adapted to Cree at Norway House. The system could belearned quickly and was adopted by both Anglican and Roman Catholic missionaries,
who spread its use throughout the North. Evans also sought to establish an Aboriginal
Methodist community at Norway House. He promoted two Methodist values: sabbatarianism (refraining from work on Sunday), and independence (in this context, fromreliance on the hbc). This brought him into conflict with the company, particularly
when Aboriginal boatmen refused to work on Sundays, and other Aboriginal people
began selling their furs to traders other than the Hudson’s Bay Company.41

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 89

The Methodist initiative in the North prompted a Catholic response. After working
as an itinerant missionary in the region for two years, in 1844, Father Jean-Baptiste
Thibault established a mission at Lac Ste. Anne, near Edmonton.42 Two years later,
Evans set out westward in hopes of combatting the Catholic incursion. The expedition was cut short when Evans accidentally shot and killed his Aboriginal interpreter
assistant, Thomas Hassall. (Hassall had been enrolled at the Red River school by Westand educated by David Jones.43 )Upon his return to Norway House, Evans also had
to face allegations of sexual impropriety regarding his involvement with orphaned
Aboriginal girls who had been taken into his home. Evans was recalled to England anddied in 1846 before the inquiry into the charges completed its work.44 Two of the other
Methodist missionaries also returned to England. A fourth, William Mason, remainedin the West, but converted to the Church of England.
The hbc began to reduce its support for the Methodists. By 1846, it was barely tolerating them.45 In 1854, the Canadian Conference of the Methodist Church took over
responsibility for the Northwestern mission field, including overseeing the Rossvillemission that had been established at Norway House, Manitoba. In the 1860s, theCanadian Conference established a mission at Whitefish Lake, Alberta, under Henry
Steinhauer, who, along with George McDougall, was among the leading figures in
the return of Methodism to this region. McDougall established a new mission at Fort
Edmonton in 1871 and, with his son John, also established the Morleyville mission in
1873.46 The Methodist residential school at Morley, Alberta, was an outgrowth of anorphanage the McDougalls opened in Morleyville.

The Oblate campaign
Missionary activity was often highly competitive. When one church sent a missionary into a new region, the others were sure to follow. The Hudson’s Bay Company decision to provide Methodists with access to the Northwest, coupled with the Anglican
appointment of Aboriginal catechist Henry Budd to The Pas, helped precipitate two of
the most significant developments in the history of missionary work in the CanadianNorthwest: the entry of the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns) and the Oblates ofMary Immaculate into the western mission field. In 1841, Bishop Provencher asked
Joseph Signay, the Archbishop of Québec, to send him some women who would serveas teachers. Provencher’s educational expectations were modest: “Our inhabitants’daughters do not need an advanced education. Rather, our principal goal will be toteach them to live well and to become good mothers. This process will raise the country’s civilization level in accordance with the times.”47
The Sisters of Charity of Montréal had been founded in the eighteenth century byMarie-Marguerite Dufrost de Lajemmerais, the widow of François d’Youville, more

90 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissioncommonly known as Marguerite d’Youville. After the death of her husband, she began
sheltering destitute women in her home. In 1747, she, and a number of women working with her, was asked to take over the Montréal General Hospital. Their organization
grew into the Sisters of Charity of the General Hospital, eventually becoming one of
the largest Canadian Catholic teaching and nursing orders. Throughout their history,
members of the order have been referred to as the “Grey Nuns.”48
In 1844, four Grey Nuns arrived in Red River, led by Mother Marie-Louise Valade.49
In the coming years, they would provide the teaching staff for many of the Roman
Catholic boarding schools. At Red River, they operated a day school largely for
Aboriginal children and, in the 1850s, they opened a boarding school. The hope wasthat the boarding school, which took in Métis students of both English and Frenchancestry, along with Ojibway and Sioux children, would foster future vocations inwomen from mixed-ancestry families.50 Louis Riel’s sister Sara attended the school
and, upon completion of her education there, she commenced her three-year periodof training to become a Grey Nun.51
The arrival of the Grey Nuns provided Provencher with a supply of teachers andnurses, but he remained short of missionaries. After being turned down by the Jesuitsin 1843, he sought assistance from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.52 The order, noteven thirty years old, was still run by its founder, Eugène de Mazenod, the Bishop of
Marseille. Although their initial focus had been the poor of rural France, the Oblates
were beginning to take on work in North America. In response to a request from
Québec Bishop Ignace Bourget, four Oblates had been assigned to work in Québec
in 1841.53 Mazenod looked favourably on Provencher’s 1843 request and, two years
later, two Oblates, Pierre Aubert and Alexandre-Antonin Taché, completed the journey to Red River.54 Over the next fifty-five years, 273 Oblates worked in the Northwest.
Of them, 138 were from France, 19 from Germany, and 6 from Belgium. Most of theeighty-two Canadians came from Québec.55 In four decades, the Oblates establisheda series of churches, convents, schools, hospitals, roads, sawmills, and farms that
extended their reach west to the Pacific Ocean and north to the Arctic Circle. The predominance of the Oblates in the world of residential schooling in the twentieth century has its roots in this remarkable period of expansion in the 1800s.
The advance party for this missionary expedition, Taché and Aubert, spent theirfirst winter at Red River studying the Ojibway language. In 1846, Taché travelled toÎle-à-la-Crosse, where he studied Cree and Chipewyan and oversaw the constructionof a mission, while Aubert was sent to what is now northwestern Ontario. Two otherOblates, Henri Faraud and Albert Lacombe, continued the Oblate expansion. Faraud
went north, establishing the Nativity Mission at Fort Chipewyan (in what is now
Alberta) in 1849 and the St. Joseph’s Mission at Fort Resolution in 1856.56 Lacombe
went west, beginning his work in present-day Alberta in 1852.57 From their various

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 91

mission bases, the Oblates spread out along a circuit, visiting numerous trading posts
throughout the Northwest.58
Some Oblates, such as twenty-four-year-old Faraud, were young, had limited
theological training, and received what amounted to rapid promotions. When Tachéraised concerns about the quality of the men being sent to him, Mazenod’s response
was that it was difficult to find people willing to submit to the difficult and, in his opinion, often terrifying life of a missionary in the Northwest.59 Their numbers were so few
and the territory they covered so vast that these early Oblates might go for more than ayear at a time without seeing another priest.60 Taché once went two years without seeing another Oblate, while Faraud once went at least two years without seeing anothermember of the clergy, noting that he could expect this state to continue for at least
another year or two.61
The early missionaries had to build their own chapels and residences, maintain agarden, hunt, and fish, all the while attempting to learn an Aboriginal language andconvert the local people to Christianity.62 The missions were expected to be largely
self-sufficient, but, in some cases, the climate was too hostile or the land too stony
to allow the Oblates to produce enough to meet their needs while continuing their
missionary work. Imported items were costly, and, in the case of the more remote
missions, supplies had to be ordered three years in advance.63 To transport goods tothe missions, the Oblates were increasingly involved in the freighting business: cutting roads, digging canals, constructing carts and barges, and, eventually, purchasing
steamboats.64
Anglican Bishop David Anderson wrote enviously of the Oblate missionaries’
willingness to ‘do without,’ asking the Church Missionary Society to send him missionaries who would be willing to “be content to travel with a single box or at most acouple.”65 Letitia Hargrave said that the Protestants compared poorly to the Catholics,
who, “be what they may elsewhere,” were “exemplary” in Red River. “The Indians seethem living perfectly alone & caring for nothing but converting them & and often they
think more of such men than those who come with families & bully for every luxury &and complain of every appearance of neglect.”66
The Oblates were under strict instructions to learn Aboriginal languages, and, inthe course of this work, prepared their own grammars and dictionaries. While a number of the Oblates were gifted linguists, others struggled with Aboriginal languages
throughout their long careers in the Northwest.67 In their missionary work, the Oblates
made successful use of a teaching tool that came to be known as “Father Lacombe’s
Ladder.” Based on earlier illustrated timelines that set out humanity’s pathway toheaven, Lacombe’s version was novel in that it included a separate pathway to hell. Asa sign that their cultural and spiritual ways were sinful, most of the Aboriginal people
in the illustration were travelling this road. It was reproduced and used throughout
the Northwest by the Oblates.68

92 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Oblate missions were ultimately run by the director and council of Oblates ofMary Immaculate, which was based in Marseille, France, until 1862, when it moved
to Paris. Funding came from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the
Association of the Holy Childhood. The second fund was intended to support the baptism and education of pagan children. In some countries, such as China, the Oblates
used the money to actually purchase unwanted children. In Canada, the Oblates paid
parents to allow their children to attend boarding schools. For example, in the 1860s,
in western Canada, the fund was reported to be supporting forty-two Aboriginal children in four Oblate schools and two orphanages. In 1863, Taché received 55,000 francs
from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and 3,000 francs from the Associationof the Holy Childhood, 6,000 in Mass stipends, and 8,500 in investment revenues. Of
this, he spent 60,000 francs on northern mission work.69
As was the case with other missionaries, the Oblates and the Grey Nuns became
increasingly convinced of the need to locate Aboriginal people in settled agriculturalcommunities and to focus on the education and conversion of the younger generation.70 The experience of running a day school for Aboriginal students in St. Francis
Xavier, Manitoba, for example, led the Grey Nuns to conclude that students could
not make significant progress because their parents often took them out of school tospend much of the year hunting. In 1871, Sister Charlebois wrote that, with financial
support, the Grey Nuns could “gladly take the entire charge of these little ones, and by
this means civilize and instruct them.”71 As early as 1851, Mazenod had instructed the
Oblates to establish schools in the West that would prepare students for a Europeanstyle life. Schools presented a disciplined and controlled environment. In them, children could be taught to be Christians and weaned away from a lifestyle of migratory
hunting.72

Anglican missionary work in the North
In 1838, Hudson’s Bay Company factor James Leith died, leaving half his estate to
be used to fund missionary work among Aboriginal people in the hbc territory. His
will gave rise to a ten-year court case, so it was not until 1849 that funds were available
to establish the Anglican diocese of Rupert’s Land, with David Anderson appointed as
the diocese’s first bishop.73 Anderson was able to substantially increase the amountof support that various missionary societies were providing to the diocese. The number of clergy increased to the point where the hbc’s Sir George Simpson remarked
contemptuously that Red River had more churchmen per capita than any other location in the British Empire. By 1864, the Church Missionary Society (cms), the Colonial
and Continental Church Society, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospell in
Foreign Parts were supporting twenty-two missionaries in Rupert’s Land.74

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 93

As Simpson’s comment suggests, the Anglican missionaries of the period were
often far less venturesome than the Oblates. They were better paid, more conscious of
their social status, and less likely to travel far from the security of the local Hudson’s
Bay post. The thirty-five missionaries the cms sponsored in the Northwest from 1820
to 1870 have been described as being among the least promising of the society’s trainees, with the more talented ones being sent to India. Once in the West, they tended tospend most of their time in Red River, where they aspired to membership in the local
elite.75
The exceptions to this were in the North, where, in the 1850s, the cms undertook
two successful missions. John Horden, a young man who had been trained originallyas a blacksmith before offering himself to the cms as a missionary, was sent with little
notice or preparation to Moose Factory in 1851. Adept at languages, Horden adapted
James Evans’s syllabics and used them with great success in the James Bay region. He
also trained the Aboriginal minister Thomas Vincent, who was sent to Fort Albany tocounter the Roman Catholic presence in that community. As a result of their work,
many of the Cree of the James Bay area were converted to the Anglican faith and educated in English.76 The other campaign was carried out in what is now the Northwest
Territories and the Yukon and is discussed in Part Four of this volume of the report.

The missionary world
The overall goals of the Protestant and Catholic missionaries were similar: to ‘civilize’ Aboriginal people, meaning to have them learn English or French and adopt a
settled European lifestyle, and, most essentially, to convert them to Christianity. There
were similarities between the social origins and experiences of Church Missionary
Society and Oblate missionaries. The Catholic and Protestant missionaries often camefrom working-class or small-business families, were educated by their missionary
agencies or societies, and lived lives of self-denial.
The missionaries also shared a disdain for Aboriginal culture and a deep hostility towards each other. On occasion, both sentiments could be brought together in asingle burst of prejudice, such as Anglican Archdeacon William Cockran’s 1830 pronouncement: “These savages make good Roman Catholics; the priests sprinkle themwith holy water and tell them they are safe; they hang a cross about their necks andtell them they are invulnerable. This symbolical deception suits their carnal minds,
they go away satisfied with the lie which the mystery of iniquity had put into their righthand.”77 To John West, the First Nations people he encountered were “degraded andemaciated, wandering in ignorance.”78 Red River was, in his opinion, “a Heathen land,
which Satan hath held bound, lo! not these 18 years or a century, but probably since
the Creation of the world.”79 In the eyes of the Anglicans, Catholics were non-Christian94 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

purveyors of a superstition-laden set of ceremonies and beliefs. Medallions, holywater, celibacy, and papal authority were all signs of Catholic error and backwardness.
To the Catholics, on the other hand, Anglicans were heretics who, if left unchecked,
would lead Aboriginal people to damnation.80 Most nineteenth-century missionaries
attempted to learn Aboriginal languages and, making use of Evans’s syllabic system,
often translated prayers, hymns, and scripture into a variety of Aboriginal languages.
This did not necessarily reflect a respect for Aboriginal culture. Rather, knowledge ofthe language served as a tool for undermining the culture.
The Oblates saw the Northwest as the Devil’s playground into which they had cometo do battle with Protestantism, liberalism, secularism, and paganism.81 Of the Cree,
Catholic Bishop Lafleche wrote,
I think it no exaggeration to say that in them we find the very lowest type of humanity. Their degradation and wickedness is the result of their mode of life. They
are mostly in large camps of sixty or eighty, or more, wigwams. They lead an idle
and wandering life, following the buffalo, which supplies them abundantly withfood and clothing. After seeing the disgusting lives of those savages, one easily
concludes that work is a blessing, if also a penance, for fallen man.82

Writing from the Arctic in frustration, Oblate Father Grollier concluded in 1860
that Indians were a hopeless people, impossible to convert, and that “I believe thatan Englishman and a savage are perfectly identical.”83 The Catholics claimed thatAnglican success in the Yukon was due to their liberality with tobacco, and further
disparaged their missionaries, Kirkby and McDonald, because one was a former stable boy and the other a former brewer.84 Other Oblates taught that Protestantism wasinvented by perverse men, and accused a Protestant minister’s interpreter of paying
people $15 apiece to be baptized.85
Often, their allegations mirrored one another: Father Lacombe lamented that the
Methodists were burned with the “fanaticism of Wesleyanism,”86 while Methodist
George McDougall wrote in 1870 that “the man of sin”—a common Protestant term
for the Pope—“is powerfully represented in this country. There are five priests to one
Protestant missionary; they are anti-British in their national sympathies; and if wemay judge the tree by its fruits, anti-Christian in their teachings.” They were, he had
to admit, untiring in their efforts to make converts.87 Oblates even accused Bompas oftelling Aboriginal people that Catholics were god killers, pointing to the crucifixes thatthey wore as evidence.88
Both accused the other group of bribing people to convert, referring to each other’s
converts as “tobacco Christians.”89 In 1862, Bishop Vital Grandin commented that an
Anglican missionary at Fort Simpson had won converts through gifts: in his words, theconverts “had sold their souls for some sugar and tea.”90 The Methodist William Mason
claimed that the Roman Catholic missionary near Rainy Lake was enjoying successMission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 95

largely because he came “loaded with Pemmican, Tongues, Flour and Tobacco which
he gives to the Indians.”91
Religious rivalry was coupled with ethnic distrust. To the French Catholics, theEnglish Anglicans were seeking to impose Anglo conformity; to the Anglicans, theCatholics were the agents of a foreign power.92 Bompas held that if the North was not
put under the authority of a Protestant government, it might fall “entirely under the
influence of the Jesuits [who were not even active in the region], and become a hotbed of rebellion, with British interests completely forfeited.”93 These tensions based onreligious denomination and national origin continued well into the twentieth century
and played a significant role in shaping and directing the history of residential schooling in Canada.

Abuse and allegations of abuse
Each of the denominations had to deal with both alleged and actual sexual misbehaviour involving missionaries and young people in their care. Methodist minister James Evans was obliged to leave Norway House in the wake of allegations that
there had been improper relations between himself and young women boarding at
his house. One of the Oblate missionaries to the Far North, Émile Petitot, became
involved in sexual relationships with adolescent First Nation boys. Although he wasdisciplined for this behaviour, he continued, both as a missionary and with his sexual
activities, for nearly a decade.94 In reaction to the projected Catholic school at Fort
Providence, Anglican priest William Bompas constructed a school and orphanage on
Great Bear Lake in 1865. The school closed in 1868 after the teacher, Murdo McLeod,was charged with sexually abusing two of his students.95

Roman Catholic boarding schools
By 1870, just three years after Confederation, the Oblates already were running fourteen day and boarding schools in the Prairie West, most of which were for Aboriginal
students.96 This far surpassed the Anglican or Methodist educational undertakings,
which were limited largely to the establishment of day schools. Bishop Taché hadconcluded by 1858 that schools should be added to the Oblate missions.97 By 1863,
the Oblates and Grey Nuns were running boarding schools in Île-à-la-Crosse, Lac La
Biche, and St. Albert.98
The creation of an informal partnership between the Oblates and Grey Nuns in the
Northwest marked a turning point in the Catholic missionary endeavour.99 The Grey
Nuns were central to this. The Oblates had been trained to evangelize and convert,

96 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

not to be educators. At some of their missions, they provided instruction in reading
and writing, either in an Aboriginal language using syllabics, or in French, but thiswas intended to assist in the conversion process.100 Although most of the Grey Nuns
were not qualified teachers, they were expected to take over teaching responsibilities.
Indeed, there were few trained teachers in Canada at that time. The Toronto Normal
School, for example, had opened only in 1847.101
The Oblates were required to limit their contacts with women and girls, which meant
they were not supposed to teach female students. Therefore, the Oblate schools had
to operate in partnership with a female order. The Oblates built the schools, obtained
funding, and assisted with their maintenance, but turned much of the educational
work over to the Grey Nuns.102 Once the schools were established, relations between
the Oblates and the Grey Nuns were carefully regulated. They were not to speak toeach other without supervision, and there were concerns about the conditions underwhich Oblates could have contact with the sisters. Oblate school supervisors had togive advance notice of visits to classrooms, allowing the mother superior to accompany him if necessary, and were to keep all visits as short as possible.103
There were three overriding goals for the schools the Oblates and Grey Nuns operated together: to provide children with a Catholic education, to provide an alternative
to any schools operated by the Anglicans, and to provide a very limited secular education.104 Religious instruction took the form of ethics, catechism, music, services, anddevotions. The hope was that with such an education, the student would not strayfrom the church after leaving school.105
Life in the schools was often precarious. In 1874, a decline in the fish harvest forced
the nuns at the Île-à-la-Crosse school to ask parents to take their children back home,since the school could not feed them. Initially, the school matron slept on a pallet in
the classroom, the female students slept on the floor, and the male students slept in
the Oblate residence.106
These early mission boarding schools never recruited more than a small percentageof the number of school-aged children in the region. Those who did attend usually left
after four or five years. Orphans were the ones most likely to stay for the longest periods.107 By 1889, the number of orphaned Aboriginal students at the school exceeded
the number of children of hbc employees.108 By 1871, at Île-à-la-Crosse, there weretwenty-six students in their boarding school, along with five orphans who were being
cared for by the Grey Nuns.109
Religious instruction, which loomed large in the Oblate educational agenda,
was often in an Aboriginal language. Other classes might as easily be in French as
in English, since most of the Oblates and Grey Nuns were French speakers and werecommitted to the creation of a French-speaking Catholic identity in the CanadianWest.110 At Fort Chipewyan, for example, French was the language of instruction until
the 1890s.111 Sara Riel, by then a Grey Nun, created a crisis at Île-à-la-Crosse when she

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 97

sought to introduce English as a language of instruction. The French-speaking Métis
parents objected and, in 1875, the English lessons were temporarily dropped.112
An 1873 federal government Order-in-Council authorized a federal subsidy of $300
a year for the Oblate school at St. Albert. The following year, the government authorized similar payments to other schools for First Nations children, provided they had
a minimum of twenty-five students. By 1876, at least three schools—St. Albert, Lac La
Biche, and Île-à-la-Crosse—were receiving such support.
Bishop Vital Grandin of St. Albert played an important role in shaping the Oblates’
educational thinking. He was convinced that Aboriginal people faced extinction,and doubtful that adult hunters and trappers could be transformed successfully into
farmers. He pinned his hopes for the future of Aboriginal people on the educationand conversion of children. He proposed boarding schools at which children would
spend much of their time outdoors, either at work or play, and would be converted
to Christianity, fed local food, and provided with practical skills. Children who went
through such an education at a mission school, he felt, would not be able to return to alife on the land. He boasted that the orphans educated at mission schools hated to bereminded of their Aboriginal ancestry. With ten such schools, he claimed, he would
be able to redeem the Aboriginal race on the Prairies. He further believed that parents,
aware of the future they faced, would willingly give their children over to the Oblates ata young age. By 1879, he had begun to lobby the federal government to provide funding for church-run schools that would educate Aboriginal children from the ages offive to twenty-one. He estimated the annual cost of boarding each of these students tobe $80 a year, of which the federal government would pay half until the student turned
sixteen. From that point on, the federal government would pay only $40 and put therest into a trust account for the student, who would have access to it upon graduation.
Grandin took his case directly to Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, saying that
the Oblate success with schooling had been so great that, upon graduating, students
so wished to live as Europeans that they refused to accept any grants intended for
Aboriginal people.113
The federal government was increasingly receptive to Grandin’s proposals. In 1870,
Rupert’s Land had been transferred to Canada. By 1877, missionaries had demonstrated their value to the Canadian state by assisting in the negotiation of seven
Treaties with western First Nations. Canada’s Aboriginal policy, expressed in the 1876
Indian Act, was one of aggressive assimilation of Aboriginal peoples. An 1879 report
prepared for the federal government on residential schooling recommended the creation of a network of industrial schools, to be established by the federal governmentand run by the churches.

98 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

West coast missions
Catholic and Protestant missionaries also undertook missionary campaigns in the
Pacific Northwest in the middle years of the nineteenth century. These campaigns
were carried out in the wake of two highly disruptive events, both of which were linked
to the intensification of colonization of the region.
The 1850 Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and 1858 Fraser River gold rushes
had brought thousands of Europeans to British Columbia. The miners and prospectors had little respect for Aboriginal people or their rights and sought to separate themfrom their land. Their mistreatment of Aboriginal people led to serious disputes andconfrontations.114
In 1862, a smallpox epidemic broke out on Vancouver Island. Aboriginal people
were the hardest hit by the disease, leading Victoria municipal officials to evict muchof the city’s Aboriginal population as a threat to public health. Many of those who
were forced to leave were originally from coastal communities. When they returned totheir homes, they took the disease with them. From there, it travelled throughout themainland of what is now British Columbia.115 According to one estimate, the epidemic
killed nearly a third of the Aboriginal population in the region.116 These were dramaticand tragic events that left many communities demoralized and bereft of their traditional leaders. They also created an opportunity for Christian missionaries to provide
Aboriginal people with medical treatment.117
Roman Catholic missionary work in what is now British Columbia remained limited until the 1860s.118 In 1858, Oblate missionaries who had been active in what is
now the Pacific Northwest of the United States were authorized to move their operations north of the forty-ninth parallel.119 The Oblates opened their first mission on
the British Columbia mainland at Okanagan Lake in 1860. In 1861, they opened theSt. Mary’s mission at Mission, British Columbia, just east of New Westminster on the
Fraser River.120 In coming years, missions would be opened at Williams Lake (1867),
Stuart Lake (1873), and in the Kootenays (1874).121
Paul Durieu, who had come to the west coast as a priest in 1854, played a central rolein the development of Catholic missions and schools in what was to become British
Columbia. He worked in Esquimalt and Kamloops before being made the assistant toBishop Louis-Joseph d’Herbomez at New Westminster in 1864. There, he served as the
director of St. Mary’s Mission. He was appointed Bishop of New Westminster in 1890,
holding the position until his death in 1899.122
Durieu has been credited with the establishment of what has been termed the“Durieu System,” a form of church-run government of First Nations communities. The
system, which was not original to Durieu, was in fact an Oblate effort to follow theJesuit reducciones in North America. The reducciones were church-governed communities intended to separate Indigenous people from their traditional ways of life andMission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 99

from settlers, who were viewed as sources of corruption. It was a hierarchical model,
in which the missionary was in total control of the reduccione.123
Fellow Oblate E. M. Bunoz credited Durieu and his system with creating “an Indianstate ruled by the Indian, for the Indian, with the Indian under the directive authorityof the Bishop and the local priests as supervisors.” It was, in reality, far from being
an Aboriginal government. In the communities in which Durieu and the Oblates
established this system, the laws were “the commandments of God, the precepts of
the Church, the laws of the state when in conformity with the laws of the Church, theIndian Act, [and] the bylaws enacted by local Indian government.” The local priest presided over the court that enforced these laws, with punishment ranging from “the lash,
the fine, black fast [a highly rigorous fast] up to a short prayer.” The chief elected under
the provisions of the Indian Act was viewed as being merely an honorary chief, withreal authority resting with the “Eucharistic Chief” appointed by Durieu—and whom
Durieu could depose. Others involved in administering the system were appointed
sub-chiefs, watchmen, catchecists, police officers (in some cases), and bell-ringers(referred to as “cloche men”). These officials kept undesirable colonists, particularly
liquor traders, away from the community and enforced discipline on First Nations
community members. According to Bunoz, under the system,
late rising was not tolerated. They were all up at the first bell and at the second
bell they all went to Church to say their morning prayer. Then breakfast and theywent to their respective work. In the evening the bell called them again for theirprayer in common. Later on at a proper hour, according to the season, the curfew was sounded; and all lights went out in a few moments.124

The Durieu System’s authority was called into question when, in 1892, thechurch-sponsored court on the Lillooet Reserve sentenced a young man and woman
to a public flogging for having engaged in intercourse outside of marriage. The sentence was approved by an Oblate priest, Eugène-Casimir Chirouse. The young woman
was flogged a second time shortly afterwards, this time for leaving the reserve with agroup of young men and women. The case was reported to the local magistrate, who
had the court members and Chirouse arrested. All were convicted at a trial in county
court. Chirouse was sentenced to a year in jail, the chief of the court to six months,
and the rest of the court to two months. After a campaign led by Catholic Bishop
John Lemmens, federal justice minister John Thompson dismissed all the charges.125
Durieu’s successor as Bishop of New Westminster, Augustin Dontenwill, questioned
the effectiveness of the system, which he viewed as being overly harsh.126 As a result,the system—whose efficiency was in all likelihood exaggerated by its supporters—fell
into decline. Chirouse’s career, however, did not. He became principal of the Mission
school in the 1890s and remained involved in the school’s operation until the 1920s.127
Durieu also supported the establishment of residential schools at Catholic missions.

100 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The first of these schools opened at St. Mary’s Mission in 1863.128 The principles of
the Durieu System structured the students’ daily life. Although the forty-two boys theschool initially recruited were given an introduction to reading, writing, and arithmetic, they spent much of their time in the fields, gardening and farming. The punishments employed included additional school work, being required to kneel for a periodof time, confinement, isolation, humiliation, and corporal punishment. Rewards were
given for good behaviour—these might be prizes or honours, such as the right to bereferred to as the “Captain of Holy Angels.” From the late 1860s onwards, the school
had a brass band, which was used in part to impress Europeans with the capability ofFirst Nations students.129
In 1865, the Sisters of St. Ann, who had established a convent in Victoria in 1858,
sent two sisters to New Westminster, where they opened up a girls’ school the following year. The school taught the children of both settlers and First Nations families.130
The Oblates promised to provide the Sisters of St. Ann with $200 a year for their services, plus $400 to outfit their convent, if the order provided two teachers for a girls’
school at Mission. When two sisters and seven students arrived in the fall of 1868, they
discovered that the Oblates had not provided any furnishings, forcing their leader,
Sister Mary Luména, to quickly make tables and dressers. In coming years, she not
only built beds, tables, chairs, and washstands, but also felled the lumber from which
the furnishings were constructed.131
The food supply at the Mission schools was always precarious. Supposedly becauseof the boys’ fondness for cabbage soup, the Oblates had them plant 4,000 cabbages inthe spring of 1864. Whether or not the students were fond of it, cabbage dominatedthe menu the following year. In 1868, there was no bread, cereal, or vegetables: thestaff and students lived on closely rationed potatoes and fish.132 The diet was monotonous and insufficient, so much so that the boys used to supplement it with apples they
took from the school orchard at night.133
The priests and nuns thought that the traditional First Nations clothing was too
extravagant. As a result, each new student was provided with a school uniform. The
girls’ outfits consisted of a brown blouse, a cotton skirt, and a white bonnet.134
The Mission school was originally funded solely from Catholic sources, but, in
1865, the colonial government of British Columbia provided it with a grant of fifty
pounds.135 In January 1874, Bishop d’Herbomez sought funding for the Mission schoolfrom Indian Affairs, pointing out that “amongst the Indian boys of our schools there
are many who can scarcely learn to read and write correctly, the same boys can learn
many things no less useful for them as (ex. gr.) [for example] to plough, to cut hay,etc. and even to play music.” At the schools, the boys “take early the habit of working,they acquire the love of order and discipline and prepare themselves to become usefulmembers of the community.”136 The lobbying effort was successful: that year, the government provided the school with a grant of $350.137

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 101

While the Roman Catholic Church remained the dominant Christian denomination on the west coast, both the Anglicans and Methodists carried out high-profile missionary campaigns during this period. They too sought to establish
missionary-governed Christian communities that would separate Aboriginal people
from the broader community.
In 1857, William Duncan, a recent graduate of the cms’s Highbury Training College,arrived at the hbc post at the northern coastal community of Fort Simpson (now Port
Simpson), where he evangelized among members of the Tsimshian First Nation.138 By
1859, there were 200 students in the school he had established. Religion was central
to his curriculum. In his journal, he wrote, “I spoke to them in the morning about
what God expects from us, being our maker, which is point No. 1 in my course of oral
lessons.”139
Duncan and 400 Tsimshian converts sought to isolate themselves from what
they saw as the corrupting influences of the European settlers and non-ChristianFirst Nations people by moving to the former Tsimshian village of Metlakatla (alternately Metlakahtla). They made the move in 1862, establishing what Duncan (who
had learned to speak Tsimshian by then) hoped would serve as a model Christianvillage.140 Life at Metlakatla was not dissimilar to that under the Durieu System: traditional ceremonies, gambling, alcohol, and work on Sunday were banned, and school
attendance was compulsory.141 A sawmill was built with the profits from the community store. Lumber from that mill was used to build houses, a church that could seatover 1,000 people, a day school, and a house for students.142 Beginning in 1874, thefederal government provided funds to the school, which reportedly had 304 students,
168 of whom were adults.143
Duncan exercised considerable power over both students and community members in general. In his journal, he recorded how “last night I had to chastise Susan for
inattention and gave all a very severe lecture on their careless, dirty and lazy habits—I
had Margaret in prison (the cupboard under the stairs) two days and nights for pilfering and also added a severe beating.”144 As magistrate, he commanded a force of uniformed Aboriginal constables. He did not flinch from imposing harsh punishment on
those who violated the community’s laws: people could be jailed, exiled, or flogged.145
For many years, Duncan’s work at Metlakatla was held up as an example of missionary accomplishment. The 1874 Indian Affairs annual report described him as “aman whose earnest labours on behalf of the Indians of British Columbia are above
all praise.”146 However, he eventually came into conflict with both church and government officials. When Duncan refused to accept the authority of the cms, he wasdismissed. In response, he and 600 Tsimshian people left for Alaska, where they established a community that came to be known as “New Metlakatla.”147
Thomas Crosby, who was born in England and raised in Ontario, came to British
Columbia as a lay Methodist missionary in 1861. Four years later, he became an

102 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

itinerant preacher, working on the east coast of Vancouver Island.148 In 1874, he arrived
in Fort Simpson, which would be the seat of his activities for the next twenty-three
years.149 Crosby learned Aboriginal languages, attended ceremonies and feasts, andpaid close attention to Aboriginal orators and storytellers. He had regard for what hesaw as being the generosity of Aboriginal people, their natural piety, and their musicalability. But he viewed their spiritual and cultural practices as the devil’s creation. He
wished to bring about a complete transformation in their lives: Aboriginal people not
only had to come to Christ, they also had to be taught to attend school or work regularly, abandon communal homes for single-family dwellings, and take up farming.150
There was little in Aboriginal life that pleased him. He wrote, “Their old houses andtheir surroundings were wretchedly filthy and disorderly, and little calculated to help
them in their efforts to rise.”151
He too sought to establish a church-run government for the First Nations peopleof Fort Simpson. Under his leadership, a village council at Fort Simpson was formed.
The council appointed watchmen to enforce laws on the observance of the Sabbath,drinking, marriage, schooling, and domestic disputes. With a new religion came newnames. By the 1880s, most members of the Methodist Church in Fort Simpson had
European names.152
Crosby was greatly aided in his work by his wife, Emma. The Crosbys initially took
young girls, some of whom were orphans, into their home to raise.153 This undertaking expanded to the point where, in 1879, the Crosby Girls’ Home opened.154 Emma
Crosby’s fundraising efforts on behalf of this work contributed to the establishment of
the Methodist Women’s Missionary Society.155 Strict routine and regimentation were
imposed by staff at the Crosby Girls’ Home.156 One of the matrons felt that frequent
punishment was “the only way to make them mind.”157 Two girls who ran away in 1883
were locked up in the workroom for nearly a week. 158 By the late 1880s, Crosby’s influence over the Tsimshian had gone into decline, as dissatisfaction with the church’s
ability to protect Aboriginal land rights led to a split in the church and the emergenceof an Aboriginal-led church society known as the “Band of Christian Workers.”159
Both Duncan and Crosby came into conflict with the federal government overAboriginal issues. Duncan argued that the Indian Act, which he viewed as restrictive,
should not apply to the Tsimshian of Metlakatla, while Crosby advocated on behalfof Aboriginal land rights. At one point, Indian agent J. W. MacKay recommended
that restraints be placed on missionaries such as Duncan and Crosby, whom he saw
as being the instigators behind Aboriginal land claims.160 Their efforts on behalf ofAboriginal rights did not succeed, and the model communities they sought to establish did not take root. Those communities did, however, serve as models for residential schools. In coming years, an industrial school would be established at Metlakatla,
and the Crosby Home was incorporated into Canada’s residential school system.

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880 • 103

A legacy of division
Throughout the Northwest and British Columbia, Christian missionaries, and the
Oblate order in particular, were strategically placed to seize the initiative when, in
the 1880s, the federal government began to implement the 1879 proposal to establish
industrial schools in western Canada. The schools that were established in the following decades were in large measure extensions of the early mission schools: they
were intended to separate children from their families, impose new spiritual beliefs
and practices, provide a very limited academic education, instill a sense of the moral
value of work, and prepare students to take up farming as opposed to returning to thelifestyles of their parents.
The intense conflict between Protestants and Catholics carried over into the residential school era. It fostered a patchwork distribution of schools, which left some areas
with no schools while, in others, Roman Catholic and Protestant schools were locateda few kilometres from one another. This competition not only led to duplication, but it
also created deep and long-lasting divisions within First Nations communities.

CHAPTER 7

Confederation, colonization,and resistanceI

n 1867, the British parliament adopted the British North America Act. It combined
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (made up of portionsof what are now Ontario and Québec) into a new political entity: the Dominion of
Canada. Not quite colony, not quite independent state, Canada was an imperial creation and remained part of the British Empire, which meant that London, not Ottawa,would set foreign policy, at least in the nation’s early years. The confederation of the
British North American colonies came about in response to a series of pressures andopportunities, including• the desire to expand intercolonial trade;• the need to improve defence because Britain’s unwillingness to officially support
the victorious Union side in the American Civil War had increased border tensions and threatened trade with the us; and• the potential to capitalize on economic opportunities in what were then Hudson’s
Bay Company (hbc) lands to the west.
Much of the pressure came from England. The British Colonial Office wanted torid itself of the costs associated with settler colonies such as Canada. Granting or
cajoling them into independence would reduce those costs, while ensuring that thecolonies remained open to investments of British capital. At the same time, British
and central Canadian politicians and investors had a real interest in the creation ofa transcontinental state, through the acquisition of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s
Bay Company and by luring British Columbia into Confederation with the promise of
a continental rail link.
The acquired lands would be populated with settlers from Europe and Upper
Canada, who would buy goods produced in central Canada, and would ship theirharvests by rail to western and eastern ports and on to international markets, and so
provide the country with export earnings. Failure to act quickly was risky: the rapidly
expanding United States might well claim the territory first as part of its own so-called
manifest destiny, depriving the empire of a transcontinental rail link, assured supplies
of coal, strategic harbours, and a secure food supply.

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Colonial enthusiasm for such a union rose and fell. In 1864, the British-appointed
governors of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island managed to persuade the political leaders of each of their colonies to meet in Charlottetown to discussa less ambitious Maritime Union. They were joined by the leadership of the Province ofCanada, which presented a proposal for a federation of all the British North Americancolonies, with the eventual goal of westward expansion. This proposal would bringabout a break in the political deadlock that had plagued the Province of Canada since
1841, when French-speaking, largely Catholic, Lower Canada and English-speaking,largely Protestant, Upper Canada had been joined in a single colony. It would also
create an economically sound and politically stable state that would attract the sort ofinvestment required for the further exploitation of the Canadian Northwest. The proposal met with support and formed the basis of the Confederation that soon followed.1
The new dominion lost no time in beginning its westward expansion. The parliament was elected in August 1867, and, in December, it adopted a measure callingon Britain to unite the Hudson’s Bay Company territory with Canada.2 Colonizing
the “North-West”—as this territory came to be known—meant colonizing the over
40,000 Indigenous people who lived there.3 There were three central elements to the
Canadian government’s colonial policy: the Indian Act, the Department of IndianAffairs, and the Treaties it negotiated with First Nations in western and northern
Canada. This chapter outlines the development of the Indian Act and the IndianAffairs department, and then describes the Aboriginal response to Canada’s colonization of the North-West. That response led to the eventual creation of the Province ofManitoba, the negotiation of the Treaties, and a Canadian military intervention thatserved as the first measure in a sustained policy of social and economic regimentationand marginalization of Aboriginal people.

The Indian Act
Federal government responsibility for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians”
came from Section 91 (24) of the British North America Act (now the Constitution
Act of 1867). In Parliament, Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald,described the government’s responsibility to Indians as one of “guardianship as of
persons underage, incapable of the management of their own affairs.”4 This official
attitude demonstrates the backward steps taken in Aboriginal policy since the days
when First Nations were seen as respected and important allies whose support was tobe sought and maintained.
Even though the legislation referred to as the “Indian Act” was not adopted until
1876, the Canadian parliament began regulating the lives of Aboriginal people
shortly after Confederation. In 1868, the government adopted the Act to provide forConfederation, colonization, and resistance • 107

the organization of the Department of the Secretary of State of Canada and for the
Administration of the Affairs of the Indians. This law essentially incorporated much of
the previous Province of Canada’s legislation regarding Indian people, applying it to
the country as a whole. This practice of adopting pre-Confederation approaches wascontinued in 1869, when Parliament adopted An Act for the gradual enfranchisementof Indians.5 This Act gave Canada the authority to• issue location titles or tickets for tracts of reserve land (These tickets associatedindividuals with specific tracts of land. This was the first step to private ownership of land and the dissolution of the reserves.);• establish elected band councils (whose bylaws had to be approved by the federal government);• remove from office those band councillors believed to be unfit for reasons of dishonesty, intemperance, or immorality;• grant to any Indian who “appears to be a safe and suitable person for becoming
a proprietor of land” a “life estate in the land which has been or may be allottedto him within the Reserve belonging to the tribe band or body of which he is amember”; and• require an Indian woman who married “any other than an Indian” to “cease to
be an Indian within the meaning of this Act.” Furthermore, the children of suchmarriage would not “be considered as Indians within the meaning of this Act.”
Writing about these two Acts in 1870, Deputy Superintendent General of IndianAffairs William Spragge made it clear that the purpose of the legislation was to undermine First Nations’ self-government and foster assimilation.
The Acts framed in the years 1868 and 1869, relating to Indian affairs, were
designed to lead the Indian people by degrees to mingle with the white race inthe ordinary avocations of life. It was intended to afford facilities for electing, fora limited period, members of bands to manage, as a Council, local matters; that
intelligent and educated men, recognized as chiefs, should carry out the wishesof the male members of mature years in each band, who should be fairly represented in the conduct of their internal affairs.
Thus establishing a responsible, for an irresponsible system, this provision, bylaw, was designed to pave the way to the establishment of simple municipal
institutions.6

When it was adopted in 1876, the Indian Act (formally An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians)7 brought together all the laws dealing with Indians
into a single piece of legislation. It contained the following key provisions.
It defined Indians: An Indian was a male of Indian blood belonging to a tribe. His wifeand children were also Indians. Indian women lost their status as Indians under108 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the Act if they married a non-Indian. Furthermore, her children by such a marriage
would not have status. This discriminatory provision ignored traditional Aboriginal
marriage practices and was to have a long-lasting disruptive impact on Aboriginal
families and communities.
It defined Indian bands: A band was defined legally as a body of Indians holding land
or a reserve in common “of which the legal title is vested in the Crown,” or for whomfunds were held in trust.
It regulated the sale of Indian lands: Reserve lands were held in trust by the Crown andcould not be mortgaged or seized for debts. This land could be surrendered only to
the Crown and only if a majority of male adult band members approved of the surrender at a special meeting. Each surrender required the approval of the minister.
As a disincentive for the band to surrender land for immediate gain, no more than
10% of the sale money was paid directly to the band and the rest was held in trust.
It defined acceptable forms of band government: Despite the fact that Aboriginal people governed themselves in a wide variety of ways across the country, the Indian Act
sought to establish a system of an elected chief and council on reserves. Although
hereditary chiefs (or “life chiefs,” as the Act described them) living at the time of
the Act could hold their position until death or resignation, the minister could dismiss the band council or councillors for dishonesty, intemperance, immorality, orincompetency. Much like municipalities, band councils were given responsibility
for roads, bridges, schools, public buildings, granting of lots, and suppression ofvice on reserves.
It placed limitations on Indian people: For example, they could not acquire homesteads in Manitoba or the North-West Territories.
It sought enfranchisement as an ultimate goal: Under the Act, a band member seeking
enfranchisement had to have band approval and been granted an allotment of land
from his or her band. The individual would also have to convince Indian Affairs of
his or her “integrity, morality and sobriety.” At the end of a three-year probationary period, such a person would (if their conduct were judged to be satisfactory)
receive reserve land. Also, a band member who earned a university degree, qualified as a doctor or lawyer, teacher, or was ordained as a Christian priest, was to
be enfranchised.
Enfranchisement did not, in itself, grant an entitlement to vote, which, during muchof this period, was subject to provincial regulation. Rather, it removed all distinctions
between the legal rights and liabilities of Indians and those of other British subjects, as
Canadians were still British subjects. In applying for enfranchisement, an Indian had
to abandon reserve and Treaty rights. He would then receive an allotment of reservelands, which would be subject to assessment and taxation.

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 109

If this policy were successful, the federal government would gradually eliminate its
obligations to individual Indians as well as its Treaty obligations. It directly impacted
the reserves, since it was meant to break them up. It affected the Treaties, because if
there were no status Indians, there were no more Treaty obligations. The policy wasnever popular with First Nations peoples. Between 1857 and 1920, other than women
who lost their Indian status upon marriage, only 250 “Indians” were enfranchised.8
The 1876 Indian Act made little reference to education, other than giving bandcouncils responsibility for building and maintaining schoolhouses. A provision added
in 1880 required that the teacher be of the same religion as a majority of the band
members, provided that the minority (be they Catholic or Protestant) have a separate
school.9
Politicians justified the Indian Act as a necessary instrument for protecting First
Nations people from exploitation while civilizing them, but, in reality, it was a tool forthe autocratic administration of their lives. In the coming years, the Act was regularly
amended to further strengthen the government’s ability to control Indian people. For
example, in the years prior to 1900, the Act was amended to• give the minister of Indian Affairs the power to replace traditional leadershipwith elected councils (If a traditionally selected leadership was replaced in thisway by an elected council, the elected council was to serve as the official representative of the band.) (1880);10• allow for the denial of band membership to children born out of wedlock (1880);11• allow the minister to ban anyone deposed from office from seeking re-election
for a period of three years (1895);12• authorize Indian agents as justices of the peace (1881);13• make it a crime to induce “three or more Indians, non-treaty Indians, or halfbreeds apparently acting in concert,-- To make any request or demand of any agent or servant of the Government ina riotous, routous, disorderly or threatening manner, or in a manner calculated to cause a breach of the peace; or—-- To do an act calculated to cause a breach of the peace.” (1884);14• give the minister the power to outlaw the sale or gifting of certain kinds of ammunition to Indians in Manitoba and the North-West Territories (1884);15• make it illegal to participate in traditional West Coast First Nations ceremonies(the Potlatch ceremony and Tamanawas dance) (1884);16• allow the minister to enfranchise a man without band approval (1884);17• allow the Department of Indian Affairs to prohibit or regulate the sale (or any
other form of exchange) by any Indian or Indian band of grain and root crops
and other produce grown on reserves in western Canada (1881);18

110 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• make the game laws of Manitoba and the Territories applicable to Indians(1890);19• give the minister increasing authority to lease lands without band consent (1894,
1895, 1898);20• forbid ceremonies that included the giving away of “money, goods or articles”
or “the wounding mutilation of the dead or living body of any human being or
animal” (1895);21 and• increase the minister’s ability to spend band funds without band approval(1898).22
In short, the Indian Act sought to place First Nations individuals and communities,
their lands, and their finances under federal government control. Real authority ona reserve rested not with the elected band chiefs and councils, whose powers werealready limited and who could be dismissed by the government, but with the federally appointed Indian agents.23 From its beginning in 1876, the Act, in effect, madeIndians wards of the state, unable to vote in provincial or federal elections or enter
the professions if they did not surrender their status, and severely limited their freedom to participate in spiritual and cultural practices. It restricted how they could sell
the produce from their farms and prevented them from taking on debt without either
government approval or the surrender of their legal status as Indians.24 Rather thanprotecting Indian land, the Act became the instrument through which reserves weredrastically reduced in size or relocated.
The Indian Act remained the dominant piece of Aboriginal legislation in Canada,but other key pieces of legislation that had implications for Aboriginal people wereadopted in the nineteenth century. The Electoral Franchise Act of 1885, for example, gave the vote to adult male Indians over the age of twenty-one, living in eastern
Canada, who possessed improved land on reserves. Prior to the adoption of this Act,
federal voting rights were established by provincial laws, which meant that Indians
who met property qualifications were allowed to vote in some provinces but not inothers. When the federal Act was repealed in 1898, provincial governments were once
more given the right to determine who could vote in federal elections. They used thispower to deny or restrict the voting rights of First Nations people. It would not be until
1960 that First Nations people received the unqualified right to vote in federal elections in Canada.25

Department of Indian Affairs
The Department of Indian Affairs developed out of what had come to be known as
the pre-Confederation Indian Branch of the government of the Province of Canada(Ontario and Québec). That branch, which could trace its history back to Sir William

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 111

Johnson’s Indian Department, had become the Crown Lands Department in 1860.26
After Confederation, the branch’s responsibilities were extended to the Maritimes.27
It was initially part of the Department of the Secretary of State, which was responsible for relations with Britain as well for the civil service and the North-West Mounted
Police. In 1873, the Indian Branch was transferred to the Department of the Interior.
The other two branches in the department were the Dominion Lands Branch and the
Geological Survey of Canada. The Department of the Interior also had responsibility for the North-West Territories (which included most of what are now Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Nunavut).28
From this point on, the minister responsible for administering Aboriginal peoples and their lands was also responsible for recruiting settlers and acquiring land—
Aboriginal land—on which immigrants could settle. To do this, the Department of theInterior would continue with policies that had been established in the pre-Confederation period: it would gain access to the land through Treaties, isolate Aboriginal people on reserves and in residential schools, impose restrictive political control throughlegislation, and work towards assimilation, so as to be rid of any political or economic
obligation to Aboriginal peoples.
It was not until 1880 that an amendment to the Indian Act created a separate
Department of Indian Affairs. Yet, the link with the Department of the Interior continued, as it became customary to place both departments under the responsibility ofthe same minister. In keeping with pre-Confederation practice, the Minister of IndianAffairs was officially referred to as the “Superintendent General of Indian Affairs” until
1936. To facilitate its work, Indian Affairs divided the nation up into “superintendencies,” each with its own superintendent who oversaw the work of up to five Indian
agents. Superintendencies were large: in the 1870s, there were only two for all ofManitoba and the North-West Territories, and two more for all of British Columbia.
In western Canada, a full-time Indian commissioner provided direction to the department’s work in the region from 1873 to 1932 (the position was temporarily abolishedfrom 1909 to 1920).29
Decision making was highly centralized. From 1874 to 1893, Deputy Minister ofIndian Affairs Lawrence Vankoughnet controlled the day-to-day operations of thedepartment. (For reasons of clarity and consistency, this report refers to the position
as “Minister of Indian Affairs” rather than “Superintendent General of Indian Affairs.”)
Having started as a clerk with the Crown Lands department in 1861, Vankoughnet
was familiar with departmental policy, and benefited from a long-standing friendship with Sir John A. Macdonald, but he had little direct experience with Aboriginal
people. His driving concerns were to maintain personal control over the workings ofthe department and to limit expenses. This policy would frustrate staff in the field,
who were unable to respond quickly to developing situations.30 For Aboriginal people
who were facing starvation due to often lethal epidemics and to the collapse of their112 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

traditional economy, the government’s delay and focus on controlling costs could
have tragic consequences.
Although the department’s senior field staff often clashed with their masters
in Ottawa, their attitudes towards Aboriginal people bore all the hallmarks of colonialism. Indian Commissioner Joseph Provencher was dismissed in 1878 after aninquiry that concluded he had neglected his duties, provided poor-quality goods to
Indians, and sought to use his position to enrich himself.31 Indian Commissioner
Edgar Dewdney referred to the 3,000 Cree who were attempting to establish a reservein the Cypress Hills as “a large number of worthless and lazy Indians, the concourseof malcontents and reckless Indians from all the bands in the Territories.” Removing
them from the Cypress Hills and “scattering them through the country” would be, in
his opinion, “a solution of one of our main difficulties.32 Hayter Reed, a future deputy
minister of Indian Affairs, described the First Nations people he encountered while
he was the Indian agent at Battleford as the “scum of the Plains.”33 Arguments that
Canada’s Indian policy was well-intentioned and humanitarian in nature must be
evaluated against the harsh, condescending, and, at times, self-interested statementsof the individuals who framed and implemented that policy.
The department had two sources of funding: the government’s annual budgetary
allocation, and the interest on funds held in trust for bands. By 1890, well over half ofthe department’s budget was spent in the West.34
In the North-West Territories, Indian Affairs officials worked closely with theNorth-West Mounted Police, which had been established in 1873. Modelled on theRoyal Irish Constabulary, the Mounted Police was intended to establish order on
the Prairies, paving the way for settlement and the construction of the railway. Its
immediate tasks were to control American whiskey traders who had begun to operate in Canada, and to establish a relationship with Aboriginal people as a prelude totheir eventual ‘civilization.’35 The police were empowered to administer British andCanadian laws—laws that had been neither made nor approved by people who lived
in the North-West. The commissioner of the force held an automatic seat on the
Territorial Council that had been established to govern the territory, and police force
members served as magistrates. As a result, the Mounted Police was involved in passing legislation, policing, and the judicial system.36 From the time of their arrival in theWest, police were present at all the Treaty negotiations, serving as a silent reminder ofCanada’s military potential.37

Resistance, Treaties, and rebellion
The colonization of the North-West did not go smoothly. From the outset, Aboriginal
people sought to have a voice in determining the future of their homelands. They

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 113

resisted the unilateral assertion of Canadian sovereignty, negotiated Treaties, andtook up arms when compelled. Canada’s responses were both military and diplomatic, and, as the Crown gained the balance of power in the West, it began to assume
even greater control over the lives of Aboriginal people.

The Métis and the Resistance of 1870
The Métis of Red River were among the first to openly resist Canadian colonizationof the North-West. One of the outcomes of the fur trade was the development of longterm relationships between traders of European ancestry and Aboriginal women.
Often referred to as marriages “in the custom of the country” or “country marriages,”these relationships gave literal and figurative birth to a new people with a distinct cultural identity. For voyageurs and fur traders, such marriages strengthened economic
relations with the First Nations with whom they were trading. For Aboriginal groups,
developing strong kinship ties was part of a larger and very old social and politicalsystem, but was also essential to trade, as these families raised their children to workin the trade as well. As the children of these relationships married and created theirown unique cultures and communities, they were referred to by a variety of terms,
including “mixed-blood,” “half-breed,” “country-born,” “bois-brûlé,” and, the term
most commonly used today to describe this new nation, “Métis.”38
Settled communities of this emerging nation developed around the Great Lakes inthe eighteenth century. Many moved west with the fur trade, congregating at the forksof the Red and Assiniboine rivers in present-day Winnipeg. There, the Métis developed
an economy based on the cultivation of narrow riverfront lots and the twice-yearly
buffalo hunt. Métis identity at Red River was shaped initially by their close relations
with the North West Company and their opposition to the Selkirk Settlers, who settled
at Red River in 1812 on land granted to them by the hbc. The Métis defended theirrights to their land and their livelihood, culminating first in a confrontation with thesettlers at Seven Oaks in 1816. They also adopted their own flag, and developed theirown language, forms of government, clothing, music, and technologies. Over the next
decades, they continued to assert their rights, defying the Hudson’s Bay Company’s
claim to a trade monopoly. By 1849, their united action had destroyed the hbc’s trademonopoly.39
By 1870, the population of Red River exceeded 12,000. Almost half were Frenchspeaking Métis, and 4,000 were English-speaking Métis. However, the government
chose to ignore the Métis majority, paying attention solely to the small but growing
population of immigrants from eastern Canada.40 The “Canadians,” as the immigrants
were known, showed little regard for land rights of the First Nations or the Métis,and lobbied to have the land controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company transferred114 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to Canada. Rupert’s Land had been granted to the hbc in 1670 by King Charles II ofEngland. It was originally to have included all lands with waters draining into Hudson
Bay that were not possessed by any British subjects or the subjects of any Christianstate. By the later 1700s, a sometimes violent trade war existed between the Hudson’s
Bay Company and competitors from Upper and Lower Canada. The trade war finallyended in an amalgamation of the Hudson’s Bay Company with its major competitor,
the North West Company, in 1821. At that time, the British government gave the hbc
a trade monopoly in all lands to the north and west of the United States and Upperand Lower Canada that did not belong to any European power. This added what wasreferred to as the “North-Western Territory” to the hbc’s existing claim to Rupert’sLand.41 After Confederation, negotiations between the Hudson’s Bay Company,
Britain, and Canada led to an agreement to transfer all of the expanded Rupert’s Land
to Canada for 300,000 pounds. The company was allowed to retain land around its
posts (amounting to an estimated 20,234 hectares). The company was also granted
rights to 20% of the land in the Plains and Parklands where settlement was expected
to take place. Aboriginal people were not consulted in the negotiations that saw thisland transferred to Canada. In 1869, before the transfer was finalized, the Canadiangovernment dispatched surveyors and appointed an Ontarian, William McDougall, as
governor. The Métis stopped the survey teams, refused to let McDougall into the territory, and, under the leadership of Louis Riel, proclaimed a provisional governmentthat brought together both the English- and French-speaking factions in the settlement, except for the ‘Canadian party.’ 42
The provisional government did not accept the right of the federal government
to govern Red River undemocratically as a territory of the federal government. It
called upon the federal government to create a province, to be called “Assiniboia,”
out of these territories. Though the federal government conceded this demand in the
Manitoba Act of May 12, 1870, it insisted on controlling the land and natural resourcesof the new, initially postage-sized province, a control it did not exercise on the otherprovinces. But the new province would have an elected legislature, its own courts, andprotection for French rights in the legislature and Catholic rights in education. The
Métis were given the rights to their river-lot settlements. In addition, 566,560 hectares(1.4 million acres) were set aside for the children of Métis families.43
Although the negotiations had ended successfully for the Métis, the provisional
government’s decision to execute one of its opponents, Thomas Scott, outraged public opinion in Ontario. In the spring of 1870, a military expedition was dispatched to
Red River under the command of Lord Garnet Wolseley. During his lengthy career inthe British army, Wolseley had served in Burma, the Crimea, India, China, Egypt, theSudan, and South Africa. Although Wolseley referred to his expedition as a “peace
mission,” the troops approached Fort Garry, the seat of Riel’s government, in battle
formation. In the face of what was clearly a punitive mission, Riel fled.44

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 115

The distribution of the land promised to the Métis was complicated in subsequent
years by government delay, repeated changes in policy, hostility towards the Métis by
new settlers from Ontario, and the manipulations of land speculators and government
officials. In the end, Métis people were able to retain little of the land that had been
allocated to them.45 It is estimated that by 1885, over 80% of the Métis population had
left Manitoba, heading further west.46

The Treaties
The Rupert’s Land Order of 1870, which transferred much of the North-West to
Canadian control, required that “the claims of the Indian tribes to compensation forlands required for purposes of settlement will be considered and settled in conformity
with the equitable principles which have uniformly governed the British Crown in its
dealings with the aborigines.”47 In essence, this required the application of the principles of the 1763 Royal Proclamation in the Canadian North-West. Despite this obligation, the Treaty-making process often was driven by First Nations who were seeking toshare in the benefits of the settlement of their land, retain their culture, and chart their
future in a time of looming crisis.
In the 1870s, the First Nations of the Prairies and Parklands—the Saulteaux (Western
Ojibway), Woodland Cree, Woodland Assiniboine, Dene, Assiniboine, Plains Cree,
Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikuni (Peigan), and Stoney (Sioux)—were confronted with a complex set of challenges. The buffalo were in decline; fur prices were
dropping; inter-tribal war and disease had disrupted First Nations communities; andnewcomers, who often had little respect for them or their rights, were appearing intheir midst.48 Drawing on their own history of alliance and diplomacy—exemplified
by the Blackfoot Confederacy, and the military and diplomatic arrangements that had
characterized relations among the Cree, the Assiniboine, and the Ojibway—the First
Nations of the Plains and Parklands negotiated seven Treaties with the government of
Canada in the 1870s.49 Through the Treaties, Aboriginal people sought a diplomatic
relationship with Canada. Specifically, they were seeking assistance through a periodof economic transition in the form of agricultural supplies and training as well as relief
during periods of epidemic or famine. In addition, they wanted to curb the influenceof American traders who were corrupting their people with whiskey and arming theirenemies with rifles.50 They saw the Treaty process as establishing a reciprocal relationship that would be lasting: the beginning, in effect, of intergovernmental relations.51
The goal was to gain the skills that would allow them to continue to control their own
destinies. As Ahtahkakoop (Star Blanket) said, “We Indians can learn the ways of living that made the white man strong.”52

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Treaty negotiations often took place at First Nations’ insistence. Their negotiators
succeeded several times in forcing the government to improve its offers. When federal
officials adopted a ‘take it or leave it’ stance, there were First Nations leaders who,
despite often desperate economic conditions, rejected the Treaties as not being in thebest interests of their people.
The First Nations asserted that the land was theirs and insisted that the Canadiangovernment had to negotiate with them before settlement proceeded.53 The First
Nations of Manitoba, for example, were aware of the Treaties that had been negotiatedwith Native Americans at Pembina in 1851 and 1863. They expected to be treated nodifferently.54 Similarly, the Ojibway near Lake of the Woods told the government not tosend settlers or surveyors until their relationship with the Canadian government had
been determined.55 In Portage la Prairie, Aboriginal people posted a sign on a church
door warning settlers not to move onto their lands without first making a Treaty.56
They halted telegraph construction and survey crews in what is now Saskatchewan.
Further west, in what is now Alberta, they said that what they termed “the invasion” oftheir country had to be stopped until a Treaty was negotiated. 57
From the Canadian perspective, the most significant elements in the Treaties—
which have come to be known as the “Numbered Treaties”—were the written provisions by which the First Nations agreed to “cede, release, surrender, and yield” theirland to the Crown.58 The provisions varied from Treaty to Treaty, but they generally
included funds for hunting and fishing supplies, agricultural assistance, yearly payments for band members (annuities), a promise to pay for schools or teachers, and an
amount of reserve lands based on the population of the band.59
The successful negotiation of the Treaties was essential to any assertion of Canadiansovereignty over the West. The federal government, at various times, was alerted byIndian Commissioner Wemyss Simpson, and by successive lieutenant-governors
Adams Archibald and Alexander Morris, to the necessity of responding to First Nation
requests to negotiate Treaties. Despite their worsening economic position, Aboriginal
people remained a significant force. Morris warned Ottawa in 1873 that a pact among
the Cree, Siksika, and Assiniboine could create a military force of 5,000. Even moreworrying was the possibility that Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) might bring about
an alliance between the Hunkpapa Lakota and the Prairie First Nations.60 The only
alternative to negotiating Treaties was to subdue the First Nations militarily, but thatwould have been a very costly proposition. In 1870, when the entire Canadian government budget was $19 million, the United States was spending more than that—$20
million a year—on its Indian Wars alone. Despite all these pressures, the government
took a slow and piecemeal approach to Treaty making.61
The government policy was to assert its sovereignty over Aboriginal land, but todelay Treaty making until the land was actually needed for economic development.
Treaties 1 (1871), 2 (1871), 3 (1873), 4 (1874), 6 (1876), and 7 (1877)—the Prairie

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 117

Treaties—were signed to clear the way for the railway and open the West to immigration. The development of a commercial fishery on Lake Winnipeg and the expansionof a steamboat network along the Saskatchewan River created the need for Treaty 5(1875). Later Treaties followed the same pattern. Treaty 8 (1899, with significant adhesions in 1900 and 1901) was negotiated to facilitate the exploitation of the Klondikegold fields. Treaties 9 (1905) and 10 (1906) and a significant set of adhesions to Treaty 5(1908 to 1910) were responses to the growth of resource industries in northern Ontario,
Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Treaty 11 (1921) was in large measure prompted by thediscovery of crude oil in the Northwest Territories.62
Not only did the government delay making Treaty until it was ready to exploit a
region’s resources, but also its negotiators were told to keep the costs as low as possible. In preparation for Treaty 1, in 1871, Secretary of State Joseph Howe instructed
Wemyss Simpson, who had been appointed to serve as Treaty commissioner, to“endeavor to secure the cession of the lands upon terms as favourable as possible
to the Government, not going as far as the maximum sum hereafter named unless
it be found impossible to obtain the object for a less amount.”63 Howe described theRobinson Treaties, signed in Ontario in the 1850s, as “good bargains” and recommended them as models.64 Those Treaties had included hunting, fishing, and marketing rights; an annual payment; and reserves.65 In keeping with the Robinson Treaties,
the draft Treaty that federal officials sent the commissioners charged with negotiating
Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 was limited to the establishment of reserves; a small, one-time
cash payment; annuities; and a ban on the sale of alcohol.66 In 1877, David Laird, who
had been appointed Treaty commissioner, was instructed to negotiate a Treaty thatwas “on terms most favourable to the Government.”67 There was little in the initial federal approach that would have provided First Nations with assistance in addressing
the significant economic challenges they were facing, let alone provide them withanything close to just recompense for the benefits in lands and resources that the federal government expected to realize from the Treaties.
The federal negotiators benefited from and exploited• the ceremonial tradition that had developed around fur-trade negotiations;• their connection to the British Crown; and• the support of missionaries who had been in contact with First Nations for several decades.68
Ceremony and the establishment of kinship ties had long been central to First
Nations diplomacy and were incorporated into the fur trade. The annual meetings
between the trader representing the fur-trade company and the trading chief for theFirst Nations fur brigade were highly ceremonial events, rooted in Aboriginal custom.
Political and economic decisions were reached at these meetings that would governboth the immediate trade and the trading alliance for the coming year.69 The Treaty

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negotiations of the 1870s incorporated many elements of the types of ceremony usedin fur-trade interactions: the government provided a suit of clothing to First Nations
leaders, gifts were exchanged, and a pipe-smoking ceremony preceded discussion.
First Nations’ teachings held that those who took part in the pipe ceremony were
obliged to speak the truth—a stipulation that was not always, or clearly, understood bygovernment negotiators.70 Processions, the smoking of pipes, the presentation of gifts(including medals commemorating the Treaties), and invocations of the Great Spirit
all underscored the sacred nature of the agreements that were being undertaken.71
To negotiate the first Treaties, the government relied on the successive lieutenant-governors of Manitoba and the North-West Territories: Adams Archibald,
Alexander Morris, and David Laird. As lieutenant-governors, they were Queen
Victoria’s representatives in the West. In the talks, they often stressed their relationshipto the Crown, and the Queen’s generous and benevolent intent.72 In negotiating thefirst two Treaties, Lieutenant-Governor Archibald used the language of relationship:
the Queen was the “Great Mother” and the First Nations were “her red children.”73
Morris made use of the same imagery, saying that the ‘red’ and ‘white’ men must live
as brothers.74 Constant allusions to the Queen as the mother created the impressionthat reciprocal bonds of kinship were being created. In Aboriginal terms, the kinshipwas one that engaged concern and support with a respect for the autonomy of theindividual, while, to the Canadians, it was one in which the children would obey theparent.75
The government engaged missionaries in a variety of roles during the Treaty process. On occasion, they were sent out in advance to help lay the groundwork fornegotiations,76 their mission buildings sometimes served as venues for Treaty talks,77
they spoke in favour of the Treaties, they served as translators and negotiators, andthey acted as witnesses to the finalization of the agreements. Prominent in the process were Anglicans Charles Pratt, John McKay, and Abraham Cowley; the Methodist
father-and-son team of George and John McDougall, along with fellow Methodists
Egerton Young, J. H. Ruttan, and O. German; and the Roman Catholics Vital Grandin
and Constantine Scollin.78
Leading Métis and mixed-ancestry figures played important roles in the negotiations, serving as interpreters and advisers to both the government and the First
Nations.79 Two who acted as Treaty commissioners, William Joseph Christie andJames McKay, had Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal family connections that extended
throughout the North-West.80 The same can be said of the government interpreters, Peter Ballendine and Rev. John McKay.81 Peter Erasmus, also an interpreter, wasanother of mixed descent.82 (Individuals of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginalancestry were often defined as “Indians” rather than “Métis” if they followed “theIndian mode of life”; that is, followed a harvesting lifestyle).83

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 119

There were always military or police escorts at the Treaty talks. Adams Archibald
ensured that soldiers from the garrison at Red River were present at the talks that led
to Treaty 1 in 1871. In his opinion, “Military display has always a great effect on savages, and the presence, even of a few troops, will have a good tendency.”84 In negotiating Treaty 3, Morris was accompanied by a company of troops from Lower Fort
Garry, who prevented the sale of alcohol and provided what Morris called “a moral
influence.”85 Members of the militia from Manitoba were present for the negotiationof Treaty 4,86 and there was a Mounted Police presence at Blackfoot Crossing for thenegotiation of Treaty 7.87 Government negotiators made it clear that rejection was not
an option. During the Treaty 1 talks, Archibald told First Nations leaders, “Whether
they wished it or not, immigrants would come in and fill up the country.”88
According to William Parker, a Mounted Police officer who attended the Treaty 7
talks, Laird warned the First Nations representatives that efforts to block settlement
would prove as futile as trying “to stop the running waters of the river, as the Queen’s
soldiers were as thick as the grass on the prairies.”89
At the Treaty 1 talks, Archibald said that although the Queen thought it best forher “red children” to “adopt the habits of the whites,” she had “no idea of compelling
you to do so. This she leaves to your choice, and you need not live like the white man
unless you can be persuaded to do so of your own free will.”90 This promise was at odds
with the laws of the time, which limited First Nations participation in all aspects ofCanadian society unless they went through the process of enfranchisement—which
did require them to “live like the white man.” In coming years, First Nations people
would be compelled to send their children to residential schools, where those children would also be made to “live like the white man.”Morris also stressed the permanent nature of the government commitments, saying, “What I offer you is to be while the water flows and the sun rises.”91 In 1876, Morris
told the Cree, “What I trust and hope we will do is not for to-day and tomorrow only;
what I will promise, and what I believe and hope you will take, is to last as long as thesun shines and yonder river flows.”92 This concept of an agreement that lasts as longas the sun shines and the water flows was symbolized in the Treaty medals that were
distributed at the signing of Treaty 3 through to Treaty 8. They showed a chief and animperial officer shaking hands; a hatchet was buried in the ground and, in the background, the sun shone.93
The First Nations negotiators demanded fair treatment. During the Treaty 3
talks, Chief Ma-we-do-pe-nais reminded Morris, “The white man has robbed us of
our riches, and we don’t wish to give them up again without getting something intheir place.”94 He said he could hear the sound of gold rustling beneath the land that
Treaty commissioners sought.95 First Nations people were unwilling to accept that the
Hudson’s Bay Company had had any right to transfer their land to Canada. During
the negotiation of Treaty 4, Pis Qua of the Plains Saulteaux confronted a Hudson’s Bay

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Company official, telling him, “You told me you had sold our land for so much money,£300,000. We want that money.”96 When offered 640 acres (259 hectares) per family in
1874, Pitikwahanapiwiyin (Poundmaker) responded, “This is our land! It isn’t a pieceof pemmican to be cut off and given in little pieces back to us. It is ours and we willtake what we want.”97 Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) famously said that for First Nations
people, post-Treaty life would be like having “the rope to be about my neck,” the life ofa tethered animal.98
From the outset, the First Nations negotiators took strong positions that reflected
their understanding of the value of their land. During the Treaty 1 talks, for example,
the government officials complained that the First Nations were asking for two-thirdsof Manitoba (which was then much smaller than its current size).99 What government
officials described as “extravagant demands” were First Nation proposals for the provisions they believed were needed to ease their passage into a new economy. These
included accommodation, land, education, medical care, livestock, teachers andinstructors, transportation, clothing, and, when necessary, support in times of need.100
To gain First Nations agreement, federal officials did not always provide full explanations of the Treaties and their implications, and they did not always include in thewritten Treaty all the commitments made during negotiations. Verbal promises toprovide clothing to the chief and councillors, and agricultural tools and support tooffset the loss of access to other means of making a living, were not originally includedin the written texts of Treaty 1 and Treaty 2. It was only on First Nations’ insistence thatthese so-called outside promises were added to the written agreement in 1875.101 On
other occasions, First Nations negotiators succeeded in pushing government representatives—to the irritation of officials in Ottawa—to go beyond their mandate. Treaty
3, for example, provided for larger reserves than did Treaty 1 and Treaty 2, and more
substantial annuities, livestock, and money for hunting supplies; Treaty 5 covered
more territory than had been originally authorized; Treaty 6 included a commitment
for relief in times of famine and the provision of a medicine chest; and Treaty 7 contained a new livestock provision.102
In negotiating Treaty 6, Morris made it clear that the Treaty created obligations thatwent beyond the specifics of the agreement. He pointed out that in the previous winter, the government had provided relief to Indians whose crops had been destroyed bygrasshoppers. “We cannot foresee these things, and all I can promise is that you willbe treated kindly, and in that extraordinary circumstances you must trust to the generosity of the Queen.”103 The First Nations also were assured they would be allowed tocontinue their previous use of resources. In particular, they were given assurances thatthey would be able to travel over the land and hunt as they had in the past.104 Morris
also told the chiefs they would play a role in selecting lands for reserves.105
There was a great deal of importance that was not said. There is no evidence, forexample, that the entire text of Treaty 7 was even read out to the First Nations, let alone

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 121

in the languages of the Aboriginal people present. First Nations accounts, handed
down from generation to generation, have described the Treaty as a Peace Treaty,
under which the First Nations agreed to share land with settlers in exchange for economic support.106 In an oral history of Treaty 7, which stressed the poor quality of thetranslation provided, Tom Yellowhorn recounted the Peigan understanding of theagreement as being one in which people “thought they were getting money but thatthey still owned the land.”107 There is no evidence that the negotiators described thefederal government’s policy of assimilation through enfranchisement or the restrictions placed on First Nations people through such legislation as the Indian Act.
Each Treaty contained education provisions. Under Treaty 1, “Her Majesty agrees
to maintain a school on each reserve hereby made whenever the Indians of the reserve
should desire it.” In Treaty 2, the nearly identical commitment is “to maintain a schoolin each reserve hereby made, whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” In
Treaty 3, the commitment is “to maintain schools for instruction in such reserves
hereby made as to Her Government of Her Dominion of Canada may seem advisable
whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” In Treaty 4, it is “to maintain aschool in the reserve allotted to each band as soon as they settle on said reserve andare prepared for a teacher.” In Treaty 5 and Treaty 6, the commitment is “to maintainschools for instruction in such reserves hereby made as to Her Government of the
Dominion of Canada may seem advisable, whenever the Indians of the reserve shalldesire it.” The Treaty 7 commitment is “to pay the salary of such teachers to instruct
the children of said Indians as to her Government of Canada may seem advisable,
when said Indians are settled on their reserve and shall desire teachers.” (With slightvariation, this commitment was used in the last four numbered Treaties, which werenegotiated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.)108
There is no evidence that the government initially intended to include schools in
the Treaties. The original draft for Treaty 1 and Treaty 2 contained no education provisions. The correspondence between Indian Affairs Minister Alexander Campbell andTreaty Commissioner Morris, in preparation for the negotiation of Treaty 3, dealt onlywith annuities and the initial cash payment.109 Two weeks before Treaty 3 talks started,
Morris telegraphed Ottawa, asking, “Presume reserves to be granted to Indians but
have no instruction—What about support of Schools? Indians generally anxious tolearn, on this subject, I believe it to be good policy to promote education of children
especially if limited annuities be adopted.”110 It was Chief Ka-Katche-way of the Lac
Seul band who, in the negotiation of Treaty 3, initially raised the demand for a schoolmaster “to teach their children the knowledge of the white man.”111 During the Treaty
4 talks, Morris said, “Whenever you go to a Reserve, the Queen will be ready to give
you a school and a schoolmaster.”112 During the Treaty 6 negotiations, the Cree twice
included a request for schoolteachers in lists of proposed changes to the government

122 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

offer.113 In 1880, Morris described the promise of schools as an important element of
the Treaties that wasdeserving of being pressed with the utmost energy. The new generation can betrained in the habits and ways of civilized life—prepared to encounter the difficulties with which they will be surrounded, by the influx of settlers, and fitted formaintaining themselves as tillers of the soil. The erection of a school-house on
a reserve will be attended with slight expense, and the Indians would often give
their labour towards its construction.114

By signing Treaties, First Nations strove to address their immediate concerns andestablish the foundation of their nation-to-nation relationship with the Canadianstate. They had secured their rights prior to the arrival of large numbers of settlers;
their economic independence was guaranteed through provisions that allowed themto hunt, trap, and fish; they would receive support while making a transition to farming; and their children would gain access to formal schooling. The Treaties had created a sacred relationship in which both parties had ongoing obligations.115 In coming
years, it would become apparent that Canada’s understanding, and implementation,of its Treaty obligations was far more constrained.

Treaty implementation
The test of Canada’s willingness to fulfill its Treaty obligations was not long in coming. The crisis caused by the rapid collapse of the North American buffalo populationin the late 1870s forced First Nations living in the southern “settlement belt” to turnto the federal government for support. The government was completely unprepared,
and largely unwilling to fulfill its obligations.116 The near extinction of the buffalo was
the result of a complex set of changes: the expansion of the Métis buffalo hunt during
the mid-nineteenth century, the introduction of repeating rifles to the hunt, the roleof American sport hunters, and the increasing demand for buffalo hides by easternindustries. The movement of the us trade in buffalo robes and hides into the West after
the end of the American Civil War marked a dramatic transformation in the process,as the hunt became a slaughter.117Another factor in the decline of buffalo populations
was the attempt by the us military to stop the movement of the herds into Canada.
This policy was intended to deprive Chief Sitting Bull’s Dakota, who had taken refugein Canada after the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1877, of a food source.118
Many First Nations people devoted considerable effort to farming during thisperiod. Their attempts to establish independent farming communities were frustrated
by the poor quality of the lands they had been forced onto, inadequate implements,
inferior seed and livestock, as well as early frosts and insect infestation. Often, theConfederation, colonization, and resistance • 123

federal government simply refused to supply promised farm implements. IndianCommissioner Joseph Provencher ‘justified’ this refusal in 1877 with these words:
It has been the constant practice of the Indians to say that they were ready toreceive every article, cattle, implements, that they may be entitled to, in certain
conditions, according to the Treaties. But I would strongly recommend that nosuch engagements should be fulfilled before the Indians have really showed thatwhatever article is given to them shall not be wasted or traded.119

Successful farming on the Prairies was not an easy or certain endeavour for anyone. Many European settlers, who were more familiar with contemporary agricultural
techniques, struggled and often failed to be successful. Several decades of experimentation were needed to develop the crops, implements, and technologies that would besuitable to the Prairies.120 It has been estimated that almost four in ten prairie homesteaders were forced to abandon their farms in the period from 1870 to 1931.121
There were only a handful of Indian agents and farm instructors appointed to assist
tens of thousands of First Nations people in making the transition to an agricultural
way of life.122 Many of the farm instructors were political appointees with little knowledge of farming, Aboriginal people, or western agricultural conditions. Some of themwere not above trying to use the position to enrich themselves when issuing supply
contracts. Others came to view Aboriginal farmers with hostility, confusing the payment of federal Treaty obligations with undeserved charity. They did not recognize
the different circumstances faced by First Nations people who were prohibited fromstaking homesteads as they had been allowed to do. In addition, Aboriginal people were often restricted to less land than settlers had; they could not take out loans
against their land, and often had trouble convincing merchants to extend them credit.
As well, they needed the permission of the Indian agent to sell or barter their animals
and produce.123 Many Aboriginal people were forced back into hunting because they
were not being provided with enough support to farm.124
When the hunt failed, they had to turn to the government for relief. The cost of thatassistance was over half a million dollars in 1882. While John A. Macdonald defended
the expense, saying it was cheaper to feed the First Nations people than to fight them,
the reality was that in the 1880s, the threat of starvation became an instrument of government policy.125 In 1883, the federal government reduced the Indian Affairs budget,
leading to a reduction in relief payments.126 Not satisfied with the level of control thatthreats of starvation gave him, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney attempted to
implement a policy of what he called “sheer compulsion,” using the Mounted Police
to arrest First Nations leaders and disrupt Aboriginal government.127 By 1884, NorthWest Mounted Police Superintendent L. N. F. Crozier complained to Ottawa that the
government’s cut in rations seemed to be designed to discover just how little food a
man needed to be able to work and subsist. If the government did not feed the people

124 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

with whom it had made Treaty, he warned, it would soon have to fight them.128 All
these pressures led to a number of near-violent confrontations between First Nations
people and government representatives.129 The impact of famine and disease wasdevastating. According to one contemporary estimate, between 1880 and 1885, theFirst Nations population on the Prairies dropped by more than a third—from 32,000
to 20,000.130
The First Nations leadership organized a diplomatic response to the growing crisis. In 1881, for example, they brought their concerns before Governor General Lord
Lorne, who was visiting western Canada, reminding him of the Treaty commitments
to provide assistance in times of need. 131 Under the leadership of chiefs Piapot, Little
Pine, and Mistahimaskwa, the Cree sought to establish a Cree homeland in the Cypress
Hills. By selecting reserves in nearby locations, they would retain political autonomy
and control over resources. However, Commissioner Dewdney wished to see themsettled on smaller, separate, and more easily controlled reserves. Although the Treaties
allowed Piapot and Little Pine to select their Treaty land, Dewdney would not grant
them the land they asked for in the Cypress Hills. He also refused to provide themwith food, going so far as to withdraw the Mounted Police, the traditional distributorof food rations, from Fort Walsh in 1883. The First Nations were forced to travel north,settling on reserves that were more acceptable to Ottawa. By 1884, Mistahimaskwa,
whose people were on the edge of starvation, signed the Treaty and took a reservenear Battleford, while Piapot settled in the Qu’Appelle Valley. That same year, the leadership of several bands met at Duck Lake, where they compiled a list of eighteen grievances relating to the implementation of the Treaties.132 At this meeting, they spoke of
how many of the younger men found the treatment they had received at the handsof government too hard to bear after the “‘sweet promises’ made in order to get theircountry from them.”133 Aboriginal leaders felt bound by the Treaties, which had beensigned in solemn spiritual ceremonies.134 The leaders decided against military action,
and agreed to meet in a year’s time to determine the next steps in their diplomatic
campaign.135 These plans were cut short by the tragic events of 1885, when the federal
government’s failure to address Métis land rights precipitated an armed rebellion.

The North-West Rebellion
In the years following the Red River Resistance in 1870, many Métis moved further
and further west, creating communities in places such as Batoche, St. Laurent, andPrince Albert. As settlers from eastern Canada began to move into the North-West
Territories, the Métis felt threatened and sought to have the federal government recognize their land rights. The start of construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway inthe 1880s made it clear that Canada would be opening the West to a much larger wave

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 125

of settlement, making the land rights question even more important to the Métis. In
1884, they invited Louis Riel, who was then teaching in a Catholic boarding school for
Métis students in Montana, to return to the North-West.136 Riel lobbied the government to take action on the land issue while he also sought, without success, to establish an alliance with First Nations leaders.
In March 1885, the Métis established a provisional government under Riel’s leadership. Within days, they won a quick victory over Canadian government forces at
Duck Lake. Mistahimaskwa tried to keep his people out of the conflict, but after the
Métis victory at Duck Lake, a confrontation arose at Frog Lake between a group ofyoung men from his band and the Hudson’s Bay clerk and the Indian agent. With
Mistahimaskwa unable to intervene effectively, nine settlers had been killed.137 During
this same period, the Cree in the Battleford area travelled there to request relief rations
and express their loyalty. The sight of a large number of First Nations people under theleadership of Pitikwahanapiwiyin panicked the townspeople, who fled to the NorthWest Mounted Police barracks. The Cree took what supplies they could from the storesand houses, and then returned to their reserve.138
In eastern Canada, these events were portrayed as a joint Métis and First Nations
uprising. Making use of the partially completed Canadian Pacific Railway, theCanadian government rapidly transported west 8,000 men under the commandof Major General Frederick Middleton. A Belfast-born veteran of the British army,
Middleton had previously participated in the suppression of Indigenous rebellions inIndia and New Zealand.139
Although Pitikwahanapiwiyin and his people had already withdrawn from
Battleford, one of the campaign’s first engagements was to send a military column torelieve the troops at Battleford. They attacked the Cree at a camp at Cut Knife Hill. The
Cree successfully defended their position. Because Pitikwahanapiwiyin gave instructions not to fire on the retreating Canadian troops, Middleton’s losses were limited.140
The short-lived rebellion came to an end in May, when Middleton’s forces defeatedthe Métis at Batoche. Riel was arrested, convicted of treason, and executed. His military commander, Gabriel Dumont, sought refuge in the United States. Mistahimaskwa,
who had attempted to limit the conflict, successfully eluded the Canadian military
until June, when he surrendered.141
The First Nations involvement in the North-West Rebellion was limited in large
measure to the acts of individual people driven to the edge of desperation by harshand punitive government policy. Riel’s efforts to recruit First Nations support to therebellions had been almost completely unsuccessful, since the leaders consideredthemselves bound by sacred Treaty commitments. In addition, they knew of the risks
involved in open revolt.142 The government was well aware of these facts. However,it chose to portray the First Nations as “rebels.” While privately acknowledging that
the Cree actions were the result of hunger and desperation (the product of harsh

126 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

government policy), and not part of Riel’s rebellion, Dewdney, who had previously
supported a policy of “sheer compulsion” in dealing with First Nations, publicly proclaimed them to be rebels in league with the Métis. In private correspondence, Prime
Minister Macdonald noted that the prospect of an Indian war had been intentionallyallowed to “assume large proportions in the public eye. This has been done however
for our own purposes, and I think wisely done.”143 The federal purposes were simple:
the First Nations leaders were portrayed as traitors in order to justify a suppression ofFirst Nations governments. With this knowledge, and in order to more effectively suppress their leadership, the federal government chose to treat the First Nations’ actions
as treason. Over eighty First Nations people were put on trial for their activities in thespring of 1885. The translation at the trials was usually inadequate or non-existent, thecases were often circumstantial, and the sentences were excessively punitive.144 Even
though Dewdney was aware that there was little evidence to link Pitikwahanapiwiyin
and Mistahimaskwa to the rebellion, he expressed satisfaction at their conviction
on charges of treason-felony.145 In 1885, a court in Battleford convicted eleven First
Nations men of murder; three had their death sentences commuted, and the othereight were executed on November 27, 1885. Macdonald believed the public executions would “convince the Red Man that the White man governs.”146 To press home themessage, Dewdney arranged to have First Nations people present at the hangings. The
witnesses kept the memory of the event alive, speaking of the courage displayed on
the gallows and the anger the community felt over the government refusal to release
the bodies for a traditional burial.147

The aftermath of 1885
In the wake of 1885, there was no more talk of letting First Nations people choose
whether they wished to live like white people. They were to be assimilated, and if theychose not to be assimilated, their children would be taken from them and assimilated.
In 1887, John A. Macdonald expressed the government position bluntly, stating thatthe “great aim of our legislation … has been to do away with the tribal system andassimilate the Indian people in all respects with the inhabitants of the Dominion, as
speedily as they are fit for the change.”148 He was expressing a view shared by leading
Indian Affairs officials. One of the most revealing insights into the colonial mind atwork on the Canadian Prairies was the extraordinary set of recommendations that
Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed prepared in July 1885, just months after
the quashing of the North-West Rebellion. Starting from a position that those who had
not participated in the rebellion should experience no change in treatment, he proceeded to advocate the implementation of a set of highly repressive actions, calling on
the government to adopt the following measures.

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 127• Ensure that those who were convicted were treated as severely as the law
would allow.
• Abolish the “tribal system.” He argued that those bands he viewed as disloyal
had nullified their Treaties. Their chiefs and councils should be dismissed—and
not replaced. Instead, Indian Affairs officials would deal directly with individualFirst Nations people.
• Refuse to pay annuities to bands he considered disloyal or to persons who hadparticipated in the rebellion.
• Disarm all rebels. Those who needed guns for hunting were to be lent shotguns(not rifles).
• Require rebels to obtain a pass from an Indian Department official before theyleft the reserve.
• Hang the leaders of the “Teton Sioux” and send the rest to the United States.
• Break up Mistahimaskwa’s band and scatter its members to other bands, or send
them to a reserve near Onion Lake.
• Enforce the merger of bands deemed to be filled with “bad and lazy Indians”
with bands that were thought to be more loyal.
• Remove “all half-breeds” from annuity pay sheets if they belonged to “rebel
bands,” even if they had not participated in the rebellion.
• Confiscate and sell the horses and cattle of “rebel Indians,” and use the proceeds
to purchase livestock, forcing them to pursue agriculture on reserves.
• Provide special recognition for those who did not participate in the rebellion.
In addition, Indian agents should ensure that “each and every Indian”—not just therebels—“now works for every pound of provision given to him.”149
Many of Reed’s recommendations were implemented. People were struck off theannuity list, guns and horses were confiscated, bands were broken up and dispersed,
and a work test was applied before rations would be supplied to the able-bodied.
Macdonald, who reviewed Reed’s suggestions, was particularly taken by the recommendation for a pass system, commenting, “The system should be introduced in theloyal bands as well & the advantage of the changes pressed upon them.” Recognizing,
however, that this violated the Treaties, Macdonald noted that punishments for those
who violated the pass system “should not be insisted on.”150 In August 1885, Reed
introduced the pass system, apparently without government authorization, informing Dewdney:
I am adopting the system of keeping the Indians on their respective Reserves
and not allowing any [to] leave them without passes—I know this is hardly
supportable by any legal enactment but we must do many things which can only
be supported by common sense and by what may be for the general good. I get
the police to send out daily and send any Indians without passes back to theirreserves.151

128 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The following year, Reed, still without any legislative authority, issued pass books to
Indian agents. The fact that the pass system was to apply to all First Nations people on
reserves is apparent from Reed’s instruction to agents that, when issuing a pass, they
indicate whether the recipient had been disloyal in 1885.152 While the administrationof the pass system varied from place to place and time to time, it was used, without
any basis in law, to monitor, control, and limit the activities of Aboriginal people.153
In an 1889 report, Reed, by then Indian commissioner, described his policy as oneof “destroying the tribal or communist system,” replacing it with “a spirit of individual
responsibility.” In other words, he was extending to all First Nations the treatment he
had recommended for rebels. Enforced cultural change, leading to enfranchisement,
remained the goal.
If the Indian is to become a source of profit to the country it is clear that he mustbe amalgamated with the white population. Before this can be done he must
not only be trained to some occupation, the pursuit of which will enable him tosupport himself, but he must be imbued with the white man’s spirit and impregnated by his ideas. The end in view in the policy adopted for the treatment of
our wards is to lead them, step by step, to provide for their own requirements,
through their industry, and while doing so, to inculcate a spirit of self-relianceand independence which will fit them for enfranchisement, and the enjoymentof all the privileges, as well as the responsibilities of citizenship.154

The destruction of the ‘tribal system’ had implications for First Nations agriculture. The government was suspicious of all co-operative and community measures,
including the community ownership of farm technology and livestock. Reed believedthat First Nations people would develop the ability to continue to support themselvesby their own means once, in the not-too-distant future, they were all enfranchised, if
they practised peasant agriculture that did not depend on technology. Indian agents
first allocated First Nations farmers forty-acre (sixteen-hectare) lots and scattered thelots throughout the reserve to discourage the development of community cohesion.
Even when the practice of subdivision was ended in the early 1890s, Aboriginal settlers were restricted to farming only on the already subdivided parts of the reserve.155
The requirement that First Nations people receive the Indian agent’s approval to sell
their produce off-reserve was a demeaning restriction that hindered economic development. Put in place in the 1880s, it was still operative in the 1920s, when, according
to Eleanor Brass, the agent on the File Hill reserve “handled all the finances of thereserve and we couldn’t sell a bushel of grain, a cow or a horse without getting a permit first.”156 Edward Ahenakew recalled in his memoirs how a First Nations farmer
might have to spend a day or two, which he might otherwise be using to farm, in hunting down the Indian agent on another reserve in order to receive permission to sell aload of hay to feed his family, a frustrating and humiliating process.157

Confederation, colonization, and resistance • 129

The British Columbia experience
Although colonization in much of Canada was based on the signing of Treaties
with First Nations, it followed a different path on Canada’s west coast. There, First
Nations and Europeans entered into a maritime fur trade in the late eighteenth century. Coastal nations traded with ocean-going Europeans and Americans. Throughout
this period of maritime trade, interactions tended to be brief and transitory, and First
Nations people retained control over their culture, their economy, and their lands.158
In the early nineteenth century, land-based trading posts were created on the coastand in the British Columbia interior by several different companies. After the amalgamation of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, the hbc’s
operations on the west coast were systematized, and the company established a chainof trading posts along the Pacific coast.159 In 1849, the British government granted the
Hudson’s Bay Company the right to govern Vancouver Island as a British colony. 160
The British claim to the Pacific Northwest dates back to Captain James Cook’s exploration of its coast in 1778.161 From 1851 to 1864, the colony was governed by Hudson’s
Bay Company official James Douglas. When, in the wake of discovery of gold in the
Fraser Canyon, in 1858, the British government proclaimed the mainland of British
Columbia to be a separate colony, Douglas became governor of both colonies. Only atthat point was he obliged to resign his position with the hbc.162
The British government did not attempt to implement on the west coast the principles that underlay the Royal Proclamation. On Vancouver Island, Douglas did
negotiate a number of Treaties that provided First Nations with limited reserves andbenefits. The Treaties did not involve the vast expanses of land covered by the Prairie
Treaties. Instead, they were limited to the land required for immediate settlement.163
Douglas was not able to continue with his Treaty-making policy. The British government was no longer prepared to pay the costs involved in fulfilling Treaty obligations,and the newly established colonial assembly refused to raise the money. As a result,First Nations people in British Columbia after 1859 were not compensated for theirlands, and no additional Treaties were negotiated with them. (The one exception tothis is the portion of northeastern British Columbia that was covered by Treaty 8 in
1899.)164 Much to the frustration of settlers, Douglas’s policy was not only to establish
reserves, but also to make the reserves as large as the First Nations requested. He also
took steps to protect the reserves that had been set out from settler encroachment.
When Douglas retired in 1864, he was succeeded by veteran British Colonial Office
officials who took a far less protective approach to First Nations land rights. Joseph
Trutch, the commissioner of lands for British Columbia, instituted a policy underwhich the size of reserves was dramatically reduced. New reserves were provided on
the basis of ten acres (4.05 hectares) per family (while 160 acres, or 64.7 hectares, per130 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

family was commonly, but not always, used to establish reserves in the Numbered
Treaties).165
The two colonies were merged into a single colony, known as “British Columbia,”in 1866, and, in 1871, it was admitted into Confederation. The terms of union in thatagreement stipulated that in its dealing with the First Nations of British Columbia,
Canada would be as ‘liberal’ as the government of British Columbia had been. This
was no small irony, since Canadian policy, although it had never been generous, was
far more liberal than that which had been pursued by the government of colonial
British Columbia.166 For example, the British Columbia policy was so aggressive thatit nearly provoked hostilities with the First Nations of the Kootenays in 1877. In theseconflicts, the federal government was unable to protect First Nations’ interests effectively, even though it was well aware of the validity of First Nations’ claims.167

Restrictions on spiritual practices
Restrictions were also placed on Aboriginal spiritual practices during this period.
Ceremonies such as the Potlatch in British Columbia and the Thirst Dance (usuallycalled the “Sun Dance” by government officials) on the Prairies played an importantrole in the lives of Aboriginal people. Such ceremonies served to redistribute surplus,
demonstrate status, cement and renew alliances, mark important events such as marriages or the assumption of position, and strengthen the bond with spiritual forces.
Missionaries attacked them as ‘pagan rites,’ and government officials objected to
the fact that they undermined the accumulation of private property, took people awayfrom agricultural pursuits, brought together bands they were trying to keep separate,and strengthened the status of traditional leaders and Elders.168 Those missionaries
involved in residential schooling played a central role in lobbying for the suppression of the Potlatch and the Sun Dance, arguing that the ceremonies undid much of
the work that had been accomplished in the schools. The Reverend Albert H. Hall at
Alert Bay in 1896 framed the debate with the succinct “It is school versus potlatch.”169
To Archdeacon J. W. Tims, who ran an Anglican boarding school in Alberta, the Sun
Dance was “that great heathen festival.” On his first encounter of it, he recalled, “If I
ever felt the hopelessness of a task set me to do it was then.”170 An 1884 amendment to
the Indian Act first banned the Potlatch, and Prairie “give-away dances,” as they were
often termed by government officials, were banned in 1895.
Government officials were instructed to prosecute only as a last resort. But theyoften came under pressure from missionaries to take action. In 1897, five people
were arrested at the Thunderchild Reserve in what is now Saskatchewan for holding a give-away dance. Three were sentenced to two months in jail. The commanderof the Mounted Police at Battleford thought the jail terms too harsh and worked toConfederation, colonization, and resistance • 131

secure early releases for the men, who were all elderly. In 1897, the Blackfoot agreed
to shorten the number of days devoted to the ceremonies and to not include someof the practices, such as ritual piercing, that were specifically banned by legislation.
Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget, however, would not abandon the department’s
requirement that the tongues of slaughtered cattle be either removed or split, making them unavailable for consumption at the ceremonies, which he viewed as being
immoral and heathen.171
From the 1880s onward, the federal government acted decisively to jail First Nations
leaders, disarm them, control their movements, limit the authority of their governments, ban their spiritual practices, and control their economic activities. It alsochose to intervene decisively in family life through the establishment of residential
schools. It was in 1883, the same year that the government cut rations on the Prairies,that the first of a series of residential industrial schools opened its doors, operated
by a government-and-church partnership. Those schools, modelled on schools fordelinquent and criminal youth, represented a betrayal rather than a fulfillment of theTreaty promises to provide on-reserve education. Their story is the darkest, longest,and most chilling chapter in the history of the colonization of Aboriginal peoples. The
federal government’s determination to have as cheap an Indian policy as possible,
coupled with the church’s drive to enrol and convert as many children as possible,
meant that the schools were sites of hunger, overwork, danger and disease, limited
education, and, in tens of thousands of cases, physical, sexual, and psychologicalabuse and neglect.

CHAPTER 8

National and international models
for Canada’s residential schoolsThe institutionalization of Aboriginal children in residential schools in Canada
was part of a broader, European-based movement to regulate members ofwhat were described as ‘the dangerous classes’ in society in the nineteenth
century. Many observers attributed the growth of such classes to the process of rapid
industrialization and urbanization underway both in Europe and North America.
Writing in 1857, the British reformer Thomas Beggs bemoaned “the fever-nests of ourlarge towns and cities,” from which were pouring out “the hordes of tramps, thieves,fallen women, and ragged urchins, which infest our crowded neighbourhoods, andfrom these classes, which constitute what are called our dangerous classes, arerecruited mainly the juvenile delinquents.” Beggs commented that a similar classof lawless youth existed in Paris, whose members were “as barbarous and as braveas North American Indians.”1 In North America, those perceived as the ‘dangerous
classes’ included Aboriginal people and an ever-growing number of immigrants fromeastern and southern Europe. Social reformers in Europe and North America established poorhouses, workhouses, prisons, reformatories, industrial schools, asylums,
and penitentiaries. All of these institutions were intended to isolate, control, andreform populations thought to present a threat to social order
In English Canada, social reformers based in the Protestant churches often promoted the creation of these institutions. Protestant church leaders conceived of
Canada as ‘God’s Dominion.’ Such a dominion would be Protestant, English-speaking,and governed by British political traditions. From this base, it would play a leading rolein the conversion of the non-Christian peoples of the world. From the 1880s onwards,
prominent Protestant figures believed that Canada’s status as God’s Dominion was
threatened by the rising immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Few of theseimmigrants spoke English, and many were either Catholic or adherents of the Greek
or Russian Orthodox churches. These anxieties led Protestant leaders to call for limits
to immigration, an energetic campaign to Christianize and assimilate the newcomers,
and a redoubling of efforts to assimilate Aboriginal people.2

134 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

These efforts drew energy from the Social Gospel, a reform movement within theProtestant churches that challenged those who believed the church’s role was only toensure the salvation of the individual through faith. The reform movement claimed
the church also had a social role to play. The Social Gospel, which did not abandon
spiritual concerns, spoke of creating the “Kingdom of God on Earth.” This led its members to support controls such as prohibition, and reforms such as the provision ofclean water, workplace health and safety laws, and improved welfare for the sick andaged. Not surprisingly, there were differences among the social reformers, with somekeener to emphasize the need to end allegedly evil behaviours such as drinking andgambling, while others focused on reducing exploitation of the weak by the powerful.
In the early years of the movement, however, the former prevailed.
The Social Gospel reformers carried out their work in poor urban areas, establishing missions often referred to as “settlement houses,” where they sought to convert
immigrants while simultaneously addressing their immediate needs. Many of thereformers, influenced by popular scientific and social writings of the time, also wereconcerned with racial purity and the future of Canada as a Protestant and British society. They favoured limited immigration of groups other than northern Europeans, andsaw schools as key instruments for assimilation of the “strangers within our gates,”a phrase that served as the title for one leading reformer’s book on immigration.3
Among the measures these reformers advocated were compulsory education and—inwestern Canada—the adoption of English-only education.
Many of the reformers focused their attention on those children, particularly boys,
who were unable to fit into the highly regimented classroom of the nineteenth century.
Once they were expelled from school, the boys spent their time on the streets, earningmoney from a series of part-time jobs. They often came to be labelled as “vagrant,”“neglected,” or “delinquent.” Both the police and social reformers viewed such young
people, whose attendance at day schools was disruptive and irregular, as a growing
threat to social order. Their solution was to institutionalize them.

Industrial schools
The establishment of industrial schools was part of a growing international trend.
Increasingly, industrial schools were being used to control the children of the industrializing world’s ‘dangerous classes.’ In Europe and North America, they were being
established to ‘rescue’ the children of urban slums, and the United States was in theprocess of expanding its ‘Indian’ boarding schools. In places as distant from Canada
as Nigeria and Australia, missionaries also were establishing such schools to separate
Indigenous children from their parents. All these factors shaped the Canadian government’s 1883 decision to establish a residential school system.

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 135

The reformatory in Citeaux, France, served as a model for First Nations industrial schools. It was only one in a network of reformatories for young people established in France in the nineteenth century.4 Most of these institutions, both in France
and Britain, drew their inspiration from the Mettray reformatory, a private initiative
founded in 1839 by Frederic Demetz. The Mettray reformatory took in boys under theage of sixteen who had committed crimes but, because of their age, were not being
sent to jail. At Mettray, boys lived in “cottages” that housed about forty, under thesupervision of two older boys and an adult staff member, and were subjected to unremitting labour in the surrounding fields.5 Demetz’s motto was “Improve the man by
the land and the land by the man.” In 1850, the French government began to fund suchinstitutions.6 The British parliament adopted the Reformatory Schools Act in 1854 andthe Industrial Schools Act in 1857. Over the next two decades, more than sixty institutions, most based on the same principles as Mettray’s, were established in Britain.7 By
1882, over 17,000 children were in Britain’s industrial schools.8

Indian boarding schools in the United States
By 1879, the United States had a long history of residential schooling for Native
Americans. During the early years of British colonization, a variety of missionaryorganizations, such as the New England Company, had attempted to establish boarding schools, with limited success. After the 1776 American War of Independence,
American, rather than British, missionaries took the lead in efforts to convert Native
Americans living in what is now the United States.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was established by
Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1810. As in Canada, there was debate within
the churches over whether it was necessary to civilize Native Americans before they
were converted. Some felt that only by bringing Native Americans to a higher level of
education could they grasp the Christian message. For others, the Gospels themselves
were the great civilizer. In reality, the two tasks were interwoven: to the missionaries,
civilization was, by definition, “Christian.”9 The missionaries had little concept of culture and its value. They believed that rational individuals, once presented with theoption, would seize the opportunity to participate in a more civilized society. It wasa replacement model that expected Native Americans to simply abandon one way oflife for another.10
Schooling loomed large in the missionary project in the United States. In 1804,
Presbyterian missionary Gideon Blackburn opened a boarding school for Cherokee
students in Tennessee.11 In 1816, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions established a mission and school in Brainerd, Tennessee.12 These were manual labour schools in which students spent half their day in the classroom and the136 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

other half in workshops, sewing rooms, kitchens, barns, or the field. The churches’
work received a significant boost from the 1819 Civilization Fund Act, which committed the us government to spending $10,000 a year on civilizing and educating Native
Americans. Rather than carry out this work directly, the government chose to fundmissionary work. By the end of 1824, the Office of Indian Affairs reported that it was
supporting thirty-two boarding schools, largely in the eastern United States.
The work of these schools was cut short by the federal government’s relocation policy. A number of Treaties had been signed with Native Americans, and lands assigned
to them in the eastern United States. The government came under increasing pressure to terminate those Treaties and relocate Native Americans to lands west of theMississippi River that the us had acquired from France in 1803.13 The removal was
supposed to be voluntary. Native Americans were to be paid for the land they were
giving up and be supplied with suitable lands in the West. In reality, the Removal Billof 1830 authorized what amounted to a forced population transfer. Those who refused
to relocate risked the loss of their lands and their right to govern themselves.14
Many did not go quietly. The Seminoles, the Creeks, and the Sac and Fox, in particular, undertook military campaigns in defence of their territory. Lands in the West
where Native peoples were relocated were not always suitable; speculators cheated
Native Americans out of the money they were supposed to receive for the land they
were leaving behind; and the journey was often one of tremendous suffering, undertaken without having received the promised supplies and supports.15‘Removal’ was given an altruistic justification. It was argued that the Native
Americans could continue to pursue their traditional livelihood in the West for a little
longer, while, at the same time, missionaries could continue the process of civilizingthem.16 The reality was thirty years of slow, steady, ongoing settler encroachment onto
Native American land in the West, coupled with frequent and bloody wars. In 1869,
President Ulysses Grant initiated his Peace Policy. Churches were to appoint the field
staff, federal spending on education was to increase, and an independent Board ofIndian Commissioners would oversee the development and administration of Indianpolicy. Two years later, Indians were effectively wards of the state.17
Catholic and Protestant missionaries also were given government support toestablish boarding schools throughout the West. The Catholics quickly surpassed theProtestants, and, by 1886, they operated thirty-eight of the fifty church-run boarding
schools that received government support.18 In addition to learning English and somebasic academic subjects, the boys were trained in the skills that would be of use to a
farmer: carpentry, stock raising, harness making, and blacksmithing; the girls were
taught to keep house. The schools operated on the half-day system and were expected
to be self-supporting.19 From the outset, it was recognized that children in boarding
schools were, in effect, hostages. As long as they remained under government control,
their parents would be unlikely to resist settler incursions into the homelands. John

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 137

Miles, an Indian agent who worked with the Cheyenne, wrote, “I am yet to know of thefirst individual Indian on this reservation who has joined in a raid, that has had hischild in school.”20
The us government signed several Treaties that provided for geographically definedIndian reservations, promised assistance in a transition to agriculture, and made astrong commitment to providing Native Americans with schooling—in one case,a school and teacher for every thirty children.21 Treaty promises were broken, andmany people moved onto reservations only when forced to by the military.22 During
the 1874–75 Red River War in Texas, the us army rounded up over seventy Kiowa,
Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Caddo men. The army originally intended totry the men under military law, but, because Indians were legally wards of the state, adecision was made to hold seventy-two of them indefinitely at Fort Marion, a militarybase in St. Augustine, Florida.23 Placed in chains, they were sent east under the command of Lieutenant Richard Pratt.
Upon their arrival at Fort Marion, Pratt ordered that the leg irons be removed andthe men be given haircuts and European-style clothing. The prisoners were givenclasses in English, and the opportunity to fish, do craftwork, and hold ceremonial
dances. After three years of confinement, the men were released. While most returnedto the Plains, twenty-two indicated they would be interested in further studies. Five
were taken in by individuals, and seventeen accepted scholarships that allowed themto attend the Hampton Agricultural School for Negroes in Virginia. There, they again
experienced the order and regimentation they had known at Fort Marion, but withadditional focus on agricultural training and daily religious services.24
Pratt accompanied the men to the Hampton school. Once there, he was impatientat being the second in command to General Samuel Armstrong. He was also opposedto the Native Americans’ being forced to associate with former slaves, for fear thiswould doom Indians to the same social standing as African-Americans.25 He successfully lobbied the federal government to establish an off-reservation boarding school
for Native Americans in the former barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and to makehim its superintendent.
Pratt thought there were few people who could have a better understanding of
Native Americans and their educational needs than himself. After all, he had fought
them, lived with them, and educated them at St. Augustine.26 Famously, in 1892, Prattwrote that a great American general had “said that the only good Indian is a dead one,and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting
Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the
Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”27

138 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Richard Pratt’s experience in transporting and later supervising the training andeducation of these prisoners led in 1879 to his being put in charge of the first largescale, off-reservation boarding school in the United States at Carlisle. The school
marked a break in approach from the smaller, church-run schools that had existed
to that time. In future years, Canadian Indian Affairs officials would draw inspirationfrom the school.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was located in a rundown former military
barracks, which was in need of significant repair. Most of the students travelled over
1,600 kilometres from their home communities on the western plains. On arrival at
the school, the students were stripped of their traditional clothing, shorn of their hair,assigned new names, and introduced to barracks life. 28 Years later, Luther Standing
Bear, the first student to cross the school threshold, recalled, “After having my haircut, a new thought came into my head. I felt that I was no more Indian, but would be
an imitation of a white man.”29 The Carlisle school was not the first Native Americanboarding school in the United States, but it was the largest and most ambitious, andemblematic of all the schools.
Like most of the students, Standing Bear had been personally recruited by Richard
Pratt, whose motto for the school was “To civilize the Indian, get him into civilization.
To keep him civilized, let him stay.”30 Pratt was convinced that within a generation, all
Native Americans would be assimilated—his school system would, he said, operate
for such a short period that it would not have a history.31 By 1902, there were twenty-five off-reservation boarding schools in the United States, all modelled after theCarlisle school.32
Life at Carlisle was heavily regimented, with little deviation allowed from a rigid
schedule for sleeping, rising, praying, studying, and working.33 Students had two complaints about the food: there was not enough of it; and what there was, was unfamiliar
and unpalatable. Pratt agreed with the students about the quantity. To improve matters, he succeeded in having the school put on army rations.34
Much of the students’ education was focused on preparing them for the world of
waged work. There were ongoing lectures on the value of time, the sin of wasting it, theimportance of spending it wisely, and the virtue of promptness.35 The Carlisle school’s‘outing system’ was an extension of Lieutenant Pratt’s experiences in St. Augustine,where the prisoners had been able to go ‘out’ and work in the community. It wasthought this would allow the students to learn English, to internalize the community’svalues, and to adopt regular work habits. Ideally, he would have liked white families toadopt all Native American children.36 Students were sent out to work for the summers,
they were roomed with farm families for up to two years (during which they attended

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 139

local day schools), and, in later years, they were boarded with urban families. Theirwages were banked for them at the school.37
Despite the significant resources invested in the school and Pratt’s genius for publicity, the school’s educational record never matched Pratt’s rhetoric. The first students graduated in 1889, after the school had been in operation for a decade. There
were only fourteen students in that graduating class and, in 1893, the number was
down to six. By 1910, the school reported that 514 graduates were not living on reservations, but that only 54 of these were farming.38
Although Pratt’s initial focus was on recruiting students from the American West,children from approximately 150 indigenous nations from across the United States
were sent to the Carlisle school. These included Mohawk children, most of whomcame from the northeastern United States.39 Then, as now, there were strong connections between Mohawk communities in Canada and the United States. Since the latenineteenth century, for example, Mohawk men from Québec have worked in highsteel construction in Canada and the United States. The Akwesasne First Nation (alsoknown as St. Regis) straddles the Canada–us border. Mohawk leaders maintained that
they, along with the other Six Nations, were sovereign, and asserted this sovereignty
in a variety of ways.40 The children of families who moved from a Mohawk community in Canada to one in the United States, or in the case of Akwesasne, from a portion of a reserve on the Canadian side to one on the American side, might be sent
to Carlisle. Among such students was Mitchell Arionhawakon White. He was born
within the political boundaries of Québec, raised at Akwesasne, and attended Carlisle
from approximately 1909 to 1914. He eventually married a Mohawk woman who had
been educated in a Roman Catholic convent in Québec. Neither of them passed on
the Mohawk language to their children.41 In other cases, the families of Mohawk students who were living in the United States when their children were enrolled in theCarlisle school might have moved to Canada while their children were in school orsome time afterward. Once they were discharged from Carlisle, these children might
have rejoined their families in Canada. Because of these and similar processes, somechildren who were born into Mohawk communities in Canada attended Carlisle andchildren who attended Carlisle came to live in Mohawk communities in Canada once
they left the school.42 As a result, the legacy of the Carlisle school was felt not only in
the United States, but also in Canada as well.
Four, additional, off-reservation schools opened in 1884: Chilocco, Oklahoma;
Genoa, Nebraska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Lawrence, Kansas. Unlike Carlisle,
these schools were built in the West, reducing parental opposition to recruitment andincreasing the likelihood that graduates would return to their home communities.43
By 1900, there were 153 federal boarding schools in the United States (both on-reservation and off-reservation) with 17,708 students, as well as 154 day schools with 3,860
students.44

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A third of the boarding-school students were attending off-reservation boarding
schools, a figure that would increase to nearly 50% by the end of the 1920s. Many dayschool and reservation boarding-school students ended up in off-reservation schools
for the final years of their education.45
As early as 1887, Indian Commissioner John D. C. Atkins forbade the use of Native
American languages in government and mission Indian schools—he claimed thatthe languages were not only of no use to students, but they were also a barrier totheir advancement.46 An 1890 policy restricted corporal punishment to situations
where a student had gravely violated the school’s rules. For students over the age of
eleven, this meant they could be subject to corporal punishment if they persisted inusing obscene language, engaged in lewd conduct, were insubordinate, lied, fought,
destroyed property, stole, or engaged in “similar behavior.”47 In 1891, Congress gave
the commissioner of Indian Affairs the authority to compel Indian children to attend
school; two years later, officials were authorized to withhold benefits and annuities
from parents who were not sending their children to school. Given that there weremany more Aboriginal children than school spaces, the law was enforced only on aselective basis until well into the twentieth century.48
At the larger off-reservation schools, training included wagon building, shoemaking, tinsmithing, carpentry, painting, tailoring, and harness making. In 1881, Carlisle
produced nearly 9,000 tin products, 183 double harness sets, 161 bridles, 10 halters,
9 spring wagons, and 2 carriages.49 In 1890, sixteen girls at the Albuquerque school
produced 170 dresses, 93 chemises, 107 hickory shirts, 67 boys’ waists, 261 pairs ofdrawers, 194 pillowcases, 224 sheets, 238 aprons, 33 bedspreads, and 83 towels.50
Every off-reservation boarding school had its own cemetery. Six children diedin the first year at Carlisle; several of the fifteen students sent home in poor healththat year also died.51 No one has yet accurately determined the death rate in Indian
schools in the United States.52 Tuberculosis was a major problem for the schools, as
was trachoma, an eye infection that can lead to blindness.53 A 1912 us study foundthat of 16,470 Indian students examined, nearly 30% had trachoma. Oklahoma wasworse than the national average; almost 70% of boarding-school students examined
there suffered from trachoma.54 One inspector, William J. McConnell, noted that of
the seventy-three students sent to boarding schools from the Wind River Reservationin Wyoming between 1881 and 1894, only twenty-six were still alive in 1899. The rest,
almost two-thirds, had died in school or shortly after being discharged. In a letter tothe secretary of the Department of the Interior, he wrote, “The word ‘murder’ is a terrible word, but we are little less than murderers if we follow the course we are now
following after the attention of those in charge has been called to its fatal results.”55
The government opened four school sanatoria by 1915, although, with a capacity of
only 222 patients, many tubercular children continued to be enrolled in, and attend,
regular boarding schools.56

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 141

Parents often refused to send their children to the schools. When the Fort Hall,
Idaho, boarding school opened in 1880, most parents boycotted the school. By 1892,
the tribal police was refusing to assist the local Indian agent in his effort to take children by force. The agent fired the band officers, but could not recruit replacements.
The government had to use the military to break the boycott. In 1897, forty-three
armed members of the United States Cavalry were dispatched to force parents to send
their children to school.57
The appointment in 1889 of Baptist minister Thomas Jefferson Morgan as commissioner of Indian Affairs marked the beginning of the end of American federal government funding of church-run schools. Morgan was a strong anti-Catholic and a fervent
believer in the effectiveness of public schools in assimilating immigrants and Native
Americans. He argued, “Education should seek the disintegration of the tribes, andnot their segregation.”58 In 1892, the Protestants, who operated far fewer schools thanthe Catholics, decided to terminate their operation of government-funded schools.
Four years later, the us government began a five-year phase-out of support for churchrun schools.59
By the early twentieth century, government officials had begun to have doubts
about the effectiveness of schools such as Carlisle. Instead of being assimilated into
American society as Pratt had predicted, former students were returning to their reservations. The government also was not happy with the growing competition between
schools to keep enrolments up. By 1902, the official government position was to prefer
on-reservation schools.60 None of these changes pleased Pratt. He issued a public callfor the elimination of the Indian Affairs office, and, in 1904, he was relieved of his position as head of the Carlisle school. After Pratt’s departure, the school suffered froma decline in leadership, culminating in an inquiry into allegations of physical abuseof students. In the wake of ongoing problems, the government returned the Carlisle
facility to the army in 1918 and closed the school that fall. Another school, Hampton,
stopped taking Native American students five years later.61 However, despite the concerns that had emerged about the effectiveness of the boarding-school system, once
established, it proved difficult to dismantle. Like the Canadian system, the Americansystem continued to operate well into the twentieth century.

Boarding schools in other countries
As well as being aware of American boarding schools, the people who planned
Canada’s residential school model would also have known of approaches being taken
in many other parts of the world, particularly British colonies in Africa and Australia.

142 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

AfricaThe British-based Church Mission Society (cms) established schools in British colonies in Africa in the 1860s. In Nigeria, cms missionaries concluded that day-school
attendance was too intermittent, and began opening boarding schools in which students were taught the “Four Rs”: religion, reading, writing, and arithmetic. If there wasa female teacher, girls were also taught sewing. There was no formal curriculum or system of inspection. The language of instruction was generally English; few of the missionaries knew the native languages. As the missionaries developed language skills,
English remained the general language of instruction, but religious instruction wasprovided in the local native language. At the industrial school in Topo, Nigeria, children worked on the farm in the morning, studied in the afternoons, and returned to
the fields until darkness fell. The reputation for severity was such that James Marshall,the chief justice of Lagos, began sentencing delinquent children to the school as analternative to imprisonment.62
The mission schools consciously sought to draw children both physically and spiritually away from their families, and into the world of the missionary. One of the results
was that some students came to view themselves as being superior to their parents
and others who had not gone to school. One missionary worried that, through education, many students had been “rendered not only useless members of society but
injurious to its well-being on account of their instrumentality in the diffusion of habitsof idleness and extravagance.”63 When faced with the prospect of such “idleness,” theproposed solution was manual education. Significant effort went into sending promising young men to England for a brief period of artisanal training (and bringing artisans from England to provide training), and into boarding students as apprentices
to local carpenters and tailors. In the case of printing, one missionary taught himself
typesetting so he could teach it to students.64

Australia
In Australia, Indigenous children were separated from their parents through thecentury-long operation of a variety of state and federal laws. In some cases, the state
simply took the children; in others, pressure was brought to bear on vulnerable parents who had little alternative other than to give up their children. From the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930s, the policy was to separate full-descent Indigenous people
onto reserves, and remove children of mixed descent from their parents to be raised ininstitutions, with the expectation that through a process of intermarriage, they would
be absorbed into the broader population.65

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 143

Australian history was marked by violent conflicts between colonists and Indigenous
people over rights to land, water, food, and even children, since Indigenous children
often were apprehended and used as labourers. By the last half of the nineteenth century, the dominant settler belief was that the full-blooded Indigenous population was
in decline and would eventually die out. However, the mixed-descent population wasincreasing. If mixed-descent children were raised in Indigenous communities, it wasthought, they would be an ongoing social cost.66
In states such as Queensland and Western Australia, the policy was to remove children from parents living on mission stations and reserves. They were taken as young
as aged four to be raised in church-run dormitories.67 The dormitory at Warangesda
Station in New South Wales, for example, housed 300 girls over the years from 1893 to
1909.68 Under an 1886 law, all ‘half-caste’ boys were to be apprenticed or sent to workat thirteen, while girls of that age were to work as servants. They were not to return totheir reserves to visit their parents without permission. Later laws would give the government the ability to send all children of mixed descent for care by the Department for
Neglected Children or the Department of Reformatory Schools. Parents who resisted
could be forced off their reserve.69 In Western Australia, the 1874 Industrial Schools Act
held that children who were voluntarily surrendered to a school, orphanage, or institution were under the institution’s authority until they were twenty-one and could
be apprenticed at age twelve.70 The assault on Indigenous people in Tasmania led tonear elimination. By the 1830s, most of the remaining Indigenous people had been
relocated to nearby Flinders Island, where the disease rate was such that most of the
population died. The adult survivors were removed in 1847 and their children weresent to an orphanage in Hobart, Tasmania.71
In Western Australia by the 1840s, there were a number of boarding schools for
Indigenous children. Only parents who had a child in school were entitled to receive
a blanket on the Queen’s birthday.72 The funding provided to the dormitories andschools was limited. In some cases, the missions did not receive public support until
the 1930s, and the results were predictable: poor nutrition, ragged and inadequate
clothing, and limited medical care. Discipline was harsh and death rates were high.
Expectations of the children’s future prospects were low; as a result, the education
they received was limited and of little value. Children were not permitted to speak
their native languages, family contact was severely limited and controlled, living conditions were harsh, and children were vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.
The impact on parents who lost their children was devastating—completely the opposite of colonists’ belief that people would quickly and easily adjust to the loss of theirchildren. During their time at school, children had little opportunity to return to theirhomes, many felt their parents had abandoned them, and they were told their culture
had no value. Cultural links were destroyed. It was common practice to give children
new names and, in some cases, children grew up not knowing they were Indigenous.

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At age eighteen, children who had been taken into care and sent out to work could
return to their families. But, by then, many did not know where they came from or who
their parents were. Those who did return went back to a world in which their activities would continue to be regulated by church and government officials, and where
there was little work, particularly for females. As they grew into adulthood, many had
difficulty raising families, due to their own lack of positive experience of being parented as children. Compared to other Indigenous children, those who had been away
to boarding school had more ongoing conflicts with the law and difficulties with substance abuse.73

Canadian residential experience
Orphanages and reformatories
In Canada, orphanages were established, often by church organizations and private charities, in major population centres in Canada in the first half of the nineteenth
century. In Montréal, the Protestant Orphan Asylum opened in 1822 and the CatholicOrphanage in 1832, the Female Orphan Asylum opened in Québec City in 1830, andthe Orphans’ Home opened in Kingston in 1857.74 These institutions took in bothorphans and the children of parents who could not support them.75 In Ontario, thePenetanguishene Reformatory for Boys opened in 1859. Its inmates were often youngsters: in 1889, forty-seven of the eighty-five boys committed to the institution were
under the age of fourteen.76 Penetanguishene itself was little more than a prison. It
provided almost no meaningful training to the more than 300 boys who lived in its
two dormitories.77
The reformers believed the boys needed a sense of home and belonging, rather thanliving in the prison-like surroundings that existed at places such as Penetanguishene.78
In 1862, the Board of Inspectors of Prisons, Asylums, and Public Charities of Canada
commented that although reformatories might reform a criminal youth, they would
do nothing to help a poor boy who needed to learn a trade. Instead, the board called forthe creation of “ragged schools” and industrial farms—in essence, industrial schools.
Unlike reformatories, they were not intended to house young lawbreakers, but rather
the poor, vagrant, neglected, or homeless children. In order to separate the child froman unwholesome family environment, advocates believed, industrial schools had tobe residential institutions.79

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 145

The first industrial schools in Canada
In 1874, the Ontario government adopted the Industrial Schools Act. It gave Ontario
school boards the right to establish industrial schools to which magistrates could send
children to live when they deemed the children to be neglected.80 Nothing more wasaccomplished until 1883, when leading members of the Toronto business and political community established the Industrial Schools Association of Toronto. The association planned to create industrial schools for “children found begging, wandering
without shelter, destitute, unmanageable by their legal guardians, or without adequate parental control.” In these schools, they would be given the training needed tomake them “useful citizens.”81 Toronto mayor William H. Howland, one of the school’s
founders and promoters, predicted, “There will not be any trouble in placing themand eventually they will be holding land of their own and we will have good citizens
manufactured out of so-called bad boys.”82
After a four-year fundraising campaign, the Victoria Industrial School opened in
Mimico, just west of Toronto. The school’s underlying philosophy was that children
became criminals because they had fallen under bad influences; usually, this meant
their parents, family members, or friends. The children could be rehabilitated byremoving them from these influences and placing them in a setting where they would
be taught “industry, sobriety and discipline.”83 The rural location was selected toremove the students from the city and its temptations. Since parents were numberedamong the potentially negative influences, they were allowed to visit their children
only once a month.84
At the start, municipalities with students in the school were expected to pay $2 aweek per boy, and the Ontario government paid seventy cents a week. Parents were
expected to make a contribution “in proportion to their means.”85 Under Ontario’s
1880 Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children, a judge could
send children under the age of fourteen to an industrial school, where they might
be required to stay until they turned eighteen.86 In 1889, half of the 140 boys at theVictoria Industrial School had been placed there by their parents.87
On the school grounds were six, two- and three-storey, red-brick buildings, referred
to as “cottages.” Each was capable of holding thirty-five to forty boys. They were supervised by a male and female officer, often a married couple.88 There were ongoing problems with the water supply and sanitation, contributing to outbreaks of scarlet fever,malaria, and diphtheria. Strict quarantines established in response to these outbreaks
often led to students’ being kept in the school longer than necessary.89
The boys rose at 6:30 a.m., then put in four and a half hours of manual labour, threehours in the classroom, and one hour at religious studies. They had only one hour aday of unsupervised activity and were to go to bed between 8:45 and 9:00 p.m. Alongwith their manual training, they were required to do housework, knit, launder clothes,146 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

cook, bake, and serve meals. Manual training included tailoring, farming, carpentry,
painting, printing, and shoe repair. Working in the laundry, one of the least desirable
jobs, was reserved for the newly arrived or those being punished. 90
Indecent language was punished with two slaps; and stealing apples, with two dayson bread and water. Whippings on the bare back and legs were the punishment forother offences. A school employee was once fined $5 for striking a boy. In the 1920s,
there were allegations in the press that one boy had been shackled to his bed for amonth, beaten with a leather strap, and placed on a bread-and-water diet for two
weeks. The parents of a boy who died at the school claimed his death was due to inhaling lead paint fumes, as he was a member of the school painting crew.91
Runaways were not uncommon. When four boys ran away in 1896, the principal
decided not to go after them, since they had all run away and been returned at least
five times each in the previous year. In 1921, twenty-two boys ran away at once. Moreseriously, one boy assaulted a matron, and another boy shot and wounded one of thestaff.92
In 1892, the Alexandra Industrial School for Girls opened in what is now
Scarborough. It was followed by two Catholic schools, one for boys and one for girls,
both in Toronto. Québec already had four industrial schools by the end of the 1880s.
By 1910, Manitoba and British Columbia had established similar schools.93 From1875 to 1899, the number of youngsters in provincially funded institutions doubled
from 970 to 1,855.94 At the Manitoba school, located in Portage la Prairie, boys went toschool half-days and spent the rest of the day taking lessons in farming, carpentry, tailoring, and shoe repair. The Saskatchewan government had been sending boys to theschool, but was unimpressed by the quality of trades training and, reasoning that thefarming skills the school focused on could be gained by fostering children out, withdrew its students.95 In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Vancouver Tradesand Labor Council called for an investigation into allegations of excessive flogging by
the principal at the BC industrial school for boys. In his defence, the principal said he
whipped only boys who ran away. At the Halifax Boys Industrial School, first offenders
were strapped, and repeat offenders were placed in cells on a bread-and-water ration.
From there, they might be sent to the penitentiary.96

Immigrant children
The industrial schools and reformatories in Europe also served as a source of childimmigration. Between 1867 and 1917, a variety of British charities and social service
agencies sent over 80,000 British children to Canada.97 Their numbers were made up
of orphans, street children, or youngsters who had run afoul of the law, or who had
been abandoned or relinquished by their parents to orphanages, children’s homes, orNational and international models for Canada’s residential schools • 147

industrial schools. All the institutions faced an ongoing problem: what to do with all
the children they accepted? Many of their directors became convinced that the children could have a fresh start in Canada, where, it was thought, the children could beboarded with families where they would be raised and trained in work such as farmlabour and domestic service.98
As a result, many children were permanently separated from their parents. The best
known of these child immigration agencies was run by Thomas Barnardo. Between
1882 and 1915, Barnardo’s Homes transported nearly 25,000 children, mostly boys,
to Canada. He also established a number of receiving homes in Canada, including an
industrial farm in Russell, Manitoba.99
Life in a new country was fraught with difficulty. Although the goal was to board thechildren out, many children languished in poorly funded receiving homes and industrial farms. Those who were boarded out were often sent back: they were deemed
too young, too slow, or otherwise unsuitable. Little was done to supervise their lives
on farms or in homes. They were frequently overworked, underpaid, and at risk ofa variety of abuses.100 In 1910, the supervisor of the Barnardo operation in Canada
was accused of sexually abusing a number of girls. Despite ongoing allegations ofabuse and neglect, no formal action was taken against him for another nine years.101
One sample study found evidence that 9% of the girls and 15% of the boys sent out by
Barnardo were the victims of excessive punishment.102 It also noted that 11% of thegirls became pregnant while under the authority of the Barnardo agency.103 The link
between the work of the industrial schools for the children of the urban ‘dangerous’
classes and the residential schools for First Nations was made explicit by the Anglican
missionary E. F. Wilson, who was the founding principal of the Shingwauk residential
school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. His stated goal was “simply to do the same for the
Indian children of Canada that Dr. Barnardo has been doing for the street children of
London and other English cities.”104

Children’s aid model
The strongest criticism of the industrial schools came from Toronto journalist J. J.
Kelso. The organizer of the Toronto Humane Society, a forerunner of children’s aid
societies (cas), Kelso opposed institutions because they did not allow “the ordinary
joys of childhood and the endearments of home ties.”105 It was his preference to placeneglected children in family settings. As the cas model gained favour, funding for
the Victoria Industrial School, which was always modest, went into decline.106 Due
to Kelso’s efforts, by 1907, there were over sixty children’s aid societies in Ontario. In
large measure, the institutional approach had been abandoned in favour of providing
care in a family setting.107

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The children’s aid societies, which were intended to be alternatives to institutions
such as industrial schools, engaged in their own form of institutionalization. When
the Ontario societies apprehended a child in the 1890s, they were supposed to housethem in a shelter prior to placing them with a foster family. Ideally, the shelter would
have a workshop in which boys could learn manual trades, a sewing room for girls,
and a small garden where they could learn agricultural skills. Many did not live up
to the ideal. Some—locked and barred to prevent escape—more closely resembled
jails. In at least one case, the medical health officer and staff inspector of the policein Toronto noted that a shelter was overcrowded and had poor sanitation.108 Despite
these limitations, the cas model had come to dominate child welfare by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Residential schooling was now reserved largely for
Aboriginal children.

2
The Canadian residential
school system, 1867 to 1939

CHAPTER 9

Laying the groundwork for the
residential school systemAlthough education is identified as a provincial responsibility under the division of powers in the Canadian federation, it was the federal government,
operating under the provisions of the British North America Act, that took
responsibility for First Nations and, much later, Inuit education.

The Indian Act and education before residential schools
While most provincial and territorial governments eventually adopted specificacts with detailed policies for education and schools, the federal government choseto address First Nations education through the Indian Act and the legislation that preceded it. The 1869 Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians contained a provision that allowed band councils to frame rules and regulations for “the constructionof and maintaining in repair of school houses, council houses and other Indian publicbuildings.” Before they could be put into effect, those rules and regulations required
the approval of the federal government.1 Adopted into the 1876 Indian Act, this was
the Act’s first significant educational provision. An 1880 amendment allowed bands
to select the religious denomination of schoolteachers. There was a significant restriction on this provision: the teacher had to be of the same Christian faith as the majorityof the band members. The amendment also provided that members of the minority
Christian faith, be they “Catholic or Protestant,” had the right to establish their own
school.2 A decision to establish a school for those on the reserve who were membersof a non-dominant Christian faith and a decision on the faith of the teacher were bothsubject to federal government approval.

First Nations schooling after Confederation
The Indian Affairs annual report for 1870 listed only two residential schools in
operation, both in Ontario: Mount Elgin at Muncey, with mechanical arts taught in152 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

workshops paid for by “Indian funds”; and the Mohawk Institute near Brantford.
Mount Elgin, with thirty-four students, was reported as being funded by the Wesleyan
Missionary Society, and the Mohawk Institute, which had ninety students, by the New
England Company. There were approximately thirty-five day schools in Ontario, eightin Québec, three in Nova Scotia, and one in New Brunswick.3
The government had also begun to support day schools for First Nations children
in the West. In 1880, there were nineteen Indian schools in Manitoba and Keewatin(the Keewatin District was established as a separate political district in 1876, andincluded much of what is now northern Manitoba, northwestern Ontario, andNunavut), and nineteen in the North-West Territories, each funded to a maximum of$300 a year by the federal government.4 Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Lawrence
Vankoughnet outlined the government’s responsibilities to fund First Nations education in an 1882 memorandum to Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. (In addition to being prime minister, Macdonald was also the minister responsible for IndianAffairs.) Vankoughnet took the position that while the Treaties said the government
was bound to maintain schools, it did not have to construct them. Furthermore, in his
view, maintenance did not include salaries for teachers or school supplies. By 1882,
the government was prepared to contribute $100 towards school construction if theFirst Nation cut the logs and put up the walls. Often, this was not necessary because
missionaries had already constructed a school. Vankoughnet noted that in the future
the government might consider erecting schools on reserves, but these should be as
inexpensive as possible, “compatible with comfort and convenience.”5
Attendance at day schools was a constant concern. Vankoughnet reported in 1878:
The difficulties attendant on the successful management of the Indian schools
appear to me to be caused by:—1st. The irregular attendance of the children
arising from the indifference and nomadic habits of the parents, and often fromwant of proper clothing. 2nd. The general lack of interest on the part of theteachers in their work, as well as of knowledge of the two languages, English andIndian. If, however, they possessed the first qualification, the matter might bereadily acquired.6

Day schools on First Nations reserves were not the only schools in Canada withirregular attendance during this period. In 1880, over 20% of the school-aged children in Canada as a whole were not enrolled in school. The daily attendance of
those enrolled in Ontario was 45.8% in that year—in all likelihood, a sign that manyof the older enrolled children were not attending at all.7 Local school officials often
attributed the non-attendance of these non-Aboriginal children to the indifference of
their parents. In reality, many parents needed children to help out on the farm or athome, many of the jobs of the period did not require a significant level of education,and both parents and children recognized that the focus of the curriculum of the day
met the needs only of the limited number of children who were expected to go on toLaying the groundwork for the residential school system • 153

secondary education and university. Even parents who wished to see their children
gain access to the benefits of education sometimes found it necessary to withdraw
them from school to help the family meet immediate economic challenges.8

Church-run schools
In addition to Mount Elgin and the Mohawk Institute, by the late 1870s there wasalso a growing number of church-run boarding schools. In Ontario, the Anglican
Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie opened in 1873, and the Roman Catholics began
taking in boarders at their Wikwemikong boys’ and girls’ schools on Manitoulin Islandin 1878.9 There were also Roman Catholic schools at St. Albert, Fort Chipewyan, Lac La
Biche, and Fort Providence in the Northwest. In British Columbia, by the early 1880s
there was the Anglican school at Metlakatla, the Methodist school at Fort Simpson(later Port Simpson), and a Roman Catholic school at what was then called “St.
Mary’s Mission.”10 In 1877, the federal government had agreed to provide a grant of$300 a year to the schools at St. Albert and Lac La Biche. 11 In 1882, Prime Minister
Macdonald, echoing Vankoughnet, wrote that although the day schools in the NorthWest were suffering from poor attendance, due to the “indifference of the parents,”
and from “incompetent” teachers, as a result of the remoteness of the schools, theresidential industrial schools of eastern Canada had “improved greatly during the last
four or five years.”12

Developing a new school policy
In December 1878, J. S. Dennis, the deputy minister of the Department of theInterior, prepared a memorandum for Prime Minister Macdonald on the country’s
Indian policy. Macdonald and the Conservatives had regained power in the September
1878 federal election, after spending five years in opposition. Their proposed National
Policy had been the centrepiece of the Conservative election platform: high tariffs
to protect Canadian manufacturing from foreign competition, the construction of acontinental railway, and the settling of the Prairies with immigrant farmers. Dennis, asurveyor by training, had his own history with the Prairie West, having been run out of
Red River by Louis Riel in 1869.13
Dennis advised Macdonald that the long-term goal of Canadian Indian policy
should be to instruct “our Indian and half-breed populations” in farming, raising cattle, and the mechanical trades, rendering them self-sufficient and “thus paving theway for their emancipation from tribal government, and for their final absorption into
the general community.” It would be the end of a separate Aboriginal identity and154 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

government. This outcome could be achieved “only” through the establishment ofindustrial schools:
One or two such schools, established at convenient points in the Territories,
where a certain number of young Indians and half-breeds, intelligent and willing, selected from the different tribes or bands, would be taught some practical
farming; some the care of stock, and others the various more useful trades—
would prove most powerful aids to the Government, both morally and materially, in their efforts to improve the condition of those people, and to graduallylead them to a state of civilization. The expense of such schools would be triflingcompared with the value of the results which would be obtained from them.

It was his opinion that “in a short time they might, by good management, be rendered, to a considerable extent, self-sustaining institutions.”14
From its outset, Indian residential schooling was linked to broad Canadian policy objectives, and constituted a rarely mentioned part of the National Policy. The
colonization of eastern Canada by the French and then the English had been undertaken in a relatively slow fashion, without widespread use of residential schools. In
the 1840s, after seeing industrial schools in operation in Europe, Egerton Ryerson,
the newly appointed superintendent of schools for Upper Canada, recommended theestablishment of residential schools for Aboriginal children. Efforts to establish such
schools, however, had largely been rejected by Aboriginal people and judged as failures by government. The colonization of the North-West was projected to take place ata much faster pace. As a result, this failed policy initiative of residential schooling was
revived and applied with renewed vigour.

The Davin Report
The development of a new school system was a matter of some urgency, given the
failure of the buffalo hunt. Dennis feared that unless they were trained, First Nations
people and “the nomadic element among the half-breed population” were likely to
be “a very serious charge indeed upon the Government.” American-style industrial
schools were seen as the “most available means of teaching these people self-reliance,” but the government needed more information on the costs and effectiveness of
the American system.15
In January 1879, the federal government commissioned defeated Conservative
party candidate Nicholas Flood Davin to conduct a one-person inquiry into the US
boarding-school system to see if such a system was appropriate for the CanadianNorthwest. Davin had immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1872, and although hequalified for the bar in 1876, he devoted most of his energy to journalism and laying
the groundwork for a career as a politician. In September 1878, he came within 166

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 155

votes of being elected as a Conservative member of parliament. There was nothingin his background to suggest he had any direct involvement with Aboriginal peopleor the Canadian Northwest. However, he and his supporters subjected Sir John A.
Macdonald to a barrage of letters lobbying for his appointment to a government position. This campaign resulted in his being appointed in January 1879 to prepare thereport on US boarding schools.16
Davin made quick work of the assignment and turned in his report on March 14,
1879. It was not a particularly thorough analysis. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School
in Pennsylvania—the first large-scale, off-reservation, boarding school in the US—did
not open until later that year. As a result, it received no attention in his report. Instead,
Davin travelled to Washington, where he met with officials who briefed him on thehistory and economics of the US boarding schools, which he referred to in his reportas “industrial schools.”
Davin observed that the United States government had concluded that adult Native
Americans could not be assimilated.
Little can be done with him. He can be taught to do a little at farming, and atstock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is all. The child,again, who goes to a day school learns little, and what little he learns is soon
forgotten, while his tastes are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion totoil is in no way combated.17

Similarly, day schools were judged ineffective “because the influence of the wigwam was stronger than the influence of the school. Industrial Boarding Schools were
therefore established, and these are now numerous and will soon be universal.”18
Davin observed that while the long-term goal was to make the schools self-supporting, in the meantime, in its contracts for church-administered facilities, the US
government provided $125 per capita for schools with enrolments of thirty or less,$100 for those with more than thirty, and an even lower amount “when the school
is of considerable size.”19 The average per capita cost of government-run schools was$100.20 The more inexpensive of the US schools cost about $1,000 to erect, and Davincalculated that, given the supply of timber in Canada, such schools could be built for$800. The lower figure suggests that Davin knew little about timber supplies on the
Canadian Prairies.21
While in Washington, Davin also met with representatives of the Cherokees, theChickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creeks, and the Seminoles, a group of nations often
referred to as the “Five Civilized Nations.” Originally from the eastern United States,
they had been transferred, against their will, to the western territory. Davin was much
impressed by reports of the progress they were making in agriculture and education,noting that they “have their own schools; a code of their own; a judiciary; a national
council which enacts laws; newspapers in the native dialect and in English.” They

156 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were, in effect, “five little republics within the Republic.”22 He mentioned they werein Washington to observe the debate on a number of “Indian Bills.” Davin failed tomention that these bills were part of an ongoing legislative campaign to open up tosettlement the territory to which they had been relocated and to destroy the self-government of which Davin was so admiring.23 Davin reported that the men from the Five
Civilized Nations—none of whom, he noted, was “of pure Indian blood”—claimed
that separating children from their parents was the only way of dealing with education
for the “less civilized or wholly barbarous tribes.”24
Davin did not, however, visit the Hampton school in Virginia or any of the boarding
schools of the five nations. The only school he visited was on the White Earth Agency
in Minnesota, which was on the way to the one community he visited in the CanadianNorthwest: Winnipeg. Davin’s report provides an extensive summary of the Indian
agent at the White Earth Agency, whom Davin deemed to know “the Indian character well,” but no summary was provided of the views of the principal or the missionary, both of whom were of at least partial Native American ancestry.25 Davin devoted
only half a sentence to describing the White Earth school—noting that the dormitory
was plain but comfortable. Another half-sentence—an observation that the children
looked well fed—was given over to food and nutrition. Education was dispensed within two sentences: the school was “well attended, and the answering of the children
creditable,” with the “quickest and brightest” being “mixed-bloods.” The superiorityof “mixed” as opposed to “full-blooded” Indigenous people was an ongoing theme in
Davin’s short report, leading to his conclusion that the person of mixed ancestry was
the “natural mediator between the Government and the red man, and also his natural
instructor.”26
In Winnipeg, he met with “leading men who could speak with authority on the subject,” including James McKay (a former Treaty commissioner and former Manitoba
cabinet minister), Bishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché, and Father Albert Lacombe.
McKay, whose mother was Métis and whose father was a Scottish-born trader, wasthe only Aboriginal person with whom Davin had been instructed to consult. Davinfelt that the discontent he found in the local First Nations people he spoke with was“no more than the chronic querulousness of the Indian character.” The exceptions
were the leaders of those bands “without a certain prospect of food in the future.”27
Davin certainly saw no need to provide the First Nations of the West with any input
into the sorts of schools that were established, let alone give them the type of control
that the Five Civilized Nations exercised in the United States. He thought it had been
an error and an affront to Canada’s dignity to have included schools in the Treaties,
since “it should have been assumed that government would attend to its proper andpressing business in this important issue.” More importantly, by including educationin the Treaties, Davin thought the government had mistakenly given First Nations
leaders such as Henry Prince in Manitoba the belief that they “had some right to aLaying the groundwork for the residential school system • 157

voice regarding the character and management of the schools as well as regarding
the initiatory step of their establishment.” These decisions should be made by government, he thought, and not according to the “designing predilections of a Chief.”28 Chief
Prince would eventually come into conflict with the government over its residential
school policies.
Davin believed he was writing at a moment of crisis. There were 28,000 First Nations
people in the area covered by Treaty. There was “barely time to inaugurate a system of
education by means of which the native peoples of the North-West shall be gradually
prepared to meet the necessities of the not distant future; to welcome and facilitate, it
may be hoped, the settlement of the country; and to render its government easy andnot expensive.”29 Making use of crude generalizations, Davin argued that First Nations
people had no option but to be colonized. “The Indian himself is a noble type of man,”but, Davin argued, he was in a “very early stage of development,” and his temperamentwas “lymphatic” (meaning “lacking in energy”), while the Anglo-Celt was “nervous or
nervo-sanguine,” possessing “great staying power, often highly intellectual, vigorous,of quick perception, and large resource.”30 It was clear to Davin which people would
prevail in the Northwest. Residential schooling was, in his mind, an essential part ofthat process.
Davin believed it would be impossible to educate and civilize most adult Aboriginal
people, who had “the suspicion, distrust, fault-finding tendency, the insincerity andflattery produced in all subject races.”31 He insisted that Aboriginal people were notchildren and should not be treated as children. However, his description as to how
they should be treated—with “firm, bold, kindly handling and boundless patience”—
does sound like the advice one would find at the time on how to treat a child.32
He believed the focus had to be on raising the children away from the parents,
and that “if anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young.”
Once caught, they were to be “kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions,” which, in his opinion, required boarding schools.33 Were it not for the fact thatmany of the First Nations and Métis populations of the Northwest were still migratory,
Davin would have recommended “an extensive application of the principle of industrial boarding schools.”34 Instead, he recommended an extension of support for the
church-run schools, which he described as “monuments of religious zeal and heroic
self-sacrifice.” These schools had the additional virtue, in his eyes, of being economical, since they recruit “an enthusiastic person, with, therefore, a motive power beyond
anything pecuniary remuneration could supply.”35 Davin acknowledged that a central element of the education to be provided would be the destruction of Aboriginal
spirituality. Since all civilizations were based on religion, it would be inexcusable, hethought, to do away with Aboriginal faith “without supplying a better.”36
Other than calling on the government to continue, and expand, its support of existing boarding schools, Davin’s major recommendation was the establishment of not

158 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

more than four industrial schools, to be operated by the churches. His suggested locations were Prince Albert (Anglican), Old Bow Fort (Methodist), Qu’Appelle (Roman
Catholic), and Riding Mountain (Presbyterian). If the government were to establish
more than four schools, the fifth should be at St. Peter’s in Manitoba.37
He did not recommend the immediate imposition of compulsory attendance,
but he did recommend that such a measure be introduced “as Bands become moreamenable to the restraints of civilization.” He saw the churches as being able to tap azealous supply of cheap labour, yet he recognized that salaries must be sufficient to“induce good men to offer themselves,” with teachers to be paid according to their
qualifications.38 Davin also made it clear he thought the schools should be open toboth sexes. Talented boys and girls should be given the opportunity to train as teachers, civil servants, business people, and professionals.
He did make clear distinctions between First Nations people and Métis people.
Davin made a strong case for providing residential schooling to children of the 1,200
Métis families he estimated to be living in the North-West. He thought they had “inhigh development many of those virtues which would make a useful official,” but theircurrent skills were not enough. They “must be educated, and become susceptible tothe bracing influences of complex wants and varied ambitions.”39

Support builds for residential schools
The recommendations in Davin’s report were not implemented for nearly four
years. One of the reasons for the delay was the growing crisis created by the collapseof the buffalo hunt. In the spring of 1879, David Laird, the lieutenant-governor of theNorth-West Territories, questioned whether the benefits of industrial schools would
be equal to their cost. In any case, he said, there were more immediate concerns. In
order to avert starvation among the “Indians and half-breeds,” he thought, money forindustrial schools could be better used to hire “a few practical men” who could teach
Aboriginal people “how to plough, sow, and save their crops.”40
Archbishop Taché of St. Boniface had reservations about residential schooling. In
an 1879 memorandum to Deputy Minister of the Interior J. S. Dennis on the “halfbreed question,” Taché wrote that “the establishment of industrial schools for boys
would necessitate a large expenditure of money without securing the desired result.
The half-breeds are very handy, ingenious, good working men, and in many ways
more skillful than most of the farmers of other countries.” Not only was such training
unneeded, but he also doubted that their children “would remain long under suchtuition.” He thought there was a need for industrial schools for girls, since “females
brought up on the plains have no training whatsoever for the different industries
required in a farmer’s house.”41

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 159

Bishop Vital Grandin of St. Albert (near present-day Edmonton) led the campaign
for residential schooling. Convinced that Aboriginal people faced extinction, anddoubtful that adult hunters and trappers could be transformed successfully into farmers, he argued in an 1880 letter to Public Works Minister Hector Langevin that “theonly efficient means of saving them from destruction and civilizing the Indians of the
N.W. is to begin with the young children, all other expenses incurred for this end will
be nearly a dead loss.” Day schools could do good work, but the
young Indian living with his family will never attend regularly & if in spite of thishe learns to read and write he will nevertheless live like his father by hunting andfishing only he will remain an Indian. To become civilized they should be takenwith the consent of their parents & made to lead a life different from their parents and cause them to forget the customs, habits & language of their ancestors.

Grandin was convinced that parents would willingly give their children to boarding
schools. “The poor Indians wish nothing more than the happiness of their children.
They foresee well enough the future which awaits them and often beg of us to takethem so that we can prepare them for a better prospect.”42 In a letter to Prime Minister
Macdonald in 1880, Grandin stressed the success that had been achieved at the missionary boarding schools, and reported, “The children whom we have brought up are
no longer Indians & at the time of leaving our Establishments, the boys at least, do
not wish to receive even the ordinary grants made to Indians, they wish to live likethe whites and they are able to do so.” Given these successes, he proposed that the
government “make a trial of letting us have children of five years old and leaving themin our Orphan Asylums & Industrial schools until the time of their marriage or the ageof 21 years.”43
Grandin’s position came to dominate Catholic thinking, and, by early 1883, he
was in Ottawa to lobby federal politicians directly.44 In February of that year, theArchbishop of Québec wrote to Macdonald on behalf of Grandin, who, he said, heldwith profound grief the distress of these unfortunate people deprived of theirhunting grounds by the encroachments of the Pale faces and the sufferings
which are the consequence and which threaten to dessemenate [sic] and evento entirely destroy them. The only means one can see of preventing or at least
delaying these fatal results is to labor to civilize their children and young men byaccustoming them either to work the land or to learn a trade.

The Archbishop urged Macdonald to support the Oblates’ efforts by committing
the government to funding schools, workshops, and farms “under the management of
their zealous Missionaries.”45
In April 1883, Edgar Dewdney, the lieutenant-governor and Indian commissioner
for the North-West Territories, wrote to Macdonald that “the time has arrived” whenindustrial schooling “might be carried on with great advantage to the Indians.” The160 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

evidence showed that such schools had “met with great success both in the UnitedStates and the older Provinces of Canada.” He recommended that one school belocated on the North Saskatchewan River, one at Qu’Appelle, and one in Treaty 7 territory, in what is now southern Alberta. The former lieutenant-governor’s residence atBattleford could be put to immediate use, and new buildings would have to be constructed at the other locations. He recommended that a considerable area of land be
attached to each school and that a farmer be engaged to “take charge of that part of theeducation of the pupils. By this means I think the Institutions might be made to someextent self-supporting.” Quoting Davin’s report, he stressed the advantages—including the economic savings—of having the churches supply the staff.
He estimated the Qu’Appelle school would cost $6,000 to construct. He sketchedout the following budget for an operational residential school:
Principal$1,200Assistant$800

Matron$400

Farmer ($60 per month)

$720

Cook

$240
$3,360Food and clothing for 30 children$4,500Furniture and general equipment$2,000$6,500On this basis, he recommended that $43,000 be added to the Indian Affairs budget for the 1883–84 year. This would provide $12,000 to construct the Qu’Appelle andwhat would become the High River schools, $1,000 to refit the Battleford school, and$10,000 to operate each school.46

The commitment is madeIn large measure, most of the administrative costs of the Department of IndianAffairs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remained as they had been
since before Confederation, covered with money from the sale of First Nations land
and from the sale of seized timber that had been illegally cut on First Nations land.
Funding for industrial schools, however, would have to come from Parliament.47 In
the spring of 1883, Public Works Minister Hector Langevin presented a budget to theHouse of Commons, based on Dewdney’s estimates. He argued that

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 161

if you wish to educate these children you must separate them from their parents
during the time that they are being educated. If you leave them in the family
they may know how to read and write, but they still remain savages, whereas byseparating them in the way proposed, they acquire the habits and tastes—it is tobe hoped only the good tastes—of civilized people.48

Parliament approved $43,000 in spending for the establishment of three new industrial schools.49 This decision was made at the same time as the federal government was
reducing its spending on relief for First Nations in the West.
In July, the federal Cabinet adopted an Order-in-Council authorizing the establishment of three industrial schools. The Battleford school was to be located in the former
residence of the lieutenant-governor to the North-West Territories (Dewdney’s former residence), and its religious orientation was to be Protestant. Anglican minister
Thomas Clarke was to be principal, and his salary was to be $1,200 a year. When a sufficient number of students were recruited, some were to be taught trades other thanagriculture, the two most likely being carpentry and blacksmithing. Dewdney was incharge of deciding where students came from, whether “one tribe, or differently fromall the bands in a given area.” The other two schools were to be located in Qu’Appelle
and in Treaty 7 territory. Archbishop Taché of St. Boniface was authorized to appoint
the principal of the Qu’Appelle school and Bishop Grandin of St. Albert was to appoint
the Treaty 7 principal. The Catholics were advised to seek out a person “possessed
not only of erudition but of administrative ability.” Dewdney was to oversee the construction of the Qu’Appelle school, the cost of which was not to exceed $6,000. The
Qu’Appelle school was to have the same staff complement as the Battleford school.
Dewdney was advised to be guided by Davin’s report in establishing the residential
schools.50
The Battleford school opened on December 1, 1883. It was the beginning of a new
era in Canadian residential schooling. Before then, most of the initiative for residential schooling had come from the churches. They had built the schools, hired the staff,
recruited the students, and made and enforced most of the policy. The federal government had limited itself to providing grants of usually no more than $300 a year. But,
by establishing the three industrial schools in the North-West, the government was
accepting responsibility for the creation of a system of residential schools. The schools
were created on the basis of a government-commissioned report, and were intended
to meet government policy goals, not those of the churches. And, while administeredby the churches, the new schools were fully funded by the government. The system
grew rapidly. By 1900, there were twenty-two industrial schools and thirty-nineboarding schools.51 In the twentieth century, the distinction between the two types ofschools was abandoned and, by the 1920s, they were all called “residential schools.”
The system remained in operation for another seventy years, until the mid-1990s.

162 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The early consequences
Throughout its long history, the residential school system constituted an attackon the identity and vitality of Aboriginal children, Aboriginal families, Aboriginal
languages, culture, and spirituality, and Aboriginal nations. As official records show,these impacts were not unfortunate by-products of a well-intentioned system. On thecontrary, they were the predetermined and desired outcomes built right into the system from the outset.

The attack on children
The attack on Aboriginal children was the most obvious and grievous failing of
the residential school system. For children, life in the schools was lonely and alien.
Supervision was limited, life was highly regimented, and buildings were poorly
located, poorly built, and poorly maintained. The staff was limited in numbers, often
poorly trained, and not adequately supervised. The schools often were poorly heatedand poorly ventilated, the diet was meagre and of poor quality, and the discipline washarsh. Aboriginal culture was disdained and languages were suppressed. The educational goals of the schools were limited and confused, and usually reflected a low
regard for the intellectual capabilities of Aboriginal people. For the students, education and mechanical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores
necessary to make the schools self-sustaining—a fantasy that government officials
indulged in for over a half-century. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack ofsupervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abuse.
These things did not just happen: they were the result of government decisions. In
July 1883, Prime Minister Macdonald wrote to Public Works Minister Langevin thatthe two Roman Catholic schools were to be “of the simplest & cheapest construction.”
Macdonald thought that in two or three years’ time, the cost of building materials
would have dropped to the point where the government could authorize “permanentbuildings in brick.” In reality, once buildings were constructed, they often continued
in operation until they burned or fell down.52 Dewdney closed his July 1883 letter of
instructions to Battleford principal Thomas Clarke with the message, “I need scarcely
inform you that the strictest economy must be practised in all particulars.”53 Problems
soon arose from placing the Battleford school in what had once been a private residence, a decision intended to save money. In June 1884, Principal Clarke reported that“the need of having a good supply of water near the Institution is daily becoming moreurgent.” The closest water supply was from the river, which was almost a kilometre
away at the bottom of a steep hill.54

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 163

Even more serious were the high mortality rates associated with the schools. In
October 1884, F. Bourne, a missionary on the Blood Reserve, raised objections tosending students to schools that were distant from their homes, because “from many
years experience I find that often when thus treated, they die or pine from sheer
home sickness.”55 Health problems led to problems in recruiting students. In 1886, theIndian agent at Onion Lake reported that, despite his requests, parents had refused
to send their children to Battleford. They “did not like the way the boys were treatedthat had been sent there & that one died soon after & the other had been expelled on
account of being a bad boy.”56 The “half-day system,” which meant students worked forhalf the day, and which Dennis, Davin, and Dewdney all believed would render thesystem self-supporting, came close to turning the schools into child labour camps. In
1898, very few of the students at the Brandon school could “attend school throughout the whole day, owing to the duties claiming their attention here and there about
the farm.”57 Hayter Reed was highly critical of Mount Elgin and the Mohawk Institute,
where older students spent two-thirds of the day in class. He wrote, “I cannot approve[of this system]; since, in my opinion, unless it be intended to train children to earn
their bread by brain-work, rather than by manual labour, at least half of their day
should be devoted to acquiring skill in the latter.”58 Aboriginal children were being
educated to fill positions at the bottom of the labour market.
It was not until 1889 that Indian Affairs officials recognized that “it would be wellto have a code of Regulations, with which the Church authorities should be asked
to comply, in obtaining children for their Schools, and in applying for the Grant.”59
Despite this belated recognition, no such code was developed at that time. In 1897,
when a former school employee complained that the principal of the Rupert’s Land
school in Manitoba was taking liberties with female students, Indian Commissioner
Amédée Forget conducted a brief inspection, which led him to conclude that while
it might have been imprudent, there was no reason to believe there were any criminal intentions in the principal’s behaviour. It would be another year before a different
commissioner reacted to fresh complaints by firing the principal.60

The attack on Aboriginal families
In establishing residential schools, the Canadian government was essentiallydeclaring Aboriginal people as a class unfit to be parents. Aboriginal parents often
were labelled as being indifferent to the future of their children—a judgment contradicted by the fact that they often kept their children out of schools because they saw
those schools, quite accurately, as dangerous and harsh institutions that sought toraise their children in alien ways. Once in the schools, brothers and sisters were kept

164 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

apart, and the government and churches even arranged marriages for students after
they finished their education.
Government officials and missionaries believed that children would grow up to
be pagan, uncivilized, and lazy if they were left with their parents. While some, like
Bishop Grandin, believed Aboriginal parents cared deeply about their children andwould therefore surrender them to off-reserve schools, others charged that Aboriginal
parents were at best indifferent and most likely to be a danger to the future of theirchildren. When education was provided at day schools, Davin claimed, the “influence of the wigwam”— meaning the influence of the parents—“was stronger than theinfluence of the school.”61 In 1889, Dewdney, by then Indian Affairs minister, boasted,“The boarding school dissociates the Indian child from the deleterious home influences to which he would be otherwise subjected. It reclaims him from the uncivilizedstate in which he has been brought up.”62 Five years later, his successor, Hayter Reed,said, “The extension of educational work is being chiefly carried out in the direction ofindustrial and semi-industrial institutions, in which the children not only get the positive advantages of instruction superior to what could be given them on the reserves,
but are removed from the retarding influences of contact with them.”63
In 1898, Indian Affairs school inspector T. P Wadsworth wrote, “It is from the children of graduates, that I expect to see the fruit of the system. But little permanent
impression can be made on the child of a buffalo hunter, one who has heard from his
parents’ lips, the fine times they enjoyed in the buffalo hunting, horse stealing, Indianwars, days.”64 Perhaps the most definitive expression of the rationale behind the war
on Aboriginal families came from Prime Minister Macdonald, who told the House ofCommons in 1883:
When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; 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.65

The attack on Aboriginal languages, culture, and spirituality
The residential school system was based on a racist assumption that European civilization and the Christian religion were superior to Aboriginal culture, which was seen
as being savage and brutal. Government officials also were insistent that children
be discouraged—and often prohibited—from speaking their own languages. Some

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 165

missionaries who had been instructed to learn Aboriginal languages could be somewhat more tolerant of language use in the schools, at least in religious instruction.
Indeed, the Bible had been translated into some Aboriginal languages by missionary
linguists. Through this, some missionaries actually helped to maintain Aboriginal languages, but in ways that further undermined Aboriginal spirituality. The missionaries who ran the schools played prominent roles in the church-led campaigns to ban
Aboriginal spiritual practices such as the Potlatch and the Sun Dance (more properly called the “Thirst Dance”), and to end traditional Aboriginal marriage practices.
Although, in most of their official pronouncements, government and church officials took the position that Aboriginal people could be civilized, it is clear that many
believed that Aboriginal people were inherently inferior.
The refusal to accept the legitimacy of Aboriginal culture as constituting a valid
civilization is reflected in Davin’s claim that residential schools were required if children were to be “kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions.” Dewdney
recycled this language in his annual report for 1883: “we must take charge of the youth
and keep him constantly within the circle of civilization.”66 Both Davin and Dewdneyargued that education would make Aboriginal people self-sufficient, but they also
expressed racist views in the way they perceived Aboriginal people’s natural abilities.
In the same 1883 annual report, Dewdney repeated Davin’s claim that Aboriginal people had “inherited aversion to toil.” Dewdney’s only change was to substitute the word“labour” for “toil.”67 To overcome this supposed aversion to toil, the schools were operated on a highly regimented system that equated labour with spiritual grace. The program of studies the government issued in the mid-1890s stressed, “Every effort must
be made to induce pupils to speak English, and to teach them to understand it; unlessthey do the whole work of the teacher is likely to be wasted.”68
Indian agents regularly reported on the religious status of communities, viewing
the growth of Christianity as a sign of progress. Of the Gordon’s Reserve, Indian agent
S. Swinford commented, “The old and middle-aged still cling to their old beliefs andthe younger people do not take any interest in religion of any kind; the young children
growing up at schools will in all probability incline towards Christianity, and theirchildren will not know anything about their grandparents’ beliefs.”69
The missionary scorn for Aboriginal culture was palpable at times. William Ridley,
the Anglican Bishop of Caledonia, saw the poverty of a First Nations community as areflection of the people’s ‘spiritual failing.’
The houses are rotting, propped up, and patched. Squalid within and dismal
without, they truly show the moral and physical condition of their ignorantand superstitious inhabitants. These cling with a passionate resolve to the yaok
[a term that is not defined in the original document], or potlatch. ‘That is ourmountain,’ say they, ‘our only joy, dearer than life. To prison and death we will go166 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

rather than yield.’ Yet this is their ruin. It is impossible to heighten the contrast
between the Christless and the Christian people of the same tribes.70

The Bishop of Keewatin in 1908 said that if Indians lacked the moral stamina tocompete with whites, they were doomed. Bishop Jervois Newnham of Saskatchewan
questioned the intellectual capacity of Aboriginal people.71
In British Columbia, the Oblate Nicolas Coccola viewed the Babine people ascongenital liars, recording in his memoirs that “of them we may say, ‘You lie like an
Indian.’”72 In 1903, Qu’Appelle school principal Joseph Hugonnard, who had been in
office since 1884, called on the federal government to eliminate the “pagan habits,
customs, superstitions and mode of life,” that still held sway on the reserve. These“habits and customs,” he wrote, “must be eradicated, or at least suppressed.” He challenged those who might think this harsh to visit a dance where they could see former students “nearly nude, painted and decked out in feathers and beads, dancing
like demented individuals and indulging in all kinds of debauchery.” In his opinion,
Indian Affairs must adopt a strong uniform policy, “totally prohibiting dancing and its
attendant pow-wows.”73

The attack on Aboriginal nations
Residential schools were an essential element in the federal government’s policyof using enfranchisement to eliminate Aboriginal governments and its own responsibilities to Aboriginal people. It was conceived of, and implemented by, the same people who confined Aboriginal people to reserves, declined to fulfill Treaty obligations,outlawed cultural practices, and, in 1885, had either executed or jailed many of the
Prairies’ First Nations leaders.
The missionaries quite consciously saw themselves in a struggle to overcome asense of national identity among Aboriginal people. In 1882, Sister M. U. Charlebois,
assistant to the mother superior of the Sisters of Charity of the General Hospital inMontréal, petitioned Macdonald for an increase in support for the schools her religious order was running in the Northwest. In her letter, Charlebois spoke of the battle the order was waging against “national prejudices” against residential schooling.
“Ignorant themselves, the Indians depreciate the benefits of education—lazy andindolent, they despise labor—loving their children as the wild animal does its young,they are loth [sic] to entrust them to strangers, while the little ones reared to roam
free could ill bear restraint.”74 In 1903, the Church Missionary Society (CMS), in one of
its resolutions on the “Administration of the North-West Canada Missions,” observed,
quoting long-time CMS secretary Henry Venn, that “although the Indian tribes are but
remains of nations, they are living remains.”75

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system • 167

The goal of the nation’s Aboriginal policy in 1878 was to clear “the way for theiremancipation from tribal government, and for their final absorption into the general community.” Deputy Minister Dennis believed that the road to his goal would be
paved by residential school graduates.76
If adult First Nations people were not prepared to be enfranchised, the government
anticipated that former students, who had been raised and educated in a new culture
and language, and kept away from their homes, would choose not to return to theirreserves, but to assimilate with the white population. Prime Minister Macdonald said
as much when, during a debate on the future of the Mi’kmaq of the Maritimes, he told
the House of Commons that while they were “improving by slow degrees,” he feared“that in a few generations they will have disappeared altogether or be absorbed by
the white population.”77 The industrial schools were established without consultation
with parents. As has been noted, Davin thought that even including education in thenumbered Treaties had been a mistake. In drafting his report on the need for such
schools in Canada, he never spoke to any students in the United States.78 Indeed, in his
1883 annual report, Macdonald acknowledged that the government was aware it was
introducing a form of education that Aboriginal people did not support. “The Indians,”
he wrote, “show a reluctance to have their children separated from them.” He expectedthat initially the schools would be filled with “orphans and children who have no natural protectors.”79 In 1891, the government rejected a suggestion from Anglican Church
officials that it provide “leading Indians on Reserves” with the details of vacation anddischarge policy. Deputy Minister Hayter Reed explained he would make all school
regulations known to “Agents, Church authorities, and Teachers, but so far as Indians
are concerned, I think it will be best to deal with them, in so far as matters, such as
the one now under consideration, are concerned, individually, as each case presents
itself.”80 And, if those leaders thought to make trouble, the children attending residential schools would serve as hostages. One year after the 1885 rebellion, school inspector Andsell Macrae commented that “it is unlikely that any Tribe or Tribes would givetrouble of a serious nature to the Government whose members had children completely under Government control.”81 This is the sort of coercive and threatening language that would be used to describe a colonial educational system. It reminds us that
Canada’s national policy on Aboriginal education was at heart a colonial policy.

CHAPTER 10

Student accounts of residential
school life: 1867–1939

T

he history of the purpose, funding, and operation of Canada’s residential school
system can be told using the documents created by that system. However, theresidential school experience itself can be best understood through the voices
of Aboriginal people. As part of its work, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada has collected statements from over 6,500 former students. These statements
form the basis of a separate part of this report. Given the age of these survivors, theiraccounts describe the residential school experience for the period from 1940 to 1997.
There is no comparable collection of statements from former students from theyears prior to the Second World War. A much smaller group of former students haveleft a record of their impressions, usually in the form of memoirs, magazine articles,
biographies, and, in one case, a novel. Some of these works are well known; others
have fallen out of print, and some were never published. Their authors are often
among the more successful students. Several writers went on to become politicalactivists, teachers, or church and community leaders. In some cases, their memoirs
were collaborative efforts, so their voices are heard in filtered form. But, in spite of thefilters, these writings provide an understanding of the early residential school experience that can be gained in no other way. Through them, many of the dominant themesof the residential school story emerge: the loneliness, the isolation, the hunger, thehomelessness, the hard work, the harsh discipline, the imposition of an alien language
and culture, and the poor health, disease, and death that haunted many schools. The
writings also provide a reminder that Aboriginal leaders wanted to see their children
gain the skills they would need to ensure survival of their communities. Those leaders
also quickly recognized the failures of the residential school system and drew publicattention to their concerns. Not all experiences were negative. Several of the writers
went on to careers in religious ministry. Others had successful careers that built on theskills they acquired in school.
None of these memoirs dealt directly with the issue of sexual abuse of students, butthat does not mean that such abuse did not take place during this period. Subsequent
chapters will describe cases of abuse that took place in the system’s earliest years of170 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

operation. Some of these memoirs were written at a time when it was socially unacceptable to write about the sexual abuse of children. At that time and since, those who
were abused or witnessed such abuse often felt too ashamed or intimidated to speakof their experiences.

Shingwauk
In the 1830s, Chief Shingwaukonse travelled from Garden River in northern
Ontario to Toronto to ask Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne which of the various
Christian denominations his Ojibway people should adopt. Colborne, an Anglican,
recommended the Church of England.1 Shingwaukonse accepted this advice, and,for many years, a series of Anglican missionaries ministered to his community. In
the 1860s, the last missionary was withdrawn from the region to go work with the
Mohawk. The Ojibway then were served by a travelling Church Missionary Society
missionary, E. F. Wilson. Shingwauk, who was Shingwaukonse’s son, resolved in
1871—without consulting with his council—to accompany Wilson on a journey toToronto to meet with the “Great Black-Coat,” as he referred to the Anglican Bishop,
and to ask him “why indeed are my poor brethren left so long in ignorance and darkness.”2 He was seeking not only a permanent mission, but also a boarding school. The
seventy-year-old Shingwauk told Rev. S. Givins and Rev. F. O’Meara, who had responsibility for missionary work, that the Ojibway of Lake Superior had “pleaded in vain
for teachers to be sent to them.” They recognized the strength of the European settlers
and the English Queen, and had concluded that they could not “keep back her power,
any more than we can stop the sun.” Before his death, he said, he longed to see a “bigteaching wigwam built at Garden River, where the children from the Great Chippeway
Lake [Lake Superior] would be received, and clothed, and fed, and taught how to readand how to write; and how to farm and build houses, and making clothing: so that by
and bye [sic] they might go back and teach their own people.” This way, all the Ojibway
would “enjoy the blessings of Christianity.”3 After the meeting, he visited a newspaper
office, where he was shown a recently developed piece of technology that was used forfolding printed papers. “I thought then, ‘Ah, that is how it is with the English nation,
every day they get more wise; every day they find out something new. The Great Spirit
blesses them, and teaches them all these things because they are Christians.’”4
The Anglicans responded positively. For the rest of the visit, Shingwauk and Wilson
visited local churches and the homes of wealthy Torontonians, collecting funds for the
proposed mission and school at Sault Ste. Marie. Some gave $10 apiece; “some would
not give us any at all.” A large public meeting raised only $21, an amount Shingwauk
found disheartening.5 He travelled on to St. Catharines, Hamilton, and Brantford,
where he spoke to several meetings, but succeeded in raising only $300.6 Shingwauk

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 171

concluded his account of his journey with a vow that, if he could not raise what wasneeded in Canada, he would “go to the far distant land across the sea, and talk to theson of our Great Mother, the Prince of Wales, who became my friend when he gaveme my medal, and I believe will still befriend me if I tell him what my people need.”7
Shingwauk did not make that trip, but in 1872, his brother Buhkwujjene (sometimes given as Buhgwajjene) accompanied Wilson on a fundraising trip to England,
where they raised 740 pounds. With this money, Wilson planned to construct a schoolthat could accommodate thirty boarding students—boys and girls. There were sixty
acres (24.3 hectares) of farmland available to the school, much of which had beencleared by local First Nations men. Wilson’s initial plan was to educate the students
at a day school that had been built with the money Shingwauk had raised, including
a contribution of $36 from the Garden River Ojibway. In addition to farming, the boys
were to be taught boot making and carpentry. An appeal to Canadian Anglicans statedthat the salaries of the school staff were “provided for through the liberality of English
friends.” Contributions still were needed to pay for the support of the children.8
The campaign succeeded. In 1873, the Shingwauk Home opened at Garden River,near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. It was destroyed by fire within the week. In a letter to
Indian Affairs, Chief Buhkwujjene declared himself “depressed, for all the childrenthat was in the Institution are extremely poor.”9 A new school opened in 1876 andremained in operation until 1970. The efforts of Shingwauk and Buhkwujjene to establish a “big teaching wigwam” are a reminder that despite the conflicts and disappointments that would arise in the future, from the outset of the residential school system,some Aboriginal leaders and parents were committed to ensuring that their children
received the schooling they would need to make an ongoing contribution to the life of
their communities.

Charles NowellCharles Nowell, as he later came to be known, was born in 1870 in Fort Rupert,
British Columbia. The name given him at birth was Tlalis (Stranded Whale). His father
was Malitsas, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation (the name is given as Kweka
in a memoir he prepared with anthropologist Clellan S. Ford). When he was young,
Nowellused to sleep sometimes beside my father. When I lie in bed beside him, he talked to me about our ancestors. He told me about my grandfather and his father
and his father, and what they did, and about how our ancestors knew about theflood. He told me the story of one clan of the Kwekas: how the ancestor of thisclan knew there was going to be a flood, and how he built a house made out ofclay where he is going to live under the water while the flood is on.10

172 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

He also was told creation stories and of the Potlatches that had been given by hisancestors. Giving Potlatches, his father instructed him, was the only way to maintainhis good name. To this end, he must not spend his money foolishly, but, instead, save,lend, and continue the Potlatch tradition.11
However, his mother died while he was young and his father began to lose his eyesight. Under these conditions, his brother arranged for him to be admitted in 1876 to
the mission boarding school run by the Anglican James Hall at Alert Bay. He was areluctant recruit.
It was hard. I cried for nearly a week. Mr. and Mrs. Hall did all they could to makeme forget my feelings, but it was very hard to forget it, for I had never been awayfrom my parents while they were living, and I never was away from my brother.… While I was in school the first week, they tried to teach me how to write andspell, but I couldn’t do anything for I didn’t want to learn. I only wanted to getback to my home.12

At the school, he was given a new name. “Mr. Hall gave me my name when he baptized me. I got the name Nowell because a Sunday school teacher in England wanted
Mr. Hall to give me his name, and they say that he was my godfather when I was baptized, and he used to send me presents every Christmas.”13
Initially, he was the only male student and he boarded, along with the girls, in the
missionary’s home. It was only after he had been there for several years that a dormitory was built and more boys were enrolled in the school, a development that eased
his loneliness. Once, when asked to assist in cleaning the toilet, he swore at the missionary’s wife. When he resisted being punished for this, he was beaten on his backand shoulders and locked away in a small room without food. He escaped by jumpingout a window and running to his grandfather’s cabin, with Rev. Hall in close pursuit.
When told that Hall wanted to beat Charles, his grandfather grabbed a piece of thewood he had been unloading from a canoe and warned the missionary he had better
leave if he himself did not wish to be beaten. His grandfather let Charles live at his
house for a week. The boy was persuaded to return to school only after the grandfather
met with the missionary and the Indian agent, and extracted a promise that corporalpunishment would be administered only in response to very serious disobedience.
Charles also explained that he had been brought up not to cry, no matter how badly hehad been hurt. That was why he had not cried when he had been beaten. This stoicism
had served only to further enrage the missionary, making the initial beating worse.
After that meeting, according to his memoir, when Charles fell afoul of the rules, theprincipal would call him into his office, explain that his feelings had been hurt byCharles’s behaviour, and then let him go.14 Despite their initial conflicts, Charles cameto have fond memories of Rev. Hall, recording that he spoke Aboriginal languages,
and ate and fed the children “Indian food” at the school. And, when Charles’s brotherStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 173

fetched him away from the school to visit their ailing father before he died, Hall raised
no objections.15
Charles came down with whooping cough at Alert Bay when he was about fourteen. Although his situation was dire, he was nursed back to health by a fellow student,
Maggie, with whom he was in love. When she, in turn, fell ill, Charles was allowed to sit
by her and, upon her death, allowed to stand vigil over her.16
He later went to the Anglican school at Metlakatla. There, he was caught writing
love letters to a young girl who lived in a nearby village. When the principal, Bishop
William Ridley, confronted Charles with the existence of the letters, Charles maintained that he loved the girl and wished to marry her. Ridley told Charles he was sending him home, since he was only causing trouble for the school.17

Daniel Kennedy
In his memoirs, Daniel Kennedy, an Assiniboine man, recounted, “In 1886, at
the age of twelve years, I was lassoed, roped and taken to the Government School at
Lebret. Six months after I enrolled, I discovered to my chagrin that I had lost my nameand an English name had been tagged on me in exchange.”18 Until he went to school,
his name had been Ochankuga’he, meaning “pathmaker.” The name honoured a trek
his grandfather had led through a Prairie blizzard.19 The new name, Daniel Kennedy,referred to the Old Testament’s Daniel of the lion’s den.20 The school interpreter later
told Kennedy, “When you were brought here, for purposes of enrolment, you wereasked to give your name and when you did, the Principal remarked that there were noletters in the alphabet to spell this little heathen’s name and no civilized tongue could
pronounce it. ‘We are going to civilize him, so we will give him a civilized name,’ andthat was how you acquired this brand new whiteman’s name.”21
Kennedy lost more than his name on that first day.
In keeping with the promise to civilize the little pagan, they went to work and cut
off my braids, which, incidentally, according to the Assiniboine traditional custom, was a token of mourning—the closer the relative, the closer the cut. Aftermy haircut, I wondered in silence if my mother had died, as they had cut my hairclose to the scalp. I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like. A Hallowe’en
pumpkin stared back at me and that did it. If this was civilization, I didn’t want
any part of it. I ran away from school, but I was captured and brought back. I
made two more attempts, but with no better luck. Realizing that there was noescape, I resigned myself to the task of learning the three Rs.22

For Kennedy, even the architecture of the school was foreign and forbidding. He
asked readers to “visualize for yourselves the difficulties encountered by an Indian174 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

boy who had never seen the inside of a house; who had lived in buffalo skin teepees in
winter and summer; who grew up with a bow and arrow.”23
Kennedy was a successful student who came to enjoy positive relations with
Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard. In Kennedy’s opinion, Hugonnard’s “genialand engaging personality won for him a host of friends in all ranks of our Canadiannation. His tact and diplomacy commanded the respect and admiration of all whocame in contact with him.”24 He also credited Hugonnard and High River principal
Albert Lacombe with making it possible for him and a number of other students to pursue their education after leaving residential school. Kennedy, for example, attended
St. Boniface College.25 He did not, however, become a priest. By 1899, he was backin the Northwest, serving as an assistant to an Indian Affairs farming instructor.26 By
1901, he was an interpreter and general assistant for the Assiniboine Indian agency.27
Two years later, he received an engineering certificate.28
In 1906, Kennedy sought assistance from Wolseley, Saskatchewan, lawyer Levi
Thompson to petition Ottawa to allow members of the Assiniboine agency to have aholiday for a sports day and promenade. At the same time, he promised they would
not participate in Sun Dances. Local Indian Affairs officials and the principal of the
Qu’Appelle school feared that the proposed promenade would turn into a dance.
Despite their concerns, Indian Affairs granted the application.29

Mike Mountain Horse
In 1893, six-year-old Mike Mountain Horse, a member of the Blood (Kainai) First
Nation in what is now southern Alberta, was enrolled in the Anglican boarding schoolon the Blood Reserve. His brother Fred was already attending the school and wasthere to provide guidance on his first day.
My Indian clothes, consisting of blanket, breech cloth, leggings, shirt and moccasins, were removed. Then my brother took me into another room where I wasplaced in a steaming brown fibre paper tub full of water. Yelling blue murder, I
started to jump out, but my brother held on to me and I was well scrubbed andplaced before a heater to dry. Next came Mr. Swainson [the principal] with a pairof shears. I was again placed in a chair. Zip went one of my long braids to thefloor: the same with the other side. A trim was given as a finish to my haircut. My
brother again took me in charge. “Don’t cry any more,” he said. “You are goingto get nice clothes.” Mrs. Swainson then came into the room with a bundle ofclothes for me: knee pants, blouse to match with a wide lace collar, a wee capwith an emblem sewn in front, and shoes. Thus attired I strutted about like ayoung peacock before the other pupils.30

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 175

The education at the school was conducted in English, but, Mountain Horse
recalled, the church services were held in Siksika (Blackfoot). To encourage students
to learn English, the principal offered to honour any request for a gift that was written
in English. To test the system, Mountain Horse requested, and received, a pound of
butter and a can of milk. It was, he discovered, more butter than he had use for, andhe threw it out.31
Although one of the key goals of the school was to convert the students to theChristian faith, Mountain Horse wrote that “the powerful sway of the new was not
sufficient to entirely dethrone the many spirits to whom we had previously made ourofferings.”32 In the end, however, he said, “The majority of the Indian youth have noalternative than to embrace the religion of the white man as taught in their schools.”33
Mountain Horse went on to attend the Calgary industrial school.34 After graduating, he went to work for the Mounted Police, served in the First World War, returned towork for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wrote the manuscript of his book on the
Bloods, and ended his career as a railway labourer. 35

Frederick O. Loft
In the early decades of the twentieth century, First Nations people began to organize nationally to advance their political rights. One of the first national leaders to
emerge was Frederick O. Loft, a Mohawk from the Six Nations Reserve. Loft served in
the First World War as a lieutenant, despite being fifty-two years old when war brokeout. A graduate of the Ontario Business College, he spent much of his working life asa clerk in the Ontario Asylum for the Insane.36 In 1918, he helped found the League of
Indians of Canada, which was inspired in part by the historic Iroquois League, whichbound together five—and, later, six—First Nations in the eastern part of the continent.
According to an early League of Indians circular,
The first Aim of the League then is to claim and protect the rights of all Indiansin Canada by legitimate and just means; second, absolute control in retaining
possession or dispensation of our lands; that all questions and matters relative toindividual and national wellbeing of Indians shall rest with the people and theirdealings with the Government shall be by and through their respective bandCouncils at all times.37

Indian Affairs aggressively worked to undermine the league. Deputy Indian Affairs
Minister Duncan Campbell Scott viewed Loft as a subversive and forbade his department to co-operate with him.38
In 1909—a decade before the league was established—Loft wrote a series of articles for Saturday Night magazine that were highly critical of Canada’s Aboriginal policies. He took particular aim at residential schooling. His starting position was that

176 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Aboriginal people should not be viewed as “a wilful antagonist or oppositionist to theeffort that has been and is being made to school him.”39 He wrote:
The Indian child has been carried to school, at once alienating it from parental
and home affection and ties. Under such circumstances, is it possible, I would
ask, for him to be expected to learn what is taught when the mind must be
burdened with loneliness and a desire to be home, perhaps constantly planninga means of stealing away at the first opportunity? This is not so serious as thefact that children are housed in a congested state that is often unsanitary andcomfortless. These schools prove veritable death-traps for them, for they are, it
is contended, peculiarly susceptible to the dreaded disease phthysis [tuberculosis].40

Loft knew what he was talking about. He had spent a year at the Mohawk Institutein the 1870s.
I can frankly say that another serious evil is the false economy that is practised indenying the children a satisfactory measure of diet, and that in the midst of plenty produced on the farm and garden by the labor of the boys. I recall the times
when working in the fields I was actually too hungry to be able to walk, let alone
work. When parents visited the child, invariably the first question was, Did you
bring anything to eat? In winter the rooms and beds were so cold that it took half
the night before I got warm enough to fall asleep. What chance of life has a childunder such conditions? When these conditions at the boarding schools and institutes become known to the parents it is no wonder they hesitate to send theirchildren back after a vacation. If a child is forced to return, the chances are he
will in time make good his escape, and perhaps not return to the home. In sucha case, it is not going far from the mark to say that schooling with him becomes
extremely distasteful.41

Loft was not impressed by the vocational training offered at the residential schools,
either. He observed, “As for the various trades that are supposed to be taught in them,
I am convinced, from what I have observed myself, a pupil would be many years
becoming a full-fledged craftsman.”42 Loft was not surprised to discover that very few
young Aboriginal students followed the trades in which they had been supposedly
trained. He observed that one of the major problems with the approach was that many
students were trained for trades for which they had no inclination. Indeed, the training, he said, started before the students were of an age to demonstrate an inclination
for any specific trade.43
Loft recommended that the government follow contemporary American policy to“do away with the institutes and boarding schools [in the United States] by degrees andreplace them by the spread of the day school. This is a policy of carrying education to
the Indian instead of carrying him to it.”44 The day school, he wrote, “must be the outpost of Indian civilization of the young, while the ingenuous, tactful and painstaking

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 177

official will be able at all times—if so disposed—to create a useful and lasting influence among the adults.”45 Loft used the Six Nations of Tuscarora as an example of thedegree of interest that Aboriginal people took in education. When the Six Nations
took over the schools on its reserve from the New England Company, it increasedsalaries, hired qualified teachers, and implemented the Ontario curriculum. Similaradvances could be made elsewhere if the government would “give the Indian a little
more latitude beyond feeling he is an infant, subject to the orders of petty and crude
officialdom at Ottawa.”46 Loft also opposed church involvement in the schools, callingon the government either to cast aside its dependence on the churches and assume
complete control of First Nations education, or to “pull up stakes and quit the job.”Among the first things Indian Affairs would have to do, he wrote, would be to hire a“recognized educationist.”47

Peter KellyPeter Kelly was born in 1885 in Skidegate, on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.
Although his parents had converted to Methodism shortly before his birth, and werediscouraged by the local missionary from telling traditional stories, Kelly grew up
hearing the Haida legends from his family, and was able to retell them in his old age.48
As a boy, Kelly resolved to be true to both his religion and his Aboriginal ancestry, aparticularly difficult endeavour at a time when missionaries saw their task as one ofstamping out Aboriginal cultural observance.49 His first schooling was at the Skidegate
Methodist mission day school, where a series of missionary women taught about thirty
children ranging in age from “toddlers up to the late teens.” The school was a lean-tothat had been built onto the missionary’s home. As was the case in many day schools,
attendance was erratic, particularly when families had to leave the community to fish
or collect berries. By his own estimate, Kelly figured he attended the school a total ofless than one year over a six-year period.50
In 1897, his mother and stepfather attended a Methodist revival meeting in
Mission City on the Fraser River. There, they were persuaded to send their son to the
Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British Columbia.51 However, first they kept him
at home for another three years, preparing him to follow in his stepfather’s trade asa boat builder.52 In 1900, he and another boy became the first two Haida students
at Coqualeetza.
He had positive memories of the school principal, Rev. Joseph Hall, but he also
recalled being chastised for whistling while he was completing farm chores on
a Sunday. To the missionaries, whistling on the Lord’s Day amounted to doing theDevil’s work. On another occasion, his use of the sort of language he learned while178 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

working on fishing boats led a teacher to threaten to wash his mouth out with soap.
The principal prevented the teacher from making good on his threat.
It was quickly recognized that Kelly was an excellent student. As a result, soon he
was exempted from the rigours of the half-day system.53 At the end of three years, heand one other student were the first Coqualeetza students to write and pass the provincial high school entrance examinations.54 Rather than attending high school, however, he returned to Skidegate, where he became a day school teacher. He held that
position for five years. He later served as a lay preacher in the Methodist Church, a
United Church minister, president of the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, and president of the Conference of the United Church in British Columbia.55

Chief Peyasiw-awasis
In 1876, Chief Peyasiw-awasis (Thunderchild), along with Mistahimaskwa (BigBear) and a number of other chiefs, rejected Treaty 6, which covered parts of central
Alberta and Saskatchewan. However, after the collapse of the buffalo hunt, he signed
the Treaty in 1879. He was a strong advocate of First Nations’ Treaty rights and traditional cultural practices. He was against having a Roman Catholic school on his
reserve, and eventually led a movement to tear the school down. He was not an opponent of schooling, but wanted it to be within First Nations control. Under governmentpressure, he allowed the Catholics to re-establish the school. He was jailed in 1897
for participating in a give-away dance. In later years, the government threatened todepose him for his support of traditional practices.
Thunderchild’s Band originally was located on good farmland west of Battlefordin what is now Saskatchewan. To make the land available to Euro-Canadian settlers,
early in the twentieth century, the federal government began to pressure the band toagree to relocate. The pressure created divisions in the band, which eventually agreed
to be relocated to Brightsand Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1909. This relocation left theband without a day school.
In 1910, Chief Peyasiw-awasis requested that the government live up to its Treaty
obligations and build a school on the reserve.56 Thirteen years later, there was still noschool. That led Thunderchild to write a lengthy letter to Deputy Minister Duncan
Campbell Scott.
My people find it very hard to part with their children to have them go to school.
It is not that they do not desire to have them educated but they are not favourable to Boarding Schools and I must give you their reasons so that you do notthink this is some idle fancy.
I am not going to touch on the side of sentiment, that part of it you will readily
understand, knowing the Indian as you do.

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 179

A spruce tree taken while young from a low lying moist soil when transplanted into light soil dies in most cases. If it lives, it will be but short and stunted,
where it would have been tall and straight had it been left in its natural soil. It
will be like this despite the greatest of care. It is not because it has no capacity
for growth, it is because it is taken out of its natural environment where it would
have done well. I have no education but my hairs are grey. I have seen and observed life. I have learnt the ways of nature and I see that the Boarding Schools
and their effect on our young can be explained by this parable. The system is notnatural, it seems artificial and the fruit of it, so far as I can see it in my Reserveand elsewhere has been very poor. Many a pupil has come home to die, being
in the last stages of consumption. The strict discipline, the changes of environment, the close confinement, the different food, has lessened the vitality of ouryoung and made them susceptible to the germs of tuberculosis with which the
Buildings are always in time saturated. I learned this from the Boarding Schoolthat was in Battleford when it was taken over by the Seventh Day Adventists they
were obliged to pull down almost the whole building because in order to insure
against infection from the germs that had played havoc among the Indian children. From the Indian point of view that school, although in very capable andtrustworthy hands was a long history of sorrow because of the disease in it.
Then we found that the continual supervision in everyday work meant the killingof all initiative in the pupils. They came back with good records, knowing English
well and other things taught to them but they were neither white men nor Indians. They don’t seem to know how to make the start. They had lost the ordinary
Indian mode of livelihood and were unable to do as the white man did. They
were victims of their educational opportunity.
The sense of ownership and the desire to increase what is owned is a thing thatshould be developed in childhood stage. All this is lost to the child in the Boarding School while there he works at cows, horses, cleans rooms, plows and helps
in harvest but he feels that he is getting nothing in return. I myself know he isactually working for himself, but he does not see it that way. He has no chance
therefor to couple work with its reward. This teaches him to look upon work as a
drudgery and in many cases this idea pervades through life. 57

He wrote that if there were a day school on the reserve, parents would “have thechildren in our care which is natural.” They would learn to read and write at school,and learn from their parents “the way of rustling around for a living.” Living among
their own belongings would teach them to care for them. If boys, for example, had
their own cows or horses, they would “develop a sense of ownership and that means agreat deal.” As well, Thunderchild wrote, the student would be “growing up and developing in his own natural elements.”58
Thunderchild knew he was asking the government to make an exception to existing policy. Such an exception was justified, he suggested, because he was “the last of180 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the old chiefs who took part in the first treaty. To me there personally was promiseda school in my Reserve if I and my people desired it.” Having this Treaty promised
fulfilled would “give to my grand children at least one heritage which would be of real
and lasting value to them and my one remaining and consuming ambition. If I cando this item I can leave the world in peace.”59 Thunderchild did not persuade Duncan
Campbell Scott. Instead, Thunderchild built the school with his own band’s funds,
essentially shaming the government into paying for the teacher.60

Edward Ahenakew
Edward Ahenakew was born in 1885 and raised on the Plains Cree reserve of
Ah-tah-ka-koop in what is now Saskatchewan. He attended Emmanuel College, theAnglican boarding school at Prince Albert, then worked as a teacher and was ordained
as an Anglican priest. He spent much of his life ministering to Aboriginal people. He
was also active in the growing Aboriginal political movement, serving as the Alberta
and Saskatchewan president of the League of Indians of Canada. In 1923, while recovering from an illness that had forced him to drop out of medical school, he wrote an
unfinished manuscript that would not be published for another fifty years.61
His book is made up of two sections: the first part is the memoirs of Chief Peyasiwawasis as told to Ahenakew; the second part consists of the memoirs of Old Keyam,
a fictional character created by Ahenakew. A boarding school graduate, Old Keyam,
who was once energetic, had “suddenly slackened all efforts” and taken on a namethat means “What does it matter?” or “I do not care!”62
Although the book does not discuss Old Keyam’s boarding school experience, it
is rich with his observations on the impact of residential school education. Nearly acentury ago, Ahenakew was documenting what has come to be termed the residential
school system’s “legacy.” On returning to his home community from school, he said
that a former residential school student “is in a totally false position. He does not fit
into the Indian life, nor does he find that he can associate with the whites. He is forced
to act a part. He is now one thing, now another, and that alone can brand him as anerratic and unreliable fellow” who sits on the fence dividing the white and Aboriginal
worlds, but belongs to neither. He thought the residential school might make sense incertain remote areas, but “for most Indian children, I hold that boarding schools areunnatural, that they are contrary to our whole way of life.”63
He said that, thanks to their highly regimented life, former students were like oldstyle cars that required cranking before they would start. The residential schools, hesaid, have taken from their students “all the initiative there may be in an Indian. He
will work only when he feels like it. He will never take advice from his elders amongst
us.” He described the File Hills Colony, which had been established in southernStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 181

Saskatchewan for former students, as a tribute to its founder, Indian Commissioner
W. A. Graham, but also as a continuance of the residential school model of telling First
Nations people what to do.64
In some cases, the return to the reserve had an even more tragic outcome. Old
Keyam said, “Again and again I have seen children come home from boarding schools
only to die, having lost during their time at school all the natural joys of association with
their own families, victims of an educational policy, well-meant but not over-wise.”65
Old Keyam contemplated taking responsibility for Indian education away from thechurches, whose only merit was in the fact that they “voluntarily undertook work thatno one else was willing to do.” He suggested that poor day school attendance—theperennial justification for residential schooling—could be best addressed by making
each reserve a school district and giving it the resources to hire qualified teachers.66
Old Keyam was also critical of the quality of the education offered at day schools,
asking why First Nations people should be saddled with unqualified teachers. “TheIndian has paid more than any school tax. The Treaty stands as witness to that.”67
Ahenakew devoted much of his life to teaching. Writing in his own voice, he said of
the day school on Little Pine Reserve in 1921, “I had never seen a more desolate looking place.” It was “the pitiful ruin of a government educational enterprise—the resultof inefficiency, indifference, and want of inspiration.” Working with the residents andArchdeacon John Mackay, he managed to get the school reopened. He played a similar role on Thunderchild’s reserve, working with the elderly chief to open the day
school on the reserve in 1923.68

Joseph Dion
Joseph Dion was raised on the Onion Lake Reserve in the 1890s. At first, he went
to the day school, but, not long after he started attending, the school burned down.
Referring to the school policy of assigning each student a number, Dion wrote,“They gave me No. 7 as my brand, so I was one of the very first in the Onion Lake
R.C. Boarding School. William Smith was the first to enter, hence his number wasone. Maggie Delaney, who later married a clerk of the Hudson’s Bay store, A. L. N.
Martineau, was the first girl to be enrolled.”69
He had vivid memories of the work done by the staff. Sister St. Olivier, for example,
not only did the cooking, but also was in charge of seeing that the cows were milked,
the chickens fed, and the supplies purchased.
The baking alone was quite a chore. The homemade oven had to be fired a longtime before it was ready, then all the coals and ashes raked out, and the pans ofdough hauled at least 200 feet from the kitchen where the setting and kneading

182 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

had been done. Oh, yes, the cook had to run to the church three times a day toring the bell; and this was at seven o’clock, at twelve and six sharp.70

Classes were held in a log house that was over ninety metres from the boarding
house. In Dion’s recollection, Brother Vermet, the priest in charge of the dormitory,
often threatened to use his thick leather belt on the boys, but, in the end, always letthem off with a scolding. When the boys were not in class, they spent much of theirtime sawing and splitting firewood. “This was carried by the armful to the kitchen
and sister’s house, to the school and bakery.”71 The only holiday he could recall was
Dominion Day, when the students were allowed to go home from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00
p.m.72Disease cast a long shadow over his school days. Four of his siblings died of diphtheria. Dion attributed his survival to the care he received from the sisters in the school.
They pulled us successfully through several epidemics like measles, chicken pox
and scarlet fever, but they were practically helpless against the scourge of tb.
The nine years of my happy school life were marred by the occasional deathamong the children. I began to notice early in life that the disease of the lungs,
the Indian term for tb, was making inroads in the ranks of our young people. My
schoolmates and I were not long in concluding that the lung sickness was fatal,
hence as soon as we saw or heard of someone spitting blood, we immediately
branded him for the grave. He had consumption: he had to die.73

His good friend Lazare was one of the students so stricken.
His bed in our dormitory was next to mine and I could hear him at all times of
the night coughing and tossing around while he gasped for breath, yet he neverwhimpered. As the boy got worse and weaker the sisters moved him to their own
house where one of them watched over him continually. How those nuns could
ever stand the ordeal is beyond belief for there were but a very few of them andeach one had a very heavy list of daily duties to perform. At his request I was
permitted to visit the boy occasionally. He was no longer afraid: in fact he spokequite freely about going, if only he could see mommy and dad before he left.74

Dion left the school at the age of fifteen with a Grade Eight education.75 He later
became a day school teacher at Kehiwin’s Reserve. The school was little more than ashack, sixteen by eighteen feet (4.8 by 5.5 metres) in diameter.76 The federal government provided next to nothing in the way of supplies.
Six reversible heavy cardboard charts, four by two feet in size graced three wallsof the buildings. These charts, sent to us by the Sisters at Onion Lake, proved tobe our pictorial mainstay for several years. A few picture books completed theoutfit. Nine pamphlets containing instructions to teachers advised in part that all
pupils were to be registered, ages given, and number of days attendance of eachStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 183

pupil recorded. There was, however, no register, nor writing paper and pencils
for use of the teacher.77

After three years, he quit in frustration, although he went back to teaching in 1921.78

Enos Montour
Enos Montour attended the Mount Elgin Institute near Muncey, Ontario, from1910 to 1914.79 Many years later, he wrote a lightly fictionalized account of his timeat the school. He titled it Brown Tom’s School Days, a play on Thomas Hughes’s 1857
novel Tom Brown’s School Days, itself a lightly fictionalized account of Hughes’s own
days at a British boarding school. Montour’s manuscript paints an affectionate, but
not uncritical, portrait of Mount Elgin, opening with a conversation between Brown
Tom and a fellow student on the eve of their graduation from the school. Tom tells his
friend, “I’ll kinda hate to leave this old place. It’s been rough but kind underneath. I
think they meant well by us, don’t you? But I sure hated it, that first night four years
ago. I was that lonely I coulda howled to the moon.”80
In those early days, the “old familiar Reserve world had disappeared.” The new students were “looked upon as curious and their homesickness not sympathized within the least,” and “electric lights, ringing bells and strict discipline intensified thisunwelcome strangeness.”81 Tom quickly found a friend with whom he would hunt andfish, dig for apples under the snow in the winter, and go swimming in summer.82 They
would eventually tease the new boys of later years, telling them to just wait until they
got to try the “Mush ’n’ Milk” and that the lights dimmed in the evening because theroom had become too warm.83
Other students, Tom notes, went beyond this gentle teasing in their treatment ofyounger students, “forever making the lives of the more retiring ones miserable. Theirinfluence was felt in strange and differing ways. These bullies were very jealous andtenacious of their power. As for the timid souls, they simply submitted and by doingso, survived.”84
The students at the school came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were the children of people Tom called “squatters,” who lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Others
were the children of comparatively well-to-do high-steel workers. The parents of otherstudents were successful farmers who wanted their children to have better education.
And, there were “waifs and strays, orphaned children sent here for shelter. Though
they shared the regular life and diet of the school, their lot was made harder due to thelack of those softening influences that letters from home, and a little spending moneyfrom time to time can bring.”85
Tom’s parents were squatters; their home was rundown and drafty. But he loved it,noting that only on the reserve could he and his friends “really be themselves. Among

184 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the Anglo-Saxon people they were tense and on guard. They could return here when
the outside world had become too cruel and unfriendly. Here they came to people
who accepted them without lengthy explanations. Here they found that response
from fellow-creatures so essential to human happiness.”86
Tom described himself as a citizen of three worlds. First was the reserve, “warm,
secure, and not too sanitary…. It was the one whose influence was indelibly stampedon his psychic life.” The second, the “White man’s world,” through which he only
passed, was “strange and challenging.” Although its residents meant well, they could
never understand him. Third, there was the school, which placed “his romantic soul inthe strait-jacket of the daily grind. It was neither Indian nor white. It was half n’ half—like milk and water.” He might live in the school and do his school work, but his “soulwould go on dreaming as it had done on those warm April evenings on the Reserve.”87
Food looms large in Brown Tom’s School Days, particularly the “Loaf ’n’ Lard” feasts
the boys would organize for themselves. Money earned by doing garden work would
buy the ingredients for the “gundgeon,” or pan bread, which was the centerpiece ofthe meal. To purchase the ingredients, although sometimes they received permission,
most often the boys would have to sneak into town.88 After it was prepared:
Little was said until only the crumbs remained of the long awaited meal. Usually
the Loaf was consumed without benefit of knife. It was simply broken in two andit disappeared by the removal first of the soft centre. The outer crust was left tothe last, and in rare cases, where it was not wholly consumed, it would be preserved as delectable medium of Barter. In most cases, while one boy finished theremaining crumbs, the other carefully licked off the remaining evidence of Lard,
still clinging to the paper wrapper.89

Montour described the food supply as “plenty, but it was not enough.”90 The boys
“were always hungry. Grub was the beginning and end of all conversations. This wasof course, more true of the pre-High School years. They were not really undernourished or ill-fed. They had simply a seemingly unlimited capacity for food—and they
were quite omnivorous.”91 Much of the bullying took place over food, as the smaller
boys often sold their food in advance. Using language evocative of the Biblical storyof the hunter Esau, who was forced to sell his birthright for a bowl of lentils (pottage),Montour described the boys as “Little Indian Esaus,” who were “forever selling their
Food-Right for a mess of potage [sic]. The ‘Thursday cookies’ were bartered for a juicy
apple in mid-afternoon, or for bits of Candy, with accretions from overall pockets.”92
At mealtimes, a student might receive a secret message reminding him of the need to
pay a food debt. 93
Romances developed between the girls who were charged with milking the cows
and the boys who were charged with guarding them. Love notes were hidden between
two slices of bread that a kitchen worker might pass to a loved one.94

William Robinson, Chief Shingwauk, and Chief Nebenaigoching, 1850.
Photographs from the Robinson-Huron Treaty, Chief Shingwaukonse collection,
2011-017-001 (001), Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, Algoma University.

Charles Nowell, his wife, and mother-in-law. When he first arrived at the Alert Bay, British Columbia,
school, Nowell recalled that he “cried for nearly a week.”
Royal British Columbia Museum, British Columbia Archives, PN00994.

Frederick O. Loft, former residential school student andfounder of the League of Indians of Canada.
Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN 3629837.

Mike Mountain Horse. In his memoir of his time at
the Anglican school on the Blood Reserve in southern
Alberta, he wrote of how upon arrival, “My Indian clothes,consisting of blanket, breech cloth, leggings, shirt andmoccasins, were removed.”
Glenbow Archives, NB-44-92.

Chief Peyasiw-awasis , ca. 1920. Peyasiw-awasis(Thunderchild) called on the federal government to establish
day schools on reserves so that parents would “have thechildren in our care which is natural.”
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-A17725

Edward Ahenakew, a former residential school student, wrote, “Again and again I have seen children
come home from boarding schools only to die, having lost during their time at school all the natural joysof association with their own families, victims of an educational policy, well-meant but not over-wise.”
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-B11359.

Joseph Dion recalled that at the Roman Catholic school in Onion Lake, he and his classmates, “werenot long in concluding that the lung sickness was fatal, hence as soon as we saw or heard of someone
spitting blood, we immediately branded him for the grave. He had consumption: he had to die.”Glenbow Archives, NA-2815-1

Enos Montour ended his lightly fictionalized memoir of life at the Mohawk Institute by asking if this had“all been a mistake? Had these gifts not only served to unfit them for the old Reserve life without being
able to promise them very much out in the great big Anglo-Saxon world? Had it been for better or worse?”
The United Church of Canada Archives, 76.001 P4091.

Eleanor Brass recalled that the dinners at the File Hills, Saskatchewan,
school consisted “of watery soup with no flavour, and never any meat.”
Courtesy of Regina Leader-Post (Photographer: Roy Antal).

While at the Lytton, British Columbia, school, Simon Baker led a successful protest to get students more food. He
told the principal if the boys were going to be worked like men, they should be fed like men.
University of British Columbia Archives, UBC 35.1/152-7.

John Tootoosis said that at the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school, “They washed away practically everything from ourminds, all the things an Indian needed to help himself, to think the way a human person should in order to survive.”
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-A7662.

George Manuel said that at the Kamloops, British Columbia,
school, “Every Indian student smelled of hunger.”
University of British Columbia Archives, George Manuel, UBC 1.1/16108.

Mary John said that at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia,
school, “The boys were thrashed for speaking to the girls,
and the girls were thrashed for writing notes to the boys.”
Northern BC Archives UNBC, Bridget Moran fonds, Accession#2008.3.1.22.6.

At the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school, the teachers reliedon “orders, threats and ridicule,” coupled with regular pokesin the ribs and knocks on the knuckles, administered with awooden pointer. As a result, Isabelle Knockwood grew up in“perpetual fear of saying and doing anything.”
Courtesy of St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 185

Montour described most of the boys as being healthy. “But occasionally the silent
killer TB showed up amongst the enrolment. Some quiet, inoffensive lad would growunusually quiet and listless.”95 In the manuscript, he left a description of a friend’s
death. “As his creeping, insidious disease came over him, he began to lose interest in
all boyish activity. He coughed frequently and his energy was sapped away. His chums
tried to interest him in their games and outings, but he only smiled wanly and told
them to leave him out. He didn’t feel like it.” Eventually, the boy was taken from theschool. “An emptiness remained where the gentle boy had lived with his pals.”96
Montour remained a member of the Methodist Church and, later, the United
Church. As a student, he said, he submitted to the government’s religious program in
the same way he accepted “the handouts of clothing, food and shelter.” But, he said,
he “sometimes wondered if the Longhouse religion back home wasn’t as satisfying as
this.”97 He recognized that each missionary
discouraged the Longhouse religion and the use of native language. They werebeing weaned away from the native culture, as though it had no spiritual or aesthetic value. They would have been shocked to hear a native teacher speak of asong in the Mohawk language as ‘the sweetest music this side of Heaven’. Indian
languages were not heard about the Institution. Occasionally Indian might bespoken in a low voice or some naughty uncouth native word might be used by
the younger chaps.98

Montour ended the manuscript with Tom’s graduating and having to decide
whether he would take the road leading to the reserve or the road to the “great AngloSaxon world of competition and continuous struggle.”99 As Tom pondered thesechoices, the author suggests that teachers were silently asking themselves if this had“all been a mistake? Had these gifts not only served to unfit them for the old Reserve
life without being able to promise them very much out in the great big Anglo-Saxon
world? Had it been for better or worse?”100 It is a devastating ending to a gentle book.

Simon Baker
Simon Baker was born in 1911 in British Columbia. His mother, Susan Capilano,
had been taken out of residential school by her parents after a year or two of schoolingbecause she was continually punished for speaking Squamish.101 As a young boy, he
was sent to the Anglican school in Lytton, British Columbia. He later recorded,
We were the first ones to arrive. I can always remember seeing this great big
building. I couldn’t figure it out. We all felt a bit excited. We were taken into thebuilding and shown around. So we were all taken downstairs and they gave us
school clothing. They took our own clothes and put them away and that was thelast time we saw our clothes.

186 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

That first night, he and his brother Joe slept on the floor because they were notused to sleeping on beds.102 In his discussion of the school in his memoirs, Baker wasmeasured in his comments, at one point observing, “I guess we were satisfied to havea bed, a place to eat, a place for recreation, a field outside to play in.”103
But the overall atmosphere of the school was repressive and regimented: “We were
just told what to do all the time. In fact, we had to answer to bells all the time like welltrained rats. A bell would ring to wake us, another bell for chores, bell for meals, forchapel, for school, for study time, for bedtime.”104 The teachers might not have beenmean, but, when he was thirteen, he and his friends witnessed the beating of a fellow
student at the hands of the farm supervisor. The boys had been working in the barnwhen one boy decided to urinate in the loft rather than climb down and use the outhouse. The urine leaked through the floor onto the farm supervisor. Enraged, he beat
the boy with a leather strap. Baker wrote, “Maybe he did a naughty thing, but he nevershould have gotten a licking like that.” Angered and frightened, the five boys jumped
the train to Vancouver that night. Baker and his friends made it back to his grandmother, who helped them get to Squamish, where they hid out in the bush. Eventually,a police officer found them and made them return to school.105 He and his friends ran
away a second time, and were returned by the same police officer. He said they were
not punished for running away, but were made to “obey more rules.”106
Baker also recalled being beaten up by older boys at the school “for something theysaid I did wrong. I never knew what that was most of the time. I never gave up, though,because my brother Joe used to help me out.”107
In his opinion, the students were underfed and overworked. They were also notalways able to enjoy the fruits of their own labour. Rather than being consumed by
students, butter from the creamery was sold, along with the vegetables and fruit theschool farm produced to help the school cover its costs.108 Baker convinced the otherboys at the school that the only way they could improve their rations was to threaten
a strike. Acting as the students’ representative, Baker told the principal that they werebeing worked like men, so they should be fed like men. And, if the students did not get
an improvement in diet, they would steal the food. The principal complimented Baker
on his honesty and agreed to their demands.109
Baker’s stay at the school, like that of so many other students, was marked by tragedy. Another brother, Jim, died of spinal meningitis at the Lytton school.
I used to hear him crying at night. I asked the principal to take him to the hospital. He didn’t. After about two weeks, my brother was in so much pain, he wasgoing out of his mind. I pleaded with the principal for days to take him to a doctor. “For god’s sake, you better do something for my brother.” They finally took
him to the small hospital in Lytton. Each day I would ask how he was doing andthey’d say he’s doing all right. On the third day, on a Sunday night, the principal’s
wife came in, spoke to her husband and they called me into the office. There theyStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 187

told me that my brother had just passed away. I went to the hospital with theprincipal. There lay my brother Jim in a room that was like a morgue.110

The school provided a coffin, but, since it was too short, it was necessary to breakhis knees to fit him into the coffin. When his grandmother came up to collect the body,she made the school order a new coffin. 111
Baker left the Lytton school at age fifteen, having completed Grade Eight. “I knew
there was nothing to stay home for and I wanted to be with the boys at the school, mybed and the three meals a day that I was used to.” He told his grandmother that hewanted to continue his education, but she said, “Son, I don’t want you to go to whiteman’s school because I have been teaching you our way of living and I want you to be
the leader of our family here on the Capilano reserve.” Although Baker was frustrated
by his grandmother’s decision, he decided not to oppose her.112

Eleanor Brass
Eleanor Brass was born in Saskatchewan in 1905, the daughter of Fred Dieter
and Marybelle Cote. Both of them had attended residential schools in their youth.
According to family lore, both the Roman Catholic priest and the Presbyterian principal gave Fred’s parents money to convince them to send him to their respective
schools. Eventually, he went to the Presbyterian school at File Hills because it wascloser to his parents. Marybelle had been educated at the Presbyterian school at
Kamsack. Both of them also attended the Regina industrial school.113
Eleanor’s father’s experiences at the Regina school became part of family legend.
He passed on stories of swimming, skating, lacrosse, soccer, and baseball (which
lagged far behind soccer in popularity). The school organized brass bands, as well as
dances, discussion groups, and debates. Some of the school’s graduates were sent to
the Hampton Institute in Virginia for further training in missionary and medical work.
In her memoirs, Brass wrote that “those of us who are descendants of the pupils often
wonder why this technical school and others like it were not kept open.”114
Her parents were married at the File Hills boarding school. Principal Kate Gillespie
and her sister Janet Gillespie, the school matron, made the wedding arrangements
and baked the wedding cake. The married couple then moved to a property Dieter had
been farming on the Peepeekisis Reserve, a reserve that would form the nucleus of theFile Hills Colony for former residential school students.115
Although his accounts of his experiences in boarding and residential schools had
been positive, Fred Dieter wanted his own children sent to “the white day school.”
However, in 1911, the local Indian agent informed him that his daughter Eleanor andher seven-year-old sister would have to attend the File Hills school, just over nineteen
kilometres from the Dieter farm.

188 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Brass herself painted very positive memories of the first principal she had there,
the Reverend H. C. Sweet, whose name, she felt, suited him.116 His replacement was,to Brass’s mind, “more like a hardened dictator,” and, under his administration, thestrap was in constant use. After being caught passing notes through the windows of
the school hospital to fellow students who were being held in quarantine, Brass was
locked in a room with nothing to eat for a day and no access to a toilet. When released,
she was slapped by the matron for wetting herself, put to bed, and strapped across herback. Brass’s cries were so loud they reached the boys in their dormitory, who calledout to the matron to stop.117
One of her fellow students, Chief Pasqua’s twelve-year-old son, who could speak
no English, found the school very alienating and ran away, only to be brought back,stripped, made to lay face down on the bed, and beaten.118 On one occasion, one of
Eleanor Brass’s cousins and a friend ran away from the school. They too were strappedon their return. “Their hands were swollen and they looked like boxing mitts and theirarms had huge welts. Then the principal chained my cousin’s ankles together so thatwhenever she tried to walk she fell down.” Fred Dieter, having caught sight of the poor
shackled girl on a visit to the school, bounded up the stairs to the principal’s office,grabbed him, and ordered him, “Take those chains off that child.” He left with thewarning that the principal was lucky he was getting off with a good shaking: “These
are children, not criminals, and I don’t ever want to see cruelty like this again.”119
Brass’s mother spoke Saulteaux and her father spoke Cree, but they chose to speak
English at home, in large measure because they feared that their children “would
be held back in school if they spoke nothing but Indian languages.”120 The children
were not allowed to speak Aboriginal languages at the school. At the same time, Brass
recalled, “The principal’s wife told us girls who were brought up in File Hills Colonythat we were no good because we couldn’t speak Cree.”121 The children tried to teacheach other what they knew about Aboriginal culture. Sometimes, they would sneak off
to the lake and, using a pail as a drum, hold secret powwows, always aware of the factthat they could be strapped if they were caught.122
During the winter months, parents were not allowed to visit the school. Eleanor
said that was “when we went through a lot of abuse and torture.”123 The lack of accesscould hurt in several ways. For instance, Brass was made to wear shoes that were toolarge for her. She was sure that if her parents had known of her need for proper shoes,
they would have provided them.124
Brass recalled that her first teacher at File Hills spent much of her time telling thechildren about hell and how they would end up there if they did not behave. A second,
younger, teacher was more popular with the students, but she did not last. Neither
teacher taught the children very much academically. In her final years at the school,
as Eleanor was getting ready to go to a “white school,” a Miss Hewett took an interest

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 189

in her: “She pushed me right along in my classes and even gave me extra lessons so I
wouldn’t be too far behind when I entered the white school.”125
According to Brass, the dinners at File Hills consisted “of watery soup with no flavour, and never any meat.” One winter, it seemed they ate fish every day.126 Porridgeat the school was either burnt or half-cooked, but students were punished for not
eating their food.127 Once, the students came across barrels of apples in the school
attic. Over time, the students worked their way through the apples. When the deed
was discovered, they were sent to bed without a meal and, over a period of days, thechildren were called down to the principal’s office one by one and strapped. When it
came to her turn, Brass recalled, her cries were met only with the sarcastic commentthat “the Cotes are good singers,” a mocking reference to the fact that her mother andsister were well known for their singing voices.128 In fair weather, the boys would trap
gophers and squirrels, and roast them over open fires to supplement their meagre
diets. Sometimes, they would share these treats with the girls at the school.129
At File Hills, the students would go for walks for exercise, even in winter. Brass said
the clothing was not warm enough. The three- to five-kilometre walks were particularly hard on the youngest students: “The tiny children would cry and wet their underclothes which would soon be frozen stiff, and they would be spanked for it.”130
She had two tragic memories from her time at the school. One autumn, Archie
Feather fell through the ice on the local lake and drowned. She also recalled that a seventeen-year-old boy from the Carlyle Reserve hanged himself in the barn. “The poor
youth was in some kind of trouble which wasn’t so terrible but apparently it seemedthat way to him. The staff could make it seem that way for they were always ready todeal out punishment.” The young man was buried on the Peepeekisis Reserve, and his
family came to visit his grave every summer.131
Her father took her out of the school in 1917 and enrolled her in the local school
in Abernathy, Saskatchewan. It was a terrible experience for her, marked with racism.
Later, Brass attended high school in Canora, and stayed at a boarding home run by the
Presbyterian Church, where she made close friends with two young Scottish girls.132
Some of her brothers went to the Brandon residential school, where “the principal
was very domineering and the children were afraid of him. My brothers said after theyleft school and happened to meet this principal they still feared him.”133
After she had left the school, her brothers also attended File Hills. They all had arough time. In her opinion, one brother, Russell, died of neglect. Their father had tried
sending them to the village school in Lorlie, Saskatchewan, but had to send them tothe boarding school when the discrimination the children experienced in the school
culminated in the school board’s refusing to accept Aboriginal students.134

190 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

John Tootoosis
In 1912, twelve-year-old John Tootoosis Jr. and his younger brother Tom were
herding their family’s sheep on the Poundmaker Reserve in Saskatchewan, when theycaught sight of a wagon outside their parents’ home. A priest was in earnest discussion with their father, who was far from impressed by residential schooling, though hecould see the value in formal education. Former students, alienated from their families
and their traditions, were already referred to on the reserve as “the crazy schoolers.” In
the end, their father’s concern that the boys learn to read, write, and figure won out.
He told them to eat a quick meal and put on their warm clothing; they were being sent
forty kilometres away to the Delmas boarding school (also called the Thunderchildschool).135 The boys enjoyed the wagon ride, but were surprised and overwhelmed by
the nuns who met them on their arrival. In coming days, they discovered they would
be punished for speaking Cree and risked further punishments for making mistakes inEnglish. Many students retreated into themselves, but John Tootoosis became adversarial. In his mind, there was too much religion, too much work, a limited and inedible
diet, and not enough education. He survived, in part because of the time he spent withhis family in the summers. But, just when he was looking forward to further education,
he was told that, at age sixteen, the government was not going to pay for any additional
education for him. He returned to the reserve and, with his father’s support, slowly
began to work his way back into the life of the community.136
After leaving residential school, John discovered to his frustration that his English
was not serviceable. Having been taught by native French speakers at the Delmas
school, he could not understand the English that was spoken in Prairie communities,
and his English was burdened with both a Cree and a French accent.137
In language strikingly similar to that of Edward Ahenakew, Tootoosis gave an early
critique of the residential school legacy. He said thatwhen an Indian comes out of these places it is like being put between two walls
in a room and left hanging in the middle. On one side are all the things helearned from his people and their way of life that was being wiped out, and on
the other side are the whiteman’s ways which he could never fully understandsince he never had the right amount of education and could not be part of it.
There he is, hanging in the middle of two cultures and he is not a whiteman andhe is not an Indian.
They washed away practically everything from our minds, all the things an Indian needed to help himself, to think the way a human person should in order tosurvive.138

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 191

George ManuelGeorge Manuel, the future founder of the National Indian Brotherhood, carried
three strong memories from his years at the Kamloops, British Columbia, residential
school in the 1920s. These were: “hunger; speaking English; and being called a heathen because of my grandfather.”139
The memories of hunger dominated. He was hungry from his first day at the school
until he left two and a half years later after being diagnosed with tubercular osteomyelitis (a bone infection). He was not alone: “Every Indian student smelled of hunger.”140
To feed themselves, students learned how to break into the locked vegetable bins andthen surreptitiously cook pilfered potatoes in fires built to dispose of weeds.141 Whenthey could find nothing else, they would eat dandelion roots, rosebuds, and evenleaves.142 His parents were able to make the journey to the school only twice a year:
once at Easter and once at Christmas. “When they came they brought deer meat andbannock and other real food you could get full on.”143
Manuel had little regard for the vocational training provided at the schools, feelingthat the students were not being given even the skills they would need to succeed as
farmers. Most of the boys’ time was spent performing the daily round of farm chores,
using antiquated equipment that would not be found on any working farm of theday.144 His real schooling did not begin until he was hospitalized. There, the nurses
not only supplied him with the sort of books he had never seen in school, but they alsotaught him how to read.145
Much of the students’ resistance to what was being done to them involved attempts
to circumvent the rules or, more distressingly, to bully younger students. This changed
at Kamloops when a group of students witnessed an older First Nations man, Alex
Thomas, berating a teacher for overworking the boys. His action inspired the boys.
“A teacher would raise his yardstick to strike a student. The student would grab the
stick from the teacher’s hand and the rest of the class was instantly on top of the man.
It was a crude and juvenile way of returning the violence to its source. But it was not
submission.”146
The harsh discipline of the schools had left students unwilling to work unless they
were threatened. As a result, according to Manuel, they were also unwilling to work on
their return to their home communities. “We came home to relatives who had neverstruck a child in their lives. These people, our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles
and grandparents, failed to present themselves as a threat, when that was the only
thing we had been taught to understand. Worse than that, they spoke an uncivilized
and savage language and were filled with superstition.”147

192 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Mary John
In the fall of 1920, when she was seven, Mary John was told by her mother she wasgoing to have to go to school. She and three other children from Stoney Creek, a Carrier
community in the interior of British Columbia, were loaded in a stranger’s wagon, andthey set off for residential school. She was excited, particularly since her mother had
given her twenty-five cents to buy candy, but the excitement was tempered by the factthat her grandmother had cried at her departure. The wagoner travelled first to the
nearby town of Vanderhoof, where he stopped to pick up two nuns, and then headed
north. The trip took two days, and the travellers spent their nights in a tent. Finally,
they arrived at Fort St. James, the site of a Roman Catholic boarding school.148
Before going to residential school, Mary had been living with her family. She hadlearned to run a small trapline, and to skin and stretch the pelts of the animals shecaught. Much of her time was spent taking care of younger siblings while her motherand older sister dried and smoked fish and meat, and participating in the annual
round of hunting, fishing, trapping, and harvesting berries.149
The meals at residential school came as a shock. They were dull and monotonous: aregular diet of porridge interspersed with boiled barley and beans, and bread covered
with lard. Weeks might go by without any sight of fish or meat; sugar and jam werereserved for special occasions.150 Students who stole food or spoke their traditional
languages were whipped. “The boys were thrashed for speaking to the girls, and thegirls were thrashed for writing notes to the boys.”151 Her return home at the end of theschool year was the scene of an emotional reunion: “Everyone cried when the wagon
stopped and we were on Stoney Creek land once more. My mother and grandmother,
Bella and Mark—everyone cried at the sight of us, two little girls, now eight years old,
who had been away so long.”152
In 1922, the students from the aging Fort St. James school were moved to the newly
opened Lejac school at Fraser Lake, British Columbia.
Everyone raced to be the first into the building and once in, we ran from room toroom, turning water taps on and off and flushing the toilets. We peeked into thesewing room and the chapel. The hospital—that was a slight disappointment,with its bare walls, its few cots, and large cupboards. We very soon learned to callit the infirmary. But everything else was so new, so big. Shouts of, “Come here!
Look at this!” sounded through the building.153

The excitement soon wore thin. On her second day at the school, a boy was whippedin front of the whole school for wetting his bed. Shortly after that, a girl was whippedfor dropping a note by a boy’s desk. Mary recalled that before the first week was out,
three boys had run away.154
Despite it all, she liked to learn and wished she were being taught more. Shy, submissive, and fearful of punishment, she spoke her own language only in whispers andStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 193

never stole anything other than the sugar in the bottom of the nuns’ teacups when she
was cleaning up after their meals. She was blessed with a good voice, and was granted
singing lessons when other children were out clearing land for the school farm. As sherecalled, she was one of the teachers’ pets.155
But it was never a happy place:
The missionaries and the nuns had to deal with one hundred and eighty Native children who were always hungry, always homesick. The boys were openly
rebellious, many of them stealing or running away or getting the girls off in somecorner alone with them. Unlike the boys, the female students were seldom openly rebellious. Instead, they were sullen and depressed.156

Although Mary dreaded going back to school at the end of each summer, she saw
a benefit in the basic education. She was proud of her ability to speak English, to read
and write, and to do arithmetic. Similarly, she valued the sewing, cooking, and otherdomestic skills she gained in the school.157
In 1927, when Mary was fourteen, she told her parents she did not want to go backto school. Members of her family had used an Aboriginal healer, and she feared thatword of this would get back to the school, where, she thought, she might be punishedfor coming from a pagan family. Her mother, who needed her to help care for her fiveyounger children, relented. Instead of going back to Lejac that fall, she joined her family in its journey to its traditional hunting grounds. They were followed, several days
later, by a Mounted Police officer, sent to retrieve Mary. The police officer pointed outthat Mary legally should attend school for one more year, but he did not force her parents to send her back with him. Her residential school days were over.158
When she married, Mary’s mother-in-law saw her as ‘useless’ because she did nothave the sorts of skills, such as preserving dry fish and meat, preparing hides, or hunting or trapping, that she would have expected in any woman fit to be her son’s wife.159
And, as Mary’s children came of age, she had to send them to the Fraser Lake school.
“It was terrible when the children went away. There was a loneliness in me for thewhole year. A truck came each September and cleared the reserve of children. And
suddenly after a summer of shouts and childish laughter, the village was silent.”160

Isabelle Knockwood
Isabelle Knockwood first entered residential school at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia,
on September 1, 1936. Her whole family accompanied her on the walk to school thatday. One brother, Henry, had already been attending for four years. But for Isabelle
and siblings Joe and Rose Anne, this was the beginning of their residential school
lives. They were taken into the school chapel, which, they were informed, was a sacred194 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

place. In retrospect, Knockwood said, it was “a place where a lot of children’s prayers
didn’t get answered.”161
From there, they went into the parlour. With the assistance of a nun, her motherread and then signed a document that registered the children as students in the school.
When a young Aboriginal woman appeared in the parlour, Isabelle’s mother began to
speak to her in Mi’kmaq. The girl responded shyly in English. It was then explainedthat it was not permitted to speak Mi’kmaq in the school.162 Isabelle later discoveredthat the banned language lived an underground life. Because it was not understoodby the nuns, Mi’kmaq provided the students with a tool to mock and ridicule authority. One student at Shubenacadie could send the choir into fits of laughter by fitting
Mi’kmaq words to Latin hymns, providing them with new and satiric meaning.163
These, however, were small pleasures. For the students, the school was a cold, sterile, and lonely place, even though it was filled with children. “We didn’t dare hug orkiss each other. The nuns always read something bad into any kind of outward displayof affection.”164
Each child pined to return home—and the boys sometimes acted on the impulse,
leaving the school and attempting to return to their families. When they were caught
and returned to the school, their heads would be shaved. Every time she went into therefectory, Isabelle cast a worried look for her brothers, fearful that they might haveundergone such a punishment. “You should have seen the look on the faces of thesisters and cousins of the boys who walked in that refectory with bald heads. It wasawful having to watch them holding back the tears and the hurt of not being able tohelp—or even talk to them.”165 Runaways also might be disciplined by being locked in
the closet below the kitchen stairs.166
Isabelle was twelve years old when she was assigned to kitchen duty. Along with anolder girl, she “made and dished out the porridge in ten large bowls and lugged theten-gallon milk cans left at the back door by the barn boys into the kitchen and filled
ten larger pitchers with skim milk.”167 She was frightened by the large knives used toslice bread and was too small to be lifting the heavy pots of boiling water used to cook
the meals. Injuries were inevitable in such circumstances.
But I had to carry them to the sink and lift them to a height of three feet. I was
not tall enough or strong enough to lift the pot and the Sister started yelling atme because she was afraid I’d drop it and burn her. So after a struggle I managed
to get the pot on the edge of the sink. Then she lifted the lid and the steam hit
my face. I ducked my head and the pot of potatoes slipped. Boiling water spilledover my clothing and shoes. I took off my shoes and could see that blisters had
started to form right away. I started to cry. I was sent to the infirmary, bandaged
up and sent back.168

Isabelle recalled the sewing room as one of the few safe havens in the school. The
two sisters in charge of the room were gentle and patient, and allowed the girls to talkStudent accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939 • 195

and joke among themselves as long as they were reasonably quiet.169 She also remembered with fondness the Scottish dancing the girls were taught in preparation for an
event intended to celebrate the principal’s silver jubilee as a priest.170 But the day she
truly looked forward to was Sunday, when her parents visited the school. Her motherwould bring homemade pies, and hold and caress her children.171 Parents who visited also questioned how their children were being treated and stood up for them.
Consequently, the orphans and those who came from distant communities weremore likely to be singled out for poor treatment and abuse.172
The schooling was done by rote and repetition. Rather than motivating students,
Knockwood thought, the teachers relied on “orders, threats and ridicule,” coupled withregular pokes in the ribs and knocks on the knuckles, administered with a wooden
pointer.173 As a result, she grew up in “perpetual fear of saying and doing anything.”174
When she finished her schooling at Shubenacadie, Isabelle continued to live in theschool and attend the local day school. As the only Mi’kmaq girl attending the day
school, she felt isolated—and quickly realized that her years at Shubenacadie had notprepared her for high school. But she was committed to continuing her schooling,even if it meant submitting to the residential school’s ongoing control over her life.175
When she and some other students slipped away from the schoolyard one afternoon,
they were all strapped on the buttocks. Midway through the beating, Knockwood
stood up and announced she had had enough. She put on her coat and left the school.
As she was leaving, a girl came up to her with an apology from the teacher—and areminder that the coat belonged to the school. Reluctantly, Isabelle took off the coat,gave it to the girl, and then followed her back to the school. “I could easily have kept
on walking down the hill and never gone back again. Going to the public school had
opened up a door, and for the time being, the only way to keep that door ajar was tostay on at the Residential School.”176
Despite Chief Shingwauk’s early hopes, the schools for Aboriginal children did notserve as a “big teaching wigwam” in which students acquired the skills they needed
to provide their nations with leadership in a changing world. Although specific teachers were remembered fondly, the overall structure was repressive and the disciplinary
code was rigid and harsh. Children were taught to forget their language, to disdain
their culture, and to disobey their parents’ teachings. Disease and death were common, the education was of limited value, and vocational training was often little morethan the enforced provision of free labour. That was the experience of the students.
Yet, such a system was to be established and maintained for five more decades, evenin the face of this clear understanding that it was, even by its own standards, a failure.

CHAPTER 11

Establishing and operating
the system: 1867–1939

T

he opening of the Battleford industrial school in 1883 marked a turning point
in Canada’s direct involvement in residential schooling for Aboriginal people.
Prior to that, the federal government had provided only small grants to boarding schools in Ontario and the Northwest that had been founded and operated by
Christian missionary organizations. By 1884, there were three industrial schools in
operation: Battleford, High River, and Qu’Appelle. Recruiting students had been difficult at High River. As a result, according to the Indian Affairs annual report, there were
only twenty-seven students at the three schools.1 In addition to the industrial schools,
there were approximately 140 day schools, with a total enrolment of 4,011 students
and an average attendance of 2,206. There were also eight boarding schools with anenrolment of 335.2
The Battleford, High River, and Qu’Appelle schools were based in large measureon the 1879 government-commissioned report of Nicholas Flood Davin. Unlike thechurch-run boarding schools, which provided a limited education with a heavy doseof religious instruction, the industrial schools were intended to prepare First Nations
people for integration into Canadian society. Generally, industrial schools were larger
than boarding schools, were located in urban areas, and were expected to provide
industrial training, and, although church-managed, they usually required federal
approval prior to construction. The boarding schools were smaller institutions, werelocated on or near reserves, and provided a more limited education. They were built
usually as church initiatives.
The limits of this residential schooling were apparent from the outset. Recruitment
was difficult, conditions in the schools were dismal, student death rates were high,and educational outcomes were disappointing. The federal government, alarmed
by rising costs, considered winding the system down in the early twentieth century.
This plan was blocked by the churches, which viewed residential schools as crucial
weapons in the inter-denominational battle for converts they were waging with one
another. Although this report refers to the “residential school system,” the word system is largely a term of convenience. The federal government never established or
operated an integrated or coherent system for the education of Aboriginal people. The

198 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

various church groups ran what amounted to independent systems that were fundedby the federal government.
A 1910 agreement between the government and churches did provide an infusionof funds and established standards for the boarding school buildings. Yet, within a
few years after the agreement, the schools were languishing once again. Funding rates
were so inadequate that the government was regularly obliged to cover school deficits.
Educational goals were downgraded as most of the industrial schools were closed.
Those that remained adopted the more modest educational goals of the boarding
schools. The number of these residential schools funded by Indian Affairs on a regularper capita basis continued to increase until the system reached a pre–Second World
War peak of eighty in 1930.3 The problems that had plagued the system from the outset
were only intensified during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the government
instituted severe cuts to school grants. The system went into further decline, repairs
were neglected, and several schools burned down.
In the nineteenth century, department officials such as Edgar Dewdney had
thought it “highly desirable, if it were practicable, to obtain entire possession of all
Indian children after they attain to the age of seven or eight years, and keep them atschools of the industrial type until they have had a thorough course of instruction.”
By the end of the 1930s, however, bureaucrats recognized that the First Nations population was growing at far too fast a rate to accommodate all First Nations children
in increasingly costly residential schools. In 1938, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of
Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, concluded, “The old idea of providing a courseof instruction designed to transform the Indian into a White Man has failed. Existing
economic conditions suggest for a great many years an overwhelming majority of ourresidential school graduates must return to their reserves and make a living there.”4
Although they would have to wait until peacetime, by the start of the Second World
War, government officials had accepted Hoey’s verdict. The future, as they saw it, lay
in the long-rejected day schools. However, it would take another fifty years to fully
dismantle the residential school system.
It had been an era of expansion followed by stagnation. The churches had been
allowed to drive and direct the expansion of schools. The government, having initially underestimated the cost of the system, never provided the schools with a level offunding that would allow them to meet student needs. Under the per capita funding
system that was adopted, the government and the churches were able to blame eachother for the system’s failings. As a result, no one took responsibility for those failings. No effort ever was made to involve parents in the system. To ensure that children
were enrolled and stayed in schools, the government used compulsory attendance torecruit and retain students.

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 199

The policy vacuum
In an 1888 parliamentary debate over the provision of $14,000 for the constructionof two additional industrial schools in Manitoba, Sir Richard Cartwright, a member ofthe Liberal opposition, inquired as to the purpose of the schools. Prime Minister (andIndian Affairs minister) Sir John A. Macdonald told him:
General industrial purposes. It is found that the common schools are of comparatively little value. The young Indian learns to read and write, and then goes backto his tribe, and again becomes a savage. The object is to get the young men andthe children severed from the tribe as much as possible, and civilise them andgive them a trade. There is also provision made for girls.

When Cartwright asked if the students went back to their reserve after graduation,
Macdonald said, “No, we endeavor to discountenance that as much as possible.”
Graduates, he said, could get homesteads, and “if they can get white women or educated Indian women as wives, they sever themselves from their tribes.”5
The following year, in his annual report, Minister of Indian Affairs Edgar
Dewdney wrote:
The boarding school dissociates the Indian child from the deleterious homeinfluences to which he would be otherwise subjected. It reclaims him from theuncivilized state in which he has been brought up. It brings him into contactfrom day to day with all that tends to effect a change in his views and habits oflife. By precept and example he is taught to endeavour to excel in what will bemost useful to him.6

This view was shared by bureaucrats and missionaries. In 1894, Deputy Minister ofIndian Affairs Hayter Reed wrote:
Experience has proved that the industrial and boarding schools are productiveof the best results in Indian education. At the ordinary day school the children
are under the inﬂuence of their teacher for only a short time each day and after
school hours they merge again with the life of the reserve. It can readily be seen
that, no matter how earnest a teacher may be, his control over his pupils must bevery limited under such conditions. But in the boarding or industrial schools thepupils are removed for a long period from the leadings of this uncivilized life andreceive constant care and attention. It is therefore in the interest of the Indiansthat these institutions should be kept in an efficient state as it is in their successthat the solution of the Indian problem lies.7

Father Joseph Hugonnard, the first principal of the Qu’Appelle school, wrote that “ifit were difficult or impossible to civilize and convert the savages born and bred withpaganism, there was a way to civilize and Christianize their children, especially if one

200 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

could get them out of that pagan environment and place them and teach them in aschool with the goal of making them into good citizens and good Christians.”8
Edward Matheson, the Anglican principal of the Battleford school, wrote in 1899:
The boarding or industrial school system—away from the reserves, if possible—
is the sure way to solve the long debated “Indian Problem”. It is the way to civilize
the Indian and merge him into the corporate life of the country—his true andproper destiny. He has given ample proof of this where he has had a fair opportunity. Most of those educated in these schools do not wish to return to reserve
life, but to strike out amongst the settlers and make their own way.9

In a similar vein, the Reverend Alexander Sutherland, general secretary of the
Methodist Church of Canada’s Missionary Department, wrote:
Experience convinces us that the only way in which the Indian of the Country
can be permanently elevated and thoroughly civilized is by removing the children from the surroundings of Indian home life, and keeping them separated
long enough to form those habits of order, industry, and systematic effort, which
they will never learn at home.

He thought the girls should be kept at school for five years and the boys for six
years, during which time they would not go home. “The return of the children to theirhomes, even temporarily, has a bad effect.”10
These statements from government and church officials make it abundantly clearthat the overall purpose of residential schooling was to separate children from theirparents and their culture so they could be ‘civilized’ and ‘Christianized.’ Once sotransformed, they could be enfranchised. They would no longer be “Indians,” either
culturally or legally, and would have no special claim on the state for support. It was
expected they would be self-supporting because the schools would have instilled inthem an industrial work discipline. But, other than these overall goals, there was little
unanimity, less policy, and scant regulation.
At some points, day schools were envisioned as potential feeder schools to the residential schools. At other times, they were seen as failures that had to be abolished.
And, at still other times, day schools were heralded as replacements for failed residential schools. As for the role of the churches, they were sometimes viewed as being
essential to the system because they provided cheap labour and moral salvation.
However, they also were viewed as being disruptive and competitive institutions thatused education funding to further their own missionary ambitions. There was little
clarity on essential questions: should schools be located close to reserves to encourage enrolment, or in urban locations into which graduates would relocate? What skills
were students to be provided with: were they being trained to take up skilled trades,
or were a little literacy and some basic farming skills sufficient? Few of these issues
ever were resolved in a coherent manner. On occasion, the government shifted from

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 201

one position to another. And, at times, it embraced one policy even as it continued to
implement a contradictory one.
It was not until 1894 that the government adopted any regulations under the Indian
Act for First Nations education—and these dealt solely with attendance. Issues suchas training, housing, health, discipline, food, and clothing were most commonly
addressed on an uncoordinated, case-by-case, basis. Even then, as late as 1897, Martin
Benson could write, “No regulations have been adopted or issued by the Department
applicable to all its schools, as had been done by the Provincial Governments.”11
Indian Affairs never developed anything approaching the education acts and regulations by which provincial governments administered public schools.
It was Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney who supplied Thomas Clarke withthe directions (described in an earlier chapter of this volume) for the operation of
the Battleford industrial school in 1883. However, the following year, it was Deputy
Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet who sent out directions to the principals of the newly
opened Qu’Appelle and High River schools. According to Vankoughnet’s memorandum, the principals were to make monthly reports and keep a school diary. They also
were responsible for selecting the employees, who would then have to be appointed byIndian Affairs. The object of the schools was to give the students “a practical knowledgeof husbandry and mechanical trades.” Attention was to be directed to teaching students
to read, write, and speak English, and “all the regulations of the establishment shall beframed with a view to secure these important results.” The principals were informed thatIndian Commissioner Dewdney had control over, and responsibility for, major modifications to the building and the supply of farm implements, tools, and furniture.12
Vankoughnet never sent Dewdney a copy of these instructions. When Dewdney
accidentally came upon them a year later, he angrily wrote to Vankoughnet to pointout that the document would “have been a good guide to me in assisting to organize
the Schools at High River and Qu’Appelle had I received it before.”13
In October 1889, prior to the establishment of a number of Oblate-run industrial schools in British Columbia, Vankoughnet sent Paul Durieu, Bishop of New
Westminster, an eight-page “digest of the views of the Department in respect to themanner in which” the schools were to be operated.14 This document was far moredetailed than the ones issued at the opening of the three schools in the North-West(Battleford, Qu’Appelle, and High River), and described the responsibilities of the staff,
set the class hours, outlined the chores that students should be doing, and, in generalterms, provided expectations in regard to food, clothing, sanitation, and accommodation. There was even a prohibition against students speaking to each other after they
had gone to bed.15
Policy, in short, was being developed on a school-by-school basis, with no overarching set of guidelines. Newly appointed principals often were unaware of instructions that had been sent to their predecessors. The government had little ability to202 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

determine if these policies were being implemented. In 1885, the federal government
had entered into agreements with the provincial governments of Ontario, Québec,and the Maritimes to have provincial government inspectors inspect Indian Affairs
schools (both residential and day schools).16 On Dewdney’s recommendation, J. A.
Macrae, a long-time Indian Affairs employee, was appointed inspector of industrial
schools in 1886.17 The government subsequently hired inspectors for the schools in
British Columbia and New Brunswick. For the most part, inspections of schools on the
Prairies were carried out by departmental officials, who, as Deputy Minister Duncan
Campbell Scott observed, had no “pedagogical qualifications, and whose examination of the classroom work is, of necessity, very perfunctory.”18 It was not until 1894
that the department had a three-person Schools Branch.19
As early as 1897, Schools Branch employee Martin Benson expressed reservations
about having the schools inspected by Indian Affairs officials, who, he believed, were
“opposed to make an adverse report on a school if there is any way of avoiding it,
it being more than likely that such action would bring them into collision with theMissionaries and interfere with their authority among the Indians.” The department’s
inspectors, he believed, devoted too much attention to “inventories, statements,
returns, accounts, &c, and pass lightly over such high matters as the general progress,
management and results obtained.” There was, he said, “no one in the Department
who has ever seen more than a few of our principal schools or knows how they are carrying on the work best suited to the wants of the Indians.”20 The Red Deer school went
three years without inspection, and the Elkhorn school went uninspected for seventeen months.21 In commenting on a rash of fires at Mount Elgin in 1903, Benson wrote,“It has been years since an inspection was made of this school.”22 Three years later, hecommented that the school at Île-à-la-Crosse “is so remote that it is not visited by anyof our Agents or Inspectors.”23 He was still drawing attention to the problem a decade
later. In response to a September 1915 request for information on the Portage la Prairie
school in Manitoba, he wrote that “there has been no inspection of this school sinceApril, 1914.”24 It was seven more years before the federal government arranged in 1922
to have all the residential and day schools in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
inspected by provincial school inspectors.25
Inspectors had little authority to order improvements. When J. A. J. McKenna was
hired as the inspector of Roman Catholic Indian schools in 1909, he was instructed“not to authorize any works or any changes in the management which would involvean increase in expenditure.” Such proposed changes should be made in the form of arecommendation. He was also not to “give the Principals of Schools, or those interested in them, to understand that your reports will follow certain lines.” His reports
should “leave the Department as free as possible to consider whatever recommendations you may see fit to make.”26 Provincial inspectors were reminded that the teachers
were not responsible to them and that hiring and dismissal rested with Indian Affairs

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 203

and the churches. They were urged to comment on the qualifications of teachers, theprogress of pupils, and the condition of facilities.27
Earlier, in his 1889 instructions to Bishop Durieu, Vankoughnet had written,“Obedience to rules and good behavior should be enforced, but corporal punishment should only be resorted to in extreme cases. In ordinary cases the penalty might
be solitary confinement for such time as the offence may warrant, or deprivation ofcertain articles of food allowed to other pupils.”28 This vague approach to discipline
opened the door to the physical abuse of students. When, in 1895, Indian agent D.
L. Clink returned a runaway boy to the Red Deer industrial school, the principal,
John Nelson, told the agent he no longer wanted the boy. According to Clink’s report,
Nelson told him he “could leave him if it was the instruction of the Department, but hewould make him toe the mark, that he had been severe with him before but he would
be more severe now.” Clink was worried that if he “left the boy he would be abused.”
As a result, Clink took the boy away from the school. He also reported that one boy
had a large bump on his head after being hit by a teacher with a stick for looking at a
scrapbook against the teacher’s orders. When Clink inquired into this and other cases,
Nelson told him to mind his own business, adding, “We run this school.” Clink recommended that the teacher who had struck the student be dismissed and brought up on
charges, since “his actions in this and other cases would not be tolerated in a white
school for a single day in any part of Canada.” Despite the beatings and floggings, hesaid, there was very little order at the school, with “the big boys and girls roaming
around together apparently unrestrained.”29
Clink’s reports led Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Hayter Reed to recognize theneed for a policy on corporal punishment. His response, however, left that needlargely unmet. In 1895, he told his staff:
Instructions should be given, if not already sent, to the Principals of the various
schools, that children are not to be whipped by anyone save the Principal, andeven when such a course is necessary, great discretion should be used and theyshould not be struck on the head, or punished so severely that bodily harmmight ensue. The practice of corporal punishment is considered unnecessary
as a general measure of discipline and should only be resorted to for very grave
offences and as a deterrent example.30

The fact that Reed, the former Indian commissioner for the North-West Territories
and Manitoba, was uncertain whether regulations governing corporal punishment
existed speaks volumes. His instructions—by not defining “grave offences”—did little to curb the physical abuse of students. School and department staff often ignored
the limits that he did place on abuse. It is doubtful they were even aware of them. In
1920, Canon S. Gould, the general secretary of the Missionary Society of the Churchof England in Canada, wrote to Deputy Minister Scott, “Is corporal punishment fordisciplinary purposes recognized, or permitted in the Indian Boarding schools?” He204 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

noted that whether or not it was permitted, he imagined that it was applied in every
boarding school in the country.31
There was no meaningful policy on teacher qualifications. An 1884 agreement
between the federal government and the provincial government of Ontario for theprovincial inspection of Indian schools stated that teachers were expected to havecertificates from the “County or District Board of Examiners.” The examiners could
exercise discretion in granting certificates, but “for some time to come … the standardof ‘High School Entrance’ will be quite as high as is attainable.”32 The Indian Affairs
annual report for 1914 acknowledged that “whenever possible the services of teachers with professional qualifications are secured for the Indian schools,” but the reality
was that, in many locations, “it has been found difficult to secure teachers with certificates.”33 No meaningful policy regarding teacher qualifications was put in place orenforced until the 1950s.
It appears that, at times, no one had a clear idea what the official policy was onany matter. In 1922, an Indian agent in Hagersville, Ontario, wrote to headquarters,
inquiring if there had been any changes in the regulations regarding education since
the adoption of a set of education regulations in 1908. His question suggests he wascompletely unaware of major changes to the Indian Act regarding education that had
supplanted previous regulations in 1920.34 The government’s general lack of policy
seems to have been summed up in a 1928 letter from Russell T. Ferrier, then superintendent of education and a former senior official in the Methodist Missionary Society.
Sister Mary Gilbert of the Grouard school in Alberta had written him to ask for “regulations concerning the education of Indian children.” Ferrier replied, “The only printed
matter in this connection is the Indian Act, Section 9 to 11A inclusive.”35
Government officials were not unaware of the lack of policy direction or its implications. By the late 1880s, senior Indian Affairs officials had concluded that there
were system-wide problems with First Nations education. An 1886 report from IndianAffairs school inspector J. A. Macrae painted a picture of schooling that was unsupervised, poorly attended, poorly taught, and highly dependent on meaningless memory
work. Due to problems in recruiting students, many schools had been “idle or only
partially effective.” He attributed the lack of attendance in part to “the Indians’ modeof existence, and lack of clothing for the children,” but it was also due, he wrote, to“Indian prejudice or folly, and lack of exertion on the part of Teachers.” When students
did attend, they were subjected to “old fashioned methods of teaching—useless so
far as Indian schools are concerned.” In Macrae’s opinion, one sign of inappropriate
teaching methods was the use of textbooks. “Elementary teaching of Indian children
may, and should be done, for the most part, without text books.” There was too muchmemorization and recitation of lessons “without being understood,” and not enough“active explanation and direct teaching.” This was not surprising, since, he thought,“injudicious and incompetent Teachers have been great obstacles to the success of ourEstablishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 205

school-work.” Some were “illiterate persons, ignorant of the first elements of teaching,and powerless to impart any ideas that they may have possessed regarding the most
simple subjects.” There was no systematic recording of student progress, making comparison of a school at different times, or between schools, next to impossible.
To Macrae, parental attitudes existed only in the negative. Indeed, they were thefirst item on his list of obstacles to be overcome. Parents, he thought, particularly
those “who have not accepted the Christian faith,” were unwilling to send their children to school out of “an instinctive dislike to their offspring losing Indian habits, andbecoming Christianized, from personal dislike to, or lack of confidence in a school
Teacher—or from a selfish apathy.” Macrae also foresaw conflict with the church-run
schools: “Unless a proper control is obtained over such schools, it may be difficult toexact from the Teachers the duties required of them, or to oblige them to adopt such
regulations and keep such records as may be desired by the Department.”36
The following year (1887), Deputy Minister Vankoughnet had concluded there wasa need for improvement in the education of “Indian children.” In a lengthy memorandum to Sir John A. Macdonald, he said it was a difficult and complicated subject.
The success that has attended the efforts made in the past to accomplish satisfactory results has not been such as to impress one with the idea that the present
system is sufficient or by any means perfect, and yet there is difficulty in coming to a conclusion as to the exact changes which should be made in order toimprove on the same, and even where changes are most manifestly deserving ofadoption they involve an expense to meet which the Department at the present
time has not the means at its disposal.

This could well serve as a summary of the eternal dilemma of Indian Affairs andeducation: the current policy was not working. In large measure, department officials
were not sure what would work; and, in those cases where the needed changes were
obvious, there was no funding available.
Vankoughnet identified three major challenges: how to improve the quality of theteaching, how to get children to attend, and how to ensure that, after graduation, students made the best use of what they had been taught. It was a tacit admission that theschools were not providing a good education, that parents did not want their children
to attend, and that there appeared to be little benefit to students derived from having
attended. Education was supposed to lead to the “intellectual emancipation of the
Indian,” but Vankoughnet thought the government’s actual education program wasoften doing more harm than good. He had no response to what he recognized as thevery valid objections of Canada’s west-coast parents who argued that “if their boys
did not accompany them in their fishing and sealing expeditions, they would fail toacquire a knowledge of industries so essential for their maintenance in the future.”37
Both J. A. Macrae, the school inspector, and Hayter Reed (then the Indian commissioner for the North-West Territories and Manitoba) looked south for solutions.

206 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

They had visited and had been highly impressed with the industrial school in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania. It was run directly by the us government as opposed to a missionary society, was located far from the communities from which its students came, and enforced
the use of English. Reed noted that the students at Carlisle came from a wide variety of
Aboriginal nations and spoke forty different dialects, making “it comparatively easy to
put down entirely the use of native tongues.” According to Reed, “So much importanceis attached to the use of the English tongue alone, that all orders, and explanations of
the subjects of instruction, from the very first, are given in English, repeated again andagain, if necessary, with patience. No books in the Indian tongue … are allowed.”
Reed returned from his time at Carlisle convinced that students should not beallowed to go back to their home communities, even at holiday time or when they
graduated. “Every effort should be directed against anything established to keep
fresh in the memories of children habits and associations which it is one of the main
objects of industrial institutions to obliterate.” He did not favour letting industrial
school graduates return to their reserves, “since it is only too probable that instead of
their presence ameliorating the condition of their tribe, they themselves might rapidly
retrograde.” He approved of the lack of church involvement in the operation of theCarlisle school and the instruction in a range of trades. Students not only supplied
most of the school’s needs, but they also produced wagons and harnesses on contract
for the United States government. For this work, the boys were paid twenty-five centsa day, and the money was banked on their behalf.
Macrae and Reed were both taken with the “outing system,” under which students
were placed with local families after spending a year and a half at the school. Reed felt
this system not only reduced school costs, but also helped to “sever all connection
between them and the members of the bands to which they belong.”38
Macrae, Vankoughnet, and Reed each developed their own—at times conflicting,at times overlapping—visions for reform. Macrae and Reed, influenced by the Carlisle
example, favoured the creation of large industrial schools that would be located at
a distance from First Nations communities. The graduates of these schools were notexpected to return to reserves. All three men called for a lessening of church involvement in the schools.

Macrae’s 1886 proposal
Macrae’s 1886 plan for Manitoba and the North-West Territories proposed theestablishment of a three-tiered system. Children would be taught to read and obey
rules at day schools. From there, they would be sent to small boarding schools thatwould serve as “stepping stones” to industrial schools. Because the boarding schools
would be located on reserves, parents would be able to visit their children and see that

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 207

they were being “clothed, fed, and taught.” This, he said, would overcome their objections to sending their children to an industrial school. The industrial schools, which,he claimed, would be the principal means of “bringing Indian children under influences favourable to their proper development,” were to be located in or near “centresof civilization,” so the students could easily observe “the life of the white man.” A second reason for “removing Industrial schools from Indian Country is that it is unlikelythat any Tribe or Tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government
whose members had children completely under Government control.”Overall, he proposed a system of 212 day schools with 25 pupils each, 14 reserveboarding schools with 50 pupils each, and 4 industrial schools with 500 pupils each—
this was at a time when there were fewer than 200 Indian schools of any type in all of
Canada. He projected a total annual cost of $362,000: $106,000 for the day schools,$56,000 for the boarding schools, and $200,000 for the industrial schools.
It was essential, he thought, that Indian Affairs, rather than the churches, shouldhave “control of the schools in all essential points.” This would include approval of
the hiring of staff, the description of the duties of teachers, teacher salaries, and theschool regulations. School administrators should be required to make regular reports,
the schools should be open to government inspection, and students should be subjected to regular examination. The ad hoc nature of the existing system can be seenin Macrae’s insistence that “the observance of regulations, the manner of making
returns, the forms of keeping records, the means of encouraging attendance, &c, so
far as these can be made general, should be common to all.”
The work should be done quickly, since “how much may be saved by hastening
the moment at which the country is to be relieved of the burden of maintaining theTribes.” A gradual approach to civilization could result in a “constant retrogression”
and the “education of the Indian will never become an accomplished fact, and themoney put into the enterprise will be wasted.”39

Vankoughnet’s 1887 proposal
In 1887, Vankoughnet recommended increasing the number of day schools so thatno student lived more than two miles (three kilometres) away from a school. He also
recommended doubling salaries, as current day school salaries were too low to attract“a partially educated or ordinarily competent teacher.” Poor day school attendance
was the result of “indifference of the parents in the matter of the education of theirchildren and the absence of the exercise by the parents of proper authority over themto compel attendance.” He suggested that a midday meal for students would make day
schools more attractive to them and their parents.

208 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Where day schooling was not feasible, the gap could be filled with boarding schools.
He also wanted to see an increase in the number of industrial schools and in the number of students they could accommodate. Each reserve would be associated with a
specific industrial school, and students from the reserve could go to that school andno other. Such a proposal was not compatible with the government’s partnership withthe churches, who opposed any measure that might see Catholic students attending a
Protestant-run school, or vice versa.
Vankoughnet called for an $892,620 capital investment in schools, with over
$600,000 of that to be spent west of Ontario. He also called for an increase of $545,000
a year in operating costs, over half of that to be spent in the West. The payoff, heargued, would be in turning the descendants of people who were “a source of expense,
into profitable citizens.”40 In 1878–79, federal spending on First Nations education was$16,000. By 1888–89, it was $172,960, and by 1908–09, it was $445,237, a far cry fromthe scale of the operating budget advocated by Vankoughnet.41
Other than a decision to provide a midday meal for day school students in Manitoba
and the North-West, none of Vankoughnet’s recommendations were implemented.42

Reed’s 1890 proposal
In 1890, Reed, then the Indian commissioner for the North-West Territories andManitoba, produced his own set of recommendations for school policy. Reed wished tosee residential schooling become the norm for First Nations children: “All Day schools
should, as much as possible, be displaced by Boarding Schools, and … both should
be closed when sufficient accommodation for children exists in higher Institutions.”
Industrial school students were to be recruited from those boarding school students
who had “given the greatest satisfaction in other schools, and so proved themselves
most worthy of the higher advantages.”
Reed believed that industrial schools should not be located close to reservesbecause “the more remote from the Institution and distant from each other are thepoints from which the pupils are collected, the better for their success.” To prevent
students from returning to their home reserves “to deteriorate,” he recommended
that new reserves for graduates be established near the schools, and be under thesupervision of the principal. (An unknown official in Ottawa wrote “Impracticable”
in the margin next to this recommendation.) Reed repeated his belief that it would
have been better if the churches had not been involved in the establishment of theschools. He acknowledged that “no hope need be entertained of the various denominations relinquishing the hold they already have upon the rising generation throughsuch schools,” but he recommended that, in the future, any residential schools thatwere to be supported solely by the government should be non-sectarian. Reed also

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 209

recommended that the industrial schools develop an outing policy under which students would be ‘farmed out’ to settler families for several months at a time.43
None of these schemes—each of which was designed by a senior Indian Affairs
official—were implemented. The system that came into being, in fact, bore little
resemblance to that envisioned by Indian Affairs officials. The federal government
was unwilling to make the sorts of investments the recommendations entailed. It
had come to believe that the churches represented a source of cost savings, since
they could provide staff members who were prepared to work for less than the market rate. The government also believed that by relying on the labour of the students,
the schools could become largely self-supporting. As a result, there was no centralized control, distinctions between boarding and industrial schools quickly became
blurred, a consistent day schools policy was never developed, and scarce resourceswere wasted by a system that was becoming ever more dependent on child labour.
In this policy vacuum, the churches seized the initiative and shaped the growth ofresidential schooling.

The growth of the system
Despite the lack of policy, or perhaps because of it, the system grew dramaticallybetween 1883 and 1930. Less than fifteen years after the opening of the first western
Canadian industrial school in Battleford in 1883, there were 15 industrial schools, 34boarding schools (as compared to 8 in 1884), and 239 day schools (up from approximately 140).44 The average industrial school enrolment in 1890 was forty-eight students, while the average boarding school enrolment that year was ten.45 (Reportingon the number of each type of school in operation at any given time is complicated.
In some annual reports, the Shingwauk, Wikwemikong, Mohawk Institute, and Mount
Elgin schools in Ontario were counted as industrial schools, but, in other years, they
were counted as boarding schools. Furthermore, in some years, the boys’ and girls’
schools at Wikwemikong were counted as one school, and, in other years, as two
schools. Similarly, the Shingwauk Home for boys and the Wawanosh Home for girls,
both in Sault Ste. Marie, were sometimes counted as one school, sometimes as two.
As a result of such inconsistencies, the 1890 Indian Affairs annual report states that
there were nineteen industrial schools in operation, while the later 1896 report sets
the number lower, at fifteen.)46
Tables 11.1 and 11.2 provide an overview of Indian Affairs education statistics forthe 1895–96 school year. In that year, there were no industrial or boarding schools
in the Maritimes or Québec. Virtually all the expansion took place west of Lake
Superior—further evidence that the federal government conceived of the schools
as effective instruments in the colonization of the western territories acquired after

210 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 11.1. 1895–96 First Nations education statistics:
number of schools, enrolment, and attendance.
Province

No. of Schools

Enrolment

Average Attendance

Boys

Girls

Total

162

110

272

Industrial
British Columbia

6

232

Manitoba

4

196

144

340

297

North-West Territories

5

382

286

668

586

Totals

15

740

540

1,280

1,115

6

246

171

417

362

Boarding
Ontario
British Columbia

5

86

151

237

203

Manitoba

3

18

35

53

46

North-West Territories

19

337

256

593

503

Outside Treaty

1

12

10

22

16

Totals

34

699

623

1,322

1,130

Ontario

77

1,326

1,111

2,437

1,148

Québec

20

388

389

777

361

Day

Nova Scotia

8

83

64

147

57

New Brunswick

5

65

52

117

61

Prince Edward Island

1

22

11

33

13

British Columbia

23

428

400

828

293

Manitoba

48

757

708

1,465

561

North-West Territories

47

498

454

952

415

Outside Treaty

10

155

201

256

222

Totals

239

3,722

3,390

7,112

3,131

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvi.

Table 11.2. 1895–96 First Nations education statistics:
number of schools, enrolment, and attendance.
Kind of School

No. of Schools

Total Enrolment

Average AttendanceTraining or Industrial

15

1,280

1,115

Boarding

34

1,322

1,130

Day

239

7,112

3,131

Totals

288

9,714

5,376

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvii.

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 211

Confederation. Four of the industrial schools were in Manitoba, five were in present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan (then the North-West Territories), and six in
British Columbia. Nineteen of the boarding schools were in present-day Alberta andSaskatchewan.47 Most students were enrolled in day schools: 7,112. The industrial
school enrolment was 1,280, while the boarding school enrolment was 1,322. The day
schools had an average attendance of only 44%. At industrial schools, this figure was
87%, and, for boarding schools, it was 85%.48
As noted, the system hit a pre-war peak of eighty schools in 1930.49 By the end of the
1930s, there were seventy-nine residential schools with a total enrolment of 9,027 andan average attendance of 8,643. The 288 day schools had a total enrolment of 9,369 andan average attendance of 6,417. By then, the government was spending $1,547,252 on
residential school operations, versus $404,821 on day school operations.50
With the exception of the three original industrial schools (Qu’Appelle, Battleford,
and High River), most of the schools were funded on the basis of what was termed a“per capita grant”: an annual amount the government would pay for each pupil in
attendance at the school.51 (There were anomalies: in 1893, the boarding school on
the Blackfoot Reserve was “allowed food and clothing” in place of a financial grant.)52
The government also placed a cap on the number of students it would support in eachschool—this figure was known as the “pupilage.” The pupilage was intended both tolimit the government’s financial obligation and to protect students against overcrowding. Because most schools barely met their costs even when they had full enrolments,
there was fierce competition among principals for students. Further, the per capita
system provided a financial incentive for principals to ignore instructions to refuse
admission to students who were not in good health.
Although the government had the authority to decide if it would fund a residential
school, the reality is that the dramatic expansion in the number of schools was undertaken partly in response to a government plan, but was driven in large measure bycompetition among the churches.

Church-directed expansion
The 1883 decision to turn the management of the industrial schools proposed
for Qu’Appelle, High River, and Battleford over to the Roman Catholic and Anglican
churches prompted Methodist missionary John McDougall to seek government support for his orphanage in Morley, in what is now Alberta. He promised to provide
the same level of training as did the industrial schools in exchange for a sliding per
capita grant: $150 each for the first fifteen students, $100 for the next fifteen, and $75
for any additional students. This, he said, would work out to about half the rate thegovernment would be paying to educate students at Battleford.53 Although Indian212 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Commissioner Dewdney delayed approval of McDougall’s proposal, he said he could
see no reason why the Methodists should not receive the same sort of assistance asother denominations received.54
The government constantly struggled, and failed, to assert control over the
churches’ expansionary drive to increase the number of schools they operated. At
various times, each denomination established boarding schools without government
support or approval, and then lobbied later for per capita funding. When they discovered that the per capita grant they received was too low, they sought to have theirschools reclassified as industrial schools to receive money at a higher rate. Buildingon their network of missions in the Northwest, the Catholics quickly came to dominate the field, usually operating twice as many schools as did the Protestant denominations. The Anglicans were the most successful of the Protestants. The Methodists
and the Presbyterians, who were the last to enter the field, operated a much smaller
number of schools. Each faith, in its turn, claimed government discrimination against
it. Competition for converts meant that churches sought to establish schools in thesame locations as their rivals—leading to internal divisions within communities andexpensive duplication of services. Table 11.3 indicates the number of schools operated by each denomination in the 1923–24 school year.
Table 11.3. Residential schools by faith in 1923–24.
ChurchNumber of schools

Roman Catholic

39

Church of England

21

Methodist

6

Presbyterian

7

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1924, 16.

The 1883 announcement of plans for the Roman Catholic school at High River met
with opposition from local Protestants. Alexander Begg, a prominent Alberta rancher,complained that with Father Albert Lacombe as principal, the students would betaught in French and raised as Catholics. This was unfair, he said, to the Englishspeaking people of the district, who would have to teach the students English before
they “could be serviceable as servants,” and was considered by the Protestants to be“unjust to the Indians and the country.” Failure to address his concerns would result,
he predicted, in a big storm led by the Protestants.55
That storm never erupted, but, three years later, in 1886, the Church of England
began lobbying for an industrial school in Manitoba. To support their claim to manage
the new school, the Anglicans argued that their missionaries had done more for First
Nations education in Manitoba than all the other denominations combined.56 In 1887,
the department offered to build the Anglicans two industrial schools in Manitoba,
each at a cost of $2,500, with an additional grant of $50 per student. The Anglicans

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 213

responded that the money was not sufficient, making it clear that while they were prepared to run the school, they did not expect to contribute to its construction or operation. In the face of church lobbying, in 1888, the government authorized $27,000 for
the construction of two Anglican schools in Manitoba: one at Middlechurch (often
known as Rupert’s Land or St. Paul’s) and the other at Elkhorn. Although they wereindustrial schools, the federal government declined to cover all their costs, approving
instead a student grant of $100 per capita.57
Not all Christian churches favoured government support of church-run residential
schools. In 1892, the Baptist Ministerial Association of Toronto stepped into the residential school debate. The Baptists stated that although they had no problem withefforts to civilize and convert “the Indian tribes of Canada,” and had indeed carried out
missionary work in Ontario and Manitoba, the government funding of church schools
was “a violation of the fundamental principle of absolute separation of Church andState, which has been agreed on, tacitly at least, as one of the corner stones of ourconstitutional system.” The Baptists observed that the government system was inherently contradictory. After all, the Methodists both believed and taught that Catholic
beliefs were “based on deadly error and tend directly to foster ignorance, superstition,and moral and spiritual darkness,” while the Catholics thought much the same about
the Protestants. “And yet the Government hopes to christianize the Indians by taxing
Methodists for the propagation of Roman Catholic teachings and Roman Catholics
for the propagation of Methodism, and Baptists and many others who are neither
Methodists nor Roman Catholics for the propagation of both.”58 The only government
response was that to adopt the Baptist recommendations “would be subversive of thepresent policy of the Indian Department with respect to the question of Indian education in the North West.”59
Each church used the funding that another received to justify its own demands. In
1900, the Methodists proposed the establishment of boarding schools in the Battle
River and Saddle Lake regions of what is now Alberta. This would entail closing five
day schools, including some that Indian Affairs official Martin Benson believed
to be doing good work. He said, “The fact of the Roman Catholics having boarding
schools in each of these Agencies is enough to make the Methodists ask for the sameconsideration.”60
Many schools that had been built without government approval later demanded
government support, both per capita payments and reimbursement for construction
costs. In 1893, Roman Catholic Bishop Paul Durieu sought per capita funding for theschool in Mission, British Columbia, which had been established by the Oblates in
1862. After British Columbia entered Confederation, the federal government provided
the school with an annual grant of $500, which was increased to $1,000 in 1882. That
grant covered school costs, but the church paid for the students’ room and board.
Durieu was seeking a per capita grant of $100 for a proposed pupilage of sixty.61

214 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1895, Father E. M. Bunoz, the principal of the Mission school, petitioned to havehis school reclassified as an industrial school, thereby having its grant increased from$60 to $130 per student.62 Ten years later, the Methodist Missionary Society sought
permission to amalgamate its boys’ boarding school and its girls’ boarding school inPort Simpson into a single industrial school, a measure intended to increase the percapita grant. Benson opposed the measure as being unnecessary, arguing that the
local First Nations made a good living from fishing. “Any trades instruction they might
receive in such a school would never enable them to compete with white mechanics.
The whole object of the petition, as I see it, is to obtain more money.”63
The boarding school on the Thunderchild Reserve in what is now Saskatchewan
stood as another example of this process. In assessing a 1904 church request forassistance, Benson wrote, “There was never any good reason for the establishment of
the school in the first place, which was started contrary to the expressed wish of the
Department.”64 The school was built with a capacity for thirty students, although thegovernment’s initial pupilage was only fifteen students. Roman Catholic Bishop Pascal
argued that if the pupilage were increased, it would be possible to close a day school,
thus saving money for the federal government. Benson commented, “The Sweet Grass[day] school is poorly attended but it is as much the fault of the missionary as any
one. The Bishop evidently wishes to use the plea of inefficiency of the day school toattain his ends. They have also a day school on Thunderchild’s Reserve, which they areendeavoring to freeze out.”65
The chief inspector of Indian agencies in Winnipeg, Glen Campbell, termed thecompetition between church schools “a curse to the Department and the Indians.” In
1912, he reported that the recently opened Anglican school at Gleichen, Alberta (often
referred to as the “Old Sun’s school”), had five to six staff and only seven students.
“This is absolutely ridiculous and more so when one realizes that other churches will
ask for the same consideration as the English Church on the same reserve.”66 In thefollowing year, Indian Affairs received a letter from Bishop Grouard informing themthat the “Roman Catholic Church have built a second school in the Lesser Slave Lakedistrict.” Grouard was seeking a grant for the school.67 Because the church had not
requested assistance in building the school, Duncan Campbell Scott recommended it
be given per capita funding for twenty-five students.68
The Anglicans even competed with themselves. In 1898, the Anglican boarding
school on the Peigan Reserve lost its “most advanced pupils to the industrial school”
in Calgary, reducing the Peigan school enrolment to twenty-eight.69 The following
year, Deputy Minister James Smart complained that, as part of a recruiting campaign,
the principal of the Anglican school in Elkhorn, Manitoba, was spreading criticism
of the Anglican Middlechurch school. According to Smart, the principal coupled his
criticisms with offers of payments to parents if they agreed to send their children tohis school.70

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 215

In 1908, Regina Presbyterian Rev. E. A. Henry responded to Indian Commissioner
W. M. Graham’s criticism of the Presbyterian Church’s school in Regina by accusing
Graham of being a poor Presbyterian. Henry said that Graham took no interest in the
church’s missionary work and had not “darkened the door” of the local church in thepast decade.71
The churches monitored the treatment that other churches received from government, searching for signs of favouritism. In the face of budget cuts in 1891, the Roman
Catholic Bishop of St. Albert complained that the government was favouring theProtestants, noting, “I have seen at a distance from Regina a splendid establishment
which is being erected for a Presbyterian Industrial School,” yet he doubted that there
were “twenty Presbyterian Indians in the North West.” Established Roman Catholicschools were being left “in want,” and he suspected that the “sole cause of the parsimony” was the fact that the schools were operated by the Catholics. In response, thegovernment noted that between 1884 and 1890, $216,982 had been spent on three
Roman Catholic industrial schools in Manitoba and the North-West, compared to$192,102 on four Protestant schools.72
In 1897, Paul Durieu, the Roman Catholic Bishop of New Westminster, complainedthat the Roman Catholics were not receiving an adequate share of school funding. Using the 1896 annual report of the department, he showed there were 12,628
Catholic Indians in British Columbia and 6,769 Protestant Indians. However, theCatholic school grant was $29,000 and the Protestant grant was $22,000. In his opinion, although Catholics counted for 2,708 of the 2,953 Indians in the Fraser Valley,
they received less than half of the federal education funding.73 Twenty-five years later,
the principal of the Mission school sought to be paid for inspecting the constructionof a new barn at his school, citing as precedent the government’s decision to pay theprincipal of the Methodist Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British Columbia, forinspecting a portion of a new building at that school.74 In 1926, the Anglicans complained that the clothing cupboards at the new Anglican school on the Blood Reservein Alberta lacked the top shelf that had been included in the new Catholic school on
the same reserve. Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham said the shelf had been addedat the Catholic school as an afterthought, and predicted, “If we have to supply every
school in the country with exactly the same accommodation and equipment, ourtroubles are only beginning.”75 These conflicts were never-ending: when members of
the Indian and Eskimo Commission of the Missionary Society of the Anglican Church
in Canada met with the minister of Indian Affairs in the spring of 1938, high on theirlist of concerns was “the injustice of limiting the Church of England in the Provinceof Saskatchewan to three Residential Schools for 3904 Anglican Indians while nine
Schools of this class were provided for 5637 Roman Catholic Indians.”76
The federal government attempted to limit the conflict. In the 1890s, Hayter Reedissued a reminder to all employees that Indian Affairs insisted “upon strict neutrality

216 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

being maintained by its Officers and Employees with regard to religious matters.”
He also stated that care was to be taken to ensure that parents of one denomination
were not pressured to send their children to the school of a different denomination.
Furthermore, parental consent, preferably in writing, was required before children
were to be sent to a school operated by a denomination other than the one to which
the parents belonged.77
The federal government sought to establish zones of influence for each faith. In
1892, Reed opposed the construction of a Roman Catholic industrial school nearPrince Albert, pointing out that such a location would “place the Institution in immediate communication with several Protestant reserves.” In the past, he said, he had
successfully discouraged the Anglicans from establishing a school at Duck Lake andthe Methodists from opening one at Fort Alexander, both of which were viewed as
being located in areas of Roman Catholic influence.78 However, the policy of attempting to establish zones of interest ran in direct opposition to the government’s practice, dating from at least 1891, of sending children of Protestant parents to Protestantschools, and the children of Catholic parents to Catholic schools.79 While it was common for churches to view some areas as their own, neither the Protestants nor the
Catholics were prepared to abandon any territory. The result was the clustering ofProtestant and Catholic schools, often only a few kilometres from each other, such as
in southwestern Alberta, southeastern Saskatchewan, and northwestern Ontario. In
1927, Indian Affairs was concerned by Catholic missionary activity on the east coastof Hudson Bay, an area that had been, to that point, largely an Anglican preserve. In
a letter to church authorities, the department, expressing concerns about controlling
costs of education, warned that “denominations should respect the zones of interest
which have been established and not encroach upon them by the extension of missionary effort upon which a demand for separate educational institutions might beafterwards based.” The department would not “recognize requests for aid to educational institutions unless by pre-arrangement.”80 This, however, generally proved to bean empty threat.
Church-led expansion also meant that schools were established in remote northern locations where Aboriginal economies were flourishing. Many government officials believed that, because of the separation from their families while they attended
school, the children who graduated from such schools lacked the skills they would
need to support themselves by living off the land. When one such school burned
down in 1927, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott noted he had
never been a “whole-hearted supporter” of residential schools in northern Canada.
“It seemed to me very doubtful whether the separation of Indian children from theirparents who are gaining their livelihood in the aboriginal fashion was really conducive to their welfare, and I should like to give very serious consideration to the wholeEstablishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 217

problem before any further schools are constructed.”81 Despite his reservations, theschool was rebuilt.82
The government also could not stop the expansion of the school system into
northern Québec. The Anglicans began lobbying in 1922 for support to turn their day
school in Fort George, Québec, into a residential school.83 Their appeals were turned
down by federal officials who appeared to believe Fort George was in Ontario.84 The
Oblates opened a school in Fort George in the fall of 1931, recruiting many students
from Anglican families.85 In the face of this challenge, the Anglicans opened a boarding school in the community in 1932.86 Two years later, the federal government beganfunding the Anglican school.87 By 1937, a Catholic boarding school in the community
was receiving federal funding.88

Funding in the Conservative era: 1883–1896
Just as the government struggled—and failed—to control the growth of the school
system, it also was not able to properly fund it. In his 1883 instructions to Battlefordprincipal Thomas Clarke, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney had stressed that“the strictest economy must be practised in all particulars.”89 From the outset of thesystem, the government was under the spell of two delusions. The first was that theschools would be relatively inexpensive to build. In 1883, Dewdney had estimatedthat the construction costs for the High River and Qu’Appelle schools would be $6,000
each.90 The winning bid for the construction of the High River school was $7,720.91 By
September 1884, the total construction costs of the two schools had reached $29,920.92
The second, more long-lasting, delusion was that the schools would be inexpensive to operate because the churches and the students would be a source of cheap
labour. In announcing the construction of the three initial industrial schools, Edgar
Dewdney said that although the starting costs would be high, he could see no reason
why the schools would not be largely self-supporting in a few years, due to the skills
in farming, raising stock, and trades that were being taught to the students.93 Deputy
Minister Vankoughnet, in support of the Anglican proposal for two industrial schoolsin Manitoba, enthused to Prime Minister Macdonald:
It would be well to give a Grant of money annually to each school establishedby any Denomination for the industrial training of Indian children. This systemprevails in Ontario, and it has been found to work very satisfactorily. It costs theGovernment less than the whole maintenance of the School would cost and it
enlists the sympathies and assistance of the religious denominations in the education and industrial training of the Indian children.94

218 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The missionaries and the students were indeed a source of cheap labour—but the
government was never happy with the quality of the teaching and, no matter how hard
students worked, their labour never made the schools self-supporting.
The two types of residential schools were funded at different levels. Until the
beginning of the 1890s, the boarding schools were funded at a rate of between $50
and $60 per month.95 Although three of the major schools in Ontario (Shingwauk in
Sault Ste. Marie, Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, and Mount Elgin in Muncey)
were often referred to as “industrial schools,” they were funded at the boarding schoolrate. According to Indian Affairs annual reports, the fourth major Ontario school, theMohawk Institute, did not receive federal funding until 1892.96 Boarding school rates
increased slightly in that year, and ranged from $50 to $72 per capita.97
As noted earlier, the federal government covered all the costs associated with theoperation of the first three industrial schools (Battleford, Qu’Appelle, and High River).
In 1891, the industrial school per capita rates for British Columbia and Manitoba were$130 and $100, respectively.98 Other industrial schools were funded on a per capita basis, although this varied from year to year. In 1891, the Kamloops, Cranbrook,
Kuper Island, Middlechurch, St. Boniface, and Elkhorn schools (along with the three
initial industrial schools) were being funded on a per capita basis.99 By the following
year, Indian Affairs was paying all expenses for the Kamloops and Cranbrook schools,
along with schools at Regina and Metlakatla, and the three original schools.100
The government was alarmed by the costs of operating the three industrial schools
it had established in the North-West Territories. To control those costs, Indian Affairs
instructed principals to cut salaries in 1888 and again in 1891.101 Dewdney, whobecame minister of Indian Affairs in 1891, continued to underestimate how much it
would cost to operate the schools. In his opinion, industrial spending was “unnecessarily high.” If the schools were to continue to operate, costs would have to be “definedwithin the narrowest limits consistent with efficiency,” and the schools would have tograduate more pupils.102 The spending cuts did not take into account the actual cost of
running the schools. According to an internal government memorandum in 1891, thetotal per capita costs at the Kamloops and Kuper Island schools in British Columbia
were $153.40 and $157.69, respectively—while the per capita grant was $130.103
The cuts of 1889 and 1891 were not enough to reduce spending to the level Dewdney
thought appropriate. By 1892, the respective costs of the Qu’Appelle, Battleford, andHigh River schools, if converted to per capita rates, were $134.67, $175.45, and $185.55,
respectively.104 At that time, none of these three schools were particularly successful.
During the 1885 North-West Rebellion, all the students left the Battleford and HighRiver schools, and the principals had great difficulty in recruiting replacements.
As Hayter Reed, then Indian commissioner, noted, “It had been necessary in someinstances to take pupils irrespective of their suitability in point of health and age.”105

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 219

An 1892 assessment of the three schools showed that of the 664 students who had
been admitted since the schools had opened less than a decade earlier, 81 were dead.
Of the 198 students who had been discharged, 85 were viewed as not having spentenough time in school to demonstrate any results; of the rest, 96 were judged as doing
either “very well” or “fairly well.” Four were “doing badly.”106
In his 1892 annual report, Reed defended the industrial schools, saying that “results
need not be expected until after such institutions have been in operation for some few
years, and it is entirely in the faith of deferred results that the cost of the preliminary
years is undertaken.”107 The department, however, was planning to reduce its level ofinvestment in students. A federal Order-in-Council (an order approved by the federal
Cabinet, which, once approved by the governor general, has force of law), adopted in
the fall of 1892, placed these three schools on the per capita system. The new rates for
Qu’Appelle, Battleford, and High River were $115, $140, and $130 a year (reductionsof 15%, 20%, and 30%), respectively. The newly constructed Regina school was givena per capita grant of $120.
Under the Order-in-Council, which was applied to all industrial schools, repair was
to be a shared responsibility: the government was to supply the material; the churches,
the labour.108 The government was also to supply the books, maps, and globes. From
the annual per capita grant, the churches were to pay for maintenance, salaries, andexpenses. The government would authorize the school’s pupilage.
The churches were obliged to follow “the rules of the Indian Department as laid
down from time to time and to keep the schools at a certain standard of instruction, dietary and domestic comfort, and … the Inspectors and Officers of the Indian
Department may at any time inspect and report upon the Institutions.” No child wasto be admitted to the school without the department’s approval. The system was to go
into effect in July 1893.109 By 1895, the Battleford and Middlechurch schools were theonly ones having all their expenses paid, although, in subsequent years, the federal
government would cover all costs for the start-up years of a new industrial school.110
By ending its brief experiment with providing full funding to industrial schools, thefederal government was in large measure seeking to absolve itself of responsibility
for the operation of residential schooling. It would provide set amounts of funding,which it would arbitrarily increase or decrease in response to its own fiscal needs.
It would be up to the churches (often with the assistance of student labour) to feed,
clothe, educate, and train their students on the basis of the per capita grant. Failures
were generally ascribed to poor management and a lack of zeal. A low per capita grant
contributed to the schools’ inability to recruit their full pupilage. But, if they did not
recruit their full pupilage, they did not receive their full grant—even though they had
to pay all their operating costs. To make up the difference, staff and students would
have to ‘do without.’ To recruit a full pupilage, schools might recruit students who
were too young or too sick. A wide age range among students diluted the schools’220 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 11.4. Outcome for High River, Battleford, and Qu’Appelle schools from opening,as reported in Indian Affairs annual report for 1892.
Schools

No. admitted

Dead

Girls

38

4

Boys

118

6

Total

156

10

Transferred

Discharged

Not traceable

14

1

1

65

7

1

79

8

High River

Battleford
Girls

56

7

Boys

100

12

1

22

3
4

Total

156

19

1

25

4

Girls

175

25

1

35

Boys

177

27

7

59

1

Total

352

52

8

94

1

Total for all schools

664

81

10

198

13

Qu’Appelle

Source: Canada, Annual Report for the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 53.

ability to provide a meaningful education, and many of the students were simply too
young for trades training. The presence of children with infectious diseases often had
tragic implications. These were the implications of the per capita model.
The limitations of the per capita system were apparent from the outset. By 1893, theAnglicans in Manitoba were ready to turn the Middlechurch school over to the government. The school could only break even with eighty students, but had managed torecruit only forty-three. The General Committee of the Rupert’s Land Indian Industrial
School called for the per capita system to be scrapped in favour of a fixed annual grant.
The committee also sought a freer hand in the operation of the school, arguing thatenrolment and funding were hampered by the department’s arbitrary rules.111 Reedsought to put the blame on the church, saying that other schools, after a short periodof time, had been successful in getting parents to acquiesce to the attendance rules.
When students were contented, “parents very seldom make any strong effort to takethem away.” The teachers at the Middlechurch school, he wrote, did not have the “personal magnetism” necessary to secure the students’ confidence, and therefore had torely on “a harshness and severity of punishment fatal to the prospects of success.” Reedclaimed that, on his visits to the school, the students lacked the “cheerful demeanor
and alacrity of friendly response met with in kindred Institutions.”112
This was not the only time Reed attributed the system’s shortcomings to the personalities of the school staff. After a visit to the Battleford school in 1890, Reed wrote that

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 221

Not in school longenough to show results

Doing very
well

Doing fairly
well

Doing
badly

Schools
High River

5

4

4

Girls

44

12

2

Boys

49

16

6

Total
Battleford

2

1

5

8

5

Boys

Girls

7

9

5

Total
Qu’Appelle

14

18

2

1

Girls

15

29

11

3

Boys

29

47

13

4

Total

85

72

24

4

Total for all schools

the principal still had much to do if he was to “comply with instructions then issued
for the better Government of the Institution.” In particular, he said, “Discipline is notwhat it should be, neither is proper regard had to making the children speak English.
During the whole time of my visit there appeared to be a marked lack of endeavour
upon the part of the officials to see that they used English in preference to the vernacular.”113 In 1891, Reed attributed many of the Qu’Appelle school’s problems to a similarlack of firmness. 114
Despite repeated salary reductions, the schools could not survive on the per capita
grant. Both the High River and Qu’Appelle schools emerged from the first year on the
per capita system with deficits.115 By January 1895, Reed had to acknowledge that the
deficits at the Qu’Appelle, High River, and Elkhorn schools had been increasing frommonth to month, “without any apparent effort having been made to check or diminish
them.” The problem was, he wrote, that the churches were paying competitive rates
for staff. This was not what the government expected. Echoing Davin and Dewdney,
Reed took the position that, since the work was “of a philanthropic and missionary
character, and the churches have facilities for obtaining, through various societies,
men and women to whom remuneration for such work is a minor consideration, it
seems only reasonable that a lower, rather than higher rate, as compared with otherservices, should obtain.” Reed, who had once opposed church involvement in the222 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school system, was now a convert to the view that the system could succeed as longas church men and women were willing to do the work for less than market rates.116
He also thought the staff was eating too well at the Regina school. Having examined
the school expenditures, he had concluded that some food items “might be regarded
as luxuries.” He noted that clothing that should have been manufactured in theschools was being purchased. When it came to household items, he said the schools
were often “positively extravagant.” Reed instructed Indian Commissioner Amédée
Forget to reduce costs at the schools. If all other measures failed, he was to cut wages
and lay off staff.117
This tough approach was difficult to implement. In 1896, the St. Boniface school
had a $2,500 deficit, which the government covered. The following year, its per capita
grant was increased.118 One year later, in January 1898, Indian Affairs informed theprincipals of industrial schools that it would no longer be providing assistance in paying off the deficits incurred by their schools.119
It is clear that the government had only a limited understanding of the financing ofmany of the schools. In 1902, four schools in Ontario were receiving per capita grants
of $60. The Shingwauk school had a considerable deficit: this was, in Benson’s opinion, because the principal, E. F. Wilson, when establishing the school, had “an eye forthe beautiful but none for the practical necessities of the work to be carried on as thegreater portion of the 95 acres they own is unproductive.” He did not think the school
could count on grants from the Anglican Church, whose members were, according
to Benson, “not specially notorious for free giving to missions.” For this reason, he
recommended the government cover the school deficit, since “it furnishes the bestEnglish and Industrial education of any of the Ontario schools, numbers of boys having passed through and taken up the white man’s burden.”Benson felt the other three Ontario schools, Mount Elgin in Muncey, the Mohawk
Institute in Brantford, and Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, were in much better financial shape than Shingwauk. He noted that the Mohawk Institute “has a liberal grant from the New England Company, Mr. Sheppard of Mt. Elgin is an extensive
stock dealer and makes it pay, while I have never found the Jesuits, who conduct the
Wikwemikong school, to be unable to find money when they want it.”120 A month later,
Benson revised his views about Mount Elgin. Principal Sheppard had informed him
that, despite his expansion into stock farming, he was not able to make ends meet.
Benson also observed that the financial records provided by the school showed nocontribution from the Methodist Missionary Society. The principal argued for a doubling of the per capita rate, and while Benson was unenthusiastic about the education
provided at the school, he recognized that, without an increase, “financial disaster”
was inevitable.121
That same year, Benson found himself compelled to argue for a payment of the full
grant to the Regina school, even though the enrolment did not justify such a payment.

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 223

If the government were to fund the school simply on the basis of enrolment, the school
would have a deficit, which, Benson recognized, would eventually end up at the government’s door.122

Residential schooling under the Liberals
The drive for economy intensified after 1896, when the Liberal Party under Sir
Wilfrid Laurier won the federal election. In opposition, the Liberals had maintainedthat Indian Affairs was staffed by corrupt, incompetent, and often immoral political
appointees. They had also raised questions about the effectiveness of the residential
schools.123 In 1895, Liberal mp David Mills argued that, in the absence of a coherent plan, control of the direction of Aboriginal education had been captured by the
churches. The time was approaching, he suggested, when the government should
consider taking over the industrial schools.124 Liberal mp James McMullen opposed
the connection between church and state that the schools represented. In 1893,
mp Louis Davis of Prince Edward Island said that if the churches wished to evangelize Aboriginal youth, they should do so at their own expense. He also worried thatchurches would place religious education ahead of practical education.125
Upon taking office, Laurier appointed Manitoba lawyer and newspaper publisher
Clifford Sifton to serve as both minister of the interior and minister of Indian Affairs.
Sifton viewed himself as the minister of western development—his major accomplishment was to bring about a dramatic increase in immigration to western Canada.126
Having concluded that “in the organized portion of the country there is no Indian
population that may be considered dangerous so far as the peace of the country isconcerned,” he reduced the Indian Affairs budget.127 He made his first cut at the top:
Hayter Reed was dismissed as deputy minister and was not replaced. Instead, Sifton’s
new deputy of the interior, James Smart, also served as the deputy of Indian Affairs.128
Much of the day-to-day operation of Indian Affairs was left in the hands of the department secretary, J. D. McLean.129 Within two years of Sifton’s appointment, fifty-sevenof the department’s employees in the North-West either resigned or were dismissed.
While many were replaced, overall, the number of department employees declined
from 144 to 133 in that period. Departmental salaries were also cut, in some cases
by up to 25%.130 Education was not to be spared in this cost-cutting exercise. Sifton
announced that spending on education had reached its peak. In the future, he said,
the government intended to cut education spending.131
Martin Benson, who had been with Indian Affairs for four years, prepared twodevastating critiques of the industrial schools for the new minister in 1897.132 Benson
judged the industrial schools’ mandate to be too ambitious, and concluded that the
Canadian system had been modelled too closely on the Carlisle school in the United224 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

States.133 In Canada, he said, “the education and civilization of the Western Indians isstill in its infancy and we should be content to let them creep for a time before theyattempt to walk. It is only a few years since they were wild untamed savages, living by
the chase, hunting in small bands or families.”
According to Benson, not more than one-half of the 700 male students attending
the ten industrial schools in Manitoba and the Northwest had been taught to farm. The
other half needed to undergo apprenticeships before they could find work. Where, he
asked, would the government find work for 200 apprentices in a year? The churches,
he said, “do not bestir themselves, so far as I am aware, to secure employment for
ex-pupils.”134 The situation was no better in British Columbia, where, he thought, theschools were both unnecessary and useless, since the First Nations people “are all
experts in the industries and pursuits they are engaged in [fishing, mining, raisingstock, and railway work] and the time spent in these schools will not help to fit themfor their after work.”135
He even drew aim at those former students who were portrayed as doing well.
Gilbert Bear, who had been taught the printing trade at the Battleford school, wasoften cited as an industrial school ‘success story,’ having gone on to work for the
Ottawa Citizen. But, according to Benson, Bear was not making enough to pay for hisboard and clothing, and hated the night-shift hours he worked. When he was fired ina dispute over his hours, Benson helped him get his job back, but said Bear “would
rather be back home on the reserve.”136
He accused the industrial schools of “trying to over-run the country with a lot of
half-trained and half-educated so-called Industrial pupils. The needs of the country
do not call for all the different trades pupils even if they were turned out as finishedworkmen.” In his opinion, there was no point in teaching printing, shoemaking, andtailoring; it was far better to train the next generation of Aboriginal people to farm. For
this, the only trades they needed to learn were carpentry and blacksmithing.137 Benson
explicitly compared Ryerson’s proposals of 1847—which stressed agricultural training—with Davin’s more ambitious 1879 report, and concluded that Ryerson’s focus on
training farmers was “the one best suited to the present generation of Indians.” In forty
years’ time, “more elaborate training might be successful.”138
Benson not only thought the schools’ ambitions were too extravagant, but he also
saw little evidence that they were, in fact, industrial schools. Students were admitted tothe industrial schools at ages varying from four to twenty. “Once they were admitted,
little if any distinction is made among pupils of the same sex as regards food, clothing,study, work, recreation, moral and religious training, rest and sleep.”139 He could notsee much difference between the industrial schools and the boarding schools, otherthan the fact that one class of school was much better funded than the other. In British
Columbia, he thought, the industrial school rate of $130 per pupil was overly generous, given the climate and cost of living. In his opinion, there was little differenceEstablishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 225

between the Coqualeetza Institute near Chilliwack, which received the industrial rateof $130, and the St. Mary’s boarding school at Mission, which received the boarding
school per capita rate of $60.140
He laid some of the blame for the system’s failure on Indian Affairs staff. Many
Indian agents looked upon school-related work “as an extra duty which is performed
in a very perfunctory manner.”141 He was even more critical of the churches and schoolstaff, questioning whether a “priest or parson is best fitted by education, training or
profession to assume the direct control and management of such institutions.” Theschools were further handicapped by frequent changes in staff and “constant bickering and petty jealousies.”142 In recommending that “ignoramuses, idlers, time-killers
and salary grabbers should not be employed,” Benson makes it clear he thought they
were present, and in significant numbers.143
He also echoed the views of many department staff in his conclusion that, by subsidizing teacher-missionaries, the industrial schools were government-funded extensions of the churches’ missionary work. When the schools were first established, hesaid, “too much power and control was placed in the hands of the Church authorities, and it will require the exercise of considerable tact to curtail these powers andwithdraw some of the concessions made to them.” The churches, he felt, showed too
much independence in the hiring of staff: “Teachers, until lately, were removed andreplaced without consulting the Department, and complaints of incompetency weremade without action being taken by them.”144
Benson did not recommend that the residential school system be abandoned.
What was needed, he felt, was a government takeover of the system. He noted thatthroughout the British Empire, “where a native population still remains, steps havebeen taken for the establishment of Industrial Training schools, which are supported
wholly, or in part, by the Government, and it is now universally conceded that such
Institutions afford the best known means of training the aborigines in habits of industry and the formation of character.”145 Canada was still drawing on the experience of
the British Empire globally in developing its Canadian residential school policy.
Deputy Minister Smart signalled in his 1897 annual report that the pendulum wasnow swinging against industrial schools. By then, there were 22 industrial schools,
compared with 31 boarding schools and 232 day schools. As for enrolment, industrial schools had 1,877 students, boarding schools had 874, and day schools had 6,877.
Smart wrote:
There is a natural tendency to run to extremes, and it seems questionable
whether the recognition of the undoubted advantages of boarding and industrial schools has not tended to an undervaluation of day schools on the reserves,which in the older provinces especially have done, and are doing a work by nomeans to be despised. It is true that the transformation from the natural condition to that of civilization can be more speedily and thoroughly accomplished226 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

by means of boarding and industrial schools, but even then it is questionable
whether the day school should not provide the initial stage of preparation for the
benefits of the boarding and industrial institutions.
There certainly seems reason to pause before further extending these industrial
schools, and before doing so the capacity of those already established should
be utilized to the extreme limit. Education must be considered with relation
to the future of the pupils, and only the certainty of some practical results canjustify the large expense entailed upon the country by the maintenance of theseschools. To educate children above the possibilities of their station, and createa distaste for what is certain to be their environment in life would be not only awaste of money but doing them an injury instead of conferring a benefit uponthem.146

Two years later, in 1899, Sifton announced the government “would not be extending the industrial school system, but where an extension is required, adding to thenumber of boarding schools.”147 In 1904, he told the House of Commons that while
industrial schools would continue to operate, they were no longer the centrepiece ofthe government’s First Nations education policy.
We have substituted a less elaborate system; a system of what we call boarding
schools where a larger number of children can for a shorter time be educatedmore economically and generally more effectively. What we desire to do is not togive a highly specialized education to half a dozen out of a large band of Indians,
but if possible to distribute over the whole band a moderate amount of education and intelligence, so that the general status of the band would be raised.148

In downgrading the industrial schools, Sifton was expressing a belief that First
Nations people were not ready to benefit from the types of training these schools wereintended to offer. “You cannot take the child of the ordinary prairie Indian, put him in
an industrial school, keep him there until he is twenty-one years of age and turn him
loose to make his living amongst white men. He has not the physical, mental or moral
get-up to enable him to compete. He cannot do it.”149(In his speeches, Sifton was insistent that, under the Conservatives, students were
kept in boarding schools until they were in their early twenties.150 While there may
have been examples of this, it does not appear to have been the general practice.)
In a highly critical assessment of the industrial schools on the Prairies, written
in 1902, Benson pointed out that since 1882, $2.1 million had been spent on industrial schools in Manitoba and the North-West Territories. This was for four schools in
Manitoba (Brandon, 1895; Elkhorn, 1888; Middlechurch, 1890; and St. Boniface, 1889)
and six in the North-West Territories (Battleford, 1883; Calgary, 1896; Qu’Appelle, 1884;
Red Deer, 1893; Regina, 1891; and High River, 1884). The government also had spent$750,000 on five boarding schools in Manitoba and twenty-nine in the North-WestEstablishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 227

Territories. In addition, $250,000 had been spent on forty-five day schools in Manitoba
and thirty-four day schools in the North-West Territories.
Of the total of 2,752 students who had been enrolled since 1883, as of June 30, 1901,
almost one-fifth, 506, had died, with another 139 reported to be in poor health. A
total of 1,700 students had been “discharged” (the formal term for removing a childfrom the enrolment record), of whom 86 had transferred to other schools. The government could not report on the condition of another 249. Another 123 were judged
to have “turned out badly,” while 599 students were “doing well.” Benson suggested
that “doing well” should be interpreted as meaning “not doing badly.” By his count,“the cost of educating Indians who have not died or utterly failed amounts to $4000 ahead.” In his opinion, there were enough schools on the Prairies to meet the educational needs of First Nations children. However, the churches continued to lobby forresidential schools because “the life of the mission is in most cases dependent on theestablishment of the boarding school.” The schools, Benson wrote, should focus on
the “improvement, not the transformation of the Indian.” Schools were not providing
the “practical lessons in self-support” that were needed.151
Conditions were no better at the boarding schools. As Anglican Church accountant
F. Van Thiel wrote in 1899, under the per capita funding system, “it has been the aim of
those interested in the work to increase the number of children at the schools not only
for the good of Christian work, but also to increase the assets.” Spending under these
conditions was limited to the “bare necessities.”152
Benson did recognize the need to increase funding. In 1902, he recommended
that the government cover the Shingwauk school’s deficit.153 In the following year, herecommended that the per capita grant for all four Ontario boarding schools (Mount
Elgin, the Mohawk Institute, Wikwemikong, and the Shingwauk Home) be increased
from $60 to $100.154 Instead, the boarding school grant remained at $60 until 1911,
even though Benson wrote of Mount Elgin that “with the increased cost of living aschool of this class cannot be carried on with a per capita grant of $60.”155 When evaluating whether the government should pick up the Regina school’s deficit in 1903,
Benson wrote that “although the Department has paid deficits for many of the industrial schools in the past, it did so as a matter of grace, and not of right.”156 The following
year, he judged the Lestock school in what is now Saskatchewan to be “the most satisfactorily managed” boarding school in the Northwest. Despite this, the school ran
a deficit of $1,000.157 Regina principal R. B. Heron concluded in 1905 that the cost of
running the school was $11,300, while the per capita for full enrolment would fall significantly short of that at $9,425.158

228 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Samuel Blake and the campaign to close residential schools
During the ten years that Sifton served as minister of Indian Affairs (1896 to 1905),
there was little growth in the system. Under his successor, Frank Oliver, a campaign led
by dominant figures within the Protestant missionary organizations nearly resulted ina significant reduction in the size of the residential school system. Two men playeda central role in this campaign: Frank Pedley, who was appointed deputy minister ofIndian Affairs in 1902; and Samuel Blake, a prominent Toronto lawyer and member ofthe evangelical wing of the Anglican Church.159
In his 1904 annual report, Pedley indicated that the government was prepared to
re-evaluate the residential schools.
The questions have been raised repeatedly as to whether the existing method of
education by day, boarding and industrial school as at present distributed andconducted is the best that can be devised for the education of the Indian youth,
and again as to whether the potentialities of these schools are being exhausted.
The many difficulties in the way of providing and inducing parents to accept for
their children such educational advantages as may seem best suited for theirseveral environments, their present requirements and future prospects, havebeen repeatedly pointed out.

The government was planning to go into these “most important questions exhaustively at an early date.” He expected to receive valuable assistance from “the various
religious denominations whose experience, co-operation and interest in the work
place them in the best possible position to render it.”160
As a leading member of the Toronto legal and political establishment, Blake waswell placed to provide the sort of assistance Pedley sought for a campaign to dramatically reduce the number of residential schools and replace them with what were to be
termed “Improved Day Schools.”
Blake had come to believe that the residential schools were a drain on church
resources. This was of particular significance, since the British-based Church of
England had begun the slow process of transferring responsibility for support of its
work with Aboriginal people in Canada to the Canadian Anglican Church (also referred
to as the “Church of England in Canada”). The British-based Church Missionary
Society announced in 1903 that it was phasing out its support for missions in Canada
and shifting its work to “the densely populated portions of the Heathen World.”161
A key event in this process was the 1902 establishment of the Missionary Societyof the Church of England in Canada (mscc). The mscc brought together a varietyof Anglican missionary organizations with the intent of assuming responsibility for
the work of the British-based Church Missionary Society.162 As a result, the mscc,
which raised most of its money in eastern Canada, was increasingly called upon toEstablishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 229

provide financial support for residential schools in the West. Blake, who served on the
mscc’s management board, questioned the effectiveness of this spending. In 1902,
in his words, he began to “procure such statistics as would throw light upon the correctness of the pleasing reports, almost universally presented for information by the
Principals, Missionaries, and others immediately engaged in carrying on the work.”163
In an inflammatory pamphlet entitled Don’t you hear the red man calling?, Blake used
capital letters to emphasize his belief that “there was justly a general and strong
feeling of dissatisfaction with the mode in which work among the indiansof the northwest and british columbia was being carried on.”164 The pamphlet also included damning quotes from leading western and northern Canadian
Anglicans to support Blake’s case. The Bishop of Qu’Appelle was cited as writing in
1906 that he had “always considered the expense of the boarding schools is much too
great for its relative importance to the general work of the diocese.”165 The Bishop of
Saskatchewan wrote in the same year, “The present system of management of Indiansin the west is wasteful, detrimental to the Indians, and calculated only to find places
and jobs.”166 The Bishop of Moosonee wrote of “the appalling death-rate amongst thechildren,” and recommended that “instead of schools it may be better to establish two
small institutions, one west and the other east, for the training of native teachers andClergy.”167
Blake was a strong supporter of the work of the Indian Affairs chief medical officer,
Dr. Peter Bryce, whose 1907 report drew national attention to the high death rates inthe schools. (Bryce’s work is discussed in more detail in a subsequent chapter.) To
those who said that Bryce’s conclusions were based on brief visits to a limited numberof schools, Blake responded, “What could he have found out if his visit had been prolonged?”168 Blake noted that at Emmanuel College residential school in Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, nearly one-quarter of the students (32 of 133) who had passed throughthe school during a seventeen-year period had died.169
Blake said, “The competition of getting in pupils to earn the government grantseems to blind the heads of these institutions and to render them quite callous to theshocking results which flow from this highly improper means of adding to the funds oftheir institutions.”170 The Bishop of Moosonee confirmed Blake’s view:I also admit that in a majority of schools unhealthy children have been admitted
and allowed to sleep in the same dormitories with healthy ones; also that thedormitories have generally been overcrowded and very imperfectly ventilated. It
is also true that in many cases the teachers have been untrained and incompetent.

He did point out that the Indian agents had long been aware of these issues.171
Arguing that students were corrupted by their time in the schools, Blake quoted
one unnamed western Canadian lawyer as saying, “When they leave the schools the230 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

boys are thieves and the girls are prostitutes.” The lawyer claimed it had recently been
discovered that every member of a ring of thirteen cattle thieves was a residential
school graduate.172 Blake also judged the schools to be a failure in winning converts
to the church: in Algoma Diocese, for example, after eighty years of expensive work,
there were, at most, 700 Anglicans—many of whom, he suspected, were Anglican in
name only.173
The pamphlet angered many Anglican missionaries and school principals, but
Blake was able to gain the support of the leaders of the Presbyterian and Methodist
national missionary associations, each of which was facing similar financial pressures.
A 1904 Presbyterian inquiry into the relations between the Regina industrial school
and the surrounding boarding schools had concluded that the boarding schools were
healthier and more popular with parents, and provided students with more attention,
while costing only half as much as industrial schools.174
As a result of Blake’s work, the three Protestant churches held several meetings
in Winnipeg, followed by a meeting in Toronto in April 1907, at which they agreed
to a joint memorandum. Beyond the regular church calls for compulsory education
and an extension on the period of time that students could be kept in school, theProtestant churches proposed that the government take over the full cost of funding
the schools. Despite this, the churches remained anxious “to continue to co-operatewith the Government in the civilization and Christianization of the Indians.”
Since spiritual and moral development were seen as such an important part of theeducational work, the churches argued that, even after they had stopped providing
any funding for the system, they should be allowed to appoint the teachers, albeit “onterms to be mutually agreed upon.”175 The churches had asked for a salary of $500 ayear for day school teachers, up from $300—a rate that had been deemed insufficient
two decades earlier. They also wanted to see the per capita grant raised from $60 to$100 for all schools in Ontario, and to $130 for all schools farther west. In addition, thegovernment should be responsible for “the cost of material for the plant,” including
plumbing, heating, and other fixtures. The government was also to make the schools
sanitary and sufficiently ventilated and to provide needed medical services. Under
this arrangement, the churches were prepared to cover deficits.176 A second memorandum recommended that the number of industrial schools be reduced to three.177
The Protestants’ apparent willingness to close schools, coupled with their desire
to increase the per capita rates for those schools that would remain open, created an
opportunity for Pedley. By 1908, the deputy minister had concluded that, rather thanestablishing industrial schools in the West in the 1880s, it would have been wiser tohave carried out such education on the reserves, providing training to both children
and adults (who had been disregarded in the past as being beyond redemption). He
had, in fact, begun closing industrial schools. By 1907, he was considering closing
the Metlakatla school in British Columbia, had closed the Calgary school in Alberta,

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 231

and had declined to rebuild the Middlechurch school in Manitoba after it had been
destroyed by fire in 1903. All three of those schools had been operated by the Anglican
Church. Now, he wanted to close the Presbyterian school in Regina and the Anglican
school in Elkhorn, Manitoba. The older students from those schools were to be transferred to the Methodist school in Brandon, which provided agricultural training to students from northern Manitoba. He also proposed closing eleven Protestant boarding
schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Pedley noted that in British Columbia, the First
Nations people were largely self-sufficient. As a result, he felt, “the policy of removing
the children from their parents and separating them from the ordinary vocations bywhich in their future lives they must obtain a living is questionable.” In addition toclosing the Metlakatla school, Pedley proposed no increases in the per capita rate or
additional capital expenditures for schools in that province.178 (In a subsequent letter,
Pedley dropped the Onion Lake and Blood Reserve schools from the list of proposed
closures.179)
With the money that would be saved by these closures, he proposed to establish
what he termed “an improved type of day school” on the reserves formerly servedby the schools that were being closed. These replacement schools would employ ateacher, his wife (who would offer domestic instruction to women on the reserve),
and a nurse, and would provide “a nutritious and simple” meal at midday and agricultural training. While a number of existing industrial schools would continue in operation, in the future, residential schooling would be restricted to districts where First
Nations people had not settled on reserves. In all, he believed that his proposals would
see total education spending rise from $445,337 to $521,768. At $378,860, residential
schooling would remain the largest component of this budget.180
Pedley had the support of the new Indian Affairs minister, Frank Oliver, who had
succeeded Sifton in 1905. Before becoming minister, Oliver made it clear that he did
not view First Nations people as full Canadians. In 1897, he had told Parliament that
“we are educating these Indians to compete industrially with our own people, which
seems to me a very undesirable use of public money, or else we are not able to educate them to compete, in which case our money is thrown away.”181 Once he became
minister, he adopted measures specifically intended to facilitate the surrender ofIndian reserve land to non-native settlers. While he said that a First Nations person“should not be deprived of his right without his consent,” if the rights of settlers andFirst Nations were to come into conflict, he made it clear that “the interests of thewhites will have to be provided for.”182 Nonetheless, he had strong reservations about
the residential school system. He questioned the policy of separating children fromtheir parents, both as a failure in and of itself, and as a betrayal of a fundamental religious teaching. In a letter to Blake of January 28, 1908, Oliver wrote:
My belief is that the attempt to elevate the Indian by separating the child fromhis parents and educating him as a white man has turned out to be a deplorable

232 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

failure. I believe that the best that can be done for the Indian is to accept thefamily conditions established by Providence, and hope for the elevation of theparents by elevating their children. In other words, that a good day school ona reserve is a better means of improving the conditions of the Indians than theindustrial or even the boarding schools.
The mutual love between parent and child is the strongest influence for betterment in the world, when that influence is absolutely cut apart as in the educationof Indian children in industrial schools the means taken defeats itself. Children
must love and therefore respect parents or they cannot or will not respect themselves. To teach an Indian child that his parents are degraded beyond measure,and that whatever they did or thought was wrong could only result in the childbecoming, as the ex-pupils of industrial schools have become, admittedly andunquestionably very much less desirable elements of society than their parents
who never saw the schools.
I hope you will excuse me for so speaking but one of the most important commandments laid upon the human by the divine is love and respect by children
for parents. It seems strange that in the name of religion a system of education
should have been instituted, the foundation principle which not only ignored
but contradicted this command.183

Thus, with the minister’s support, it appeared that the plan to scale back the system would succeed. The federal government agreed to the Protestant proposal that anadvisory board be established, with two representatives from each of the Protestantchurches. Blake, who was a member of a committee investigating the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada’s work among Aboriginal people, served
as the chair of the first advisory board.184
In the spring of 1909, Pedley presented the Protestants with a detailed proposal forindustrial school closures, coupled with proposals as to how the money saved would
be distributed. The $14,000 that would be saved by closing the Presbyterian-run
Regina school would allow for the Presbyterian boarding school per capita grant to be
increased from $72 to $100, and the pupilage for Presbyterian schools to be increasedby ten to fifteen students, depending on the school. The grants to Presbyterian day
schools would be increased, and the church would be given responsibility for two,
new, “improved type” of day schools.
In exchange for agreeing to the closure of four industrial schools, the Anglicans
would see similar per capita and enrolment increases at boarding schools, be allowed
to open a new boarding school in The Pas (in what is now Manitoba), and have responsibility for three new day schools. In addition, they would receive funding increases
for all thirty-nine Anglican day schools in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta thatwere deemed to be viable.

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 233

Pedley now wished to close the Brandon school. In exchange for agreeing to this,the Methodists would receive an increase in the per capita grant and pupilage at their
Norway House school in what is now Manitoba, and be provided with increased support for sixteen day schools. The government also took the position that, in the caseof the Methodist school at Red Deer, “it might be better at some not far distant date
to close this School and to open a Boarding School” at a location closer to where thestudents lived.185
A subcommittee of the Protestant advisory board accepted the overall proposal,and commented, “While residential schools may be necessary in some localities andmay answer a good purpose for the time being, the Board concurs in the policy of the
Department in establishing wherever possible an improved type of Day School.”186
All Pedley needed now was the agreement of the religious orders that ran the
Roman Catholic schools. He had already closed the St. Boniface industrial school,
while allowing the church to establish three smaller boarding schools in Manitoba
and northwestern Ontario.187 In addition, he wanted to close nine Catholic boarding
schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan.188 It was Pedley’s suggestion that the Catholics
be asked to appoint two representatives to enter into discussions with the government to discuss the proposal. He intended to offer them the same increase in the percapita grant as he had offered the Protestants, along with a reduction in the numberof schools.189
The Catholics certainly were experiencing financial problems at some of theirschools. In March 1908, for example, Qu’Appelle school principal Joseph Hugonnard,
after thanking Oliver for providing $3,000 to help cover the school deficit, pointed outthat the additional grant reduced only half the deficit. Without an increase in the percapita grant, he wrote, the deficit would become permanent.190 Despite such problems, the Catholic leadership refused to accept any proposal for an increase in funding that was tied to a decrease in the number of schools.191
A challenge to Pedley’s and Blake’s plans then arose from within the Protestantchurches. Led by Calgary Anglican Archdeacon J. W. Tims and Red Deer Methodist
school principal Arthur Barner, missionaries in the West inundated Ottawa with lettersand petitions supporting residential schooling. Regina school principal R. B. Heronurged Oliver to convene a conference of principals and others involved directly inschool work before making any changes.192 His proposal was backed by the principalsof the Birtle and Portage la Prairie schools in Manitoba on behalf of the Associationof Indian Workers.193 The Catholics also opposed the plan, with Bishop Emile Legal ofAlberta calling the day school plan “a fallacy and farce.”194
Tims characterized Blake’s criticisms of residential schools as “grossly unfair.” Hesaid that the calls to amalgamate schools were impractical, the shortcomings of theCalgary school were exaggerated, and the death rates were inflated. He added thata great deal of agricultural training was being carried out, that he knew of no former

234 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

student who had become a prostitute, and that “the cases of thieving (in each caseof horses) are very rare.” He argued that medical problems had been overstated by
the government to justify the proposed closure of the schools. “Unless some strong
action can be taken,” Tims warned his fellow Anglicans, “the future education of the
Indians is to be left in the hands of the Roman Catholics.”195 In January, a conventionof Protestant residential school workers in Alberta came out strongly in opposition
to the government proposals. After the conference, Red Deer principal Barner wrote
to Blake that day schools in Alberta were about as appropriate as it would be for a
farmer in northern Alberta to follow the same farming methods as a farmer in central
Saskatchewan.196
Blake accused his opponents of being little more than a “handful of men blindedby their local interest.”197 He maintained that since the “members of the Church in theeastern portions of Canada contributed over three-fourths of the funds for missionary
purposes, it was but right that they should have a substantial voice in suggesting what
‘re-arrangement or other changes in the field’ should reasonably be made in the interest of the whole Church.”198 His campaign, however, had lost momentum.
In the face of the growing opposition, the government backed down from its plan
to reduce the number of industrial and residential schools. Oliver concluded by thesummer of 1908 that no major changes would be made without “the acceptance by
the Roman Catholic Church of the main features of the proposition and more complete harmony amongst the various local interests of the Protestant churches.”199 The
Catholic Church never accepted the government proposal, while the pro-residential
school faction had gained dominance within the Protestants. Given the church opposition, the federal government abandoned Pedley’s proposal to dramatically reduce
the number of residential schools.

The 1910 contract
In 1909, Duncan Campbell Scott was appointed to the position of superintendentof Indian Education.200 Shortly after his appointment, Scott began to fashion a new
approach to the schooling issue. He began by disavowing the department’s previous
goals for First Nations education. In his first report, Scott wrote:
It was never the policy, nor the end and aim of the endeavour to transform an
Indian into a white man. Speaking in the widest terms, the provision of education
for the Indian is the attempt to develop the great natural intelligence of the raceand to fit the Indian for civilized life in his own environment. It includes not only
a scholastic education, but instruction in the means of gaining a livelihood fromthe soil or as a member of an industrial or mercantile community, and the substitution of Christian ideals of conduct and morals for aboriginal concepts of both.201

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 235

Scott’s statement that it was never the aim to “transform an Indian into a whiteman” is at variance with the facts. The government had been, and continued to be,committed to transforming Aboriginal people economically, politically, culturally,and spiritually. The only real change was that the government was now dropping any
pretense of providing First Nations children with the sorts of skills that would allow
them to move successfully into the broader economy. Scott noted that, while there
were two orders of residential schools (industrial and boarding), “the work carried on
at each is in all essentials the same. The teaching of trades is no longer generally pursued at the industrial schools; carpentry and agriculture are the chief practical subjects, for the boys, and general housewifery for the girls.”202
He also stressed that the schools were a source of social order, and that “without
education and with neglect the Indians would produce an undesirable and often adangerous element in society.” He claimed that schools were providing a social service.
Not only are our schools every day removing intelligent Indian children fromevil surroundings, but they are very often ministering to a class which would beoutcasts without such aid; I refer to the illegitimate offspring of white men andIndian women who are thrown upon their mothers for support, and who have nolegal status as Indians.203

Scott then set about engineering a set of negotiations that led to a new boarding
school funding agreement between the government and the churches in November
1910. The contract provided significant increases in the per capita grant and incentives to improve the quality of the boarding schools. It was based in large measure on
the Protestant proposal of 1908—minus any requirement for school closures. A sign ofthe change in both government and church policy can be detected from the fact that
Archdeacon Tims of Calgary was one of the Anglican Church representatives, while
his fellow Anglican, Blake, who had advocated for school closures, does not appear tohave been present at the meeting.204
In 1910, per capita rates for boarding schools had not been increased since 1891:
they were $60 for schools in eastern Canada and $72 for schools in the West and North.
The new agreement divided the country into three divisions: Eastern, Western, andNorthern. The divisions did not break down along provincial boundaries; for example,
Ontario had schools in all three divisions. There was a single per capita rate for the
Northern Division schools of $125, but in the Eastern Division, the rates could vary
between $80 and $100, and in the West, they could vary between $100 and $125. The
difference in the divisional rates was intended to reflect the higher cost of supplies
in the West and the North. Although they represented an increase, the new boarding
school per capita rates were still below the rates granted to industrial schools underthe 1892 Order-in-Council.

236 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The schools themselves were to be divided into three classes: A, B, and C. (SeeTable 11.5.) Class A schools were church-owned schools in good condition, andwould receive the maximum grant for their division. They had to have substantialbuildings in a good state of repair, with a full basement, a stone or cement foundation,a plentiful supply of pure water throughout the building, a proper system of sanitation, hospital accommodation for students with infectious diseases or tuberculosis,
modern ventilation, adequate space in dormitories and classrooms for the numberof students enrolled, modern heating, and a sufficient land base for farming and gardening. Class B schools were government-owned schools. They would have to meetthe same requirements as Class A schools, but would receive only the minimum per
capita grant for their division. Class C schools were church schools that, while “sanitary and kept in a good state of repair,” did not meet all the requirements of a Class A
school. These schools, which were required to have hospital accommodation, modern ventilation, adequate classroom and dormitory space, and an agricultural landbase, would receive the minimum per capita grant. Schools that upgraded from Class
C to A would receive an increase in funding.
The classification system reflects the poor state of the boarding schools of the day:of the existing sixty-one schools, forty-one were in the lowest class, Class C. Further,
the haphazard nature of the expansion of the boarding school system in the West canbe seen from the fact that seven of the twelve Class A schools were in Ontario.205 The
average per capita grant under this system was $115.206
Table 11.5. Regional breakdown of boarding schools by class, 1910.
Division

Class AClass BClass C

Eastern Division (central Ontario)

6

1

0

Western Division Ontario

1

1

1

Northern Division Ontario

0

0

2

Manitoba222Western Division Saskatchewan

2

2

7

Northern Division Saskatchewan

0

0

2

Western Division Alberta

1

2

8

Northern Division (includes schools in northern Alberta
and the Northwest Territories)

0

0

10

British Columbia

0

0

9

Total

12

8

41

Source: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 3:1, box 48,
file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 237

Class A schools were expected to provide 500 cubic feet (14.1 cubic metres) ofspace per child in each dormitory. On a per-pupil basis, each classroom was to have16 square feet (1.5 square metres) of floor space and 250 square feet (23.2 square
metres) of air space.
Under the provisions of the contract, the churches agreed to “support, maintain,and educate” a specific number of students. They were not to admit any child under
the age of seven and required permission from Indian Affairs to keep a child who wasover the age of eighteen. No child was to be admitted without the approval of IndianAffairs and a doctor’s examination (“where practicable”). The contract limited theschools to children of specific bands. “Half-breed” children could not be admitted
unless a sufficient number of “Indian children” could not be obtained.
The schools also had to be operated according to regulations adopted by the government. The government could determine the number of “teachers, officers, andemployees” who were required at the school. Teachers had to be able to “speak andwrite the English language fluently and correctly and possess such other qualifications as in the opinion of the Superintendent General may be necessary.” There wasno similar provision for French in the contract. The teachers and officers had to bequalified togive the pupils religious instruction at proper times; to instruct the male pupils of
the said school in gardening, farming, and care of stock, or such other industries
as are suitable to their local requirements; to instruct female pupils in cooking,laundry work, needlework, general housewifery and dairy work, where suchdairy work can be carried on; to teach all the pupils in the ordinary branches ofan English education; to teach calisthenics, physical drill and fire drill; to teachthe effects of alcoholic drinks and narcotics on the human system; and how tolive in a healthy manner; to instruct the older advanced pupils in the duties andprivileges of British citizenship, explaining to them the fundamental principlesof the government of Canada, and training them in such knowledge and appreciation of Canada as will inspire them with respect and affection for the country
and its laws.

Despite this long list of required skills, there was no requirement that teachers
would have formal training. The contract also allowed Indian Affairs to require thechurch to remove, “for cause,” any “teacher, officer, employee or pupil.”Students were to be given sufficient clothing, food, lodging, and accommodation
for their “comfort and safety.” With certain exceptions, the churches were to provide tools and equipment. Students and their clothes were to be kept clean and vermin-free, and the schools were to be free from flies, insects, and vermin.
Classes were to be held five days a week and “industrial exercises” were to be held
six days a week. There could be no more than one month of vacation, which was tobe taken between July 1 and October 1 each year. During that month, children were238 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

allowed to visit their homes, but Indian Affairs would “not pay any part of the transportation either going or returning.” The schools were instructed to observe the King’s
Birthday, Victoria Day, Dominion Day, and Thanksgiving Day. The churches were toprovide reports as required and allow Indian Affairs representatives to conduct “thorough and complete” inspections of the schools. Indian Affairs could also order the
churches to make needed changes or alterations to the schools.
The contract placed only three obligations on Indian Affairs: to make quarterly
payments based on the school’s enrolment; to provide medicine, schoolbooks, stationery, and school “appliances”; and to maintain any government-owned buildings ingood repair and to provide for sanitation and “sanitary appliances.” If the government
believed a church was not adhering to the provisions of the contract, the contract
could be cancelled with six months’ notice. 207

The 1910 contract and beyond
The 1910 contract went into effect on April 11, 1911, and was intended to run forfive years. 208 In the first few years after the contract was signed, the federal government
spent $150,000 a year upgrading many of the Class C schools. This spending ended
with the commencement of the First World War in 1914.209 When the contract lapsed
in 1916, no effort was made to negotiate a new one.210 However, the government andchurches continued to operate as if the contract was still in effect, and, when newschools opened, it was used as the template for an operating agreement between the
church organization and the government.
Wartime inflation rapidly reduced the value of the increase in the per capita grant.
As early as 1916, a senior Oblate in British Columbia, J. Welch, claimed that the $100
per capita paid to the Mission school wasquite inadequate. We find it impossible to feed, clothe, educate and house achild with this amount, and each year when we have expended on the School
the Government allowance, we have to turn for additional help to the Society for
the Propagation of the Faith, and to the Congregation of Oblates. But this, to mymind, is unfair, for as I have said on a previous occasion it is on the State, and noton the Church, to provide the necessary means for the education of the Indian.211

By the following year, the Anglican school at The Pas had a $5,173 deficit. Afterblaming the church and the former principal for the problem, Indian Affairs official
Martin Benson acknowledged:
The trouble with this school is want of funds. The per capita grant of $110.00 is
insufficient. Eighty pupils are provided for which will give them a gross incomeof $8800 a year. It will require at least $3500 to pay salaries which only leaves$5300. For the year ending December 31, 1916, food and incidental expenses

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 239

cost $5060.33, and clothing cost $885.34 a year, total of $5945.67. No saving could
be made in any of these items and it is quite evident that the school cannot be
carried on for $110.212

In response to these rising costs, Duncan Campbell Scott, who had become deputy minister of Indian Affairs in 1913, proposed that the per capita grant be increased
by $10. In a 1917 memorandum, he noted, “This grant, owing to the increased costof food, clothing and wages, is insufficient to meet the cost of the maintenance andmanagement of these schools.” As a result, “with one or two exceptions,” the schools
were running deficits. He thought the increase could be funded by not building any
new buildings that year and by cutting spending on “house furnishings, implements,
provisions, transportation of pupils, etc.”213
While the 1910 contract provided an increase in funding for boarding schools, it
provided no increase for industrial schools, which continued to run deficits that the
government continued to cover. A 1913 Indian Affairs inspection of the Red Deer
school’s books recommended that the government not cover the school’s $2,754.98
deficit, since it “was incurred through want of management and lack of experience.”
The farm, for example, which was operating at a loss, was in the hands of a “young
Englishman only 22 years old.” In making this recommendation, Martin Benson
acknowledged that the Methodists were well aware that the government had covered
other school deficits in the past and expected to “receive the same liberal treatmentthat has been accorded” the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic schools.214
Three years later, Benson recommended that the department cover the then $10,000
deficit at the Qu’Appelle school in Saskatchewan, which Principal Hugonnard claimed
was the result of fires and increases in the cost of supplies and salaries. Benson notedthat the $130 per capita grant being paid the Qu’Appelle school was not enough tocover the cost of running an industrial school in the West.215 In 1918, the Methodists
complained that they could not continue to operate their schools on the $130 rate thatwas provided to industrial schools west of the Great Lakes.216 In 1919, the federal government instituted another increase of $10 in the per capita rate, this time increasing
both the industrial and boarding school rates. Another $10 increase was granted in
1921.217
The number of industrial schools continued to decline. The Regina school closed in
1910, the Battleford school in 1914, the Elkhorn school in 1918 (although it would later
reopen), the Red Deer school in 1919, and the High River school in 1922.218 By 1922,
there were only sixteen industrial schools, and, from 1923 onwards, the department
stopped making any distinctions between boarding schools and residential schools.219
In 1921, J. H. Edmison, of the Methodist Board of Home Missions and Social
Services, wrote, “During the years of the War we have simply tided things over. In
regard to our buildings and equipment in the schools, everything has gone threadbare.”220 Many boarding schools and industrial schools were running deficits.221

240 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In the 1920s, the federal government began to acquire most of the church-ownedboarding schools, although the churches were allowed to continue to operate them. The
churches were anxious to be rid of financial liabilities, while the government, which also
agreed to cover school capital costs, believed this move would allow the churches tospend more on “better instruction, food and clothing.”222 The government was preparedto pay for church schools that were in good condition, but some schools were in such astate of disrepair that the government argued they had no economic value. For example, it judged the value of ten Anglican-owned schools (out of the total of twenty-one
Anglican schools) to be “nil, because of the poor condition of the buildings or their situation.” Similarly, Indian Affairs believed that two Methodist-owned schools (out of a
total of seven schools) could be obtained for free. Three of the four Presbyterian-owned
schools were deemed to be modern and well designed, while the fourth was “dilapidated, and we would pay nothing to the Church when we decide to rebuild.”223
In cases where the church and government could not reach an agreement, theschool remained in church hands and the government made a commitment to provide capital supports.224 By 1934, there were ten church-owned schools (seven ofwhich were in Alberta) for which the government paid capital expenses. At that time,
Indian Affairs director Harold McGill lamented that the “lack of written records andagreements makes it very difficult to determine the nature and extent of this responsibility.” In particular, he was frustrated by the fact that churches were undertaking
repairs and renovations without getting government approval, and then requesting
afterwards that the government cover their costs. In an effort to regain control overdepartmental spending, McGill announced the government would provide grants
towards the cost of buildings only if prior written authority had been granted.225
The fact that schools were penalized if they did not have full enrolment was also an
ongoing issue. In 1922, the Manitoba Provincial Council of the Oblates pointed out thatnever in the history of the Pine Creek school had there been a year in which the church
received the full amount that would have been allocated if it had recruited its allotted
enrolment.226 In 1938, the Oblates estimated that running a school with a pupilage ofless than 125 was economically unsound, based on the current per capita grant, and afigure of 150 was ideal. At the time, only one of the schools it operated (at Qu’Appelle)
had a pupilage of over 125. Five of its schools had pupilages of less than 100.227
Between the ongoing need to cover school deficits and the government’s increasingly ad hoc approach to school funding, the classification system developed in the1910 contract had broken down by the 1920s. In 1924, the federal government did
away with the regional divisions and classes, and a per capita rate was set for eachschool.228 For example, in 1927, there were five different rates for thirteen United
Church schools in western Canada: $145, $155, $160, $170, and $175.229 (The United
Church had been created in 1925 through a merger of the Methodist Church, theCongregationalist Church, and many Presbyterian congregations. In the process,Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 241

the United Church assumed responsibility for all Methodist schools and all but two
Presbyterian schools.)230 At the same time, there were at least three rates for Catholicschools in Alberta: $140, $155, and $170.231 By 1931, the average grant was $175 (upfrom $115 in 1911).232
The Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia did not open until 1930. Pressure for aschool in the Maritimes, however, had been mounting for two decades. As early as 1911,
the Reverend J. J. Ryan, the provincial superintendent of schools in New Brunswick,lobbied the federal government for an industrial school in the Maritimes.233 In 1924,
Indian Superintendent A. J. Boyd recommended that an industrial school be established in a central location in Nova Scotia. He said that such a school should not only
teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also provide technical training that would
allow students to go on to “become self-sustaining and useful citizens of their country.” He repeated this recommendation in 1925.234 Father F. C. Ryan supported Boyd,saying that without such an industrial school, federal spending on Aboriginal education “seems a huge waste of money.” He believed there were at least 100 “delinquent
Indian children, orphans and those who will not go to school” who would benefit
from being sent to such a school. Currently, he said, these children “run wild about
the shores,” exerting a negative influence on those who were attending school.235
In 1927, Scott concluded that a school with a capacity of 125 students should beestablished in Nova Scotia. In large measure, the decision was determined by economics, since, according to Scott, Indian Affairs was already paying to house “a large
number of children in institutions in Halifax and elsewhere and there are others forwhom we are paying board while they reside in foster homes on the reserve.”236 Roman
Catholic authorities in Halifax responded positively to the government’s proposal thatthey manage the school and recommended that the staff be drawn from members of
the Sisters of Charity.237
The Shubenacadie school was the only residential school the government operated in the Maritime provinces.238 With its opening, the system hit a peak of eighty
schools operating at the same time.239 From then until the 1950s, the opening of newschools would be balanced with closures. In 1931, the residential school enrolment
was 7,831 and the average attendance was 6,917. (Enrolment could be higher thanattendance at residential schools because enrolment could include enrolled students
who had run away, who had not returned from holiday, or who were being treatedfor illness in hospital.) The average day school enrolment was 8,584 and the averageattendance was 5,314.240 At that time, according to Indian Affairs, there were 21,190
First Nations children between the ages of six and fifteen (inclusive), meaning thatabout 37% of school-aged First Nations children were enrolled in residential school.241
The Roman Catholic Church operated forty-four of the schools; the Anglicans, twenty-one; the United Church, thirteen; and the Presbyterian Church (comprised ofthose Presbyterian congregations that had rejected the 1925 merger) operated two

242 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

schools. That year, four new main buildings were constructed at schools in Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Construction also had begun on new buildings at Birtle,
Manitoba; Lestock and Beauval, Saskatchewan; and in Blue Quills, Alberta.242
This sort of expansion could not be sustained in the face of the international economic depression of the 1930s. In 1932, without any prior consultation, the federal
government cut per capita grants by 10%. The cut was imposed in March and maderetroactive to January.243 The rate was cut again the following year by another 5%.244 In
response to protests, Indian Affairs director Harold McGill wrote that not only would
the cuts be maintained, but it also might be necessary to make more cuts in the future.
He said, “I can offer no assurance that anything can be done in the way of building
new schools or rebuilding those that have been destroyed by fire.”245 The government
announced in 1935 that it would be partially reversing the reductions, but, in the faceof worsening economic conditions, it cut the per capita grant once more in 1936.246
Table 11.6 outlines the impact of these cuts on the school grants (spending on
medical costs and textbooks and other supplies was not cut during this period, but
received no increase).
Table 11.6. Residential school funding cuts during the mid-1930s.
Fiscal year ended

Average
attendance

March 31, 1932

7,400

March 31, 1933

7,613

Residential school expenditure
Per Capita

1,545,513.49

Medical costs

20,000

Textbooks, supplies, repairs

19,045Per Capita

1,320,399.59

Medical costs

20,000

Textbooks, supplies, repairs
March 31, 1934

March 31, 1935

March 31, 1936

7,760

7,882

8,061

Per Capita

8,176

20,000

Textbooks, supplies, repairs

18,295Per Capita

1,260,823.79

Medical costs

20,000

Textbooks, supplies, repairs

19,941Per Capita

1,492,209.00

Medical costs

20,000Per Capita

214

180

20,0001,254,018.63

Medical costs

Textbooks, supplies, repairs
March 31, 1937

Averageper capita

162

165

190

20,973
1,414,703.20

Medical costs

20,000

Textbooks, supplies, repairs

20,000180

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-?, part 1, R. A. Hoey to Dr.
McGill, 4 November 1938. [AEMR-120432]

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 243

Former Manitoba cabinet minister R. A. Hoey compared these figures to the October
1938 per capita costs for the Manitoba School for the Deaf in Tuxedo ($642.40), andthe Manitoba School for Boys in Portage la Prairie ($550), which were more than threetimes greater than those paid to Aboriginal residential schools. According to Hoey,
in British Columbia, the provincial government paid $208 a year to support children
under the care of the children’s aid society; in Alberta, the rate was $365 a year; in
Saskatchewan, $182; and in Ontario, $274. Meanwhile, in the United States, theannual per capita rate at the Chilocco Indian Residential School in Oklahoma in 1937
was $350. According to the American Child Welfare League, the per capita costs forwell-run institutions in that country ranged between $313 and $541, depending on
the institution’s size and how well equipped it was.
The Canadian residential school system could operate on such a low per capita
grant because of the low wages it paid staff of religious orders, the value of the outputof the farms from student labour, the clothing donated by many missionary societies,
and the supplementary financial contributions of mission societies. In 1938, for example, the Presbyterian Church contributed an additional $7,745 to the operation of the
Birtle school.
In Hoey’s opinion, a fixed per capita grant made no sense, since it gave the government no ability to respond to differences in costs of supplies. In the short term, however, he called for a reversal of the most recent cut. At the same time, he also wanted
to transfer more costs to the schools, such as the payment of night watchmen, thefreight charges on shipping clothes the churches sent to the schools, and the cost oftransporting students to and from the schools. He also believed that a restoration offunding had to be accompanied by an understanding “that the Churches will provide
greater facilities for manual training, instruction in handicraft, auto mechanics, weaving, etc.”247 Hoey’s advocacy led to a 5% increase in the per capita grant in the following
year.248

The American experience
There were no nationwide evaluations of the Canadian residential school system
during the 1920s or 1930s. However, a 1928 study of Indian boarding schools in the
United States by the us Institute for Government Research raised the same concernsthat Samuel Blake had identified in his writings on the Canadian system twenty years
earlier. The Problem of Indian Administration, more commonly referred to as the“Meriam Report” for its lead author, Dr. Lewis Meriam, painted a devastating pictureof the American boarding school system, which had grown to seventy-eight institutions. Buildings were overcrowded, students were underfed and the work they wererequired to do bordered on child labour, student medical care was minimal, staff did244 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

not meet proper qualification standards, discipline was punitive, and the curriculum
was outdated.249 Those students receiving vocational training were often being trainedfor vanishing trades.250 The report questioned whether “much of the work of Indianchildren in boarding schools would not be prohibited in many states by child labor
laws, notably the work in the machine laundries.”251 It recommended an increase incommunity involvement in all levels of education, more day schools, and better salaries and standards for school staff.252
The report sparked a number of changes. In 1929, us Commissioner Charles Burke
issued an order forbidding the flogging of students.253 An increase in boarding school
funding in 1930 meant, according to historian Margaret Szasz, that “for the first timechildren in boarding schools were guaranteed enough food and clothing.”254 There
was also a concerted effort to close the schools.
Further American change came in 1933, when John Collier was appointed commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a position he held until 1945. Collier was asocial reformer who had organized education and recreation programs for immigrantcommunities in New York and San Francisco during and immediately after the FirstWorld War. Demoralized by the war and the period of political reaction that followed,
he travelled to New Mexico, where he was inspired by the tenacious survival of Pueblo
culture.255 He was a remarkable choice for the position of commissioner of IndianAffairs: unlike previous commissioners, he disparaged European, not Aboriginal, culture. In a 1934 speech, he called Europeans (a category that, in his mind, included
the descendants of Europeans living in the Americas) a “shattered race—psychically,
religiously, social and esthetically shattered, dismembered, directionless.”256 Collier
launched what was termed the “Indian New Deal.” One of his first measures was todecree that there be “no interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression.”257 He also made it clear he would not tolerate corporal punishment in theschools.258
Collier wanted to allow children to be raised in their own community and culture.
He also wanted them to gain the skills that would enable them to make a living when
they returned to their own communities and reservations.259 Under his administration, initiatives were undertaken to make the curriculum more relevant, to establish
community schools, to close residential schools, and to improve the quality of staff.260
Experiments in cross-cultural education were undertaken, and new professionals andnew resources were drawn into the school system.261 When a decision was made tooffer courses on Aboriginal history, the bureau discovered that it had little information on the topic.262 Efforts were made to recruit and train bilingual teachers and towrite and publish bilingual books.263 From 1933 to 1941, the number of day schools
increased from 132 to 226 and their enrolment almost tripled.264
Collier also sought to end the boarding school system. During his first year in office,ten boarding schools were shut down or turned into community schools.265 However,Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939 • 245

he was not able to maintain momentum. The campaign to close boarding schools was
slowed by growth in the Native American population and the Depression’s impact on
the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget. Without the money to establish the number of
additional day schools needed to meet the population growth, the boarding schools
continued to operate.266 In 1941, there still were forty-nine boarding schools in the
United States.267
In 1934, Canada’s Indian Affairs department prepared a brief comparison of theCanadian and American Indian school systems. The American boarding schools,
with an average enrolment of 342, were much larger institutions than their Canadiancounterparts, which had an average enrolment of 106. The average enrolment in a us
day school was fifty-two, while in Canada, it was thirty-four. In addition to the federal government-run schools, the us also paid for the tuition of 39,061 students inpublic schools. The Canadian government made no such payments, although it did
operate an additional nine “White and Indian Schools.” These day schools had a total
enrolment of 175 students. In the us, 33% of the Native American children enrolled
in schools were in boarding schools, while in Canada, 40% of First Nations children
enrolled in school were attending residential school. The American appropriation
for funding this system (both day and residential schools) was $9,103,230, or $133
per student. The Canadian appropriation for the year ending March 31, 1933, was$1,712,233.06, or $96 per student. In other words, even though Canada was making
greater use of a more expensive schooling system (residential schools), it was spending seventy-two cents for every dollar the Americans were spending on Aboriginal
students.268

CHAPTER 12

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939

When, in 1895, the Reverend John Semmens went on a journey throughwhat is now northern Manitoba to recruit students for the proposedindustrial school at Brandon in southern Manitoba, parents continually
told him they were not prepared to send their children so great a distance. The chiefand councillors at Cross Lake explained, “We are unwilling to permit our children togo so far away from home to a place which we could never hope to visit in case of theirillness or death.” At Norway House, the chief said he had asked for a school there “yearsago” and “would not favor an institution any where else.” At Berens River, Semmens
was met by the full council, whose members opposed sending students to Brandon“on the one ground of distance.” In the face of what he described as “an organized
opposition,” Semmens was able to recruit only two children from that community. In
concluding his report of a very unsuccessful trip, Semmens recorded the questions
that First Nations parents had posed to him throughout the trip:
Will the children return to us after their course at school?
Is it the object of the Gov’t to destroy our language and our tribal life?
Is it the purpose to enslave our children to make money out of them?
Can the children return at their own wish or at the wish of the parents before theterm at school expires?
The offer is good. Will the Government keep this promise or break it as they haveothers made in like beautiful language?1

Government officials often branded First Nations parents as being ignorant, superstitious, selfish, and uninterested in their children’s future or education. For example,
in 1884, Indian Commissioner (and future Indian Affairs minister) Edgar Dewdneyargued that “owing to his peculiar nature, being a creature of the present moment andfailing to witness immediate results to his own benefit, as well as prompted, in many
instances, by a selfish desire to retain constantly about him the slight labour which his248 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

children may afford him,” an Aboriginal parent “fails to insist on their attendance atschool.”2
But the questions posed to Semmens paint a much different picture. Parents worried that their children would not return to them after their schooling was over. They
suspected that residential schooling was intended to obliterate their language andculture. They feared that their children were being prepared for a market economy
in which human life was just another commodity and their children would be used
as free labour. And they viewed with distrust any government statements intended toallay their fears. They suspected that the government and the churches would not live
up to the “beautiful language” of the promises they made when trying to recruit children, as they already had previous experience of Treaty promises being broken. The
parental concerns were well founded. The government and church leaders who established the industrial schools expected that students would not return home, would
forget their language, adopt new cultural values, and become integrated into a new
economy. The regimentation and discipline of the capitalist work world meant it was
far different from the highly autonomous world in which Aboriginal people had lived
for thousands of years, so much so that it might well feel like a form of slavery. Parents
also realized that the type of educational and spiritual transformation being proposedby the federal government would separate them from their children, not only for theperiod of time they were in school, but also quite possibly for eternity. James Smart,
the Indian Affairs deputy minister, conceded as much in 1897 when he wrote, “Among
those who have not renounced paganism, the belief prevails that the children will be
educated into other creeds, which will affect their existence in a future state, and separate them from their parents in the great hereafter.”3
This was not very different from the views of the government and church leaders
who believed that those who were converted would go to heaven, while those who
remained pagan would go to hell.
Parents, not surprisingly, wanted their children to be recognizable to them in thisworld as well as the next. Some missionaries and government officials were preparedto acknowledge this desire. In 1887, the principal of the Qu’Appelle school in what is
now Saskatchewan noted he had not been able to recruit a single student from somereserves. Joseph Hugonnard wrote, “The Indians are afraid that their children after
leaving the school will not go back to the reserves, and that they will stray away from
them; they also do not wish their children to acquire the habits of the white people.”4
Father E. Claude, principal of the High River school in what is now Alberta, concluded
after his failed recruiting drive that parents did not wish to see their children “resemble
the white people.”5 The following year, Indian agent R. H. Pidcock wrote that because“parents see in education the downfall of all their most cherished customs,” the Alert
Bay, British Columbia, boarding school was not well attended.6

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 249

As time went on, the list of reasons why Aboriginal parents might not wish tosend their children to residential school only increased with bitter experience. The
amount of work the students were required to do, the poor quality of the education
they received, the health risks they encountered, the limited and often inadequate
diet, the discipline to which they were subjected, and the physical and sexual abuse
that some experienced all served to strengthen parental opposition to the schools. A
number of Aboriginal memoirs provide evidence of the role that parents and grandparents played in opposing residential schooling. George Barker, born in 1896 on the
Bloodvein Reserve in Manitoba, attended day school on the Hollow Water Reserve. In
his memoirs, he wrote:
I liked school and maybe would have continued, but my school friend, Arthur
Quesnel, was about to leave to go to the Catholic boarding school in Fort Alexander. He wanted me to go with him, but grandmother wouldn’t allow it. She was
not too impressed with the white man’s teachings. This pretty much ended mylife as a school boy.7

Lazare John attended the Fort St. James, British Columbia, school for one year.
During that year, his mother had moved from the family’s home community of Stoney
Creek to Fort St. James to be near her son. However, according to the memoirs of
Lazare’s wife, Mary John, “He was so unhappy away from Stoney Creek that he andhis mother returned to our village after one year, and Lazare was never sent to school
again.”8
As a result, recruitment was a persistent problem for residential schools. In hisannual report for 1884, Indian Commissioner Dewdney acknowledged thatno little difficulty is met with in prevailing upon Indians to part with their children; and even after the latter have been cared for in the kindest manner, someparents, prompted by unaccountable freaks of the most childish nature, demanda return of their children to their own shanties to suffer from cold and hunger.9

Parental resistance to industrial schools was so strong that it actually contributed to
the failure and eventual closure of most of the industrial schools on the Prairies. From1884 onwards, the government put in place an increasingly restrictive set of laws andregulations regarding enrolment and discharge. Many school and government officials were either not well versed in the laws and regulations governing enrolment, ordisregarded them. It is clear that, on occasion, officials exceeded the authority granted
them by the Indian Act and related regulations.
Parents often were compelled to send their children to residential school because
federal policy decisions had robbed them of alternatives. For example, federal decisions not to build day schools, or decisions to close the existing day schools, meant thatparents who were committed to seeing that their children would get an education wereforced to send them to residential school. The federal government’s unwillingness to250 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

invest in First Nations economic development, particularly on the Prairies, meant thatmany families existed in a state of dire poverty and were sometimes dependent on
government-supplied relief rations. In such conditions, parents might send their children to school in hopes they would be properly fed and cared for there. In some cases,
federal officials denied relief rations to parents in need who refused to send their children to school. The enrolment problems in the schools would have been worse if theschools were not also serving as child-welfare facilities, taking in orphans, the sick,and children whose families were judged to be unable to care for them.
The federal government’s First Nations education policy was devised and put inplace by men who already made regular use of compulsion in their dealings with First
Nations people. When he was the Indian commissioner, Edgar Dewdney used compulsion and the withholding of rations to disrupt a First Nations campaign to negotiate Treaty revisions and establish a First Nations homeland. Dewdney used the 1885
North-West Rebellion as a pretext for persecuting much of the First Nations leadership, despite the fact that the vast majority of First Nations leaders and their people
did not participate in the uprising.10 When he was the assistant Indian commissioner,
Hayter Reed advocated and implemented the pass policy. Under this policy, which
had no legal authority, First Nations people on the Prairies had to seek government
permission to leave their reserve. In the absence of a legal basis for the policy, thegovernment charged individuals who left their reserve without a pass with “trespass.”
In other cases, it denied rations to those who did not comply with the pass policy.11
Amendments to the Indian Act, which banned the traditional Potlatch ceremony on
the west coast as well as various sacred dances on the Prairies, are other examples ofthe policy of compulsion. Between 1900 and 1904, there were at least fifty arrests andtwenty convictions for violations of the laws against dancing. One of the convicted,
Chief Piapot, then in his mid-eighties, was sentenced to two months in jail.12

Regulating attendance: 1884–1893
In 1884, the Indian Act was amended to give First Nations band councils responsibility for “the attendance at school of children between the ages of six and fifteen
years.”13 This was the first reference to school attendance in the Indian Act. At the time,
only four provinces—Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward
Island—had any compulsory education laws. The Ontario law of the day required thatchildren between the ages of seven and twelve attend school for at least four months
a year. British Columbia’s law required six months of attendance, and Prince Edward
Island’s required twelve weeks.14
Almost immediately after the industrial schools were established, principals begancalling on the government to institute some form of compulsory enrolment. It took

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 251

Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard a year to recruit the thirty students he wasinitially authorized to enrol.15 As early as 1885, High River school principal Albert
Lacombe urged Indian Affairs “to bring pressure in some way to bear upon thoseIndians who refuse their children, as by threatening to deprive them of their rations.”16
In 1886, Hugonnard reported that a recent recruiting expedition to three reserves had
netted him only the promise of two new students. “The objections of the Indians arethat they do not like to send their children away nor to have them attended to by adoctor, nor to let them work, and also to their taking the habits of the white people.”17
In 1888, Robert Ashton, the principal of the Mohawk Institute, reported that in theprevious year, twenty-one boys and twenty girls had left the institution. The average
length of attendance had been two and three-quarter years for boys and two andone-quarter years for girls. In light of the fact that most students were leaving school
long before they could derive “much lasting advantage from the course of training
provided,” Ashton recommended that the government require parents to commit
their children to the school for specific periods of time.18
When he was Indian commissioner, Edgar Dewdney thought that compulsory
attendance was inevitable, but recommended it not be introduced immediately.
“As Indians become amenable to restraints on their reserves,” he wrote, “attendanceshould be made compulsory.”19 Hayter Reed, his successor as Indian commissioner,
was also initially cautious. In 1889, he said, “The time is approaching, when pressure will doubtless have to be brought to bear upon Indian parents to compel themto send their children to school, but this must be done with great caution, and very
gradually.” He noted that he had, in certain circumstances—Battleford, for example—“given instruction to Agents to bring pressure to bear, and I will act in the same
direction wherever and whenever I feel satisfied that to do so will be attended withgood results.”20 By 1892, he had become much more aggressive, recommending thatthe government enact legislation that would require “children being retained inIndustrial Schools pending the Department’s pleasure.” Deputy Minister Lawrence
Vankoughnet rejected that idea; he did not think
the Indians of the North West are sufficiently advanced in civilization to rendersuch drastic measures advisable, as respects the control by the Dep’t—which it
actually would be—of their children. As you are aware, Indians are particularly
sensitive in respect to their children and the Dep’t is preparing them graduallyfor the more stringent measure of compulsory education by endeavouring to
induce the Chiefs and Headmen of the different Bands to co-operate with theIndian Agent for the passage of rules and regulations under the Indian Act rendering attendance at the schools compulsory on the part of Indian parents.21

The only real question under debate was when—not if—parents would be compelled to send their children to residential schools.

252 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

But, if there was debate about recruitment, there was none about whether parents
should be allowed to withdraw their children from the schools once they were there.
In 1891, officials in Ottawa were concerned that students at industrial schools, particularly at Qu’Appelle, were being withdrawn long before they could have learned a
trade. Reed was instructed to ensure that “no pupils shall be admitted to or taken fromor allowed to leave any of the institutions without your express authority having beenobtained.”22 Reed felt that Hugonnard was giving in too easily to parental requests toremove their children from the school. He visited the school at the same time that agroup of parents were seeking to remove six children from the school. “By the exercise of firmness I convinced each of the applicants that they must leave their children
unmolested and the Principal’s eyes were opened to the fact that resistance would
accomplish all I claimed.” Reed told Hugonnard that if he felt himself unequal to thetask of refusing parents, in the future, he should simply send for him.23

Compulsion and the disruption of First Nations government
Efforts to force First Nations children to attend residential schools also led the federal government to interfere directly with First Nations governments. The cases of
Wahpeemakwa (White Bear) and Ahchacoosahcootakoopits (Star Blanket), in what is
now Saskatchewan, stand as examples of the government’s willingness to disrupt andignore First Nations government.24
In the 1880s, Wahpeemakwa was the chief of a Saulteaux-Cree band in the Moose
Mountain area of Saskatchewan. Under his leadership, the band members limited therole of missionaries, and many refused to send their children to school, particularly tothe residential schools. An Anglican attempt to establish a school on the reserve failed
in 1885. Although Indian Affairs removed Wahpeemakwa from his position as chief in1889, he remained an influential figure. Indian agent David Halpin reported in 1897:
It is very difficult to get the parents to allow the children to be sent away toschool, more especially those Indians who are in any way connected with thedeposed chief White Bear and his sons, who will have nothing to do with anything in the shape of education, and who try to live as they did before treaty was
made with the North-west Indians, and they will hardly allow any one to talk on
the subject of education to them and simply say that their ‘God’ did not intend
them to be educated like white people; they will not allow that there would be
any benefit to be derived from having their children taught, and say they wouldmuch prefer to see their little ones dead than at school.25

The federal government removed Wahpeemakwa’s son Kah-pah-pah-mah-amwa-ko-we-ko-chin from his position as headman in September 1897.26 This movealso backfired, and the band continued to refuse to co-operate with the government.

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 253

Eventually, Wahpeemakwa was restored as chief. At the same time, departmental secretary J. D. McLean rejected Wahpeemakwa’s request for a day school on the reserve,
because “it would prove a hindrance to the work of getting children into the Industrial
Schools.”27 Halpin later reported, “White Bear, since his reinstatement by the department as chief, has not been so much against having children educated, but he stillholds back with regard to allowing them to be sent far from home to school.”28
Ahchacoosahcootakoopits, or Star Blanket, was the chief of the Star Blanket Band in
the File Hills area of southern Saskatchewan. He should not be confused with anotherchief known as Star Blanket or Ahtahkakoop (Atakakup). Ahchacoosahcootakoopits
was the son of Wapiimoosetoosus, one of the Cree chiefs who signed Treaty 4. He
had been part of the 1884 movement to seek Treaty improvements, and was arrested
but never charged after the 1885 North-West Rebellion.29 Star Blanket opposed Indian
agent efforts to repress the Sun Dance, to amalgamate four bands in the File Hills
area, and to send children to residential schools. As a result, the federal government
deposed him, giving as its grounds his “incompetency.” The band refused to accept
the government decision and refused to co-operate with the Indian agent. In 1895,
Star Blanket was restored to office. At the same time, he agreed to allow one of hissons to attend the residential school in Regina under the conditions that his hair not
be cut, and that he would be exempted from religious studies, military drill, or thebrass band. In 1898, the federal government once more threatened to depose him fornot sending more of his children to residential school.30 So intense was the conflict
between the government and Star Blanket that, in 1898, the federal deputy ministerof Indian Affairs thought it significant enough to relate in his annual report that “StarBlanket, who so long persistently opposed sending children from his band to school,
has during the last month, allowed three to go, two to Qu’Appelle, and one to theboarding school here.”31 Star Blanket successfully resisted government efforts to havethe band surrender some of its land for the File Hills Colony that Indian Commissioner
W. M. Graham was developing for former residential school students.32
Into the early twentieth century, Star Blanket continued to campaign to havethe government live up to its Treaty commitments. His 1912 letter to the Duke ofConnaught, then governor general, gives eloquent expression to his sense of betrayal.
We have waited patiently for many years for a chance to speak to some one who
would carry a message to the Government and our white brothers in the east.
The first part of our message Great Chief is one of Good wishes and peace toyourself first and then to the Government. For as I was born with two legs andas these two legs have not yet quarreled, so I wish to live in peace with the white
people. When I was in middle life the Government of the Great White Mothersent some wise men to ask us to give them much land. A large camp of Indians
was made near Qu’Appelle and there the Government and Indians after muchtalking signed a treaty, on paper and much was promised as well. One of these254 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

papers has been carefully kept by us, and by it we Indians gave to the Government a large piece of land and held back for ourselves some small pieces as Reserves. In the treaty we made then the Government promised to make a Schoolfor every band of Indians on their own Reserve, but instead little children are
torn from their mothers’ arms or homes by the police or Government Agents andtaking [sic] sometimes hundreds of miles to large Schools perhaps to take sickand die when their family cannot see them. The little Ants which live in the earth
love their young ones and wish to have them in their homes. Surely us red men
are not smaller than these Ants.33

Indian Affairs official Martin Benson prepared a disingenuous response to this letter. He acknowledged that Treaty 4 did oblige the government to “maintain a school in
the reserve,” but then said that the educational needs of the children on Star Blanket’s
reserve were being met by the Qu’Appelle industrial school and a boarding school “inthe immediate vicinity of the reserve.”34

The Indian Act amendments and regulations of 1894
In 1893, Lawrence Vankoughnet was forced into retirement and Hayter Reed waselevated to the position of deputy minister of Indian Affairs. Reed was then able to put
his more aggressive policies into practice. In 1894, he reported that parental opposition to sending their children to boarding schools had decreased to the point where
the government felt justified in the introduction, “without fear of exciting undue
hostility, of measures for securing compulsory attendance at schools.”35 In that year,
the Indian Act was amended to authorize the government to make regulations “tosecure the compulsory attendance of children at school.” These regulations could beapplied to “the Indians of any province or of any named band.” The amendments also
authorized the government to establish “an industrial school or a boarding school for
Indians.” (The schools were, of course, already in existence.) The government was also
authorized to commit to these schools “children of Indian blood under the age of sixteen years.” Once committed, they could be kept there until they reached the age ofeighteen.36
Under the authority of this amendment, the government adopted its first school-related regulations, the Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children. These
regulations stated: “All Indian children between the ages of seven and sixteen shallattend a day school on the reserve on which they reside for the full term during
which the school is open each year.” Exemptions were allowed if the child was being
instructed elsewhere, if the child was sick or otherwise unable to attend school, if
there was no school within two miles (3.2 kilometres) for children under ten years
old, or within three miles (4.8 kilometres) for children over ten, if the child had been

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 255

excused from attending school to assist in farm or domestic work at home, or if thechild had already passed a high school entrance examination.
Indian agents were authorized to appoint truant officers, who would have “police
powers.” The truant officers were to investigate cases of non-attendance, and could lay
complaints against non-compliant parents with justices of the peace or Indian agents.
Refusal to comply with the order of a truant officer was punishable by a fine of up to$2, ten days in jail, or both.37
Most of the regulations dealt with day school attendance. However, if an Indian
agent or justice of the peace thought that any “Indian child between six and sixteen
years of age is not being properly cared for or educated, and that the parent, guardianor other person having charge or control of such child, is unfit or unwilling to provide
for the child’s education,” he could issue an order to place the child “in an industrial
or boarding school, in which there may be a vacancy for such child.” In Manitoba andthe North-West Territories, such an order could be issued without the need to give any
notice to the “parent, guardian or other person having charge or control of such child.”
In the rest of the country, prior notice was required and, if the parents requested, an
inquiry could be held before the child’s committal. Under these orders, a child could
be committed to residential schools until the age of eighteen.
If a child placed in the school under these regulations left a residential school
without permission, or did not return at a promised time, school officials could get awarrant from an Indian agent or a justice of the peace authorizing them (or a police
officer, truant officer, or employee of the school or Indian Affairs) to “search for andtake such child back to the school in which it had been previously placed.” With a warrant, one could enter—by force if need be—any house, building, or place named in thewarrant and remove the child. Even without a warrant, Indian Affairs employees andconstables had the authority to arrest a student in the act of escaping from a residential school and return the child to the school.38
The regulations specifically identified twenty-three industrial residential schools:
four in Ontario,39 four in Manitoba,40 four in what is now Saskatchewan,41 four in what
is now Alberta,42 and seven in British Columbia.43 The regulations also specified eighteen boarding schools: three in Manitoba,44 seven in what is now Saskatchewan,45 six
in what is now Alberta,46 and two in British Columbia.47 The decision to list the specificschools created enforcement problems in later years as some schools closed and newones were not specifically listed in the regulations.
In 1895, Regulation 12 was amended. Previously, it had authorized the search for,and return of, any student who had been placed in the school; that is, children who,
Indian Affairs had concluded, were not “being properly cared for or educated.” It wasamended to allow for the return to the school of all truant students, including those
who had been voluntarily placed in the school.48 Enrolment—at least on paper—wasstill voluntary; discharge would be much more difficult to obtain.

256 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Reed made sure that these newly granted powers were put into force. Shortly after
they were adopted, he instructed the assistant Indian commissioner, “Power is givenby these regulations to bring back deserters and you are at liberty to exercise yourdiscretion about putting them into force.” Reed also instructed, “Schools which havenot their full complement of pupils, such as Battleford and Regina, can now be filled
and the Department would like you to communicate with our Agents with a view tosecuring orphans to fill vacancies.”49
When parents in northern Manitoba resisted sending their children to the
Methodist industrial school in Brandon, Reed instructed the school’s principal tocall the parents’ attention to Indian Act provisions “for the compulsory education ofIndian children.” He said that although the department was reluctant to enforce theregulations, it would do so unless parents demonstrated “their willingness to havetheir children educated.” He suggested the parents could take comfort from the fact
that, although students would not be allowed to leave at their own will once they wereadmitted, their parents would be allowed to visit them at school.50
Threats were part of the government arsenal. In 1895, when members of the Arrows
Band in what is now Saskatchewan refused to send their children away to boarding
school, the Indian agent told them
if they would not let them go willingly that in all probability the Department
would take them by force and send them to whatever school was thought best.
The consequence was that when paying Treaty there on the 22nd inst. the Indians offered me all their children if I would place them in the Duck Lake Boarding
School.51

The government followed up on its threats. In 1896, an Indian agent asked if it wasnecessary to conduct a trial before returning a child to the school. Reed argued thatthe regulation allowed a child to be returned to a school on the basis of a warrant
issued in relation to the regulation.52
Reed was far from satisfied with the results of the campaign of enforcement he had
initiated. His 1896 annual report contained a warning: “In some localities persuasive
powers have failed to obtain such an attendance as the number of children would
warrant, so it may yet become incumbent upon the department to adopt more stringent measures to secure increased attendance.”53 Through his campaign against day
schools, he also worked to limit parental options.

The campaign against day schools
In 1895, Reed announced it was his intention “to do away as far as funds and circumstances will permit with day schools on the reserves and substitute industrial andboarding schools at a distance from them.”54 He stated that “much lasting good cannot

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 257

be expected from day-schools, owing to the fact that home influences so readily counteract any good which may be attained through them.” In 1896, he wrote that in the
Northwest, “day-schools are being closed, and it is expected that by the expiration of
the present fiscal year the number of schools thus closed will have been materially
increased.”55
Treaties 1 through 6 had committed the government to establishing on-reserve
schools, and the later Treaties had stipulated the provision of teachers once reserves
had been established. None of them made any mention of residential schools.56
However, the federal government was slow to establish day schools. In 1885, IndianCommissioner Edgar Dewdney favoured delaying the opening of a school on a reserve
until it was apparent there would be a regular attendance of at least twenty students.
Children from reserves without schools were to be sent to “Industrial Schools, in the
success of which I have every confidence.”57 While it is apparent that many parents
were not prepared to force their children to attend day school, it was also recognizedat the time that the schools provided a very poor quality of education. In an effort toimprove the quality of the teachers being recruited, Dewdney recommended in 1885
that the day school salary be increased from $300 to $500 a year.58 It appears there waslittle progress on this front: in 1908, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Frank Pedley recommended that the salaries at Indian Affairs schools in eastern Canada be between$300 and $500.59
Reed continued with his campaign to close down established schools. In 1894, hetold the principal of the Gordon’s residential school in what is now Saskatchewan
to recruit students from the day school on the Gordon’s Reserve. “By this means,”
Reed wrote, “it may be possible to close up some day schools, and devote the funds
which would otherwise be expended on them to increasing the number of pupils at
the Boarding School.”60 The opening of the Anglican boarding school on the Blood
Reserve in what is now Alberta had an impact on the three Anglican day schools thatwere operating on the same reserve by the 1890s. By 1895, one of the day schools had
closed and, in another, enrolment had dropped by a third. In some years, the averageattendance was six students. By 1904, only one of the three schools was operating.61
The impact of Reed’s campaign to close day schools was apparent in the annual
reports of many Indian agents during this period. Again and again, the agents noted
there were no school-aged children and no day schools in many of the communities
they visited. In 1898, Indian agent J. B. Lash’s report on the situation at Piapot’s Reservesaid, “The industrial schools at Qu’Appelle and Regina have a number of pupils fromthis reserve, and there are very few children of school age left on the reserve.”62 He
made similar observations about the Muscowpetung and Pasqua (given in the report
as Pasquah) reserves.63 That same year, in the report on the Sarcee Reserve, Indian
agent A. J. McNeill wrote that “all of school age are now either in the Calgary Industrial
or boarding school on the reserve.”64 The report of E. J. Bangs for the Stony Reserve,258 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

home of the McDougall Orphanage (an early boarding school), noted that the two
day schools were “practically closed.”65 In British Columbia, a report on the Ewawoos,
Texas Lake, and Ohamil bands noted that most of the children were attending theMission or Yale boarding schools.66
The impact of the day school policy can be detected in the following 1909 reports
on conditions on the Ochapowace, One Arrow, and Beardy’s and Okemassis bands:“Most of the children in this band of school age attend boarding school”; “There is no
day school on this reserve. The children of school age are sent to the Duck Lake boarding school”; and, “There is no day school on these reserves, the children of school age
being sent either to the Duck Lake boarding school or the Regina industrial school.”67
Even after Reed left office in 1897, the lack of day schools in the West left parents
with limited options. In 1913, R. B. Heron, the principal of the File Hills school, supported a request from parents for a new day school for children from the Pasqua,
Muscowpetung, and Piapot reserves (all reserves that Indian agent Lash had earlier
noted as being devoid of school-aged children). The parents said File Hills was too far
from their reserves. As a result, at least thirty children were not being sent to school.
Heron wrote to his superiors in Toronto that if the Presbyterians did not establish a day
school that would allow it to “get these 30 children (and there are many more will [sic]be of school age in a short time), most of them will be drafted into the nearest school—
the R.C. school at Lebret [the Qu’Appelle school].”68 The inspector of Indian agencies
at the time, W. M. Graham, opposed the move. Instead of building a day school, hethought, the department should simply force the parents to send their children to File
Hills. There would be, he said, “no evil consequences if the act were put into force.”69
After the 1918 closure of a day school on the Quamichan Reserve in British Columbia,
families had little alternative but to send their children to the Kuper Island residential
school.70

Policy change under the Liberals
Hayter Reed was dismissed as deputy minister after the Liberal victory in the 1896
federal election. His replacement, James Smart, backed away from Reed’s approach tocompulsory enrolment. In 1898, he wrote that “the Department’s policy is as long as
possible to refrain from compulsory measures, and try the effect of moral suasion andan appeal to self-interest.”71 The Liberals were looking for ways to cut Indian Affairs
spending—they viewed industrial schools as being costly failures and recognized thatday schools were much less expensive to operate. Forcing more children to attend
residential schools would only increase government costs.
Residential school principals, who still struggled to fill their schools, opposed the
new approach. Principal Hugonnard at Qu’Appelle said:

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 259

Without compulsory education it will be impossible to maintain this attendanceas those Indians who can be induced to send their children to school prefer tokeep them near them by sending them to the numerous boarding schools on thereserves—of course the majority having children at home refuse to send them toany school at all.72

In 1898, the principal of the Anglican boarding schools on the BlackfootReserve complained:
We have at present on the rolls twenty-nine boys and eleven girls. With accommodation for so many more children it is sad to see that so many are allowed
to grow up under the influence of camp life without any of the benefits of these
institutions. Unfortunately the Indians of ‘treaty seven’ are for the most part
strangely prejudiced against education.73

The following year, Battleford principal Edward Matheson chided the government
for not enforcing the existing attendance regulations: “The policy of the department—that of insisting on the education of the children—is the proper one. But one thingremains, and that is to put the policy into force. Until this is done the full results desiredcannot be shown [emphasis in original].”74
In 1902, Red Deer principal C. E. Somerset wrote, “There has been an average attendance of sixty-two during the year, although the number authorized by the department is eighty. I shall be glad if some means can be devised whereby parents will be
persuaded to allow their children to be sent to this school.”75
At Qu’Appelle, Hugonnard took matters into his own hands. In 1901, he was accusedof “stealing” boys of the She-Sheep’s Band and taking them to school by force. The
mother of two of the boys, known as the “Widow Penna,” told Indian agent Magnus
Begg, “The Rev. gentlemen and the two police-men overtook her about 25 miles from
Qu’Appelle and 40 miles from the Reserve, and without speaking to her, told the police
to put the boys in the waggon [sic], she said the eldest boy clung to her but they pulled
him away.”76
When Begg told her she could visit her boys at the school, she said the “distance was
too long, the snow too deep, and she was sick and wanted her children back.” Other
band members told Begg that “there would be trouble” as a result of Hugonnard’s
treatment of the boys. He took this to mean that the police would have difficulty inretrieving runaways from the school. When band members asked if Hugonnard’s
actions were legal or approved by the Indian commissioner, Begg told them he did not
know. In a letter to Indian Commissioner David Laird, he noted that under Section 9 of
the 1894 regulations, “a child may be committed by a Justice of the Peace or an Indian
Agent without giving notice. The Rev. Father Hugonnard is neither, but of course I did
not read this part of the section to the Indians.”77

260 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Hugonnard claimed he had a warrant from a Fort Qu’Appelle justice of the peaceauthorizing him to take two boys into custody. He did so because the boy’s motherwas a widow and “with her wandering mode of life she could not bring the children
up properly, and utterly refused to send them to any school.” He also said he had beenasked to take the boys into custody by the boys’ brother-in-law, who had been supporting the family.78 Laird pointed out to Hugonnard that it was government policy
not to apply the regulations to families living in the Indian agency from which he hadtaken the boys.79 Indian Affairs officials were not prepared to inform parents of theirrights, or to order that a school principal return children to their parents, even though,in taking them by force, he had overstepped his authority.
By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, there were still many parts ofwestern Canada where a significant number of Aboriginal children were not in school.
In 1910, for example, of 213 school-aged children in the Duck Lake Agency, only 133
were enrolled in school. The figures for the Carlton Agency were 107 of 200; for theOnion Lake Agency, 57 of 190; and 92 of 131 in the Pelly Agency.80 When parents did
opt to send their children to a residential school, it is clear that they preferred thesmaller boarding schools that were located on or close to reserves. The enrolment
rate in the boarding schools and industrial schools reported on by David Laird, theIndian commissioner for Manitoba and the North-West Territories in the 1902–03
school year, provides a clear demonstration of this preference. The thirty-six boarding
schools that provided complete attendance information to Indian Affairs for that year
had a total pupilage of 1,255—and, at the end of the year, they had an enrolment of
1,274. In other words, they had enrolled slightly more than 100% of the students they
were allowed. The ten industrial schools had a total pupilage of 1,140, but only 977
students (or 86% of their authorized enrolment).81
While parents clearly preferred boarding schools as an alternative to the more distant industrial schools, they also resisted the boarding schools. In 1906, J. R. Matheson,
the principal of the Anglican boarding school at Onion Lake, lamented:
The teacher or Missionary is entirely powerless in the matter of persuading or
forcing the parents to send their children to school. The Indians either simply
laugh or point blank refuse, or in some instances take the children away or coax
them to run away after they have been in the school for some time, and all efforts
to get them back are utterly futile.

He wrote that schools were languishing because government officials were “afraid
to enforce the law, or there is no law for them to enforce. Which is it?”82
Limitations with the existing regulations also were becoming apparent. In 1903, J.
A. J. McKenna, the assistant Indian commissioner of the North-West Territories, wrote
to the department:

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 261

The Principal of the Boarding School at Norway House experiences great difficulty in retaining children at school. The Indians through mere caprice insist on
taking their children away at all seasons. I find that the school is not mentioned
in section 8 of the Regulations and that therefore the Principal has no authority
to retain the pupils. His hands would be strengthened if it were known that hehad a legal right to keep children in school. I would therefore recommend thatthe section be amended by adding the name of the school.83

He pointed out that at least fourteen schools were not listed in the regulations andwere therefore in the same situation.84
The Liberals resisted church requests to tighten up their laws on recruitment. In
1904, Indian Commissioner David Laird responded negatively to requests that the
government force parents to send their children to residential schools.85 In 1908, thegovernment adopted a new set of regulations that addressed the ambiguities in the1894 regulations. The 1908 Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children
stated, “All Indian children between the ages of six and fifteen shall attend a day schoolon the reserve on which they reside.” This change, to “six and fifteen” from the “sevenand sixteen” in the previous regulations, now brought the regulations into agreementwith the provisions in the Indian Act about attendance. Truant officers were no longer
granted “police powers” (it had been determined that the Indian Act did not provide
the authority to grant such powers). Rather than listing the schools, the regulations
stated that all boarding schools and industrial schools receiving per capita grants
for the education of “Indian children” were designated as industrial and boarding
schools for the purposes of the regulations. The rest of the provisions remained essentially unchanged.86 Smart’s successor as deputy minister, Frank Pedley, wrote that “norule should be adopted which would provide for the arbitrary separation of parents
and children.”87
As in other matters, Indian Affairs was slow to develop an age policy for industrial and boarding schools. Industrial schools had been intended to teach older students the skills that they would need to survive in the Euro-Canadian economy. It was
expected that as the students learned these skills, they would make their own schools
self-supporting. Implicitly and explicitly, this would require students who were oldenough to have the strength and interest to undergo such training. But parental
resistance to sending children to schools, coupled with the financial enticement of
the per capita funding system, led the school principals to also recruit students who
were too young for industrial training. Even though he was supposed to be operating
an industrial school that trained students for entering the workforce, in 1885, HighRiver principal Albert Lacombe sought government permission to limit his enrolment
to children younger than nine years of age.88 In his 1887 annual report, Qu’Appelleprincipal Joseph Hugonnard actually opposed recruiting older students. The younger

262 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

ones were more obedient and apt to learn. However, he noted, “we need to have someof the older boys to learn the trades and work on the farm.”89
Under the Liberals, a policy slowly began to emerge. In August 1898, J. D. McLean
wrote in response to an inquiry about the age limits for boarding schools that “theDepartment does not consider it advisable to make any hard and fast rule as to theage at which pupils should be admitted to such schools.” However, under “ordinary
circumstances,” he said, “no pupils should be taken into such schools under the ageof 8 years or over that of 14.” At the age of fourteen, McLean thought, the students
should “be sufficiently advanced to enter an Industrial school.”90 By 1900, a policy had
been developed: the minimum age for admission to boarding schools was to be seven,and age ten for industrial schools. The government acknowledged that it might makeexceptions and allow for the enrolment of students younger than those ages, but insuch cases, the schools would receive only half the per capita grant.91 This measure
was meant to discourage industrial school principals from enrolling students whom
the department deemed to be too young. It also meant that in cases where younger students were enrolled, the school had less money to feed, clothe, house, and educate thestudents. In 1911, the policy was changed to make seven the minimum age for admission to both industrial schools and boarding schools.92 The full grant would be paid
for all students whose enrolment had been authorized by the federal government.93
The churches urged the federal government to continue with Reed’s policy of closing day schools—particularly church-supported day schools. Indian Affairs official
Martin Benson concluded that the churches were simply attempting to shift their mission-related costs onto the federal government. In commenting on a 1901 Methodist
proposal for the establishment of a boarding school in northwestern British Columbia,
he noted that in that region of the province, there were five professional teachers,
seven Aboriginal teachers, eighteen missionary teachers, and twenty-five “missionary
ladies,” all working out of thirty-three churches and seventeen school houses. This,he said, was likely to be a drain on the resources of the various missionary societies, so he was not surprised that they were anxious to be relieved of these costs “bythe establishment of boarding schools which would provide for their maintenance by
the Government.” But, he said, “the Department should not be asked to break up the
Indian home such as it is and the Regulations for compulsory attendance were notpassed for their purpose.”94
Benson was well aware of the limitations of the day schools, claiming they did little
to educate or civilize, and served instead as a “resting place for some lazy, incompetent individual with just sufficient energy to draw a small salary.” But rather thanclose them, he thought, the government should improve them by recruiting practicalmen and women with more than textbook knowledge. Such teachers “would be ready
and willing to do anything useful and right, and … eager to find some right thing to
do for the real good of the people.”95 In response to a 1907 Anglican proposal to close

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day schools and open a boarding school in The Pas, he wrote that “there is no reason why day schools should not be made effective. This could be done by raising thepresent salaries and holding out inducements to efficient teachers to take charge ofthese schools.” He pointed out that over the previous six and a half years, $2 million
had been spent on residential schools in the West. “If a portion of this sum had been
expended in bettering the Indians’ condition on the reserve and improving the existing day schools, better results would have been obtained.”96
As noted in the previous chapter, by 1908, the Liberals were considering a radical policy change that would close many industrial and boarding schools and replacethem with improved day schools. Although that policy was abandoned, the churches
and the government were still in conflict over the issue of enrolment. In 1909, theAnglican Synod recommended, “All Government donations in excess of Treaty obligations should be withheld from such parents as refuse to send their children toschool.”97 The following year, Indian Affairs departmental secretary J. D. McLean told
Edmonton-area Indian agent U. Verreau that “it is not the policy of the Department touse compulsion for the purpose of placing children in industrial or boarding schools,
except in cases provided for in the Regulations relating to the Education of IndianChildren.” McLean argued that, with great effort on the part of staff and missionaries,
parental apathy could be overcome to “persuade the Indians to avail themselves of theopportunities offered by these schools.”98
Rev. M. C. Gandier, the principal of the Gleichen, Alberta, school, reported in 1913
that the school had opened the year before with accommodation for forty students
and an enrolment of just thirteen. “Compulsion,” he wrote, “has to be used to get theparents to bring their children to the school.99 This view was supported by British
Columbia Indian agent Thomas Deasy, who also wrote that “we shall never makethe Indian realize the importance of education until we take hold of him and compel
attendance at school.” Left at home, he thought, children fell under the influence ofthe older members of the community, who wereimbued with their old customs and habits; they realize little the necessity formorality or compliance with our laws and customs. Their forefathers lived
without the assistance of the whites, and the Indian has nothing in common withus. Some of the older men consider their ways best, and there is a something
underlying the character, habits and traits of the Indian that it will be hard toeliminate.100

Although the churches and government officials thought the government should
be enforcing its attendance regulations more strictly, the Liberals were not as lax inenforcement as the church criticism implies. In March 1901, Indian Commissioner
David Laird recommended that the Indian agent for the Sarcee Band, A. J. McNeill, “exert
if not exactly compulsion, fairly energetic measures, for instance, cutting the rations
down, etc.”101 In December, McNeill reported he had taken the recommendations to264 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

heart. To recruit five more students for the Sarcee boarding school, he had resorted“to the extreme measure of stopping the rations of the whole Band for the past elevendays.” The band, he said, was “rather hostile at first,” but had eventually come to realize “they cannot quite do as they like.”102 Laird pointed out that it might have been
sufficient to simply stop the rations of the recalcitrant families, as opposed to those of
the whole band, and instructed him not to take such measures in the future without
approval from his superiors.103
The Indian Affairs annual report for 1906 notes that in the Kwawkewlth Agency,“a few parents were fined for not sending their children to school.”104 That same year,
Laird, responding to a situation at Onion Lake where the school-aged children of
twelve families receiving government relief were not attending school, sought andreceived authorization from Ottawa towithhold rations from such parents for the children at home who are fit to attend
school, but are not sent thereto. This is a hardship of which they could relieve
themselves by complying with the wish of the Department and sending theirchildren to the school of their choice where they would be fed and clothed.105

Admission and discharge policy
As parents were to discover to their sorrow, once they enrolled their child in a residential school, there was no question that the child’s continued residence at the school
was anything other than compulsory. It was departmental policy that no child could
be discharged without departmental approval—even if the parents had enrolled thechild voluntarily. The government had no legislative basis for this policy.
As early as 1891, it was government policy to require parental consent for admission to residential school whenever the parents of one faith wanted to have their childeducated at a school operated by a different church.106 Samuel Lucas, the Indian agent
on the Sarcee Reserve in what is now Alberta, reported in 1893 that “eight parents or
guardians have signed an agreement to give up their children for an indefinite time.”107
In 1895, A. E. Forget, then the assistant Indian commissioner for the Northwest, issued
a circular to all industrial school principals and Indian agents, instructing them that“in all cases of pupils admitted into Boarding and Industrial Schools it is desired thata written application for such admission be taken from the parents by the Agents,
Principal, or other official to whom the application is made.” Ottawa would provide
blank application forms for this purpose.108
Onion Lake Roman Catholic principal W. Comiré wrote in 1897 that parents “seemunwilling to sign the forms of application for admission required by the department.
They prefer to keep the liberty of leaving or withdrawing their children from the schoolat will.”109 By 1892, the department required that all parents sign an admission form

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 265

when they enrolled their children in a residential school. In signing the form, parents
gave their consent that “the Principal or head teacher of the Institution for the time
being shall be the guardian” of the child. In that year, the Department of Justice provided Indian Affairs with a legal opinion to the effect that “the fact of a parent having
signed such an application is not sufficient to warrant the forcible arrest against theparents’ will of a truant child who has been admitted to an Industrial School pursuant to the application.” It was held that, without legislative authority, no form could
provide school authorities with the power of arrest.110 Despite this warning, IndianAffairs would continue to enforce policies regarding attendance for which it had nolegal authority well into the twentieth century.111
The form in use in 1900 stipulated that the parent was making application foradmission “for such term as the Department of Indian Affairs may deem proper.” Theform also still required parents to consent to the provision that the “principal or headteacher of the institution for the time being shall be the guardian of the said child.”112
Sometimes, parents persuaded the school principal to discharge their child in spiteof the regulation. In August 1894, Whitefish Lake Chief James Seenum (also known as
Pakan) called on the Red Deer school to try to take his son out of the school. Principal
John Nelson initially said no, the boy could not be discharged without the permissionof the department. Nelson later wrote that if Seenum had “manifested an arrogant
spirit I might have easily resisted his entreaties, but he seemed almost heart broken
and wept when he realized the unfavourable prospect of securing his son’s discharge.”
The principal was so moved that he told Seenum that although he could not discharge
the boy, he “would not say he should not take him,” adding that such a measure would
likely displease the government. Seenum took the hint and left the school with hisson.113 Chief Henry Prince of the St. Peter’s Reserve in Manitoba was not so fortunate.
When he removed his son from the St. Boniface school in 1895, the school officials hada police constable seek the boy’s return. Prince resisted their efforts, and was charged
and convicted for interfering in police work.114
In some cases, Indian Affairs refused to discharge children who had been voluntarily enrolled until they turned eighteen. In 1903, when the government refused
to discharge two brothers who were over fifteen, the students ran away from theMiddlechurch school. They were apprehended and returned to the school on thebasis of a warrant issued under the 1894 regulations. Their father, William Cameron,went to court and got a writ of habeas corpus. Normally, such a writ requires that theperson under arrest be brought before a court. According to Martin Benson, Judge
Richards of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench found on the father’s behalf, andwrote, “The regulations for the detention of children until they reach the age of 18
years do not apply to children who have been voluntarily placed in the school and thatto such children the parents have a right to get them out of the school at any time theywish to demand them.”115

266 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In other words, the government’s discharge policy for students who had been voluntarily enrolled had no legal basis. But this court victory did not change the policy. In
1907, it was still government policy that children, whether voluntarily enrolled by theirparents or committed under the provisions of the Indian Act, could not be removed
without the minister’s permission.116 In his report for the year ending March 31, 1910,
Duncan Campbell Scott, then superintendent of Indian Education, wrote that “pupilsof residential schools are not usually allowed to leave the institutions until they reachthe age of 18.”117 Clearly, the government was willing to ignore court rulings.
For their part, the churches thought the discharge policy was not strict enough.
Principal Father Hugonnard thought that eighteen was too low a discharge age, andthat “many who go back to pure Indian surroundings will be liable to lose many ofthe benefits of the education they have received.” He believed students should be discharged only “when the character is sufficiently formed, and when there is reasonable hope of the ex-pupil not lapsing into an uncivilized mode of life.”118 In 1904, Dr.
Sutherland, the general secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society, lobbied thefederal government to increase the discharge age from eighteen to twenty-one.119
In the early twentieth century, British Columbia Indian agent A. W. Neill observedthat school-discharge policies effectively discouraged parents from enrolling theirchildren. While many wanted to see their children get some schooling, he wrote in1906, parents “think the time is too long to be separated from them. They would agree
to part with them for, say five years, but think that to put a child into the school atseven or eight years of age, and not get it out again until it is eighteen years old is toolong.”120 He made the same point five years later, observing thatthe system of keeping the children in until they are 18 years of age is against thesuccess of the school. It makes parents reluctant to sign them in, it leads to trouble in the maintenance of order and discipline in the school, and too often tends
to lower the vitality of the pupils, so that the health of ex-pupils is often found to
be undermined.121

Neill’s reports not only highlight parental resistance to enrolling their children, butthey also demonstrate the degree to which the government and the schools ignored
the legal rights of parents when it came to discharging students. Until 1908, the federal school regulations set the maximum age for compulsory school attendance for
Aboriginal children at sixteen. In that year, the age was lowered to fifteen.122 While theregulation allowed the government to commit a child to a residential school until theage of eighteen, that was only in situations where it had been concluded that the childwas being neglected or was not being properly educated. These conditions would not
apply when parents were voluntarily enrolling a child. Yet, it is clear from Neill’s lettersthat British Columbia schools and Indian Affairs had taken the position that even voluntarily enrolled children would not be discharged until they were eighteen.123

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 267

Parental resistance and the demise of industrial schools
The industrial schools that the federal government established in western Canada
in the late nineteenth century were the centrepiece of the federal government’s residential school policy. Deliberately built at significant distances from First Nations
communities, they were intended to separate students permanently from their homecommunities, cultures, and economies. Industrial schools also had a higher per
capita rate than church boarding schools. After fifteen years in operation, they were
judged to be failures: most of them were closed by the 1920s. The industrial schools
failed for a variety of reasons: they were, for example, poorly conceived, poorly built,
and poorly managed. Because they were funded on a per capita basis, the industrial
schools could succeed financially only if they had full enrolment. The fact that many
parents refused to send their children to these schools sealed their fate. The existence
and effectiveness of this parental resistance should not be overlooked.
Resistance to the industrial schools was strongest on the Prairies. Between 1883
and 1922, the federal government opened nine industrial schools in Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta. By the end of 1922, only two of these schools were stillin operation: the Qu’Appelle school in Saskatchewan and the Brandon school in
Manitoba. The rest of the industrial schools had all been closed, in large measure as
the result of parental opposition.

Battleford
The Anglicans opened the Battleford industrial school in December 1883.124 The
next year, school inspector T. P. Wadsworth described the school classroom as “cheerless,” largely lacking in furniture and what there was of it was not “of a proper kind.”125
By January of 1885, there were local news reports of boys attempting to run away fromthe school.126 The staff abandoned the school during the North-West Rebellion, andthe students dispersed. It was not until October 1886 that Principal Thomas Clarke
was able to reoccupy the school, which had been used as a barracks by the military.127
Recruiting remained difficult. That year, Onion Lake Indian agent G. G. Mann reported
that, despite his numerous requests, parents had refused to send their children toBattleford because they “did not like the way the boys were treated that had been sent
there & that one died soon after & the other had been expelled on account of beinga bad boy.”128 By July 1887, the enrolment was forty-four—thirty-two boys and twelve
girls. Clarke attributed the increase to the efforts of Assistant Indian Commissioner
Hayter Reed, Major Cotton of the North-West Mounted Police, and the Indian agentsat Prince Albert and Onion Lake.129

268 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1891, enrolment increased to 120, a figure that held into the mid-1890s.130 But,
by the beginning of the twentieth century, enrolment had gone into a decline fromwhich it would never recover. In 1901, Principal Edward Matheson reported that “thedifficulty here is to get all the pupils we want.”131 The following year, he complained
about the opposition to the school from First Nations communities, where “many of
the old people are still bitterly opposed to any change from former customs, and soconstantly work against all progress on the part of the rising generation in the direction of civilization and its methods.”132 In 1907, Matheson blamed his school’s poor
enrolment on the lacklustre efforts of local Indian agents, who would neither recruit
students nor allow him to visit reserves.133 That year, he had 59 pupils enrolled in aschool with a capacity for 150.134
Things did not improve in subsequent years. In 1911, Inspector W. J.
Chisholm reported:
The reluctance of the Indians to allow their children to be taken away from home
is no less than in former years. Of the pupils admitted the majority come from
Montreal Lake, which is more than two hundred miles distant; and the change
from the freedom and relaxation of their northern home to the confinement anddiscipline of residential school life is most trying to their frail constitutions.135

In 1912, Duncan Campbell Scott, by then the Indian Affairs superintendent ofIndian Education, had concluded that the Battleford school had outlived its usefulness. Enrolment had dropped to thirty-five, and the school deficit had climbed to over
$2,000. He recommended that the school be closed, with the students being sent to a
day school to be constructed at the Red Pheasant Reserve, or to a boarding school to
be constructed at The Pas, Manitoba.136 The Battleford school was closed on May 31,
1914.137

High River
The St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic school at High River in what is now Alberta closed
in 1922. Its history had been one of near-continuous rejection by First Nations parents and children. The school had opened in October 1884, a year after the Battlefordschool. The November school diary of that year noted that the eight Blackfoot boys
recruited appeared to be “too big and too well acquainted with the Indian fashion toremain in an institution like this.” Later that month, three of the boys left with a groupof adult First Nations people who had been visiting the school. In January 1885, aninterpreter, Jean L’Heureux (who was eventually forced to resign in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse), brought in nine boys from the Blood and Peigan reserves. The
school diarist observed, “Three of them are very big, and not likely to remain here.”138
By the end of the year, the school had recruited ten boys.139 In later years, Oblate

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 269

Albert Lacombe undertook fruitless recruiting trips to the Sarcee, Blood, and Peigan
reserves.140 In his 1885–86 annual report, Lacombe lamented that “we have not succeeded in retaining the boys at this school, and I may say they have nearly all deserted.
Most of the boys were compelled to leave the school by their parents or guardians,
while a few of the older ones, by making themselves so extremely unmanageable andrebellious, forced us to send them away.”141
When the North-West Rebellion broke out in the spring of 1885, there were only
five students at the school. This number quickly dwindled to one as parents withdrew their children. Post-Rebellion efforts to rebuild enrolment were ineffectual. In
September 1885, the one student recruited in the previous month was withdrawn by
his mother. At the urging of the local Indian agent, the school accepted as a student“an insane Indian hunted by the police for threatening the Rev. Mr. Sims, minister of
the Church of England.”142 The acting principal, E. Claude, explained that the plan was
to recruit two of the man’s children as students. “No idea can be formed of the trouble
I had, for three days, to obtain these children although the parents were expected to
be rationed and to remain here.” The father eventually became angry with Claude andleft the school with his children.143
In February 1886, Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed informed Claude
that all he needed to do was to send an order to the Indian agent at the Blood Reserveand children would be dispatched to the school. The order was issued, but the only
message back from the agent was that “no one could be found who liked to cometo the school.” Claude often tried to convince First Nations families travelling by theschool to leave their children with him. The parents would stay for a few days, accept
Claude’s food, and leave with their children. In the fall of 1887, letters to three Indian
agents among the Blackfoot produced no new students.144
In 1887, the school had an enrolment of thirty, only two of whom were fromBlackfoot reserves.145 The following year, a local First Nations leader, Chief Alexander,
refused to help recruit students for the High River school, but promised support if a
residential school were built on his reserve.146 Chief Alexander’s request was a common one. Many Aboriginal leaders were not opposed to schools, or even residential schools, just as long as they were not in distant locations. When Lacombe andClaude went on another recruiting trip through the Peigan and Blood reserves in
1887, Lacombe reported, “We received only four children. Always the same excusesand same reasons.” Despite this, he proposed that the federal government support
the Oblates in establishing a residential school on the Blood Reserve. Pointing to theAnglican and Methodist presence on the reserve, he commented, “I think we have aright as any one to have our share in the schools of that reserve.”147
By the early 1890s, a new principal, Albert Naessens, reported that parents “seemto be more contented to be separated from their children, and do not visit the school
as frequently as heretofore, greatly to the advantage of the children.”148 However,270 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the Blackfoot never accepted the school. In 1897, Naessens was forced to acknowledge that “for some reason or other the old time opposition of the Indians of Treaty
No. 7 towards sending their children to this school, seems to be re-awakened. The
Blackfeet are the worst in this respect. We have received no recruits from this agency
since January, 1893.”149 Although the school’s pupilage had been increased to 130, by
1898, it had only 105 students, and by 1910, enrolment was down to 62 students.150 In
1917, Indian Affairs reprimanded Indian agent Harry Gunn for not doing a better jobof recruiting children from the Brocket, Alberta, area for the High River school.151
Those parents who did enrol their children in the school had trouble getting themout. In 1906, an Indian agent wrote to High River principal Naessens that Chief Little
Plume had been “bothering me for some time over the discharge of his adopted son
Thomas Charlie.” The agent noted that the boy was now eighteen years old and asked
the principal to please let him know what was being done about his discharge.152
In 1917, Indian agent W. J. Dilworth reported that no Blood children had been sent
to the High River school in the past two years. Parents were angered by the fact that theschool’s new principal, George Nordmann, was not honouring commitments that his
predecessor had made as to the age at which children would be allowed to leave theschool. The level of hostility was so great that Dilworth predicted that no one on thereserve would willingly send their child to the school.153
The federal government wanted to close the school. Instead, the Oblates appointed
a new principal, Alfred Demers, who, they believed, could turn the troubled institution around. But in 1922, Demers asked to be relieved of his work, due to his declining
health. Over the previous three years, according to his superiors, Demers had “travelled all over the country, visiting all the Indian reserves, in order to get pupils. All his
efforts have not met with the success they so well deserved.” The Oblates concluded,“Indians seem to be more and more opposed to the idea of sending their children to
Dunbow [High River] and to-day there are only about forty students in a school capable of accommodating a hundred.” They recommended that the Bishop of Calgary, J.
T. McNally, approach the federal government to arrange the closure of the school.154
The school was closed in the fall of 1922, and its equipment was given to the principalof the Catholic boarding school on the Hobbema Reserve.155

St. Boniface
The Roman Catholic school in St. Boniface, Manitoba, opened in 1889 under Oblate
management.156 By 1893, Sister Hamel, the principal, was reporting:
The difficulty in that respect comes from the parents, who, though pleased with
the institution, seem unable to control their inclination for unrestricted liberty
and their unreasonable fondness of having their children with them. A good deal

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 271

has been done towards overcoming this inclination, but there is still room for
improvement.157

Indian Affairs inspector Albert Betournay reported as early as 1896, “It has always
been found very difficult to recruit pupils” for the St. Boniface school.158 By 1902, it was
clear to the Oblates that the St. Boniface school needed to be replaced by schools thatwere on reserves. Oblate official J. P. Magnan wrote, “I have frequently given instructions to our Rev. Fathers Missionaries [sic] on the Reserves, to induce the Indians tosend their children to that school, and I can attest that they have done all they could
reasonably do under the present circumstances; but it has been to no avail.”159 The
school was closed in the spring of 1905. In exchange for closing the school, that same
year the Oblates opened two boarding schools in Manitoba (at Sandy Bay and Fort
Alexander) and one in northwestern Ontario (at Fort Frances).160
Aside from the Battleford, High River, and St. Boniface schools, three other prairie
industrial schools (Middlechurch, Calgary, and Regina) closed in rapid succession
during this period. In the 1890s, the Middlechurch school in Manitoba had experienced difficulty in recruiting students from distant locations because government
policies made it impossible for the students to return to their homes for vacations.161
By 1900, the school was at its full capacity of 125 and was actually turning students
away.162 By 1903, however, the school was in decline, with average attendance down toeighty.163 The school burned down in 1906 and was not rebuilt.164 At the end of the 1905
school year, enrolment at the Calgary industrial school was down to twenty-seven.
Principal George Hogbin blamed the parents and “the fact that those responsible forthe boarding schools do not appear to use all the influence they might to secure thetransfer of the older (and probably most promising and bright) pupils, as they arriveat the usual age.”165 The school closed by the end of 1907.166
In 1896, the Indian agent at Birtle, J. A. Markle, wrote that the parents of his agency
objected to sending their children to the distant Regina school, since “they cannot
hope to see them in the event of the serious illness of those near and dear to them.”
To address this need, he proposed an increase in the pupilage of the Birtle school.167
In 1897, the Regina school had a capacity of 100 and an average attendance of 50.168
In 1905, the principal reported that there were “very few available children” onlocal reserves, and noted “it will be more difficult to get recruits from more distantreserves.”169 A few years later, an attempt to increase the number of children enrolled
in the school failed because “the parents will not send them.”170 Declining enrolments
and poor management led to the school’s closure in 1910.171

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Red Deer
The Methodist industrial school in Red Deer opened in 1893 and closed in 1919.
Throughout its history, it was largely shunned by First Nations people.172 Principal
John Nelson initially had no trouble recruiting fifty-two pupils, more than the school’s
allowed maximum. However, he found that some of the students “were too old, andwith habits formed, aspirations well defined, fresh from the free and untrammelled
life of the reserve, the association with younger children must necessarily produce anundesirable effect.” As a result, these boys were discharged.173 Nelson’s successor as
Red Deer principal, C. E. Somerset, had great difficulty in recruiting students of any
age. He conducted an unsuccessful recruiting expedition in 1897 that led him to conclude that parents “prefer to keep the children around their own homes.”174
Somerset’s successor as principal, Arthur Barner, felt that nothing less than houseto-house recruiting was needed if he were to fill the school. He spent much of thefall and early winter of 1908 visiting families on the White Whale Lake, Saddle Lake,Whitefish, and Goodfish and Battle River reserves.175 He had limited success: the following school year opened with only forty-three students. Barner wrote, “It has been
said that Alberta has the poorest class of Canadian Indians. I can well believe it, forignorance and dirt they would be hard to beat. I can truly say that no amount of money
no matter how great would hire me to spend another week as I spent the one referredto.”176 In 1909, W. E. S. James, a Protestant missionary in the area, reported that on
the Paul’s Reserve, he was able to recruit only three of forty school-aged children forthe school. He said the parents wished to send their children to the school, but “thegrand-mothers refuse to let them go.”177
Chiefs who might have been expected to support the Methodist-run Red Deerindustrial school, such as Methodist Chief Samson of Hobbema, had opposed theschool’s construction because of its distance from their reserves. Instead, Samson lobbied for an on-reserve boarding school.178 To Barner’s dismay, both the Hobbema andMorley reserves boycotted the Red Deer school.179
Even though Barner had led the charge to halt the attempt to close industrial
schools in 1909, he also expressed deep reservations about the industrial school’s
prospects, concluding that such a school was “at least a generation ahead of its time.”
He had become a convert to the construction of smaller boarding schools closer toFirst Nations communities. In a confidential letter to Methodist officials, he gave voice
to an even more heretical idea:
There is another thing I think should be done if any change is to be made, viz.
have some kind of consultation with the Indians concerned, no matter what thescheme may be, try to secure their co-operation. I believe this can be accomplished by some wise agent clothed with authority. There is a feeling abroad
among our Indians that they would like to have something to say about the ed-

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 273

ucation of their children and I believe more will be accomplished by confidence
and co-operation than any kind of compulsion.180

Conflicts between parents, principals, and Indian agents continued into the second
decade of the twentieth century. In 1913, Whitefish Lake Chief James Seenum once
more came into conflict with the Red Deer school administrators when he refused toreturn his daughter to the school. He said that when he had enrolled her in the school,
he and Barner had reached an understanding that she would attend for only one year.
The year was up and he needed her at home because his wife was ill. Seenum’s letter tothe local Indian agent on the issue ended with a request to “try and come over before
you send the police after me.”181 The following year, a new Red Deer principal, J. F.
Woodsworth, wrote letters to parents who had not sent their children back to school
after the summer vacation that informed them that if the children were not returned
within a week, “I shall send a policeman to bring them.”182 Later that month, he issued
a warrant for the arrest of fifteen runaway students.183 By 1919, the school was in stateof crisis brought on by chronic underfunding and a devastating bout of influenza.184
In recommending a permanent closure of the school, Woodsworth observed that “ithas been in the wrong place from the first, being too far from the homes of the Indian.”
He noted that the enrolment problem stemmed from the government’s failure to act
on a recommendation made ten years previously to close the school and build boarding schools on the reserves.185 But the placing of the schools at a distance from thereserves had not been an accident or an error; it was a deliberate policy decision.

Shingwauk and Elkhorn
The Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, sought to expand into western
Canada in the 1880s in the hope of addressing its inability to recruit students locally.
In 1884, E. F. Wilson, the school principal, said:
It is annoying and discouraging to have good buildings and good teachers, andall in excellent working order, and yet only half the proper number of pupils, andto know that in many cases it is not the pupils themselves who are to blame, but
the parents, who often retain their children, and prevent their completing theireducation, in order to satisfy their own selfish ends.186

Four years later, he wrote:
I have been 20 years now labouring as a missionary among the Indians, and myinstitution has been 13 years in operation. I may say that it has been a time of almost constant trial and anxiety owing (1) to the difficulty of getting the pupils we
wanted; (2) our inability to detain them for a proper period owing to the unreasonable and unreasoning action of parents and other relations.187

274 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1900, the enrolment at the Shingwauk Home was seventy students, although
the school had a capacity of 100.188 By 1910, enrolment was down to thirty-sevenstudents.189
After touring the residential schools in the United States, Wilson concluded thatindustrial schools “should be as far as possible removed from the Reserves.” Therefore,
he recommended in 1887 that the Shingwauk Home take in students from western
Canada.190 The following year, he opened a second school in Elkhorn, Manitoba.
It was intended to be the first of a set of feeder schools for Shingwauk. “As we gain
the confidence of the Indians,” he hoped to “gradually draft our Western pupils” to
Shingwauk.191 Parents had little interest in sending their children to the Elkhorn school,
let alone to Ontario. In 1889, Wilson acknowledged that the attendance at the Elkhorn
school “has been small and fluctuating.” Four of the eight students enrolled in theschool had run away.192 In 1910, the school had an attendance of sixty-four.193 By 1918,
the federal government decided to close the Elkhorn school. Although average attendance was ninety-six in 1915, it had fallen to forty-two by 1917. The industrial school
had been trying to recruit students from as far west as Battleford, Saskatchewan, andas far east as northwestern Ontario. In making the decision, the federal government
acknowledged that “Indians are averse to allow their children to attend school at sucha distance from their homes. Educational facilities are available on all the reserves inwhich pupils are enrolled; boarding schools are in some places adjacent and in others
day schools are in operation on the reserves.”194
By refusing to enrol their children in the industrial schools on the Prairies, parents
not only undermined the federal government’s assimilation policies, but they also
deprived the schools of revenue and free labour. As a result, the industrial schools ran
significant deficits, and overworked and underfed the children they did recruit. This
led other parents to withdraw their children from the schools.

Resistance in British Columbia
Indian Affairs officials proved to be overly optimistic in their estimations as to howeasy it would be to recruit students for industrial schools in British Columbia. In 1881,
Indian agent Henry Cornwall reported, “A boarding school for children of both sexes
at Kamloops is greatly desired by all the Indians.” He predicted that 300 students could
be recruited within a fifty-mile (80.4-kilometre) radius.195 But in 1892, there were only
thirteen students at the Kamloops industrial school. According to Indian agent J. W.
Mackay, “The Indians have taken their children away one by one.” The parents said theprincipal, Michael Hagan, made “them work too hard clearing land. They are furtherof the opinion that they would prefer having their children occupied in learning useful

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 275

trades, when not at their lessons: as they can pick up the art of clearing brushy land attheir own homes.”196
Metlakatla principal John Scott had trouble keeping students for any length of time.
In 1892, he reported that ten students were now back living with their parents. Most ofthem were under the age of twelve when they had been withdrawn from the school,
usually “because they were needed at home, others through anxiety on the part ofparents. That anxiety arose from their sons being far from home during the prevalence
here, about a year ago, of the influenza epidemic.”197
Despite predictions that “there will be no difficulty in filling” a proposed industrial
school at Alert Bay, British Columbia, parents were unwilling to enrol their children
when the school opened in 1894. Principal A. W. Corker reported:
One boy was admitted from the Tanakdakw tribe, a bright little fellow, and was
my only pupil for the first quarter. The beginning of the next quarter, eight boys
were admitted. Two have since gone out to the fishing, and two were taken awayby their parents because the old people reproached them for putting their children in the school.

There was no trades training for those boys who did enrol. Instead, they were put towork “clearing land, and extracting stumps.”198
This sort of opposition did not dissipate quickly. In 1907, Indian Affairs reported
that local parents were so resistant to sending their children to the Alert Bay industrial
school that “about half the boys are taken in from the Northwest Coast agency. There
has been a Girls’ Home or boarding school, which, however, has been closed for sometime for want of attendance.”199
Principal Nicolas Coccola was well aware of the degree of parental resistance to anindustrial school at Cranbrook in the Kootenays. He said that on the night before theschool opened in 1890, parents were on the verge “of breaking out into war with thewhites, [because they] objected to send their children.”200 In his memoirs, he boasted
about the measures he took to get all the children into the school without securing
parental approval. After a large church service, he had all the children in the congregation line up, making sure he placed the children whose parents supported theindustrial school at the head of the line. Then, all the children, including those whoseparents did not wish to enrol their children, were marched to the school, where “theSisters were on the porch to receive the children who entered and closed the doors.
[I] told the crowd to go back to camp and so the school opened with 20 children.”201
By the following year, Coccola was able to boast that the school was filled to capacity
and that the parents “seem now highly pleased, and come and offer their children.”202
If this was the case, it was a temporary phenomenon: in 1922, Coccola complained ofhaving spent the month of September “collecting children from the different camps
for the school, the parents doing nothing towards the education unless coaxed and276 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

threatened.”203 Five years later, when he was principal of the Fraser Lake school, heissued a similar report: “As usual we had to go around to the camps to gather them,
the generality of parents do not appreciate yet the advantage of education, they would
rather keep their children with them.”204
Before the First World War, the federal government closed only one industrial
school in British Columbia—the short-lived school at Metlaktala (1889 to 1908).205
Historian Jennifer Pettit has suggested that the British Columbia industrial schools,
which focused more on farming and gardening and less on trades training than did
other industrial schools, had somewhat more success in recruiting students than theprairie schools because there were fewer boarding schools in British Columbia thanon the Prairies. As a result, the industrial schools faced less competition from schoolsthat were closer to home. Also, the British Columbia industrial schools usually werelocated relatively close to the home communities of the students. This eliminated oneof the major parental complaints about industrial schools.206
However, it is also clear that parents even in British Columbia preferred boarding
schools to industrial schools. In 1914, the council of the Massett Band of the Queen
Charlotte Agency petitioned the federal government for a boarding school. The council members wrote that there were over 100 school-aged children whom they wished
to be “taught in a way that would be credible to us and to the young under our care.”Because they spent much of the year at fishing camps, their children could not attend
day school. While some parents sent their children to the more distant Coqualeetza
Institute in Chilliwack, most were unwilling to send their children to boarding schools
on the mainland, since “we, sometimes, want to see our children, and the expense of
sending them to outside schools is great.”207
While parental resistance contributed to the closing of the industrial schools, it also
led the government to adopt an ever more compulsory approach to enforcing attendance at the remaining residential schools. These measures were adopted following
the appointment of Duncan Campbell Scott as deputy minister of Indian Affairs.

The appointment of Duncan Campbell Scott
In 1913, Duncan Campbell Scott replaced Pedley as deputy minister of IndianAffairs. Scott, who had joined the department as a bookkeeper in 1879, would continue in his position as deputy minister until his retirement in 1932. As deputy minister, he worked with six different ministers and exercised considerable control overthe development of Indian Affairs policy. For example, in testimony before a Houseof Commons committee in 1920, Scott acknowledged that Indian Affairs ministers—
who also doubled as Department of the Interior ministers—usually had little time to
devote to the portfolio. As he put it, it was “really difficult for any Minister to sit down

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 277

and grasp the complicated nature of the Indian business.”208 Scott played a leadingrole in developing policies to suppress Aboriginal culture, to make it easier for thegovernment to gain control over Aboriginal land, and to implement more compulsory
measures in relation to school attendance. He pushed aside those who advocated amore aggressive—and therefore more costly—approach to the treatment of tuberculosis among Aboriginal people. He was also responsible for the 1910 contract, which
provided for the largest increase in residential school funding prior to the Second
World War. Scott had the confidence and support of his ministers and Parliament
throughout his long career. It is important to recognize that this confidence was inlarge measure due to the fact that the policies he implemented were completely inkeeping with Canada’s historic approach to Aboriginal people.
In 1912, the police were used fifteen times to force students to attend the Qu’Appelleschool.209 In 1914, Scott sent a circular to all Indian agents, pointing out that the government had the power under the Regulations Relating to the Education of IndianChildren to place children “who are not being properly cared for or educated” into
residential schools. He instructed them to bring all such cases in their agency to theattention of the department. He also reminded them, “When recruiting, orphan children and children neglected by their parents should have the preference.” At the endof each quarter-year, agents were expected to submit a list of all school-aged children
in their agency who were not attending school, along with an explanation for thechild’s absence.210
In 1914, Indian agent W. J. Dilworth reported he had sent a parent from the Blood
Reserve in Alberta to jail for ten days for taking his son out of a residential school without permission.211 Department secretary J. D. McLean supported Dilworth’s position,
urging him to remind school principals they should not make promises to parents
that implied they would be allowed take their children out of school after they had
been admitted. McLean noted that “the printed form of admission distinctly statesthat the child is to remain in the school for such time as the Department may deem
fit and that the principal or the head teacher of the institution for the time being
shall be the guardian of said child.”212 In an effort to improve enrolment at the HighRiver school and at the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Cardston, Alberta,
Dilworth announced that “children of school age that are not attending school without a reasonable excuse shall receive no free ration at the ration house.”213 In 1915, parents refused to return children to the Norway House, Manitoba, school at the start ofthe school year because of complaints over the school’s lack of food and poor qualityof clothing in the previous year. Methodist Church representative T. Ferrier reminded
Chief Berens, “These children can be taken back to the school by the Department,in spite of whether the parents are willing or not now that they have been entered as
pupils of the school.”214278 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The government’s weak legal position on discharge was underscored in 1918 whenfederal Deputy Minister of Justice E. L. Newcombe informed Indian Affairs that thepowers under Section 12 of the 1894 regulations applied only to students who had
been committed to the schools because it was believed the child was “being not properly cared for or neglected.” In order for the government to have the legal authority toforce Aboriginal students to stay in school longer, he recommended that the regulations be amended to ensure that even when “a parent or guardian voluntarily surrenders the child to the industrial school,” the “child shall then be held in all respects as
if committed.”215 Although the regulation was not amended at that time, Newcombe’s
letter helped pave the way for significant changes to the Indian Act in 1920.

The Indian Act amendments of 1920
In 1919, the churches intensified their pressure for enforcement of compulsory
attendance. In apparent response, Assistant Deputy Minister A. F. MacKenzie sent out
a circular to Indian Affairs staff, stating that parents who did not send their children
to school “shall not be regarded as being eligible for relief or other assistance fromthe Department.”216 In 1920, the Anglican Church complained that the Indian agent
did not provide support to the church in its efforts to recruit students to its boarding school in The Pas. In one instance, T. B. R. Westgate, the field secretary for theMissionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, said that students were notdelivered to the school until five months after their admittance had been approved.
In another case, two boys had been placed in the schools “because they were a nuisance on the reserve.”217 This continuing pressure from the churches, coupled with thegrowing realization that the government lacked the legislative authority for its current
discharge policy, led to a complete rewrite of the education section of the Indian Act
in 1920. Under the new provisions:10. (1) Every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is
physically able shall attend such day, industrial or boarding school as
may be designated by the Superintendent General for the full periods
during which such school is open each year. Provided, however, that such
school shall be the nearest available school of the kind required, andthat no Protestant child shall be assigned to a Roman Catholic schoolor a school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices, and no Roman
Catholic child shall be assigned to a Protestant school or a school conducted under Protestant auspices.
(2) The Superintendent General may appoint any officer or person to bea truant officer to enforce the attendance of Indian children at school,

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 279

and for such purpose a truant officer shall be vested with the powers ofa peace officer, and shall have authority to enter any place where he hasreason to believe there are Indian children between the ages of seven andfifteen years, and when requested by the Indian agent, a school teacher orthe chief of a band shall examine into any case of truancy, shall warn thetruants, their parents or guardians or the person with whom any Indianchild resides, of the consequences of truancy, and notify the parent,
guardian or such person in writing to cause the child to attend school.
(3) Any parent, guardian or person with whom an Indian child is residing
who fails to cause such child, being between the ages aforesaid, to attend
school as required by this section after having received three days notice
so to do by a truant officer shall, on the complaint of the truant officer,
be liable on summary conviction before a justice of the peace or Indian
agent to a fine of not more than two dollars and costs, or imprisonment
for a period not exceeding ten days or both, and such child may bearrested without a warrant and conveyed to school by the truant officer:
Provided that no parent or other person shall be liable to such penalties
if such child, (a) is unable to attend school by reason of sickness or otherunavoidable cause; (b) has passed the entrance examination for highschools; or, (c) has been excused in writing by the Indian agent or teacher
for temporary absence to assist in husbandry or urgent and necessary
household duties.218
It should be noted that the 1920 amendment did not make residential schoolingcompulsory for all First Nations children. The provision stipulated that students “shallattend such day, industrial or boarding school” (italics added). Indeed, the federal
government never constructed a sufficient number of residential schools to accommodate all First Nations children. Where, in the past, the federal government couldcommit a child to residential school only if it judged that she or he was not “being
properly cared for or educated,” the new amendment gave it the authority to compel
any First Nations student to attend residential school. It also made it legal to keep thechild in that school until they turned fifteen. (However, the department was to takethe position that the Act gave it the right to keep children in school until they turned
sixteen.)219
Scott recognized that the amendments had significantly increased the government’s power of compulsion. In his annual report, he wrote:
Prior to the passing of these amendments the Act did not give the Governor inCouncil power to make regulations enforcing the residence and attendance ofIndian children at residential schools, as the department could only commit to aresidential school when a day school is provided, and the child does not attend.

280 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The recent amendments give the department control and remove from the Indian parent the responsibility for the care and education of his child, and the bestinterests of the Indians are promoted and fully protected. The clauses apply toevery Indian child over the age of seven and under the age of fifteen.220

The schools as child welfare institutions
The enrolment difficulties that the schools experienced would have been more
severe were it not for the fact that they also served as what would now be describedas “child-welfare” institutions. 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.”221 In reality, orphans and the children of parents who could not afford to care forthem constituted a considerable portion of the schools’ enrolment not only throughout this period (1867 to 1939), but also throughout the 130-year history of the system.
In 1893, Mohawk Institute principal Robert Ashton pointed out that the general
education progress at the school was being lowered by “the admission of orphans andneglected children, who are generally quite ignorant on admission; but as this classis admitted for long terms the decrease of numbers in the higher classes will be only
temporary.”222 A decade later, the enrolment of the Shingwauk Home was fifty-seven.
Principal G. Ley King reported that “nineteen are motherless, nine fatherless and seventeen have neither father nor mother.” In other words, of the fifty-seven students
enrolled, only twelve had both parents living.223 Children were also taken from parents
who were deemed to be unfit. In 1911, for example, Indian Affairs placed two tenyear-old girls in British Columbia’s Coqualeetza Institute. According to Indian Affairs,“Their mothers, notoriously bad women, were unfit to have charge of them. Aided bysome Indians and bad white men, they fled from place to place, to prevent the girls
being placed in school. The girls are now doing exceptionally well, being quite contented and happy, and the Indians are quite reconciled.”224
In the wake of the 1918 influenza epidemic, Indian Affairs decreed:In view of the number of Indian children made orphans by the recent epidemic
of influenza, who will have to be provided for, it is the wish of the Departmentthat 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.225

By 1924, this temporary measure was official policy. According to that year’s annual
report, “Orphans, children of destitute parents and those living some distance fromday schools on the reserves are given the preference, when the number of vacancies
is limited.”226 In 1921, 112 of the 129 students at the Mohawk Institute were under theThe struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 281

category of “orphaned and neglected.”227 Basil Johnston, who entered the Spanish,
Ontario, boys’ school in the late 1930s, recalled that most of that school’s students“came from broken homes; some were orphans, having lost one or both parents; others were committed to the institution as punishment for some misdemeanor; and a
few were enrolled by their parents in order to receive some education and training.”228
Other students were taken in because they were in poor health. In 1909, W.
McWhinney, the principal of the Presbyterian school at Kamsack, Saskatchewan,
wrote of how, in the school’s early years, many of the students who had been recruited“should never have entered school.” Many of these students died.229
In other cases, parents enrolled their children in the schools out of financial desperation. Charles Constant of the James Smith’s Band in Saskatchewan applied to have
his eleven- and thirteen-year-old daughters admitted to the Anglican school at Onion
Lake in 1929, even though there was a day school near to his home. As he explained
to the Indian agent, “I am poor, hard up and cannot feed my children properly and I
think it will be better for my older girls to be in a boarding school.”230 Seven years later,a Chilcotin father wrote to his children attending the Cariboo school at 145 Station,
British Columbia, “I didn’t make much money this year, just enough to buy grub tolive on. You are lucky to be in school where you get plenty to eat. If you were home you
would be hungry many days.”231
By the 1930s, the schools were part of a far-reaching system by which the federal
government sought to regulate Aboriginal life. In 1935, E. A. W. R. McKenzie recommended that the daughter of a relationship between a member of the Kahkewistahaw
Band and a “French half-breed” be admitted to a residential school. In this case, thegirl’s mother had died and the father had remarried and “relinquished all claim to thechild,” who was being raised by her maternal grandmother. The agent recommended
that the girl be admitted to the Grayson, Saskatchewan, residential school.232 In 1936,
G. A. Dodds recommended that a six-year-old child be admitted to the File Hills,
Saskatchewan, school, arguing, “There are four children to this family and the father
has no great store of energy or ambition, that I feel it would be a kindness to the childto admit her to the school.”233 In 1936, Indian agent F. J. Clarke sought to have four children who were attending the Peguis Centre day school in Manitoba transferred to theBrandon residential school. He explained that there were seven children in the family
and the “father has not been able to support the family properly. The Principal of theschool had to outfit these four boys with clothing before they could go to the school.”234
In April 1938, Indian agent W. B. Murray sought to have a four-year-old girl admitted
to the Morley, Alberta, school. He wrote that “her Mother died leaving 7 children. The
oldest child is discharged from school, 4 are now in school, a baby has been given in
adoption, and the father, from the wish to keep the family together as much as possible, asks to have this child in school.”235

282 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Shubenacadie school was established specifically to serve as a child-welfare
facility.236 In the spring of 1937, the father of two children attending the Shubenacadie
school wrote to his seventeen-year-old daughter, saying that “he hoped she would
not be coming home as they were starving” in their home community in Restigouche,
Québec.237 As a result, a decision was made to delay the children’s discharge from theschool for at least a year.238 In 1938, Richibucto, New Brunswick, Indian agent Charles
Hudson recommended that a girl whose foster father was “inclined to ill use her” beadmitted to the Shubenacadie school.239
Some children from Summerside, Prince Edward Island, were sent to Shubenacadie
in 1939 because their “parents were very poor, and of a roaming nature.”240 That same
year, some parents tried unsuccessfully to have their children admitted to residential
school. Indian agent Hudson recommended against admitting a Richibucto woman’s children to Shubenacadie. He said that although the woman was a widow, herchildren were well-cared-for and attending a local day school. According to Hudson,“She wishes to marry a very much no good Indian and he does not want her children
around.”241 At the same time that Indian Affairs was rejecting this woman, a different
Indian agent was recommending that two children who were “wandering about thereserve from one home to another” be admitted to Shubenacadie.242
Indian agents were also consulted when children were discharged. In 1937, when
two students were of age to be discharged from the Chapleau, Ontario, school, theIndian agent consulted with their mother, who said she was “not actually able to takecare of these two children being hardly able to feed the rest of the family with the relief
allowed.” As a result, she asked that they be kept in the school, and the Indian agent
concurred with her request.243

The use of inducements
Faced with parental hostility, principals offered parents incentives to enrol theirchildren. This practice, generally frowned upon by government, was followed nomatter what the decade and no matter which political party was in power. Principal
E. F. Wilson lamented his efforts to recruit students for his new school in Elkhorn,
Manitoba. In 1888, he said that “it is almost impossible to get [children] except bybribes of money or presents, a system to which I utterly object—indeed I always tellthe Indians that the thanks must be on their side not on mine if I take their children
to my schools.”244
Although the federal government discouraged this recruiting practice, other principals were not as high-minded as Wilson. Their agreements might come to the attention of the federal government only if parents felt the principal was not adhering to
his side of the bargain. For example, in 1891, a First Nations woman, Es-qua-sis, had

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 283

transferred her son from the Anglican school at Onion Lake to the Roman Catholicschool at Qu’Appelle. She did it because the principal, Joseph Hugonnard, had promised to discharge the boy in the spring so he could help with farm work—along withhis young uncle, who was also enrolled at the school. He had also given her $8 to covertransportation costs. But, when spring came, she complained that Hugonnard had notreleased either boy as promised.245
Indian Commissioner David Laird reported in 1902 that the Indian agent for theCowessess Reserve believed “it has been a rule with the Roman Catholic Schools to begenerous to the parents of pupils they may get.” Laird added, “This ‘generous’ practice
is not confined to R.C. Schools, and I have had occasion within the last year to censure
what appeared more like a payment for pupils than mere generosity.”246
In examining an allegation that the Brandon school principal was paying parents
to send their children to the school, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson wrote that
it was likely the principal was providing parents with gifts of clothing “to induce themto part with their children as it is said to be pretty generally the practice in the Westto fill up the schools by this means. The denominational schools have clothing sent
them, and I have learned from outside sources that they use it for this purpose, as the
Indians will not give up their children voluntarily.”247
In the following decade, W. J. Dilworth, the Indian agent on the Blood Reserve inAlberta, sought to end what he saw as a practice “to literally buy children into school.
One principal here no longer [sic] than last spring told me that he is always asked by
the parent to give him $5.00 for the child. He said that he would loan the parent $5.00
expecting never to have it returned and it never is.”248
The practice continued into the 1930s. When Indian Affairs attempted to resolve
a conflict between the principals of the Anglican and Catholic schools on the Blood
Reserve in Alberta in 1933, it was revealed that the Catholic principal, E. Ruaux, had
paid the parents $10 for a saddle and $5 for delivering their son to the school. The $5,
they said, was not a bribe, but had been given to them to alleviate their poverty. IndianAffairs, which had originally ruled that the boy should go to the Anglican school,
allowed the boy to continue to attend the Catholic school, but determined that, in the
future, Ruaux was not to make “clothing, gifts, nor funds for the purchase of same”
prior to the admission of a student.249 In February 1935, J. H. O. Allard, the principalof the Thunderchild school in Delmas, Saskatchewan, offered parents between $1 and$3 to offset the cost of bringing their children to school.250 By August, he reported, “Oursavages did not need coaxing to come for the promised three dollars. Last year at thesame time, we had 12 entries; this year, we have 60, including five new recruits.”251
The degree to which the schools were successful in employing financial inducements is a sign of the widespread poverty among Aboriginal people, a condition thatwas largely the result of the federal government’s failure to live up to what were supposed to be legally binding Treaty commitments.

284 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“Virtually being kept a prisoner”:
Coercion from 1920 to 1940
The closing of the hated industrial schools, the adoption of heightened powers of compulsion, the priority given to child-welfare cases, and the ongoing use of
inducements all contributed to increased enrolment. By 1925, Deputy Minister Scottreported that residential schools were full to capacity and enrolment at day schools
had also increased. In the 1919–20 fiscal year, 4,719 students had been enrolled in seventy-four residential schools. Five years later, enrolment in seventy-three schools was
6,031. During the same period, average attendance had increased from 4,133 to 5,278.
Day school enrolment in the same period had gone from 7,477 to 8,191, and averageattendance increased from 3,516 to 4,601.252
Although students could be withdrawn from school once they reached the age of
sixteen, in the 1920s, the government policy was to encourage parents to keep theirchildren in school until they turned eighteen. Russell T. Ferrier, the director of education for the department, wrote, “Indian Agents, principals and others interested inIndian education are urged to make every possible endeavor to persuade parents toleave their children in school for a longer period than prescribed by the Act.”253
In a 1927 letter to an Indian agent, Ferrier wrote that “you will realize that the
majority of residential school pupils will considerably benefit by remaining in such
schools until they are eighteen years of age or even older—this is especially true ofthe girls for reasons which will readily suggest themselves to you.”254 Departmental
secretary J. D. McLean maintained the same approach, instructing the principal of
the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, to ensure that “every effort is bent to havethose who should remain longer stay until they are 18 years of age.” If parents were to
request the discharge of students who were sixteen or seventeen, McLean advised theprincipal to tell them that “the matter will have to be referred to the Department.”255
While Ferrier and McLean were advocating a policy of persuasion and delay,
Indian Commissioner William Graham, the senior Indian Affairs official on the
Prairies, essentially took the law into his own hands. It was his policy to refuse to granta discharge to any student under the age of eighteen. His practice came to light only
in 1926 when he complained to Ottawa that the principal of the Joussard, Alberta,
school was discharging students at the age of sixteen. Graham called this “an irregularproceeding and contrary to the Regulations of the Department, which required theeducation of Indian children up to the age of eighteen.” He said he had been careful to guard against granting applications from other schools to discharge students
before they reached the age of eighteen.256 When McLean pointed out that the Indian
Act provided for compulsory attendance only for children between the ages of sevento fifteen,257 Graham responded that while he was well aware of the Indian Act provisions, he thought the government had a regulation “whereby we were expected toThe struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 285

keep children in school until the age of eighteen.” He said this regulation was similar
to the regulation that required band members to request passes from the Indian agent
before leaving the reserve, although he was also well aware there was no formal regulation regarding passes. The impact of Graham’s personal policy making was significant to many First Nations families. According to his report, he received at least 100
applications a year from parents who were seeking to have their children discharged
once they turned sixteen. By this, his own evidence, at least 100 First Nations youth ayear were being illegally required to attend residential school against the will of theirfamilies.258
Meanwhile, the churches continued to believe that attendance regulations were
not being enforced with sufficient vigour. At their 1925 convention, the principals of
Catholic residential schools passed a resolution that, since some parents “show negligence or repugnance to send their children to school or encourage truancy,” thefederal government be requested to enforce the compulsory attendance provisions of
the Indian Act. They maintained their opposition to day schools, asking that none beconstructed “within the recruiting grounds of a residential school.”259 Fifteen months
later, in 1927, all Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) officers and constables wereappointed truant officers.260 From then on, the rcmp was with increasing regularity
called upon to return runaway students and to compel parents to send their children
to residential schools.261 In 1928, an Indian agent had a parent from the Blood Reserve
jailed for refusing to send his children to school.262 The Indian Act was amended in1933 to incorporate the appointment of Mounted Police officers as truant officers,
reflecting their 1927 appointment.263
In 1930, the Indian Act was amended to increase the discharge age from fifteen to
sixteen. The minister was allowed to order that a child be kept in school until he or
she turned eighteen if it was thought “it would be detrimental to any particular Indianchild to have it discharged from school on attaining the full age of sixteen years.” In
this case, the government was legalizing its existing practice. As Scott wrote in the1931 annual report, “The usual practice at Indian residential schools is to encourage pupils to remain until they are 17 or 18.”264 Departmental director of education
Ferrier struck a different, more moderate, note and explained to T. B. R. Westgate of
the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, “It is not intended thatcompulsion to the 18th birthday be applied to all Indian children or even to a large
number.” Instead, he said, it was to be used only “when home conditions very strongly
suggested such action.”265
Coercive measures were used throughout the 1930s to compel attendance. In 1931,
Mrs. John Chakita (alternately Tchakta) visited the Thunderchild school in Delmas,
Saskatchewan, and, against the desire of both the principal and the sisters, removed
her daughter Mary, who, she said, was suffering from poor health at the school.266 The
local Indian agent chastised the principal and ordered him to seek the girl’s return.267

286 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

When the principal’s efforts failed, the Indian agent, S. L. Macdonald, obtained a court
summons ordering the mother to return the girl to school.268 The following year, theIndian agent sent a letter to a member of the Moosomin Band that said, “The Principalof the Delmas School has made a complaint that you have not returned your boy to
the School.” The father was told, “Please see that this boy is taken back to the schoolat once, as if it is found necessary to use the Police, you will be liable as well as have to
pay the expenses of the action.”269 In October 1937, the police visited the Poundmaker
Reserve on behalf of the school, and told the parents of seven children who had not
returned to school the previous month to send their children to school. Within fivedays, all the children were back in school.270
In 1936, the principal of the Fraser Lake school in British Columbia was reprimanded by Indian Affairs for allowing Chief Maxine George to withdraw his son fromthe school to do work at home. Indian agent R. H. Moore noted, “In view of the factthat we had to prosecute Maxine to get his boy into the school in the first place as wellas many other inconveniences to this Department, I cannot help but feel that it was
unwise to allow this boy to return to his parents.”271
Indian Affairs found itself locked in a series of conflicts with parents in northern Alberta in the late 1930s. In April 1935, John Gambler and his wife visited their
two daughters at the Desmarais, Alberta, school. According to Principal L. Beuglet,
Gambler said that he and his wife “were lonesome without their children and wished
to bring them back” to their home in Crossing Lake, Alberta. When Beuglet objected,“the parents walked away with their children, threatening to shoot whomsoever would
endeavour to stop them from taking their children back home.”272 A local magistrate,
who had attempted to stop Gambler from removing his children, said that Gambler
had “not actually threatened them but had given them to understand he would
use force if necessary to take his children.”273 Beuglet wanted Indian Affairs to havethe rcmp enforce the return of the girls to the school, fearing that if forceful action
was not taken, other parents might follow his example.274 Indian Affairs official M.
Christianson was, however, reluctant to dispatch the police. The distance that police
officers would have to travel was considerable, the roads were poor, and the likelihood of locating Gambler was uncertain. The expense of such an expedition would
also be charged back to Indian Affairs. Rather than authorizing a costly police expedition, Christianson wrote to Calling Lake storekeeper J. H. McIntosh, asking him totell Gambler to return his children to the school. In his letter to McIntosh, Christian
wrote, “I wish to bring to your attention that an Indian by the name of Gambler” hadgone to the Desmarais school and “took his two daughters out of the school without
the permission of the principal.”275 However, this was not the first that McIntosh had
heard of this matter. One month earlier, Indian agent N. P. L’Heureux had written aletter to McIntosh, informing him of the events at the school. He then went on to write:

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 287

As the above mentioned J. B. Gambler is in receipt of a monthly ration, I have toorder that same be cut off entirely until such time as I am able to reverse my decision. This cannot be expected until the children are back in school at Wabasca
and Gambler’s amends presented to the Principal and Magistrate there.276

L’Heureux, apparently without the approval of his superiors, was attempting to
starve the Gamblers into sending their daughters to school. Gambler, it appears, was
not dependent on relief rations. He had not returned his children by February 1, 1938,
when L’Heureux wrote the rcmp, asking when a patrol might visit Calling Lake andtake the children to the school.277 The rcmp was not prepared to undertake such a
mission, which would have involved the leasing of a plane, since Indian Affairs was
not prepared to reimburse its costs.278 In July 1938, L’Heureux sent Gambler a letter
telling him that if he did not send the two daughters he had withdrawn (by then fourteen and eleven years of age) and two younger daughters to the Desmarais school on
September 1, “a charge will be preferred against you under the Indian Act” and hischildren would be “conveyed to school under escort of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police.”279 In its review of the records, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada has not located any court records to indicate that such prosecution ever took
place. However, it was not until October 1940 that Gambler enrolled his two youngest
daughters in the Desmarais school.280
L’Heureux used the threat of prosecution against other families in this period. In
January 1938, he reported that Agnes Cunningham (also referred to as Mrs. FrankKissaynees-Cardinal) had been refusing since September to send her daughter,
Florence Cardinal, to the Joussard, Alberta, school. In October 1937, she had told
L’Heureux that “the reason she would not send her child to school was because ‘theylearn nothing in those schools.’” L’Heureux had the rcmp serve her with a noticerequiring her to bring her daughter to the school. She ignored it, and a second notice
was served on her in December. By January, L’Heureux was seeking permission tohave the case taken to court. He also wanted John Felix Beaver brought up on similar charges for failing to enrol a child in school. He argued that if the cases were notprosecuted, other parents would withhold their children from school.281 At the endof January, Indian Affairs had decided to prosecute Mrs. Frank Kissaynees-Cardinal
and John Felix Beaver.282 The Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training,
R. A. Hoey, advised Alberta government officials that Indian Affairs was “not anxious to register either fines or jail sentences on parents but our primary desire is tohave the children given an opportunity of obtaining an education.”283 While it is notclear if the cases ever went to court, in April 1938, Florence’s father, Frank CardinalKissaynees, who supposedly had favoured her admission to Joussard, signed an application for admission to school.284 L’Heureux also threatened Wanakew Cardinal (alsoknown as Francis) with prosecution in 1938 unless he returned his granddaughter tothe Desmarais school. Sergeant D. E. Forsland was unable to locate Cardinal when288 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

he attempted to serve him with a notice to return the girl. Forsland noted that, in his
opinion, the girl “had been taken out of school under the influences of Jean Baptiste
Gambler.”285
By the end of this era, the discharge policy was still solidly in place. On March 16,
1939, acting Indian agent J. D. Caldwell wrote to a parent that unless he returned hischild to the Kuper Island school within four days, he would be prosecuted under the
Indian Act.286 In July 1939, W. C. Lewies, a lawyer in Chatham, Ontario, wrote to IndianAffairs about the case of Muriel Stonefish, who was a student at Mount Elgin. She had
not been allowed to return home for the summer holiday because she had been truant
on at least two occasions during the school year. Her mother, Flora Powless, had contacted Lewies to see if he could arrange her discharge from the school. Lewies wrote
the department that it was his understanding that the parents had voluntarily placed
their daughter in the school. Since there was no order placing Stonefish in the school,
Lewies argued that she was “virtually being kept a prisoner at the Mount Elgin Indian
Residential School.”287

Residential schools in the broader Indian Affairs agenda
Lewies’s depiction of the student as prisoner is an apt summation of the failure of
the previous sixty years of residential school policy. The policy was an overly ambitious, unwelcomed, coercive, inconsistent, and underfunded intrusion into Aboriginal
families and culture, and an intrusion that failed.
The compulsory approach to schooling adopted in the Indian Act amendmentof 1920 was but one of a series of measures aimed at enforcing the assimilation ofAboriginal people. A 1920 amendment allowed the federal government to strip peopleof their status under the Indian Act without their permission. The government took thisstep because the previous policy of voluntary enfranchisement had failed: between
1867 and 1920, in all of Canada, only 162 families, comprising 360 persons, had given
up their Indian status through this process.288 First Nations people had a far deeper
attachment to their Aboriginal identity than the federal government had realized.
In testimony before a parliamentary committee examining proposed amendments
to the Indian Act, Deputy Minister Scott outlined the department’s long-term goals.
Having worked for Indian Affairs for thirty years, he expressed those goals in personal terms:
I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that thiscountry ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to standalone. That is my whole point. I do not want to pass into the citizens’ class people
who are paupers. That is not the intention of the Bill. But after one hundredyears, after being in close contact with civilization it is enervating to the indi-

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 289

vidual or to a band to continue in that state of tutelage, when he or they are able
to take their position as British citizens or Canadian citizens, to support themselves, and stand alone. That has been the whole purpose of Indian education
and advancement since the earliest times. One of the very earliest enactments
was to provide for the enfranchisement of the Indian. So it was written into ourlaw that the Indian was eventually to become enfranchised.

Scott stated that although it might be years before the process of enfranchisement
was complete, “our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada
that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, andno Indian Department that is the whole object of this Bill.”289
Scott’s testimony is a clear statement of colonial policy. First Nations people were
not members of nations with whom Canada had a relationship: they were a problem.
In the process of gaining control over Aboriginal land and resources, the Canadiangovernment had assumed a series of obligations to Aboriginal people. In Scott’s mind,
the role of Indian Affairs was not to administer these obligations—which, when they
were being negotiated, had been described to Aboriginal people as being part of an
ongoing, indeed, eternal, relationship—but to terminate them. The best way to do thiswas to eliminate First Nations identity—in all its legal and cultural forms—thus bringing to an end all obligations. The government now had the power to rob adults of theirstatus and to rob parents of their children.
The fact that the 1920 amendments addressed both enfranchisement and education demonstrates that the ongoing colonization of Aboriginal people was not limited
to education. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Indian Act was
repeatedly amended to undermine First Nations’ control of land and cultural identity.
Traditional economic pursuits were discouraged through the application of provincial game laws, communal farming was disrupted by the subdivision of land, and theauthority of First Nations leaders was undermined. Aboriginal culture and strong collective identity were to be eliminated by government policies designed to “inculcate
and foster a spirit of individuality.”290 Some of the important amendments• established incentives to encourage First Nations people to approve the sale oftreaty land (1906);291• allowed for the removal of First Nations people from a reserve that was next to, or
within, a town of more than 8,000 people (1911);292• allowed for the expropriation of reserve land (1911);293• prohibited First Nations people from participating “in any Indian dance outside
the bounds of his own reserve” (1914);294• tightened provisions restricting First Nations people’s ability to sell livestock
without government permission (1910, 1914);295• allowed the government to spend band funds without band permission (1918);296• allowed Indian Affairs to lease reserve surface rights for mining (1919);297

290 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• prevented anyone from collecting money from Indians for the pursuit of claims
against the government without the consent of Indian Affairs (1927);298 and• allowed the government to apply existing provincial game laws, weed-control
laws, and motor vehicle laws to reserves (1936).299
These amendments are examples and do not constitute the full list of measures
adopted. The government made continual incremental reductions in band authority
and incursions into every aspect of Aboriginal life—including the right to visit poolhalls (which was restricted in 1930).300 As Scott’s biographer, Brian Titley, commented:
It would be tedious to recount in detail the various amendments to the Indian
Act that were instituted between 1920 and Scott’s retirement [in 1932]. Like thosethat preceded them, they tended to increase the power of the department whileconcomitantly, weakening the autonomy of the Indians.301

Although the involuntary enfranchisement provision was repealed in 1922, it was
revived in slightly different form in 1933 when the minister of Indian Affairs was given
the power to enfranchise individuals.302 Women who married individuals without status continued to lose their status with consent.
The Indian Act was not the only piece of government legislation that circumscribed
Aboriginal life. In the British Columbia Indian Lands Settlement Act of 1920, the federal government reneged on its commitment to protect Aboriginal land rights in
British Columbia.303 The 1917 Migratory Birds Convention Act undermined Aboriginal
hunting rights.304 Aboriginal people also faced numerous barriers to getting the rightto vote. For example, the Dominion Franchise Act of 1934 explicitly disqualified Indian
persons living on reserves and Inuit people from voting in federal elections.305
Federal policy was contradictory, self-defeating, and destructive. Scott wrote in1920 that “the ultimate object of our Indian policy is to merge the natives in the citizenship of the country.”306 In daily practice, however, federal policy segregated First
Nations people from the rest of the Canadian population, often confining them toremote reserves, which ensured their continued colonization and marginalization.
The schools had a mandate to assimilate Aboriginal people, but this always was complicated by government insistence on implementing its policy as cheaply as possible.
The history of residential schools from Confederation to 1939 reflected these contradictions. The schools were established in a piecemeal fashion with ambitious but
poorly defined goals. Once it became apparent that the type of system that government officials had envisioned would cost far more than politicians were prepared tofund, the government largely abandoned the system to the churches. The expectation was that the underpaid labour of missionaries and the free labour of students
would compensate for the inadequacy of the per capita grants the government provided. The reality was that chronic underfunding led in the early twentieth century
to a health crisis in the schools and a financial crisis for the missionary societies. The

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939 • 291

government, with the support of leading figures in the Protestant churches, soughtto dramatically reduce the number of residential schools, replacing them with day
schools. Opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant missionaries
in western Canada blocked this effort. Instead, the federal government finally implemented a significant increase to the per capita grant received by boarding schools
and attempted to impose basic health standards for the schools. This resulted in ashort-term improvement. However, the wartime inflation eroded the value of the
grant increase, and the grant was actually reduced during the Great Depression. By
the end of the 1930s, Indian Affairs officials recognized that the per capita grants were
too low and that the per capita system itself was an ineffective funding mechanism,
since it bore no relation to costs. Not surprisingly, parents resisted sending their children to underfunded, unhealthy, and often distant schools. It was only in the area ofattendance that the government had developed any regulatory powers—and, as time
passed, these became increasingly authoritarian in nature. This institutional and regulatory history creates much of the context for the daily life of the schools. The following chapters deal with the dominant themes of that life.

First Nations family at the Regina, Saskatchewan, school.
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-A2690.

Students travelling to the Christie, British Columbia, school.
British Columbia Archives, AA-00928.

Children at the Sarcee, Alberta, school.

Children at the Gleichen, Alberta, school.

General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-635.

General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-194.

Children at the Chapleau, Ontario, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P8801-85.

Children at the Kitamaat, British Columbia, school.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P466N.

The boys’ playground at the Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-230.

The girls’ playground at the Carcross school in the Yukon Territories.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada. P7538-621.

In response to lobbying from the Anglican Church, the federal government agreed to build two industrial schools in Manitoba,
one at Middlechurch (pictured above) and one at Elkhorn.
Provincial Archives of Manitoba, N16969.

Schools went considerable periods of time without being inspected. In 1903, for example, the Red Deer, Alberta, school had gone three
years without inspection, and the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school (pictured above) had gone seventeen months without an inspection.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, PA–182261.

The decision to establish many of the industrial schools near urban centres (such as the Brandon, Manitoba, school, pictured
above) was part of a federal government attempt to encourage students not to return to their reserves when they had
completed their education.
Ruth Kitchen Collection, Library and Archives Canada, C–030122.

Minister of Indian Affairs Edgar Dewdney wrote in 1890
that he thought it “highly desirable, if it were practicable,
to obtain entire possession of all Indian children after theyattain to the age of seven or eight years, and keep them atschools of the industrial type until they have had a thoroughcourse of instruction.”
Library and Archives Canada, a033509.

Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Hayter Reed wrote in1893 that “in the boarding or industrial schools the pupils
are removed for a long period from the leadings of thisuncivilized life and receive constant care and attention. It istherefore in the interest of the Indians that these institutions
should be kept in an efficient state as it is in their successthat the solution of the Indian problem lies.” Despite his
disdain for Aboriginal culture, Reed had a large collectionof Aboriginal clothing. He and his stepson Jack Lowery were
photographed wearing this clothing at the 1896 Historical
Fancy Dress Ball in Ottawa.
Library and Archives Canada, a139841.

The Regina, Saskatchewan, industrial school, pictured here in 1908, closed in 1910.
Canada, Department of Interior, John Woodruff, Library and Archives Canada, PA–020921.

The construction of both a Roman Catholic boarding school (top) and an Anglican boarding school (below) at Onion Lake,
Saskatchewan, was a result of the inter-church competition that plagued the residential school system.
Library and Archives Canada, PA–44537; General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538–360.

In 1895, Indian agent D. L. Clink was highly critical of the disciplinary policies at the Red Deer, Alberta, school (staff andstudents pictured above). He wrote that the actions of one teacher “would not be tolerated in a white school for a single day
in any part of Canada.”
United Church of Canada Archives, 93–049P844N.

The Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, which did not open until 1930, was the only residential school the government operated in
the Maritime provinces.
Nova Scotia Museum, Ethnology Collection.

A view of the Fort Qu’Appelle Industrial School in Lebret, Saskatchewan, in 1884 shows students with Principal Father Joseph
Hugonnard, staff, and Grey Nuns.
O. B. Buell, Library and Archives Canada, PA–118765.

The High River, Alberta, school had constant problems recruiting students. In his 1885–86 annual report, Principal Albert Lacombe
lamented that “we have not succeeded in retaining the boys at this school, and I may say they have nearly all deserted.
Most of the boys were compelled to leave the school by their parents or guardians, while a few of the older ones, by making
themselves so extremely unmanageable and rebellious, forced us to send them away.”
Provincial Archives of Alberta, A4705.

Classroom life (clockwise from the top left) at Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories; Moose Factory, Ontario; Gleichen, Alberta,
and Fort George, Québec. Most students never got out of the junior grades. They spent less time in class than non-Aboriginal
students, were provided with fewer resources, and were more likely to be instructed by unqualified teachers.
Canada, Department of Interior, Library and Archives Canada, PA-042133; General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-970; General
Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-184; Dechâtelets Archives.

As a leading member of the Toronto legal and politicalestablishment, in the early 1900s, Anglican church leader
Samuel Hume Blake led an unsuccessful campaign todramatically reduce the number of residential schools.
Library and Archives Canada, c030420.

Indian Affairs Minister Clifford Sifton argued that First Nations
people were not ready to benefit from the types of training
industrial schools were intended to offer. He said, “Youcannot take the child of the ordinary prairie Indian, put him
in an industrial school, keep him there until he is twenty-one
years of age and turn him loose to make his living amongst
white men.”
Library and Archives Canada, William James Topley, Topley Studiofonds, PA–025940.

By 1908, Indian Affairs Minister Frank Oliver had come toquestion the residential school system. He wrote, “It seems
strange that in the name of religion a system of education
should have been instituted, the foundation principle which
not only ignored but contradicted this command.”City of Edmonton Archives, EA–10–2245.

CHAPTER 13

The educational record ofresidential schools: 1867–1939

Residential schools were intended to be far more than simple educational institutions. But, as their name makes clear, they were schools, and it is appropriate
to assess their educational record. The government and churches had goals
for education in the schools, although in large measure they were poorly defined.
During the debate over the establishment of the schools, Prime Minister Sir John A.
Macdonald said he expected the industrial schools would produce “native teachers,
and perhaps native clergymen, and men who will not only be able to read and write,
but who will learn trades. The Indians are more apt to take to trades such as carpentry,
blacksmithing, & etc. than to the cultivation of the soil.”1
Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet wrote in 1884 that the purpose of theschools was to imparta practical knowledge of husbandry [farming] and mechanical trades. The
principals are to charge themselves with the duty of seeing that the intention of
the Department in this respect is fully carried out, as well as that the children are
instructed in the art of reading and speaking the English language, and in theelementary studies generally pursued at school.2

The 1892 government order that placed a number of existing industrial schools on
the per capita funding system mentioned education only in passing: managers of government-funded schools were required to “keep the schools at a certain standard of
instruction.”3 That standard was never defined.
To meet these limited objectives, the schools were given total control over the students for twenty-four hours a day, for at least ten months of the year—and often longer.
Despite this level of control, during this period (from 1867 to 1939), only a small fraction of the students ever finished the six grades (or “standards,” as they were initiallycalled) the schools offered. The amount of vocational training offered was minimal.
Many observers, including government officials, came to the conclusion that, rather
than preparing students for adulthood, the system was leaving them unprepared
for the future. This was such a common concern that government officials actually294 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

developed their own word for it—wondering whether the schools were “unfitting”
students for the lives they would lead.
It is clear that even by the standards of the period in which they operated, residential schools failed to provide students with an adequate education and the promised
vocational training. The government and the churches failed the students at the policy
level, the funding level, and at the classroom level. Government officials were wellaware of these failures throughout the history of the system.
The following conclusions are undeniable:• The federal government did not establish a clear set of goals for education in theresidential schools.
• The residential school curriculum was in essence an elementary school curriculum, reflecting a belief that Aboriginal people were intellectually inferior.
• The government never developed or enforced a system-wide policy onteacher qualification.
• The teaching staff was under-qualified, poorly paid, and overworked.
• The curriculum was not relevant to the children’s experiences, interests, orneeds. As a result, few of them ever completed their schooling.
• Students left the schools lacking the skills to succeed in their home communities
or to succeed in the broader labour market.

The daily routine
Most of the residential schools operated on what was referred to as the “half-day
system.” Under this system, students were in class for half the day and in vocational
training for the other half. In some ways, the term half-day system is misleading, since
it masks the amount of work that students did in residential schools. Often, as many
students, teachers, and inspectors observed, the time allocated for vocational training
was actually spent in highly repetitive labour that provided little in the way of training.
Rather, it served to maintain the school operations. Above and beyond the half-day
that students spent in vocational training, it was not uncommon for them to also dochores both before and after school. As a result, students often spent more than half a
day working for the school.
While it was referred to as the “half-day system,” it is important to note that it was
not a formally established system with rules or regulations. Some schools did not use
the half-day system, and those that did use it implemented it on their own terms. In
1922, Indian Affairs recommended that the Chapleau, Ontario, school implement thehalf-day system. In his letter of instruction, Russell Ferrier, the Indian Affairs superintendent of Indian Education, informed the Chapleau principal that “in most schools it
is used the year round.” In providing a sample timetable, Ferrier acknowledged “there

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 295

are many variations from this routine; but, as near as I can remember, it is the generalplan in use.” In other words, thirty-nine years after the opening of the first industrial
schools in the West, Indian Affairs did not have a formal description of the half-day
system: in order to describe the so-called system, the department’s senior education
official could refer to only what he had observed in other schools.4
Table 13.1. High River school summer schedule, 1887.
Rising5:30 o’clock.

Prayers and mass

6:00 o’clock.

Making beds, cleaning for inspection

6:30 o’clock.

Breakfast

7:00 o’clock.

Fatigue, trade instruction

7:30 o’clock.

School

9:00 o’clock.

Recreation

11:30 o’clock.

Falling in, getting ready for dinner

11:45 o’clock.

Dinner, recreation

12:00 o’clock.

School and trade instruction

1:00 o’clock.

Singing class

3:30 o’clock.

Fatigue

4:00 o’clock.

Falling in, getting ready for supper

5:45 o’clock.

Supper, recreation

6:00 o’clock.

Prayer, falling in, going to dormitory

8:00 o’clock.

Lights out

8:30 o’clock.

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 180–181.

According to Ferrier’s description, the principal of a 100-student school would
divide students into three groups: 35 older boys and girls who would work in themorning, 35 older boys and girls who would work in the afternoon, and 30 younger
students who would be “in school and at play” all day.5
Timetables from Indian Affairs annual reports of the 1880s and 1890s show that
school life was highly regimented, generally starting as early as 5:30 a.m. and running
to 8:30 p.m. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney believed that such a highly structured life would play an important role in “civilizing” a student. As he put it in 1889:
The value of time is practically exemplified to him in the class room, atrecreation, or in any fatigue work which he may be required to perform, by therecurrence every day of the hour at which each duty has to commence and againof the time by which it should be completed. The importance to an Indian childof such instruction cannot be overestimated, as innate in him, inherited from his
parents, is an utter disregard of time, and ignorance of its value.6

296 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“Fatigue duty” is a military term for non-military duties to which a soldier might
be assigned—often as a punishment. In residential schools, that same term was used,generally referring to chores assigned to the children. Table 13.1 shows the schedule by which students at the High River school in what is now Alberta were regulated
in 1887.
In the winter, the day started an hour later, with school commencing at 8:30 a.m.,evening prayer at 7:30 p.m., and lights out at 8:00 p.m.7
While the half-day system was supposed to apply only to the older students, thereality was that at most schools during this period, every student worked. At HighRiver, students who were not learning a trade could count on two hours a day of fatigue
duty in the winter and four hours in the summer. According to Principal E. Claude, “Tothese youngest ones pertained the weeding of the garden and the house work on theirside of the school, and I must say, that this summer none denied our watchword, ‘No
idleness here,’ as all work was exclusively done by the pupils.”8
Table 13.2 reproduces the schedule in force at the Qu’Appelle school in 1893.
Table 13.2. Qu’Appelle school schedule, 1893.
Pupils rise

5.30

Chapel6.00

Bedmaking, washing, milking and pumping

6.30 to 7.15

Inspection of pupils in the school rooms to see if they are clean and properly
dressed, their condition, health & c., a note being taken of those requiring
attention, if of clothes, this is done by the sister directly after dinner

7.15 to 7.30

Breakfast

7.30

Fatigue for small boys

8.00 to 9.00

Trade boys go to work

8.00

School with 15 minutes recess

9.00 to 12.00

Prepare for dinner

12.00 to 12.10

Dinner

12.10 to 12.40

Recreation

12.40 to 2.00

School and Trades

2.00 to 4.00

Fatigue, such as milking, carrying coal, ashes, filling tanks, wood boxes,
pumping, sweeping

4.45 to 6.00

Prepare for supper

6.00 to 6.10

Supper6.10 to 6.40

Recreation

6.40 to 8.00

Prayer and retire

8.00

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 173–174.

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 297

Sundays were not much different from other days. They started with breakfast, thenfatigue duty, followed by dressing for church, church parade, church service, dinner,a doctor’s inspection, and then recreation until 2:30 p.m., when the children went toprayers. These were followed with chores, followed by an hour-long lecture from theprincipal at 5:00 p.m. on morals and religion.9
At the Wikwemikong, Ontario, school in the 1890s, boys in Standard 5 took manual training from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., while boys
in standards 3 and 4 took training from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and from 4:30 p.m.
to 6:00 p.m. In addition, all the students at the school spent “a few hours daily” onsuch chores as “sweeping, scrubbing, sawing and splitting wood, dairying, gardening, stock-feeding, helping in the kitchen, in the mill, on the farm, & c.” The principal claimed, “They like these various occupations and become quite industrious.”10
In 1907, the Wikwemikong principal used nearly identical language to report that,in addition to the vocational training students received, “all the pupils are employedabout two hours daily each, according to sex and ability, at various kinds of labour,
such as sweeping, scrubbing, sawing and splitting fire-wood, dairying, gardening,
feeding stock, helping in the kitchen and on the farm.”11
At the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1884, the working hours forthe boys were from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m., from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., and from 5:00
p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Boys were required to wear tin badges on their arms while they were
working. Students wearing such badges were not allowed to play. Those boys who
were undergoing apprenticeship training worked ten hours a day and then attended
classes in the evening.12
Middlechurch, Manitoba, principal W. A. Burman wrote in 1893:
The rule of half day classwork has been carried out as far as practicable, though,owing to the lack of larger children for necessary work, some of these havefrequently had to work at their various occupations full time. It has, however, theadvantage of preparing them gradually for the kind of life they must expect in thenear future.13

By the end of the nineteenth century, this regime was universal in the industrial
schools. In his 1898 annual report, the Battleford principal wrote, “All pupils, excepting the smallest or most backward, attend on the ‘half-time’ system.”14 At the HighRiver school that year, “all boys do farm work, even the apprentices in different shops
not only work on the school farm, but go out to work for the farmers during haying andharvesting.”15 At the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school, “all the boys work as usualfrom two to three hours daily.”16 At Williams Lake, British Columbia, “with the exception of the small boys all take lessons in farming and gardening, learn to milk and workat the hay.”17

298 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 13.3. Standard courses of study, Manitoba and the North-West Territories, 1889.
Branch.

Standard 1.

Standard 2.

Reading and recitation in.

Alphabet and tablets.

First half of First Reader.

Spelling.

Simplest words.

Words in first half of First
Reader.

Writing.

Elementary strokes on slates.

On slates. To transcribe lettersand simple words from printor black-board.

Dictation.

Letters and short words.

Arithmetic.

Figures–to count Addition and
Subtraction (mental) of units.

Tables 2 to 5 times, mental
exercise in addition andsubtraction.

Object lessons with English
conversation.

Explanation of all common
objects; verb acting;
instructive movements andconversation.

English study and Grammar.

To name common objects,
learn names of days, weeks,months, &c., &c.

Geography.

Verbal instruction in facts necessary to understanding
thoroughly geographical ‘definitions.’

Vocal music.

Simple Hymns and Songs.

Religious instruction.

Scripture Reading; Ten Commandments; Lord’s Prayer; Life of
Christ, &c., &c.

To name common objects,
and make simple statements
intelligibly.

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 171.

Some students did nothing but work. In June 1898, the principal of the Calgary
industrial school, which had opened the year before, reported that the school had
been without a teacher until April. This, he suggested, was in reality an advantage,
since “it has enabled us with few hands to give more time to outdoor occupation andso get things in order much more expeditiously than we could have done had moretime been spent in the study rooms.”18 One boy, Nelson Peters, ran away from theMount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, so often that the principal concluded that thecosts involved in returning him were too high. He initially planned on discharging theboy, but then proposed that he “stay and work in the fields with a team and not go toschool.” The boy agreed, and stayed at the school for at least another two years without
attending class.19

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 299

Standard 3.

Standard 4.

Standard 5.

First Reader.

Second Reader.

Third Reader.

Words in First Reader.

Words in Second Reader.

Words in Third Reader.

On slates and paper. Words
and short sentences from
Reader or black-board.

Sentences from Reader, on
slates and paper or books.

To copy well from script or
print.

Words from First Reader.

Sentences from First andSecond Reader.

Sentences from Second andThird Reader.

Multiplication Tables, Notation
and Numeration, Mental +, -,x, \, and simple exercises insame on slates, divisors andmultipliers under 12.

All simple rules; thoroughly
Same–Division andgrounded in reduction. Mental
multiplication tables,
thoroughly. Tables weights and exercises well performed.
measures, +,-,x,\ divisors andmultipliers over 12. Mental
exercises.

Same–The intelligence of the pupils to be cultivated to keep pace with the progress they
make in reading, i.e., they must be made to understand thoroughly–what they read and not
to advance in mechanical reading quicker than in understanding. Object lessons should bedesigned to illustrate what is read as well as what is seen upon every hand, and instructive
conversation commonly held.
To express thoughts wellin simple English, but
grammatically.

To compose simple sentences
to know verbs, nouns andadjectives.

To name parts of speech,
understand their uses andidentify them.

Definitions and maps of Canada, local Geography, the World,&c., &c.

The half-day system contributed directly to the educational inadequacy of the residential school system. Throughout this period, non-Aboriginal students attended
schools that provided them with academic training on a full-time basis. A 1921 timetable for a one-room public school shows classes starting at 9:00 a.m. and running to
4:00 p.m., with two fifteen-minute recesses and an hour-long lunch break. The students ranged from grades One to Eight. The older students had as much academicclass time as the younger students.20 In British Columbia, Indian Commissioner D. M.
MacKay noted in 1939 that at one residential school he visited, “I inclined to believethat there is too much non-educational production labour.” In his opinion: “Where
the children have such a long day and work on the half day plan with considerable
heavy productive work, the tendency would be to reduce the efficiency of the school300 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

as an educational institution. This is probably true in most of our residential schools
in British Columbia.”21
Whether in class, in the field, or even in the community, it was a regimented life thatmany students came to hate. Margaret Stonechild, who attended residential schoolsin Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the 1930s, grew tired of the constant regimentation.
“‘Line up here, line up there.’ ‘Oh, here comes the cows,’ we heard people saying andlaughing because we were all in a line, marching into church in Brandon.”22

The curriculum
When the industrial schools were established in the 1880s, the instructions provided to principals gave little guidance about either curriculum or teacher qualification. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney’s 1883 letter to Battleford principal
Thomas Clarke stipulated that the staff should include a principal, a farming instructor, and “a woman to act as Matron as well as to do the cooking.” No mention was madeof hiring any additional teachers.23 The rules and regulations that Deputy Minister
Lawrence Vankoughnet issued for the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school in 1889
made no reference to either the hiring of staff or to goals for education, other than to
say that the principal “should give instruction, with such assistance as he may employ
for that purpose, to the pupils in the ordinary branches of education.” The school
foreman, who was to “take charge of the boys at outside work,” was to be expected
to teach whichever trades in which he was skilled.24 The 1894 Regulations Relating
to the Education of Indian Children dealt almost solely with matters of attendance:
no mention was made of education standards or of teacher standards.25 Under these
conditions, curriculum was left in the hands of church-appointed principals.
However, in 1889, Indian Affairs published in its annual report the “Standard
Courses of Study for Manitoba and the North-West Territories” (Table 13.3). It was anelementary school curriculum, with five standards through which industrial school
students were expected to progress. The curriculum (which includes typographicalmistakes from the original) was dominated by the “Four Rs”: reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Music was taught, but the emphasis was on hymn singing.26
In 1894, Indian Affairs published its “Programme of Studies for Indian Schools,”
which apparently applied to all its schools across the country (see Table 13.4). The
program was issued in the same year that the government adopted its first formal
regulations for Indian education. Together, the program and the regulations represented the government’s first attempts to impose a degree of order on the networkof boarding and industrial schools that existed across the country. According to theprogram, a teacher was required to follow it “as far as the circumstances of his school

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 301

permit.”27 While changes could, theoretically, be made only with government permission, inspection, particularly in the West, was limited and lax.28
With its heavy emphasis on the Four Rs, the program did not differ significantly
from what was being taught in public schools at that time. Despite the fact that inStandard 3, students were supposed to be taught “Stories of Indians of Canada andtheir civilization,” it is highly unlikely that public schools in Canada were providing
any real instruction on the topic of Aboriginal culture or accomplishment. Well into
the twentieth century, Canadian textbooks, when they spoke of Aboriginal people atall, spoke of them largely in negative and stereotypical terms. A 1928 textbook, A FirstBook of Canadian History, described them as being “of a somewhat primitive type.
They had not learnt the art of making metal tools and utensils, but made use onlyof stone hatchets, flint arrow heads, and clay pottery. They had no knowledge evenof such a simple invention as the wheel.” The book’s many stereotyped portrayals of
Aboriginal people included a quotation from the French explorer Jacques Cartier that
told students, “They can with truth be called savages, as there are no people poorer
than these in the world; and I believe they do not possess anything to the value offive pennies, apart from their canoes or nets.… They are great thieves, and will steal
all they can.” Another textbook, Building the Canadian Nation, from 1942, described
the hardships that missionaries underwent working with “wandering tribes who
lived from hand to mouth in a condition of filth and often of privation almost beyond
description.” According to that book, “The Indian was attached to his superstitions,to his belief in magic, to his feasts and ceremonials which were often no better thanwild orgies.”29 Based on their training or the available texts, residential school teachers
would have been hard-pressed to give meaningful instruction on “Indian civilization”
or the “Stories of the Indians of Canada.”
The program stressed, “Every effort must be made to induce pupils to speak English,
and to teach them to understand it.” Teachers were encouraged to allow students torestate concepts in their own language—providing the teacher spoke that language.
Great stress was laid on the need to teach children to “read loudly and distinctly,” and,in coming years, inspectors would lament the quality of the students’ spoken English.
It is also worth noting that instruction was to be direct, making use of the “voice andblackboard,” with “the unnecessary use of text books to be avoided.” While much may
be said of the value of direct and interactive teaching, the downplaying of the use of
textbooks reflected a belief that the schools needed to provide only limited academic
training.30 In this way, the program appears to reflect the views of Andsell Macrae andHayter Reed. In 1886, as the first Indian Affairs school inspector, Macrae stressed theneed to teach students “the lessons of life,” not the “knowledge of books.”31 While he
was Indian commissioner, Reed had been impressed by the way much of the education at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, was carried out by way of object
lessons, with little use being made of books. 32

302 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 13.4. Program of studies for Indian schools, 1894.
Subject

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

EnglishWord recognition andsentence making.
Simple sounds ofletters of alphabet.
Copying words.

Sounds continued. Sentence
making continued.
Orthography, oral andwritten. Dictation of words
learnt and of simple
sentences.

Sounds completed. Simple
homonyms explained.
Sentence making
continued. Orthography,
oral and written.
Sentences dictated.
Compose sentences about
objects and actions.

Generalknowledge

Facts concerning
things in school.
Develop what isalready known. Daysof week, month.

The seasons. Measuresof length and weight incommon use. Colours.
Commence animal andvegetable kingdoms, theirparts and uses, cultivation,
growth, &c. Things in andabout the school and theirparts.

Animal and vegetable
kingdoms continued.
Money. The useful metals.

WritingElementary strokes
and words on slates.
Large round hand.

Words, &c., on slates. Largeround hand.

Slates and copy bookNo. 1. Medium round
hand.

Arithmetic

Numbers 1 to 10:
their combinations
and separations,oral and written. The
signs +, -, x, ÷ countto 10 by ones, twos,
threes, & c. Use andmeaning one-half,
one-third, one-tenth.
Making and showing
one-half, one-fourth,
one-eighth, one-third,
one-sixth, one-ninth,
one-fifth, one-tenth,one-seventh (nofigures). Simple
problems. Oral.

Numbers 10 to 25:
their combinations andseparations, (oral andwritten.) Count to 25 byones, twos, threes, & c. Useand meaning of one-half,
one-third, one-fourth, &c., to one-twenty-fifth (nofigures). Relation of halves,
fourths, eighths, thirds,
sixths, twelfths, thirds,
ninths (no figures). Simple
problems, introducing
gallons in peck, pecks inbushel, months in year,
inches in foot, pound,current coins up to 25c.
Addition in columns, nototal to exceed 25.

Numbers 25 to 100:
their combinations andseparations, oral andwritten. Count to 100 by
ones, twos, threes, & c.,
to tens. Use and meaningof one-twenty-sixth,
one-twenty-seventh, &c., to one-one-hundredth(no figures). Addition,
subtraction, division andpartition of fractionsof Standard 2. Roman
numerals I to C. Simple
problems, introducing
seconds in minutes,
minutes in hours, hours
in day, pounds in bushel,
sheets in quire, quires inream.

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 303

Standard 4Standard 5

Standard 6

Sounds reviewed. Sentence
enlargement. Orthography,
oral and written. Letter
writing. Simple compositions,oral and written, reviewing
work on general knowledge
course.

Enlargement and correctionof sentences continued.
Orthography, oral and written.
Letter writing continued. Easy,
oral and written, composition,
reviewing general knowledge
course.

Analysis of simple sentences.
Parts of speech. Orthography,
oral and written. Letter writing
continued. Oral and written
composition, reviewing
general knowledge course.

Animal, vegetable and mineral
kingdoms continued. Uses ofrailways and ships. Explain
manufacture of articles incommon use. The races ofman.

Same enlarged. Laws regarding Social relations. Seats offires, game, &c., of daily use.
government in Canada.
System of representationand justice. Commerce andexchange of products.

Copy books Nos. 2 and 3.
Medium round hand.

Copy books Nos. 4 and 5.
Small round hand.

Copy books Nos. 6 and 7.
Small round hand.

Numeration and notation
to 10,000. Simple rules to
10,000. Addition, subtraction,
division and partition of
fractions already known(figures). Introduce terms
numerator, denominator,& c. Roman notation to 2,000.
Graded problems, introducing
remaining reduction tables.
Daily practice in simple
rules to secure accuracy andrapidity.

Notation and numeration
completed. Formal reduction.
Vulgar fractions to thirtieths.
Denominate fractions. Daily
practice to secure accuracy
and rapidity in simple rules.
Graded problems. Reading
and writing decimals to
thousandths inclusive.

Factors, measures andmultiples. Vulgar fractions
completed. Easy application ofdecimals to ten-thousandths.
Easy application of square andcubic measures. Daily practice
to secure accuracy andrapidity in simple rules. Easy
application of percentage.
Graded problems.

304 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 13.4. Program of studies for Indian schools, 1894, continued.
Subject

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

Geography
Development ofgeographical notions
by reference togeographical featuresof neighbourhood.
Elementary lessons on
direction, distance, extent.

EthicsThe practiceof cleanliness,obedience, respect,order, neatness.

Right and wrong. Truth.
Continuance of proper
appearance and behaviour.

Independence. Selfrespect. Develop thereasons for proper
appearance and behaviour.

ReadingFirst Primer

Second Primer

Second Reader

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 305

Standard 4Standard 5

Standard 6(a) Review of work ofStandard 3. Lessons to lead tosimple conception of the earth
as a great ball, with surfaceof land and water, surroundedby the air, lighted by the sun,and with two motions.
(b) Lessons on naturalfeatures, first fromobservation, afterwards by aidof moulding board, picturesand blackboard illustrations.
(c) Preparations for andintroduction of maps. (Review
of lessons in position,
distance, direction, withrepresentations drawn toscale.) Study of map of
vicinity drawn on blackboard.
Maps of natural features
drawn from moulded
forms. Practice in reading
conventional map symbols onoutline maps.
(d) General study from globe
and maps. The hemisphere,
continent, oceans andlarge islands, their relative
positions and size. The
continents’ position, climate,form, outline, surroundings,
principal mountains, rivers,
lakes; the most important
countries, productions,people, interesting facts andassociations.

Simple study of the important
countries in each continent.
Province in which school issituated and Canada to bestudied first. The position of
the country in the continent;
its natural features, climate,productions, its people,
their occupations, manners,
customs, noted localities,
cities, & c. Moulding boards
and map-drawing to be aids inthe study.

(a) The earth as a globe.
Simple illustrations andstatements with reference
to form, size, meridians andparallels, with their use;motions and their effects, as
day and night, seasons, zones,
with their characteristics, aswinds and ocean currents,
climate as affecting the lifeof man.
(b) Physical features andconditions of North America,
South America and Europe,studied and compared.
Position on the globe:
position relative to othergrand divisions, size, form,
surface, drainage, animal andvegetable life, resources, & c.
Natural advantages of thecities.
(c) Observation to accompany
the study of geography–
apparent movements of thesun, moon and stars, andvarying time of their risingand setting; difference in heatof the sun’s rays at different
hours of the day; change inthe direction of the sun’s rays
coming through a schoolroom window at the samehour during the year; varying
length of noon-day shadows;
change of the weather, windand seasons.

Industry. Honesty. Thrift.

Citizenship of Indians.
Patriotism. Industry. Thrift.
Self-maintenance. Charity.
Pauperism.

Indian and white life.
Patriotism. Evils of Indian
isolation. Enfranchisement.
Labour the law of life.
Relations of the sexes as
to labour. Home and publicduties.

Third Reader

Fourth Reader

Fifth Reader

306 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 13.4. Program of studies for Indian schools, 1894, continued.
Subject
Recitations

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

To begin in Standard 2, are to be in line with what is taught in English, anddeveloped into pieces of verse and prose which contain the highest moral andpatriotic maxims and thoughts.

History

Stories of Indiansof Canada and theircivilization.

Vocal Music

Simple songs and Hymns. The subjects of the former to be interesting andpatriotic. The tunes bright and cheerful.

Calisthenics

Exercises, frequently accompanied by singing, to afford variation during work andto improve physique.

Religious
Instruction.

Scripture Reading. The Ten Commandments. Lord’s Prayer. Life of Christ, &c., &c.

NOTE–ENGLISH–Every effort must be made to induce pupils to speak English, and to teach themto understand it; unless they do the whole work of the teacher is likely to be wasted.
READING–Pupils must be taught to read loudly and distinctly. Every word and sentence must be
fully explained to them, and from time to time they should be required to state the sense of alesson or sentence, in their own words, in English, and also in their own language if the teacher
understands it.
Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 246–249.

In the nineteenth century, very few students ever made it to standards 5 or 6. Table
13.5 shows the residential school grade distribution for 1898. Of the 1,454 students
enrolled in these schools, 992 (68%) were in the first three standards. Only 39 (2.6%)
had made it to Standard 6.33
Table 13.5. Grade distribution, twenty-one Canadian residential schools, 1898.
Standard

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

Standard 4Standard 5

Standard 6

Number of
students

370

265

357

234

189

39

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 256–356.

From the outset, it was apparent to some principals and teachers that the curriculum was not relevant to the lives or experiences of the students. In 1903, the principal of the Anglican boarding schools on the Blackfoot Reserve in what is now Alberta
reported, “We feel the need of a reader for the older children more adapted to the needsof their future lives than the general Canadian reader now in use.”34 The Middlechurch
principal, W. A. Burman, drew the government’s attention to the same issue:
The study of English has received special attention, but I have felt, with, I have no
doubt, all others engaged in such work, the need of readers specially adapted tothe use of these children. There is much in those now in use, to discourage theThe educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 307

Standard 4

History of province in which
school is situated.

Standard 5

Canadian History(commenced)

Standard 6

Canadian History (continued)

GENERAL–Instruction is to be direct, the voice and blackboard being the principal agents. The
unnecessary use of text books to be avoided.
N.B.–It will be considered a proof of the incompetency of a teacher, if the pupils are found toread in “parrot fashion” only, i.e. without in the least understanding what they read. And thefollowing remark applies to all teaching, viz.:–Everything must be thoroughly understood, before
a pupil is advanced to further studies.

pupils in their efforts to overcome the difficulties of the English tongue. Manyof the subjects treated of in these books cannot be understood without a wider
knowledge of the world than Indians of any age are likely to have.35

Individual teachers also recognized how foreign the curriculum was to many students. Margaret Butcher realized when she was teaching the Biblical story of the Good
Shepherd to her students at the Kitamaat, British Columbia, school that “not one
child had ever seen a sheep.”36 After a visit to the Hobbema, Alberta, school in 1926, aninspector noted, “Care must be taken, however, to see that the child’s earliest vocabulary will appeal to his innate interests—a subject which requires special study in its
application to Indian pupils who have no knowledge of the English language before
they enter school.”37
The federal curriculum appears to have remained in place until the 1920s. In 1920,
Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott wrote, “Our aim is to have the course in our
Indian schools conform as closely as possible to the curriculum in the public schoolsof the districts in which they are situated.” To achieve that goal, he commenced negotiations with governments in the prairie provinces to pay provincial inspectors to
inspect Indian Affairs schools.38 The following year’s annual report stated, “The courseof study is that prescribed for the provincial, public and separate schools and is strictly
followed.”39

308 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Teacher qualification
In 1880, Sir John A. Macdonald, who was both prime minister and minister ofIndian Affairs, wrote in a memorandum to Cabinet that “all Teachers of Indian Schools
in the North West Territories and elsewhere, whether appointed by religious denominations or by the Department be required to hold certificates of competency andcharacter and to fyle [sic] the same in the Department.”40 However, during this period(from 1867 to 1939), the government never adopted a regulation that would actuallyrequire that teachers at Indian Affairs schools meet the level of qualification set downin Macdonald’s memorandum. This was in large measure due to the government’s
unwillingness to meet the cost of hiring qualified teachers.
Problems in recruiting qualified teachers were not restricted solely to residential
schools. In the late nineteenth century, teacher qualification requirements, particularly for elementary school teachers, were minimal in all Canadian schools. According
to education historian Robert M. Stamp:
In the years immediately following Confederation a young girl still in her teens
or a discharged non-commissioned officer who could find nothing better to do
could almost always find a job “keeping” a one-room school. With little training
behind them such teachers could resort to little more than an insistence on rotememorization of material with frequent applications of the rod if the pupil’s
memory was less than perfect.41

In 1885, just 285 of the 446 teachers in Manitoba’s Protestant schools (at the time,
the province had both a Protestant and Catholic school system) had some training.
Much of this was limited to attendance at four-week sessions at normal institutes(teacher training schools). These sessions were intended to provide unqualified
teachers with a measure of training.42
Rural communities had particular difficulty recruiting qualified teachers. A
1913 survey concluded that 93% of the unqualified teachers working in Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and Ontario were teaching in rural schools. The reasons for this are
not hard to discern: by 1900, the wages paid to teachers in urban schools were threetimes higher than those paid to rural teachers. Not surprisingly, every year, a quarterof the rural teachers left their positions.43 The problem persisted: into the 1940s, theManitoba government continued to issue “special authorities” that allowed untrainedteachers to work in the province’s public schools.44
The hiring of residential school teachers was left to the churches, as Martin Benson,
an official of the Indian Affairs Schools Branch, observed in his 1897 report on industrial schools. Benson believed that the policy of allowing the churches to hire staff
without the department’s approval had “led to very unsatisfactory results and seriously interfered with the educational policy of the Department.” To address this, hewrote, Indian Affairs had begun to require, where practicable, that the teachers haveThe educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 309

a provincially recognized teacher’s certificate. The rule was not obligatory because of
the difficulty in getting qualified teachers “who are willing to accept the remuneration
offered for the work required.”45 Those whom the churches were able to recruit were“not as a rule well fitted for the work of teaching, not so much from want of scholarship as from the lack of ability to adapt their instruction to the children’s needs.”46
A decade later, the churches were still in control of hiring. In 1909, British Columbia
Indian agent A. W. Neill discovered by accident that the principal of the Alberniboarding school in his agency had resigned and that his successor had already been
appointed. In a letter of complaint to his superiors, Neill stated it was his understanding that no school staff member could be appointed without government approval. It
was his opinion that this rule was a “dead letter.” He wrote that, instead, “the various
churches appoint principals and teachers without any reference to the Dept.” Oncea new staff member was in place, the school asked him, as Indian agent, to “report
the fact to the Dept., which sends a formal approval.” Neill felt that Indian Affairs
was being embarrassed into accepting whomever the churches appointed, since “itwould be extremely difficult for the Dept. to object to a man after he brought his family perhaps a couple of thousand miles.” He thought Indian Affairs should be vetting
appointments before they were in the field.
Given the fact that principals played a central role in the success or failure of aschool, Neill also recommended that principals be required not only to have “somecollege training,” but also to “possess the equivalent of a first class teacher’s certificate and to have had some previous experience among Indians.” Since the incoming
principal of the Alberni school, W. A. Hendry, possessed such qualifications, it was afavourable moment, Neill thought, for the department to “announce that its rule mustin future be adhered to.”47 The British Columbia Indian superintendent, A. W. Vowell,thought Neill’s recommendations regarding qualifications were excellent, save for thefact that they would “further increase the difficulty said to be experienced in securing suitable teachers.” If stricter requirements were placed on the churches in regard
to teacher qualifications, Vowell wrote, the government could expect the churches toapply for “larger grants.” And, as Vowell understood it, Indian Affairs “is not at present
disposed to entertain requests for increased grants to Indian boarding and industrial
schools.”48 Hendry lasted less than a year as Alberni principal. When his replacement,
H. B. Currie, arrived in 1910, Indian agent Neill was once more disheartened. He
reported that although Currie and his wife were fine people, “they have absolutely no
experience in this work, have no knowledge of school management, or of nursing, orof handling Indians; they do not appear to have even been fully informed of the conditions under which they will have to work.”49
The 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches, which had
established a per capita funding agreement for three different classes and locations ofboarding schools, and established the respective responsibilities of government and310 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the churches for the schools, also sidestepped the question of teacher qualification.
The school managers, according to the contract, were not to
employ, except for a period not exceeding six months, any teacher or instructor
until evidence satisfactory to the Superintendent General has been submitted
to him that such teacher or instructor is able to converse with the pupils under
his charge in English and is able to speak and write the English language fluently
and correctly and possess such other qualifications as in the opinion of theSuperintendent General may be necessary.

The contract also required that the schools provide “teachers and officers qualified
to give the pupils religious instruction at proper times.”50 These were minimal requirements that would allow for the continued hiring of untrained teachers.
The schools had a great deal of trouble recruiting staff even though formal requirements were not in place. After his 1908 tour of schools and reserves in western Canada,
Indian Affairs inspector F. H. Paget reported that at the Battleford, Saskatchewan,
school, “Frequent changes in the staff at this school has not been to its advantage.” Theproblem was not with the principal, but with the fact that “more profitable employment is available in the District and, furthermore, the salaries paid are not as high as
are paid in other public institutions.”51 At the Anglican school on the Blood Reservein Alberta, there were four vacant staff positions. Paget observed, “Great difficulty isexperienced in retaining an efficient staff upon the small salaries which are offeredand until our schools can offer as high salaries as are paid at other Public Institutions
this difficulty will not disappear.”52
Publicly, the government tried to minimize this ongoing problem. In his 1914
annual report, Duncan Campbell Scott claimed:
Whenever possible the services of teachers with professional qualifications
are secured for the Indian schools, and in the older settled portions of thedifferent provinces a large percentage of our teachers are so qualified. On the
more remote reserves, however, it has been found difficult to secure teacherswith certificates. The salaries offered to teachers in these localities are thought
to be liberal, and residences are provided, but this hardly compensates for theisolation and lack of society. Many of our teachers who have not professional
qualifications have had long experience, and a number of them are meeting withconsiderable success.53

He repeated this message, often with no changes, in the next eight annual reports.54
In 1923, after an actual increase in funding, Scott reported, “Salary schedules havebeen raised and the services of better qualified teachers are being secured.”55 In his
report for the following year, Scott sounded less confident, saying there had been “adetermined effort to secure the services of better qualified academic and vocational
instructors for the boarding schools.”56 One year later, he reported, “Better trained

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 311

teachers are being engaged and more classroom, vocational and recreational equipment is being supplied in an effort to make the instruction more attractive.”57
Despite Scott’s optimistic reports, in reality, progress in hiring qualified teachers for both residential and day schools remained slow. An inspection of the Roman
Catholic school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta in 1914 noted that neither of theschool’s teachers held teaching certificates.58 Nine years later, Indian Affairs secretary
J. D. McLean informed the principal of the same school that the provincial inspector“has reported so unfavourably concerning the instruction and teaching ability” of theschool’s two teachers that he had to ask that they be replaced.59 In 1925, McLean wrote
the principal again, saying that the inspector had given an unfavourable report on the
English-language skills of one of the teachers and that “I shall be pleased if you will
arrange in the immediate future for a better qualified instruction.”60
In 1922, the Anglican Indian and Eskimo Commission acknowledged that in thepast, it had accepted as teachers “any Christian men or women who expressed a willingness to serve in that capacity, whether they possessed suitable qualifications ornot.” The new policy was not to accept anyone whose “literacy standing would not satisfy the requirements of one or other of the Departments of education in the provinces
throughout the Dominion.”61
Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham frequently raised concerns about the qualifications of both the vocational instructors and the classroom teachers. In 1923, hewrote to Scott, “A large percentage of the ex-pupils on leaving many of our Industrial
and Boarding schools to-day know little or nothing about the care of stock and do
not display as much intelligence along the lines as do many Indians who have neverattended school.”
We have men at the head of some our important institutions at which they aresupposed to teach practical farming, care of live stock, etc. who do not know the
first things about these essential branches of the work; men who could not begin
to make a living at farming and who, nevertheless have the responsibility of
training our Indian youth in these important matters.62

In a second letter that year, Graham wrote:
In these three provinces [Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta] many of ourschools are staffed by persons who are not qualified to teach or instruct our
Indian children in the various departments over which they have charge. A great
many of our teachers would not be allowed to teach in an ordinary country
school. In support of this statement I need only refer you to the reports you havereceived from the various Inspectors of the Department of Education in theseprovinces. Have not these reports shown that in many cases the teaching andmethods in our schools are very poor?63

According to Graham,

312 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the teachers at the Old Sun’s School are not qualified in so far as that they have
not received Normal training. The reports of the Provincial School Inspectors
on Indian schools have been in the majority of cases unsatisfactory, and thesegentlemen have invariably stressed the necessity for employing as teachers inour schools only men and women who have received Normal training.64

The problems were not limited to small and remote mission schools. The quality ofteaching at the Qu’Appelle school, one of the largest and oldest industrial schools in
the West, was a source of constant irritation to Graham. In 1922, he reported to Ottawa
that, in the opinion of a school inspector, the teacher of the boys’ senior classroom
at the school was “an absolute failure, lazy and to use his own words, unfit to occupy
the position he holds.” The teacher was reported to have “a very poor pronunciation,”
spoke “poor English,” and had “no certificates.” The brass band and the Boy Scouts
had ceased to function as a result of his lack of attention. It was recommended that
he be dismissed.65 At the same time, the school had also promised to remove a female
teacher who had been judged to be unsatisfactory.66 At the end of the year, Grahamremained frustrated:
The whole trouble here is that the parents of these children are demanding bettercare for their children and a better education and training. This school is notwhat it should be. The Department have [sic] been informed of this. I had reason
to believe that a change would be made, but this has not taken place, and there
will alway [sic] be dissatisfaction about getting children to attend this school,especially those of graduates. I am at a loss to know why the Department have[sic] not taken action on the reports that have been sent in by the Inspectors. Thisschool is far from what it should be.67

In 1925, the provincial inspector recommended that all four teachers at the
Qu’Appelle school take normal school courses.68 Four years later, the school received
a more positive assessment:
The teachers of this school are not trained in teaching according to the methods
employed at the Provincial Normal School: by years of experience the ladyteachers have worked out their own methods for the instruction of the Indianchild and these are successful in a large measure. The male teachers are better
qualified academically and are employing satisfactory methods.69

But, in 1932, there was only one teacher at the Qu’Appelle school who had a teaching certificate, and she, according to Sister Pulvermacher, was “too tired to teach.”70 A
1936 report on the Qu’Appelle school observed:
In the rooms taught by the sisters the problem was the same as it has ever been
during the past eight years; there should be greater variety of exercises to takethe place of the unchanging rotations of activities. A stronger appeal should beThe educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 313

made to the children to get them to think independently and with some degreeof consistently [sic].71

When, in 1923, the chief inspector of schools for the Department of Education in
Saskatchewan, J. H. McKechnie, advised Indian Affairs that “certified teachers, only,
be engaged in the future for Indian work,” he was informed by Russell T. Ferrier, thesuperintendent of Indian Education, that “it is the aim of this Department to gradually employ better qualified teachers.” Ferrier had to acknowledge that many of thechurches often nominated “missionary teachers.” He suggested this subsidization of
local missionary work could be seen as an overall benefit, since “the general good
influence on the reserve of these Christian workers often offsets any loss in classroom
efficiency.” He said, “When Parliament is fully seized with the importance of educating our wards, we will be able to offer larger salaries to prospective teachers andwe can then demand properly certificated workers.”72 In short, the children were still
being taught by unqualified teachers because the government was not prepared tooffer competitive salaries.
In the opinion of the people the government paid to inspect the schools, this lack ofqualifications had an impact on the quality of the education provided. Inspector R. H.
Cairns believed there should be at least “one Normal trained teacher” at each residential school. He wrote, “Practically all teachers who have not had Normal School training are seriously handicapped in the classroom.” His observations were promptedby a 1925 visit to the Cranbrook school, where neither of the two teachers, both intheir early twenties, had a teacher’s certificate.73 A 1926 inspection of the Sandy Bay,
Manitoba, school found two teachers with seventy students. Neither teacher had any
professional qualification to teach. The inspector said, “The methods employed bythese teachers is [sic] not up-to-date when compared with our public school standards. The methods employed to teach these non-English-speaking pupils could
be improved.”74 That same year, Duncan Campbell Scott wrote to Roman Catholic
Archbishop Alfred Sinnott in Winnipeg, “It is my policy to only recognize qualified
teachers for all class-room work, that is teachers who are the holders of Provincial
certificates. We are meeting with a fair measure of success I am glad to say, and I think
the quality of our teachers has been much improved.”75 The facts suggest that Scott
was overly optimistic. Two years later, following a visit to the school at Round Lake,
Saskatchewan, an inspector observed, “The junior classroom work should be under aqualified teacher instead of that it is under a mere lad and I understand that this is thefirst school he has taught in.”76 Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham recommended
that a teacher at the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, be dismissed
in 1931 because she was not qualified. He wrote, “We are doing our best to keep theteaching staff at our various schools up to date, but when cases such as this creep inwe cannot make any headway.”77

314 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Indian Affairs Schools Branch maintained that the principals and the staff were“appointed by the church authorities, subject to the approval of the Department as
to qualifications.”78 In reality, the system tended to operate in the manner that Neill
had described back in 1910: the churches hired staff and the government then rubber-stamped their selections. In 1922, Graham informed the field secretary of the
Anglican Missionary Society that while he would allow the former farm instructor at
the Gleichen, Alberta, school to live in a cottage at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school,that was no guarantee that Indian Affairs would approve the man’s appointment asfarm instructor at Elkhorn. The field secretary, T. B. R. Westgate, informed Graham
that, in his opinion, “the only officer over whom the Department have [sic] control is
the Principal.” Graham said this flew in the face of a pamphlet on the operation of theschools that had been issued in May 1921.79
For their part, the churches’ key requirement for staff during this period was religious commitment. A 1936 United Church document on First Nations education policy stated that the staff of all United Church schools should be composed of people
who had a “Christian motive, or, in other words, a missionary purpose coupled withskill in some particular field to teach his specialty to the Indians.” Staff members were
expected to be “closely related to and actively interested in the work of the nearest
United Church” and be acquainted with, and sympathetic to, “the religious education
programme of the United Church.” Having laid out these fairly specific requirements,
the policy document added that “some minimum educational qualifications for staff
members should be outlined.”80
In 1939, the Oblates’ Committee on Indian Missions endorsed the principle that
residential school staff “should be duly qualified.” The committee recommended that“teaching nuns who do not have the required qualifications, complete the pedagogical education through summer courses.”81 That such an endorsement was seen as necessary in 1939, and that such training was still required, clearly reflects the fact that,
despite stated hiring expectations for teacher qualification, the federal government
failed to ensure that all residential school teachers were properly qualified.

Workload
Limited funding meant that unqualified teachers were hired. It also meantthat those teachers, many of whom were quite young, had very heavy workloads.
Throughout this period, inspectors regularly made comments on the high student-toteacher ratios in the schools. Qu’Appelle school principal Joseph Hugonnard’s 1894
report observed, “For the boys there are two teachers, who on alternate days remain
with them from a quarter past six in the morning till eight in the evening; making avery long and arduous day.”82 At Mount Elgin in 1898, “two second-class professional

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 315

teachers have handled an average of over one hundred pupils successfully.”83 In thesame year at the Shingwauk Home, two teachers taught seventy-three students.84 The
Middlechurch school had only two teachers.85
At the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school in 1911, the boys and girls were taught separately, with one teacher taking all the girls and the other teacher taking all the boys.
As result, one had a class of twenty-six, while the other had almost twice as many:
forty-nine. An inspector suggested that the classes be mixed, with one teacher taking
the lower grades and the other taking the higher grades.86 In 1925, two teachers at thesame school were responsible for 103 students: sixty in one class, forty-three in theother. The teacher for the senior class was eighteen years old, and had some experience working in a rural orphanage, but no teaching qualifications. Each of the women,
who were nuns, was paid $120 a year.87
At the Qu’Appelle school in 1911, Sister McGurk had seventy-five girls in the juniorclassroom. The inspector of Roman Catholic schools reported to Ottawa that this wasan “almost impossible” situation. Indian Affairs secretary J. D. McLean instructed theschool to add a second teacher.88 Inspector R. H. Cairns was concerned by the fact
that, in 1915, Coqualeetza Institute (in Chilliwack, British Columbia) principal George
Raley refused to turn down any application for admission, advising that “Raley willneed to be restrained or he will overcrowd his school.” Cairns also noted that “100pupils is [sic] all that the two teachers can manage with efficiency.” At the time of
Cairns’s report, there were 120 students enrolled in the school.89
At the Mount Elgin school in 1915, there were two teachers and an authorized
enrolment of 125.90 Eleven years later, it was even worse; in the spring of 1926, twoteachers were responsible for 140 pupils. A provincial inspector said there was a needfor at least three teachers, and noted that “there have been too frequent changes ofteachers” during the previous year.91 At the end of December 1927, the same inspector
observed, “I think there are relatively too many pupils for each teacher. Two teachers
cannot efficiently manage and teach 148 pupils.”92 One year later, two teachers werestill responsible for 148 pupils. The inspector repeated, yet again, his recommendation that an additional teacher be hired, pointing out that many of the students “comehere without a speaking knowledge of the English language.”93
A 1922 school inspector’s report curtly noted that the children at the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora, Ontario, “need the attention of two teachers.”94 In 1928, there were
sixty students in the junior classroom at the Alberni, British Columbia, school. The
principal recommended hiring an additional teacher. Inspector R. H. Cairns thought
the junior students should be put on the half-day system. He said, “Indian pupils will
not do good work and maintain their health and strength if they are kept indoors
too much.” If the students were kept in class for five or six hours a day, he said, theschool death rate was likely to increase, and he noted there had been four deaths in316 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the previous year.95 As late as 1931, Indian Affairs gave orders to the principal of the
Shingwauk Home to institute the half-day system to reduce crowding in classrooms.96

TurnoverGiven the low pay and high workloads that characterized the life of a residential
school teacher, staff turnover rates were high. When the teacher at the Calgary industrial school resigned in October 1903, the school recruited a new teacher. But, before
he took up the position, he accepted “a more lucrative post in the Western Canada
College.” The principal filled in as teacher until February, but admitted that, given hisother responsibilities, this “was not completely satisfactory.” When a new teacher was
finally recruited after five months, he had to be let go, since he was “not being quite
up to our standard.”97
The 1903 Indian Affairs annual report observed that at the Red Deer school in what
is now Alberta:
During the three and a half years preceding the inspection there had been
seven different teachers employed, some of them well qualified for their work,
but others very poorly adapted, at least for their particular duties here. The
consequence was that the class work was somewhat disorganized, though theexamination revealed in the case of some of the senior pupils the results ofefficient teaching at an earlier stage.98

According to the Indian Affairs annual report for 1909, at the Battleford school:
During the preceding 18 months there had been four teachers in charge of theclasses for short intervals, two of them having professional qualification, theother two none. The salary paid was $50 a month, with board and lodging, whichis as high as the revenue of the school would admit of; but in spite of this it was
found impossible, to retain the services of a well qualified teacher.99

In 1916, frequent changes in staff at the Presbyterian school in Shoal Lake, Ontario,
were viewed as having a negative impact on student achievement. According to theIndian Affairs departmental secretary, the school returns showed that “there are twenty-seven pupils in the first standards who have been two years and over in the school.
Three of these pupils have been six years in the first standard, two five years, three four
years, eleven three years, and eight two years.” It was, the secretary observed, “mostunsatisfactory.”100
Two young women—one twenty years of age, and one eighteen years of age—werein charge of eighty-eight students at the Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,in 1928.101 Two years later, both of them were gone, replaced by two other women in
their mid-twenties, one of whom, according to the inspector, was “fresh from Normal

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 317

school.”102 In a report on the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, in the late 1920s,
an inspector noted that, with the exception of the matron, the entire staff was new.103

Religious education
It should not be surprising that schools operated by churches placed a heavyemphasis on religious training. In the minds of some principals, religious training was
the most valuable training the schools provided. In 1903, Brandon, Manitoba, principal T. Ferrier wrote that “while it is very important that the Indian child should be
educated, it is of more importance that he should build up a good clean character.”
Such a heavy emphasis was required, in Ferrier’s opinion, to “counteract the evil tendencies of the Indian nature.”104 Under the heading of “Moral and Religious Training,”
A. E. Wilson, the principal at Elkhorn, wrote in the 1910 Indian Affairs annual reportthat “more attention is paid to this part of our pupils’ education than any other, andthe results show that we are not working in vain.”105 Certainly, a great deal of time
was devoted to religious study and service. In 1889 at the Battleford school, every day
the students would “read the Bible, catechism, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, andattend morning and evening prayers. On the Lord’s Day they attend morning and evening divine services and Sunday school in the afternoon.”106
At the Methodist school in Brandon in 1900, there were “religious exercises every
morning and evening. The additional services on the Sabbath are morning song service, Sabbath school in the afternoon and regular evening service.”107 The Anglicans
followed a similar regime. At their school in Middlechurch in 1901, prayers were
held morning and evening in the dining-room and religious instruction is givenin the school-rooms daily. All the pupils attend St. Paul’s church every Sundayat 11 a.m. and at 7. p.m. Sunday school is held in the school at 2:30 p.m. every
Sunday, where each member of the staff teaches a class and the Rev. R. C.
Johnstone, incumbent of the parish, teaches the Bible class.108

In the same year, the principal at the Roman Catholic school in St. Boniface,
Manitoba, reported, “Religious instruction is given everyday in school, also morning and evening prayers; on Sundays the pupils go twice to church, and the principal has Sunday school during the afternoon.”109 Louise Moine recalled that religious
instruction and observation were a constant part of life at the Qu’Appelle school in theearly twentieth century: “From the time we got out of bed at the sound of the bell, wewent down on our knees to pray. After we had washed and dressed, we headed for thechapel to attend Low mass which was always held at 7 a.m.”110
Biblical studies also featured in the school curriculum, as evidenced by these questions that appeared in an 1887 examination given students at the Shingwauk Homein Ontario:

318 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

What is the meaning of the name Jehovah? Does the name come many times in
the Bible?
Why was it wrong of David to number the people?
What three things happened on Mount Moriah?111

Many of the schools also organized their students into church-sponsored organizations. At the Anglican Battleford school, for example, students were recruited into
the King’s Daughters and the King’s Sons.112 Catholic students were recruited into
organizations such as the Croisés.113 The United Church expected teachers to organize
branches of the Canadian Girls in Training and Trail Rangers.114
In keeping with missionary practice, it was not unusual for religious instruction to
be provided in Aboriginal languages. At the Roman Catholic school in Fort Albany,
Ontario, Principal L. Carrierre reported in 1910 that “an hour of religious teaching is
also given in their own language.” It was not clear from his report if this was on a daily
or weekly basis.115 Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard, who often taught religious
classes in Cree, reported in 1907, “On Sunday and every day during the winter months
I hold a class for the whole school, when I give religious instruction for one hour afterclass.”116
In the opinion of some Indian Affairs officials, religious education was given too
much prominence in the schools. In a letter to the department, Indian agent W. J.
Dilworth reported that, as far as he could tell, “the prime object of our schools at present seems to be the making of as many adherents as possible to the religious bodyunder whose auspices the school is conducted.” As a result, the teaching of English,
homemaking, childcare, sewing, gardening, farming, dairying, raising cattle, carpentry, and machine use and repairs was “sadly neglected.”117 Indian agent G. H.
Gooderham reported in August 1923 that parents had complained to him that theirchildren were getting too much religious training at the Cluny, Alberta, school, adding that they were complaining about the religion classes being taught in their “native
tongue.” The principal countered that “no religious training is given in school hours
and that the children get religious exercises only in the early morning and for a halfhour at noon. He did, however, talk partly in Blackfoot as many could not understandEnglish.”118 Discipline was strict in religious studies classes. Of her catechism class at
the Qu’Appelle school, Louise Moine recalled that if a student could not answer thequestion put to them during the question period, Father Kalmes “would make thepupil kneel, with arms outstretched, till the end of class. Father Kalmes was as miserable as they come.”119
Students had differing memories of the role that religious training played in theschools. For some, it was their greatest legacy. Elsie Ross, who attended the File Hills,
Saskatchewan, school during this period, recalled, “We did very good ground workin religion and Christian belief. Mr. Rhodes was our instructor and principal. He was

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 319

very good at teaching us religion. I am eternally grateful for that because I have a firm
standing in Christian beliefs to this day. That was good.”120 Bernard Pinay, another File
Hills student, felt that “religion was never driven to us. If we wanted to go to church,
usually they had it on a Sunday, we could make an excuse and they wouldn’t say nothing.”121 However, Mildred Riley, who attended the Mount Elgin school in the 1930s,
recalled going to church “an awful lot. You couldn’t get out of going—it was compulsory to go.” She vowed to herself that once she left the school, “I ain’t never going tochurch again.”122

Quality of education
In 1923, former Regina industrial school principal R. B. Heron read a paper to ameeting of the Regina Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church that was highly critical of
the residential school system. He told the church leaders:Indian children are compelled to leave their homes at the age of seven—to
remain in school, with only an occasional holiday, until they are eighteen. The
parents have no voice in the selection of teachers nor in the selection of thecourse of study the children are to pursue, nor in the number of hours theyattend the class-room.

He noted that parents generally were anxious to have their children educated, butthey complained that their children “are not kept regularly in the class-room; that they
are kept out at work that produces revenue for the School that when they return to theReserves they have not enough education to enable them to transact ordinary business—scarcely enough to enable them to write a legible letter.” He said, “The classroom standing of many of the graduates of the schools would indicate that the parents
have considerable ground for complaint.” In his opinion, First Nations people were“capable of holding their own in class-room and College halls,” pointing to one former,
unnamed, student who had been a gold medallist at the University of Manitoba. This
student was, however, the rare exception, since the residential schools did not, in his
opinion, allow most students to fulfill their potential. Few former students, for example, were capable of translating from Cree into English or vice versa. He ended with astory about one former student, who, when working as a church interpreter, rendered
the Biblical passage “It is I; be not afraid” as “Hit him in the eye, don’t be afraid.”123
Heron’s speech described a system that separated parents and children, denied
parents any role or say in the establishment and operation of the system, and provided their children with an inferior education.124 This sort of criticism did not gounanswered. The principal of the Presbyterian school in Birtle, Manitoba, R. E. Pitts,
defended the schools. In doing so, he mounted an attack on the character of First
Nations people. Heron, he said, was merely giving voice to what Pitts described as

320 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“the Indian complaint. Nothing would please the Indian better than to sit down andhave the White man feed, clothe, and wait on him. If we did this work for the children in the school we would be making them worse Indians and unfitting them still
more for the conditions of civilized life.” He stressed the role that the school played ininstilling the students with “energy, perseverance, self-control, morals, and religion.”
He said that Heron’s complaints about the lack of parental involvement in the systemwere “far-fetched.” He also said that the “parents of white children” were not allowed
to “choose their teachers,” either.125 This was a misleading argument: Euro-Canadianparents could, for example, vote for the provincial politicians who established province-wide policies for education, and they voted for local school boards that built andoperated the local schools. Although they might come into conflict with provincial
departments of education, local, community-controlled school boards were alreadycentral components of the Canadian school system.126 Aboriginal people were denied
the opportunity to play similar roles in the education of their children.
Heron’s speech may have been one of the more public attacks on the quality ofeducation provided in residential schools, but he was not saying anything that was
unknown to government officials. A Saskatchewan Indian agent observed that at theBattleford school, students were simply performing repetitive drills. According to his
1909 report,
in their attempts to keep up with their class-mates and to please their teacher
they were still occasionally found to repeat, and frequently to write in theirdesk exercises statements that were quite meaningless, and which revealed amere attempt at imitation rather than reasoning, a fault, however, which may beobserved in some degree in all schools.127

Indian agent W. J. Dilworth echoed these comments in 1915. He reported that aninspection of the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve had left him “disappointed in the class of instruction given and being given in the subjects reading, arithmetic and spelling. The children’s work was merely memory work and did not appear
to be developing any deductive power, altogether too parrot like and lacking expression. The English spoken is not clear.”128
An inspection of the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, in the late 1920s concluded that although some of the students were ‘fair’ at certain subjects, “in reading,they appeared hopeless.”129 Similar sentiments are found in a 1932 inspector’s reporton the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school. According to the inspector, H. L. Winter:
The methods employed by these teachers do not impress me very favorably,
and they stress the fact the children ‘do not want to learn’.… I should say thiswas “cause and effect”. The teaching as I saw it today was merely a question ofmemorizing and repeating a mass of, to the children, “meaningless” facts. There

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 321

was no evidence of anything in the way of “motivation” or “self-activity”—thekey-words in education today.

He said, “The showing made by all classes was decidedly weak, and below the average of other schools.”130
Slow progress was not uncommon. In his 1928 inspection report on the Christie
school on Meares Island, British Columbia, R. H. Cairns wrote, “The educational
standing of this school is very low. It will be noticed that there are five boys and one
girl in the fifth grade. All other pupils being below that Grade.”131
Inspectors often spoke of the failings of young and inexperienced teachers. At theschool in Ahousaht, British Columbia, an inspector wrote in 1914 that the principal’s
son was in charge of the classroom and that educational progress was slow. The problem was an ongoing one at the school, which had had four different teachers since1911.132 A 1933 report on the Norway House school in Manitoba noted, “Miss Smith isdoing her first year’s teaching and naturally shows the marks of the amateur.”133
In some cases, it appears that principals and teachers had low expectations of theirstudents. Wikwemikong, Ontario, school principal R. Baudin wrote in 1883, “What wemay reasonably expect from the generality of children, is certainly not to make great
scholars of them. Good and moral as they may be, they lack great mental capacity.”
He did not think it wise to expect them to “be equal in every respect to their whitebrethren,” but he thought they could become good artists and mechanics. “They canimitate and re-produce in a wonderful manner the work of others.”134 In commenting
on the impressive scores students had achieved on an 1891 mathematics test, a later
Wikwemikong principal, Dominique duRonquet, wrote that the result was “so muchthe more worthy of notice as it is well known that Indian children naturally have little taste and aptitude for that branch of learning.”135 In preparing a 1928 report on
the Anglican school at Onion Lake, a Saskatchewan government school inspector
expressed his belief that “in arithmetic abstract ideas develop slowly in the Indianchild.”136 Principal S. R. McVitty wrote in 1928 that at the Mount Elgin school, “classroom work is an important part of our training, but not by any means the most important.” He added, “In the case of the Indian ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing.’”137
There were also many positive assessments of the work being done in residential
schools. In 1905, for example, British Columbia inspector A. E. Green wrote, “I amsatisfied that the best results of Indian education are obtained from the boarding
schools. In travelling, I meet with ex-pupils who are a credit to these institutions.”138 A
report on the Anglican school at Onion Lake in 1915 stated, “The pupils have a goodpractical use of English according to their different grades and give evidence of a fairunderstanding of what they read.”139 In 1924, Inspector W. M. Veazey gave the Delmas,
Saskatchewan, school a very positive assessment. The three teachers were “energetic
and untiring in their efforts,” the children were “good at word recognition,” the school
was “splendidly equipped,” and, while there was “some difficulty in teaching the322 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

English perfectly [sic],” he felt that “practical education was excellent.”140 Two years
later, a different inspector of the same school said, “I do not see how the work could bedone much, if any, better and the entire staff deserves commendation.” Of the intermediate class, he wrote, “The pupils read fairly and being questioned shewed [sic]a pretty good knowledge of the subject matter. The spelling was almost perfect andI gave the words myself. Few public school pupils could do better.” The major problems he identified were the insufficient use of teaching methods that related to thestudents’ lives and experiences, and the pupils’ lack of English.141 An inspection froma decade later gave a similarly positive assessment: the rooms were well lit and airy,
the teachers showed excellent leadership, and the pupils were orderly, anxious to dowell, and thoughtful.142
It is clear from reading these reports that many of the people who worked in theschools were dedicated to teaching. There were also many children who were interested in the work and applied themselves to their lessons. A 1922 report on the Birtle,
Manitoba, school observed, “A good tone prevailed in the class rooms, teachers arecapable and interested in the work. There is evidently the best spirit of co-operation
between teachers and classes.” The inspector was “very much pleased with the progress the children had made.”143 A 1926 report on the Anglican school at Onion Lakedescribed one teacher, Kate Beanland, as “very energetic and is doing good work.”
The other teacher, Elizabeth Turner, was “a strong teacher, clear and careful in presentation and maintains a good standard of work.” They were seen to be “well selected
for their departments.”144 At the Gordon’s Reserve school in 1926, it was reported thatin the senior room, “the different grades compare very favorably with those in similar grades in the public school, but the pupils here are somewhat older for the same
grade.” The junior room teacher had no previous teaching experience, and, as a result,“the order is not as good as might be desired.”145
Inspector R. C. Moir was impressed by the work in the Lestock, Saskatchewan,
school in the early 1930s. He said, “Written language has reached a very satisfactory
standard. Good methods in oral language teaching were observed in the primaryroom.”146 The following year, he observed, “In drawing and industrial art, writing andwritten language, high standards of work are expected from the children. I note that
increased attention is being given to oral language in all classes and that more time
is being spent on effective school work.”147 Inspector G. H. Barry wrote in 1931 that at
Kuper Island, British Columbia, the “children show that they have made very good
progress in Arithmetic. They like their new work books, and are doing well in Nature.
The work books in Reading have been supplied to the Beginners and Grade 1. They
are delighted with these books.”148 The report of A. G. Hamilton in 1936 on the Roman
Catholic school in Kenora was practically glowing with praise. The children, he wrote,
were getting along well in their grade and he was delighted with their reading. “Thebooks are all well kept and the work neatly set down.”149

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 323

At times, the schools would draw attention to the careers of successful former students, including the students whose school experiences were outlined in an earlier
chapter of this volume. Qu’Appelle graduate Daniel Kennedy, for example, became aninterpreter and general assistant for the Assiniboine Indian Agency.150 Joseph Dion, agraduate of the Onion Lake school, taught school for many years in Saskatchewan.151
Many former students went into the church. Coqualeetza graduate Peter Kelly becamea Methodist Church minister.152 Emmanuel College graduate Edward Ahenakew
became an Anglican minister.153 After attending the Mohawk Institute, Beverly Johnson
went to Hellmuth College in London, Ontario, where he excelled at sports and drama.
He then went to work for the New York Life Insurance Company in Pennsylvania.154
A graduate of the Mohawk Institute, N. E. Lickers was called to the bar in 1938 andwas described by the Brantford Expositor as the “First Ontario Indian Lawyer.”155 In
1904, Calgary principal George Hogbin pointed to a number of successful students,
including Jim Starlight, the school’s first student, who was building a house for the
local Indian Affairs doctor. Another former student, Joe Mountain Horse, was working
as a police translator.156 Duncan Campbell Scott reported in 1914 thatseven pupils of the Mount Elgin industrial school at Muncey tried the entrance
examination to the high schools during the past summer, and all weresuccessful, one girl taking first-class honours and standing sixth in the countyof Middlesex. A number of Indians are attending colleges and universities
throughout the Dominion, and their records are very good.157

Getting support for students to pursue academic studies was always difficult.
According to Oliver Martin, who was raised on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario andwent on to become an Ontario magistrate, in either 1913 or 1914, Six Nations decided
to send two boys to Upper Canada College in hopes that they would go on to receive
legal training. The decision was made after the Six Nations council had undergone aseries of legal reverses. Although the money would have come from the interest on
band money, Indian Affairs refused to authorize the expenditure. Years later, Martin
was in Ottawa and asked Duncan Campbell Scott why the request had been denied.
According to Martin, Scott told him, “It’s no use sending you Indians to school you justgo back to the reserve anyway.”158
In 1930, the Mohawk Institute prepared an eleven-page list of successful former
students. Among the men, it included clergy, teachers, and interpreters, as well as carpenters, bookkeepers, and farmers. Among the women were nurses, stenographers,
and church organists. There were also teachers listed among the women, including
Susan Hardie, who taught at the Mohawk Institute from 1886 to 1936.159
However, the schools’ overall educational record was dismal. Most students did
not progress through the system. The problem became apparent within a few years
of its inception. In 1889, 2,136 students were enrolled in both residential and day324 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

schools in the North-West Territories (which was comprised primarily of modern-day
Saskatchewan and Alberta). Table 13.6 shows the grade distribution in the territorial
schools for that year (which went up only to Standard 5 at that time). As can be seen,
over 50% of the students were in Standard 1.160
Table 13.6. Grade distribution of students in Indian Affairs-funded schools in the NorthWest Territories, 1889.
Standard

Total
enrolment

Standard 1

Standard 2

Standard 3

Standard 4Standard 5

Number of
students

2,136

1,227

456

244

154

55

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 170.

The system never managed to improve on this pattern. Table 13.7 shows that during
the forty-five-year period from 1894 to 1939, one-third of the students enrolled in
the country’s residential schools were in the first grade (or standard). This could be
explained partially by the fact that an expanding system would always have a large
number of students in the first year. But it is also clear from this table that students
were not progressing through the system. In seven of the selected years (1894, 1899,
1904, 1909, 1914, 1919, and 1924), at least 70% of the students were in the first threelevels. The enrolled students in the first three levels never fell below 60% in this period.
Over time, the schools showed only slight improvement in their ability to advance
students through the levels. In 1894, only 1% of the enrolled students were in Standard
Table 13.7. Enrolment and grade distribution, Canada’s residential schools, 1894 to 1939.
Year

Total
Enrolled

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

% of
enrolment% ofenrolment% ofenrolment% ofenrolment% ofenrolment% ofenrolment

1894

2,127

31%

23%

21%

5%

8%

1%

1899

3,115

33%

19%

21%

15%

8%

3%

1904

3,526

28%

19%

23%

18%

9%

3%

1909

3948

32%

18%

22%

15%

9%

4%

1914

4,076

35%

18%

18%

15%

9%

5%

1919

4,640

33%

20%

20%

15%

9%

4%

1924

5,673

36%

18%

19%

14%

8%

5%

1929

7,075

35%

17%

15%

14%

10%

7%

1934

8,596

32%

15%

14%

14%

11%

7%

1939

9,179

34%

15%

14%

12%

10%

8%

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 325

6. By 1939, this had risen to 8%. By 1929, several schools were offering grades Seven
through Nine, although the number of students studying at these levels combined
ranged from 3% to 8% of enrolment. It is clear that most students never got out of thejunior grades.
For a comparison, Table 13.8 shows the elementary school grade distribution for
the Winnipeg School Board in 1921.
This table shows that the elementary school enrolment in Winnipeg public schools
Table 13.8. Enrolment and grade distribution, Winnipeg School Board, 1921.
Total

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

% of
% of
% of
% of
% of
% of
% of
% of
enrolment enrolment enrolment enrolment enrolment enrolment enrolment enrolment
26,561

14.6%

16.5%

15.2%

13%

13%

12.%

9.2

7.3%

Source: Gidney and Millar, How Schools Worked, 24.w

was spread evenly in grades One through Six by 1921. The Grade Six enrolment is 79%
of the Grade One enrolment, suggesting that most children in Winnipeg were progressing to Grade Six. By contrast, in 1919 in the residential schools, the Standard 6
enrolment was just 13% of the Standard 1 enrolment.

VII

VIII

IX

% of
enrolment% ofenrolment% ofenrolment

2%

1%

0%

4%

2%

1%

4%

2%

1%

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1894, 250–270; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 444–449; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, Part II,
50–57; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndianAffairs, 1909, Part II, 18–23; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1914, 152–153; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 92–93;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1924, 94; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1929, 104; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1934, 77; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1939, 266.

326 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

As early as 1911, 80.1% of the general Canadian population (excluding Québec)between the ages of ten and fourteen were enrolled in school. By 1921, this had
increased to 90.5%, rising to 95.6% in 1931. In 1941, the figure was 95.8%. Enrolment
dropped off quickly at age fifteen. In 1911, 20.7% of Canadians between the ages offifteen and nineteen were enrolled in school. This increased to 27.3% in 1921, reaching
37.8% in 1931 and 40.1% in 1941.161
A very small number of residential school students continued their studies pastStandard 6 (by the 1930s, referred to as “Grade Six”). In 1926, Indian Affairs was providing support to 120 First Nations students who were attending “public schools, highschools and colleges.” This number included former residential school students aswell as former day school students. The government provided these students with a
total of $19,386.38 in support. In reporting on the funding, Deputy Minister Duncan
Campbell Scott emphasized that this support was “continued only when satisfactory
reports are received.”162 A decade later, Indian Affairs was providing grants to 200 graduates of both residential schools and day schools to support them at high schools,
universities, and business colleges. The policy may have been adopted in responseto the early mortality of many students, since it was to provide “grants to the mostpromising physically fit graduates of our own schools.”163 Students also had to meetvery high academic standards to gain such financial support. In 1934, the department
announced it would not support students who did not get over 70% on their Grade
Eight examinations.164 The government was also uncertain about the value of academic education. By the end of the 1930s, Indian Affairs was encouraging students
who were thinking of pursuing high school education “to take up vocational courses
such as agriculture, auto mechanics and domestic science.”165
There are several reasons for the lack of academic progress. In their early years at
school, the students would have struggled to learn a new language. In inspecting theGordon’s school in 1923, J. H. McKechnie observed, “A number of pupils have recently
come into school for the 1st time, some of them being 11 or 12 years of age. This makes
proper grading a difficult task.” He thought the students were doing as well in theirgrades as students in most rural schools, but he noted “the average age per grade
is higher.”166 The fact that staff members at most of the schools were poorly trained,
under-qualified, overworked, and subject to constant turnover certainly accounts formuch of the difficulty. The poor health that many of the students experienced whileat the schools and the often primitive conditions of the buildings and limited schoolsupplies were other factors.
The half-day system, by its very nature, ensured that students would emerge withan inferior education. By the time the students had learned enough English to begin
to grapple with the curriculum, they were put on the half-day system. As Mary Ross,a teacher at the Round Lake school, wrote in 1936, “a half day at school, and no study
periods outside school hours is insufficient for those pupils in Grade Eight, where they

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939 • 327

are faced with a Departmental exam.” It was not possible, she wrote, to cover the material or “give the amount of drill work needed to give them a thorough grasp of theirwork.” Ross, who was the wife of the school principal, stated that over the previous
twelve years, eighteen of the school’s students had successfully passed their Grade
Eight examination. But the reality for most students at the school was that by the timethey had reached Grade Eight, “it is almost impossible to get over the work, let alone
teach it thoroughly.” The problem the students faced, she felt, was not one of ability, but of time and resources. She pointed out that Indian Affairs did not provide theschool with copies of the authorized primer for students in Saskatchewan, choosing
instead to substitute a different book. She also said that the policy of having only one
inspection a year was not sufficient, particularly since “the teacher has not access toa copy of the report he submits,” and, as a result, “has no mean of benefiting from thiscriticism.”167
The idea that the residential schooling was “unfitting” students became a staple ofthe internal criticisms of the system. Indian Affairs education officer Martin Benson
commented in the early 1900s that although the Brandon school did a good job intraining students in farming, “nearly all the pupils in this school are recruited fromthe country surrounding the northern end of Lake Winnipeg, which is not adapted
for farming.” He predicted that many of the students coming out of the school would
not be able to utilize their education if they returned to their home communities.168 In
opposing a proposed Methodist boarding school in British Columbia, Benson wrote:
The North West Indians are literally ‘Toilers of the Sea’ which affords themalmost their entire support. They make more from fishing than any other Indiansin British Columbia, and in order to obtain the necessary skill and daring inthese pursuits, they must begin to learn while they are young. No knowledge ofbooks, refinements of life or manners will help them in perils of the deep and
I do not think it would be wise to force them to change their present mode ofproviding for their sustenance until a better one can be offered them.

Benson said, “Life even in a boarding school will unfit them for their work andincrease their sensitiveness of wants without the means to supply those wants which
will but add to the burden of life.”169
Indian Affairs inspector W. J. Chisholm made the following report on the Red Deer
school in 1903:
The attempt to civilize our Indians by breaking up the ties of home andalienating them from their nautral [sic] associations has proved a general failure,
and accounts for the fact that in many instances ex-pupils of the schools on
returning to the reserves are found by the agents to be untractable and unsettled,scorning in a measure their Indian connections, yet quite unable to think or live
like white men.170

328 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

These thoughts were echoed by Fisher River, Manitoba, Indian agent T. H. Carterin a letter to Duncan Campbell Scott in 1914. Carter had concluded that the industrial
schools were a “cruelty instead of a benifit [sic] being imposed upon the Indian.” Welltrained young people were returning to reserves “where it is an impossibility for themto profit by the education they have received while in the industrial school; and theirlast state is generally worse than their first.” They had been “unfitted to get a living as
an ordinary Indian.”171
In 1938, the Mounted Police sent Indian Affairs a lengthy report on its efforts toenforce attendance at the school at Fort Vermilion, Alberta. The report stated, “These
Indians, particularly the Red River Band, are becoming increasingly more dissatisfied
and reluctant to allow their children to attend school at the Mission at Fort Vermilion.”
The parents claimed, and “rightly so,” in the Mounted Police’s estimation, that “whena boy is compelled to attend mission school until he is sixteen years of age, and thenturned back into the bush, he is useless to himself or to his family and is too old tolearn bushcraft.” The police report also noted that the people of that region went into
the bush for the fall hunt. If they had not sent their children to school, it was a very
expensive and difficult procedure for the police to track down families and transport
their children to school. Indian Affairs took the police report seriously. It instructed
the force not to take any further action in returning students to the Fort Vermilion
school at that time. It was also decided to apply certain regulations to the children
from the Little Red River Band attending the Fort Vermilion school. These regulations
had been developed in the Northwest Territories, in consultation with Roman Catholic
Bishop Gabriel Breynat. Under this new regime, boys would be discharged at the ageof fourteen, not sixteen. Boys in good physical condition would be allowed to spend a
year with their parents in the bush when they turned twelve. Orphan boys were to beplaced with families who would provide them with a good knowledge of hunting.172
By 1935, it was increasingly apparent that government officials had lost faith in
the value of the education they were supposed to be providing. That year, the United
Church sought support to send two boys, seventeen and eighteen years old, fromresidential schools on Vancouver Island to the Chilliwack residential school on themainland, so that they could complete their high school education. The acting superintendent of Indian Education, J. D. Sutherland, rejected the idea. He responded thatIndian Affairs “doubts the wisdom” of the measure. “After three or four years, theywould have to return to their home reserves and take up their future life work, and it isdoubtful if they would then be any better prepared to make a living.” Sending them toschool would leave them “handicapped by being behind the other boys in becoming
established.”173

CHAPTER 14

The student as labourer: 1867–1939

F

ifteen-year-old Clayton Mack was sent to the Alert Bay, British Columbia, schoolby the local Indian agent in 1923 after the death of his father. He arrived during
the summer holidays and was asked by the principal if he could handle horses andcows. When he said he could, he was put to work tending them.
So I feed the horses, clean the barn, feed the cows and later even milk the cows. I get
up at four o’clock in the morning sometimes and go look for them cows. I had tencows. I’d get up, round them up, put them in the barn, feed them bran and then milk
them. Then I have to get the milk ready for the Chinaman to pick up. Let the cows
out for the day. In the summer it was really hard work. When the school closed in thesummer they gave me the girls’ cows too! The girls had about eight milk cows. So I
did, looked after the whole works for two years. I also helped look after the farm, help
with the potatoes, and helped cut the hay. I tried to go to school but there was notenough time. I worked most of the time. I went to Alert Bay for school and instead
they put me in a job!1

Clayton Mack’s story is extreme, but it is a stark reminder that the residential schools
were places of labour as well as education. In the name of receiving ‘vocational training,’
many students spent much of their time at repetitive tasks needed to support the schools.
As Indian Affairs official Martin Benson observed of the Mount Elgin school in Muncey,
Ontario, in 1902, residential school students were “not only working,” they were “being
worked.”2
Manual or vocational training had been a central element in residential schooling fromthe time the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, began taking in boarding students in
1832. Throughout the residential school system’s history, there was ongoing debate overthe purpose of this training, with some arguing that it should be preparing students toleave the reserves and integrate themselves into the Euro-Canadian workforce, and others arguing that students should be trained to return to the reserves to take up farming
and ranching.
With regularity, Indian Affairs officials pronounced that previous policies had focused
too much either on providing academic skills or on preparing students for skilled trades

330 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionin which they were unlikely to find employment. In 1897, Deputy Minister James Smartworried that the schools were providing too much vocational training:
Education must be considered with relation to the future of the pupils, and only thecertainty of some practical results can justify the large expense entailed upon the
country by the maintenance of these schools. To educate children above the possibilities of their station, and create a distaste for what is certain to be their environment in life would be not only a waste of money but doing them an injury instead ofconferring a benefit upon them.3

In keeping with this view, in 1902, Indian Commissioner David Laird reported that hehad “tried to discourage the introduction or even continuance of so many shops which are
not likely to turn out any but a small number of good mechanics. It is a waste of funds toemploy an expert craftsman in a school to train a mere handful of pupils who in the end may
be unable to turn their knowledge to advantage.”4 In 1910, Duncan Campbell Scott, thensuperintendent of Indian Education, announced that trades training was being dropped
at many residential schools in favour of training in the skills that would “fit the Indian for
civilized life in his own environment.” The students would still receive a “scholastic education,” but the focus would be on carpentry and farming for boys and housekeeping for the
girls.5 Seventeen years later, shortly after R. A. Hoey, a former Manitoba cabinet minister,
took over as the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, he concluded
that the system was still too academic.
My personal opinion is that in our educational programme provision should bemade for a course of study that would enable the pupils to spend at least one third of
their time at manual training or vocational instruction. The general public have an
impression that the instruction given in our Indian schools is altogether too abstract
and academic. They feel that there should be a more direct relationship between this
instruction and the tasks that confront the pupil after his departure from school.6

Reed and Hoey may have differed in the amount of time they thought students shouldbe spending in vocational training, but both men were convinced that residential students
were spending too much time in class. Not Reed, Smart, Laird, Scott, or Hoey expected
that, in their adult lives, Aboriginal students would be required to do much “brainwork”
or have need for “scholastic” or “academic” training, however these terms were defined.
Indian Affairs officials had much lower expectations for Aboriginal students than this.
Vocational training also was seen as part of the essential remaking of the Aboriginal
character, which was viewed as being inherently lazy. When he took over the Kamloops,
British Columbia, school in 1893, M. Carion wrote, “The greatest difficulty we experience
with the pupils is to overcome their natural repugnance to work of any kind; but I haveno doubt that they will gradually be made to look upon work as a necessary and healthyoccupation.”7 At the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school in the same year, the principal,
Nicolas Coccola, wrote, “Although brought up with their people in idleness and in perfect

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 331

ignorance of all sorts of work, the active life of this industrial school is soon cheerfully
embraced by the new comers.”8 Two years later, Mohawk Institute principal Robert Ashton
told Indian Affairs official Martin Benson that by the impartial enforcement of strict rules,
he could “train a child that by the time he is ready to leave the school, he will have formed
the habit of doing what has to be done unconsciously.” According to Benson, Ashton
claimed to be able to “train an Indian child to work whether he likes work or not.”9 His
clear implication was that Aboriginal children preferred not to work.
These views were long-lived. The United Church’s 1935 report on its First Nations education work observed:
The Indian is still a creature of fits and starts. Unconsciously, perhaps, but nevertheless truly, he still lives in the psychology of the chase, when all the men of the tribe
went out to hunt the buffalo. When the hunt was a success and plenty of food had
been obtained, they sat around, slept and smoked until the pangs of hunger forced
another hunt.10

This fear of inherent laziness is present in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, principal J. P.
Mackey’s 1939 comment: “We feel that every child capable of work should be impressedwith the idea that if they are to get along, they must work.”11
Despite this ongoing concern over the need to train Aboriginal young people to earn aliving, the vocational training program too often degenerated into a student labour program. Training in trades was always very limited. Throughout this period, parents complained that their children were being overworked. Government officials often came to thesame conclusion. But, because the government refused to increase funding, the schools
remained dependent on student labour.
This labour was essential to the housing, clothing, and feeding of the students. Without
their work, the system would have collapsed. In 1889, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister
Lawrence Vankoughnet rejected a proposal from the Mount Elgin school that contractors
be hired to carry out an expansion of the school. Instead, the government was prepared to
pay for materials and have the students, working under staff supervision, do the work. It
would, he wrote, “be the best instruction in carpentry those pupils can receive.”12 In 1894,
the principal of the Alert Bay industrial school reported, “At present no trades instructor
has been appointed, owing to the small number of boys, but elementary lessons have been
given them in carpentry; the chief industry of the boys has been clearing land, and extracting stumps, preparatory to making a kitchen garden and play ground.”13 Principal A. M.
Carion at the Kamloops school wrote that due to thewant of shops, trades could not be taught regularly. However, three boys haveacquired some practical knowledge of carpentering by helping the foreman in theerection of outbuildings. The boys were employed chiefly in clearing and fencing
land, gardening and making the improvements described below. From four to five332 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

hours, according to the season, were devoted every week day to manual labour. The
half holiday allowed by the rules on Saturdays was not kept here.14

Construction and maintenance
The establishment of the Red Deer school, in what is now Alberta, depended on student
labour. Principal John Nelson rejoiced in farm instructor McClelland’s ability to persuade
the boys thatwork is only play after all, and although only boys, they can do the work of ordinary
men. As an illustration of this, four pupils and farmer [sic] put up nearly sixty tons of
hay in less than two weeks, and this work done with oxen. During the past winter theboys cut eight thousand rails; each boy would average over two hundred per diem. To
my mind at least, the too prevalent idea that Indians are naturally lazy has no proof in
actual observation. The older boys work faithfully and well in the carpenter shop andeagerly await their turn at the bench. With pardonable pride they point to the laundry
they have shingled during the carpenter’s absence, also a substantial board fence
they erected, using hewn poles instead of scantling. The building site was a veritable
forest, although possessing its advantages. A playground is a necessity. To obtain thisa great amount of labour has been performed by the pupils before and after school in
preparing the grounds, clearing brush, digging stumps and levelling up.15

By the summer of 1890, Thomas Clarke, the principal of the Battleford school in what
is now Saskatchewan, could report that the carpenter’s shop was a source of revenue forthe school. He provided the following summary of the work undertaken by the school’s
carpentry students:
In July they erected the outbuildings, and in August and September worked on the
new addition to the main building with the carpenters employed, making sash andframes [for windows], shingling, lathing, siding up and laying floors. They subsequently went to Thunderchild’s Reserve, where they quickly put up a schoolhouse.
On their return from the reserve they built three flights of stairs in the new wing andmade all the storm sash for it, wainscotted the different rooms and completed thework in detail. They then made the needful alterations in the old building, removed
partitions to enlarge the rooms, wainscotted them, and made such necessary furniture as tables, benches, & c. When spring opened, they accompanied the Instructor
to Red Pheasant’s Reserve and built a school-house. They also lathed the Farm Instructor’s dwelling house. Thence they went to Moosomin’s Reserve, where anotherschool-house was put up by them; and finally they completed the school-house andthe Farm Instructor’s dwelling at Poundmaker’s Reserve.

Clarke set the value of the construction undertaken by students at the school as $1,329.16

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 333

In 1893, two boys from the Qu’Appelle school in what is now Saskatchewan “worked
the whole winter on the building erected at the High River Industrial School.” In that year,
Qu’Appelle students also did repairs to an unnamed boarding school on the Sioux Reserveand built twenty desks for other schools.17
Many of the schools were substantial operations. For example, the Coqualeetza Instituteat Chilliwack, British Columbia, included:(1) the main building, containing kitchen, dormitories, lavatories, laundry, recreation-rooms, school-rooms, clothes-rooms, furnace-rooms, and dairy; (2) the
residence of the principal; (3) the residence of the farm instructor; (4) three largebarns; (5) a granary; (6) a wagon and implement shed; (7) a wood-shed; (8) a new
bake-house; (9) a hen-house; (10) a root-cellar; (11) a hothouse; (12) a new pig-pen;(13) two new tent-house dormitories added this year.18

Other than the main building, the Regina school included theprincipal’s residence, brick veneered cottage hospital, frame, one story; carpenter
instructor’s cottage, frame, one story; trades building, frame, containing shoe-shops,
printing office, hardware storeroom, paint-shop, carpenter-shop, with lumber-houseattached; laundry building, frame, two story; two implement sheds; cow stable,
frame; horse-stable, frame, with stone basement; hen-house, hog-pen and boiler-house attached; bake-shop, containing brick oven and grocery store-rooms; blacksmith shops, ice-house, containing cold storage room for meat; granary, root-house,pumping engine-house, garden tool-house, lumber-house, grain-crusher house,boys’ outside closet and girls’ outside closet.19

The students played a central role in maintaining these facilities. When, in 1907, theChristie, British Columbia, school’s waterline froze, nine boys and the instructor spenteight days replacing the pipe. According to school principal P. Maurus, “One boy with theassistance of another looked after the many plumbing fixtures of the house and kept themin good order. The same boy, unassisted by instructor, did all the plumbing work in connection with the installation of a gasoline engine in a launch.”20 In 1910, the High River,
Alberta, school principal reported, “The boys, under the instruction of the school carpenter, did all the repairs and building during the year.”21

Clothing and feeding the school
The female students’ contribution to the ongoing operation of the schools was also
substantial. In 1889, the principal of the High River school, E. Claude, reported that, inthe previous year, the girls at the school had produced substantial goods:
27 aprons were made; bonnets, 6; coats, 28; drawers, 25; dresses, 34; garters, 23;
night-dresses, 89; mattresses 6; mitts, 14; napkins, 37; overstockings, 12; petticoats,334 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

17; pillows, 6; sheets, 14; shirts, 80; towels, 72; trousers, 48; socks, 64; stockings, 6(these last two articles are hand knitting);—besides the ordinary mending of theirs
and the boys’ clothes.22

The boys taking carpentry had done work worth between $500 and $700 for the school,
and the four boys in the shoe shop were credited with
one hundred and ninety-seven pairs of boots repaired, twenty-three new pairs made,eighty-nine pairs of shoepacks were made for winter supply, and seventy-four pairs
for Qu’Appelle Industrial school: fourteen pairs of slippers have been refitted for use,and eighty-eight pairs of soft moccasins have been enlarged and refitted for use.23

In 1894, Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard wrote, “All the clothing for the girls
and most of that for the boys is made in the institution by the girls.”24 Repairing clothes
was a constant part of residential school life. Mary Augusta Tappage recalled of her daysat the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school in the late nineteenth century: “The sewing
was from four o’clock til six. We had to patch. We had to patch the boys’ clothes. We had
to wash and iron Mondays, Tuesday. We had to patch and keep on patching till Saturday
and all their bags would be lined up.”25 Mary Englund, who attended the Mission, British
Columbia, school in the second decade of the twentieth century, recalled:
I used to go to the sewing room in the mornings and she start teaching us how to
run the machines, you see. And sew, first it was aprons, we all had to wear aprons.
Everybody had an apron to wear. So she gave me this material and she cut it out. She
never let us cut it out, she cut it out and there she showed us where to sew and how to
sew and your stitching had to be straight. So I started this interfacing, you know, thiszig-zag. She’d make me rip it over and I’d sit there and cry and rip, you know, and thenames I didn’t call her.26

In 1915, Matilda Wilson provided the following account to the school paper of the work
she did at the school at The Pas, Manitoba: “I work in the sewing room. Everyday I sew
clothes for boys and girls. Three girls mend moccasins every morning. I guess I will work inanother place next week. I like to work everywhere for then I can learn. I was sorry Emmahurt herself on the eye with a needle.”27
The students not only repaired clothes, but they also made them. In 1897, the twenty-five female students at the Kamloops school made “fifty-seven dresses, fifty drawers,
forty-five aprons, eight bed-ticks, forty-two pillow cases, twenty-three pairs of stockings,
thirty bodices, fifty chemises, twenty-six shirts, ten night-dresses, twenty-seven sheets,
fifty petticoats, three bouquets of artificial flowers.”28
The girls were also charged with cooking and cleaning. Mary Angus enrolled in the
Battleford school in 1893 after the death of her mother. She recalled:
We did all the work, cleaning up, make the beds upstairs. Some of the girls were
washing dishes in the kitchen. After that we go to work. We kept changing work every
month. I used to work at the sewing room, another month I got to knitting stockings

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 335

for the children on the machine, another month I got to the kitchen and anothermonth I go to the laundry. We were changing all the time.29

Of all the chores at the Battleford school, the one that Sarah Soonias liked least was
scrubbing the wooden dining-room floor.30 Pauline Creeley had similar school memories
about File Hills, Saskatchewan: “The worst part I used to have to scrub the cement floor
every day, sometimes twice a day. It was very hard on the knees. In those days there wasno such things as kneeling pads or mops with long handles. I used to kneel on my hands
and they would get very sore.”31
For Alice Star Blanket, the laundry room at File Hills was theone place that I dreaded to work in because it was a place where you were required
to work hard, like hard labour. They kept us very busy here; there was washing of lotsof clothes and bed clothes to be laundered, hanging them up outside, folding themup and carrying these clothes and bed clothes to the rooms upstairs. There were big
machines in the laundry room that we had to man and they were big noisy things likethey have in the hospitals, big washers and dryers.32

During the late nineteenth century, the All Hallows girls’ school at Yale, British
Columbia, enrolled both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Initially, the students
studied together, but, by the mid-1890s, they studied and boarded separately. Even theChristmas celebrations were organized separately. While the non-Aboriginal girls dressedfor dinner, the Aboriginal students were setting the table. While there were awards for academic achievement, there were also awards for the Aboriginal girls for baking and laundrywork.33 A non-Aboriginal student recalled that the Aboriginal students “were the servants;
they did the work.”34
Nellie Stonefish, who attended Mount Elgin in the 1920s, recalled, “We had to makebeds every day after breakfast—20 beds on each side. There’s two girls in a dormitory andyou make ’em when you came back from breakfast and you’d sweep up. Saturdays you’dscrub the floors on your hands and knees.”35
Lila Ireland recalled that at Mount Elgin:
The beds had to be made just right and lined up so that the cuffs of the sheets were
all turned over exactly the same—there was even a board to measure them with. You
had either 8 or 10 beds to make. So then you come along and look at it and every oneof these cuffs had to be absolutely straight and all even or she’d rip them all out, andthat would maybe make you late for class cuz you had to do them over.36

Martha Hill, who went to the Mohawk Institute from 1912 to 1918, said of her training,“We learned everything about housekeeping there was to learn—cooking and everything.
We even learned how to look after a baby when a baby was born. We had a celluloid doll,
and we had to dress it, put a diaper on it, pretend we were feeding it.”37

336 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The school farms
The school farm operations were expected to make money for the school, provide a lowcost food source for the students, and teach the students, usually the boys, how to farm.
In 1896, the students at the Kamloops school produced the following from the school’s
1.2-hectare garden:
potatoes, twenty-seven thousand and six hundred pounds; carrots, nine thousand
five hundred and three pounds; field pease, one thousand and sixty-five pounds;
dry beans, two hundred and seventy-three pounds; onions, six hundred and four
pounds; beets (table), seven hundred and eleven pounds; mangolds and sugar beets,
three thousand one hundred and ninety-four pounds; white turnips, one hundred
and two pounds; Swede turnips, nine hundred and twenty-seven pounds; cabbage, one thousand pounds; tomatoes, six hundred pounds; squash, four hundred
pounds; corn, one hundred and fifty pounds; flax seed, fifteen pounds; giving a
total of forty-six thousand one hundred and forty-four pounds, or twenty-three tons
and one hundred and forty-four pounds; independent of what was used during thesummer, and two hundred and fifty pounds of parsnips left in the garden and dug inthe spring. Besides, we raised in the orchard, six hundred and forty-five pounds ofturnips, two hundred and fifty pounds of corn, sixteen hundred pounds of squash
and pumpkins, and more than one thousand melons and citrons.38

The students at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school had been expected to learn to farm, but
the farmland associated with the school was eight kilometres away.39 Similarly, the Regina
school’s ability to train students to farm was hampered by a lack of pasture land.40 At the
St. Boniface, Manitoba, school, “for the want of more land,” agricultural training was “confined chiefly to gardening.”41
Farming was carried out at the Mission, Lytton, Squamish, Kuper Island, and Chilliwack
schools in British Columbia. But, in other schools in the province, there was a shortage ofarable land. For example:• At Kamloops in 1903, only 6 of the school’s 129.5 hectares could be cultivated.
• At Port Simpson, the land was wet and boggy.
• At Christie Island, less than one of the school’s 70.8 hectares was being cultivatedin 1906.
• At Alert Bay, the soil was poor.
• At Alberni, the school, which had an orchard, had been established on heavily
treed land.
• At Metlakatla, farming opportunities were limited because the school was located on
only 2.4 hectares of land.42
Farming was an unpredictable enterprise. At Battleford, the crops of the summer of1894 were a “total failure.”43 These were the same words that Principal Hugonnard used todescribe the Qu’Appelle crops of 1893.44 The following year, drought left the same school

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 337

short of grain and vegetables.45 In the early twentieth century, the principal of the Red
Deer school increased the amount of land under cultivation from 30.3 to 121.4 hectares, adecision that dramatically increased the school’s deficit. Four years of poor crops, coupledwith mismanagement, left the school with a $5,000 deficit.46 In 1908, the school at HighRiver derived considerable revenue from fattening cattle on contract, receiving fifteen
cents a pound for animals that usually gained at least 150 pounds (68 kilograms). In thisway, the principal paid off a $3,000 debt to the federal government.47
An extremely positive assessment of the Portage la Prairie school in 1925 focused solely
on the success of the school farm, where, according to Inspector M. Christianson, the principal “grows everything on this farm that it is possible to grow here in the West.”48

School-run businesses
To survive, some schools engaged in a variety of economic endeavours. In Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario, Shingwauk Home principal E. F. Wilson sought in 1884 to supplement theschool’s revenue and provide students with training opportunities by investing $4,000 ina window-and-door shop. It appears to have been short-lived, however, as there was noreference to it in subsequent annual reports.49 Some of these economic endeavours led toconflicts with local business people and residents. In 1896 at the school at Middlechurch,
Manitoba, pupils who had received “some instruction in these trades” were in charge ofthe blacksmith and print shops. While it was hoped they might do work for local customers to generate revenue for the school, in reality, they took in little outside work due to“opposition from local tradesmen.”50 The Williams Lake school’s financial situation wasjeopardized in 1893 when the federal government halved the school pupilage from fifty totwenty-five students.51 To compensate for the lost income, the school harness shop began
to seek out local customers, which resulted in objections from local businesses. In thespring of 1899, there were complaints that the school was undercutting local businesses
while neglecting its educational responsibilities. In particular, it was alleged that the “harness shop is conducted for revenue and not for purposes of instructing the pupils.” IndianAffairs Superintendent A. W. Vowell investigated the allegations at the time and concluded
they had no merit.52
In 1915, a business operator in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, objected that the trades
shops at the Qu’Appelle school were doing work for members of the public, thus taking
work away from local businesses. Principal Hugonnard denied the claim, saying that the
only outside work was done by the school wheelwright, and, since there were no otherlocal wheelwrights, he was not hurting local business.53
At Chapleau, Ontario, school principal George Prewer sold milk and firewood locally.
He contracted with local residents to cut the firewood, and students milked school cows
and delivered both the milk and wood in a wagon. For their labour, the students were paid

338 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

twenty-five cents a day. On days when they delivered the milk, they did not get into classuntil 10:00 a.m. According to Indian Affairs Superintendent of Indian Education Russell
Ferrier, Prewer’s “closed-fisted business activities” had alienated local residents.54 Whencharges were made that Prewer was overworking the students, Indian Affairs instructed
him to change the wake-up time from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m., to cease the sale of milk and wood,and to provide more vocational training.55

Payment and the outing system
In the early years of the system, trades students were paid for work “done by them ofvalue to the Department.” Hayter Reed from Indian Affairs sought permission to pay theboys doing farm work as well.56 As he envisioned it, such payment would be limited to
the “best workers.” The possibility of being promoted into this class would, he believed,
encourage boys to stay in school and work hard.57 Reed proposed a rate of twelve cents a
day for farm work.58 At the Mohawk Institute in 1889, boys were paid for at least some of
the work they performed. In addition, students could win good-conduct badges that entitled them to a small weekly allowance.59 At High River in 1893, “the older boys worked all
day at their trade and the smaller ones the usual half time. The bigger boys were allowed
twenty-five cents per diem.”60 At the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school in that same year, students
were paid between ten and thirty cents for the work they did at their trades. They wereallowed to spend the money on what they wanted, “tobacco and of course spirits being
prohibited.” Girls were said to spend their money on clothing, gloves, handkerchiefs, collars, and ribbons, and the boys bought neckties, collars, and handkerchiefs.61
Following the us model, the Canadian schools established what were termed “outing systems,” under which students would be placed “out” with local farmers or in local
homes. In 1896, Deputy Minister Hayter Reed said that most of the outing work for boys
came in the harvest season when there was a heavy demand for boys, while “many moregirls could be placed as servants if the numbers and work at the institutions permitted.”
He said the wages were paid to parents, in most cases, “otherwise they would not consent
to their children going out to work in this manner.”62 In 1893, six boys from the High Riverschool lived with local farmers and assisted with harvesting and haying. Principal Albert
Naessens declared it “fairly satisfactory,” but, he noted, “most of the children becomelonesome, especially when they are in a place where they have no one to associate with,and wish to return to the school.” The boys were allowed to keep the money they earned.63
Naessens could not fill all the outside requests for student workers, since he needed theirlabour at the school.64 In 1894, Qu’Appelle principal Hugonnard reported that there weremore requests for female domestic servants than the school could fill. On average, he said,
there were nineteen girls in service, making from $5 to $10 a month.65 Battleford principal
E. Matheson reported in 1896, “A number of girls have been at service as out-pupils, andThe student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 339

have given great satisfaction.”66 By 1897, forty-six High River students were doing outing
work, usually for farmers, but in some cases as interpreters for Indian agents or the police.
Principal Naessens had difficulty encouraging the students to bank their earnings—a
combined total of $824—so he introduced a policy of using the student earnings to buy
calves that they would care for and own.67
Principal John Ashby at Middlechurch worried in 1896 that “in going out to work withwhite people,” students were “easily led into bad habits, such as swearing or drinking.”68
The school continued with the practice and, in 1898, Ashby’s successor, John Fairlie, wrote:
One boy working with a farmer has put $40 in the bank, another boy has over $60
saved, one is working as a carpenter in Winnipeg at $2 a day, another as a blacksmith
in Winnipeg at $1.50 a day, another gets $6 a week in the department warehouse,
Winnipeg, one was placed with a surveying party at $1 a day and board, and several others are doing steady work. I am pleased to be able to state that with only one
exception every boy placed during the year has proved sober and reliable.69

At the Qu’Appelle school that year, Hugonnard reported, “Nineteen boys were hired out
on farms and nineteen girls were in domestic service at wages ranging from $4 to $25 permonth and board; some girls have been in continuous service now for over seven years.”70
The following year, the number of students being placed had fallen to six boys, and theirwages were between $5 and $18 for periods of from four to seven months.71 Hugonnard
did express a concern that some girls, by working as servants, might “acquire habits andideas which will render them unsatisfied with their future prospects as wives of Indians on
the reserves,—and still, on account of their connections, very few of them can expect tomarry respectable men outside the treaty.”72 At the Regina school, ten boys were working
for farmers for four to six months a year, making between $15 and $20 a month and receiving their board. Two girls were “in service” in town, making $8 a month. As was often thecase, much of the money was banked for students.73 At File Hills, four boys worked in thesummer for local farmers. They made $150, of which $64 were left with the principal.74
In 1899, Joseph Hall, the principal of the Coqualeetza Institute near Chilliwack, British
Columbia, reported that students from that school “are in demand beyond our ability tosupply it by the farmers in the neighbourhood during the summer season, especially inhaying and harvest. They receive wages, which they are allowed to spend in any properway.”75 In 1906, his successor, R. H. Cairns, noted, “The girls who go into service givemarked satisfaction, and are much sought after. If we could get the consent of the parents
all our girls could be placed in good Christian homes, and earn good wages.”76
Efforts were made also to put former students in positions as domestic servants. When
she was seventeen, Mary Angus, a student at the Battleford school, pleaded to be discharged. To secure school principal E. Matheson’s support for this request, she foundwork for herself as a domestic for a number of residents of South Battleford.77
Although the outing system appears to have been largely abandoned by the early twentieth century, some schools continued to find placements for girls as servants when they340 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were discharged from the school. In 1913, the principal of the Yale school reported, “Threegirls, who had no homes, have lately been placed out in service, where they are givingmuch satisfaction. We constantly have applications to send out girls to service but prefer,when possible, to send them home.”78
The school at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, worked with Indian agents to try to findfemale students jobs as domestic servants after their schooling finished. Indian agent
R. McCutcheon reported in 1939 that over the previous four years, he had placed “somethirty girls in white homes as domestics. Some have let me down and been failures but I
am more than satisfied with the average.” In writing about one girl who had left service,
he said, “Just another case of a girl being discharged from our school where she has had
the security of that school over a period of years and then sent to me; one by one I havewatched them revert to type even though we move heaven and earth to save them.”79
The 1894 Indian Act regulations authorized the government to retain the Treaty annuity
due to children committed to a residential school and spend the money for the child’s education or benefit.80 In the nineteenth century, the Canadian postal system, like many postal
systems in industrial countries, offered small-scale, secure savings accounts.81 Separate
postal-savings accounts were established for each student, and the Treaty payments
owing to children attending industrial and boarding schools were deposited into theseaccounts.82 In many cases, the money the students earned while working at the school orfor local farmers was also deposited in these accounts. In 1897, Indian Commissioner A. E.
Forget provided instructions to Indian agents and principals as to how students could go
about withdrawing this money. The circumstances under which the student was leaving
the school had to be described in an application for withdrawal, as well as the “object for
which the money was intended to be used.”83 The applications for withdrawal were to besent to Indian Affairs in Ottawa.84

Overwork
From the time the schools were opened, parents and inspectors raised concerns
about just how much work students were being required to do. Inspector T. P. Wadsworth
claimed in 1884 that the boys at the Battleford school generally enjoyed their chores, but
added that he would protest “against forcing these little fellows to haul water every day
and all day from the river in winter, as was the case last year.”85 In 1886, Qu’Appelle school
principal Hugonnard wrote, “During the summer they have more manual labor and recreation. The parents cannot understand that the pupils are here to learn how to work as wellas to read and write, we therefore cannot at present devote too much time to the former.”86
Inspector Wadsworth returned to the topic in 1893, when he said that much of the farmwork at the Middlechurch school was too much for the boys. The girls were also set to workin the laundry at a “tender age.” 87The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 341

In 1897, Indian Affairs school official Martin Benson observed that the industrial school
timetable “generally covers 15 hours or more, for study work and play, and the balanceof the time for sleep. A days [sic] routine at a school is a wearisome grind for teacher andpupil and should in most cases be shortened considerably.” The half-day system was, hesuggested, exhausting for all but the oldest boys: “Say a boy works all the morning on thefarm, at this trade or about the house and barns, he is pretty well used up by noon, andthen after dinner he has to put in four or five hours in class and study.”88 Their workloadon the farm was so heavy in 1898 that very few of the students at the Brandon school could“attend school through the whole day.”89
Birtle, Manitoba, principal Walter McLaren recognized in 1912 that the amount oflabour required by the half-day system was undercutting the quality of education provided
at the school.
The children are made a means to the end. The Indians perceive this and the demand for day schools is growing as a result. They see too often the interests of theirchildren’s English education are sacrificed because the children are useful to relieve
the situation about the school or farm. I know boys and girls who after ten years inour schools—Birtle included—cannot read beyond the second reader, cannot write adecent letter.90

In some cases, boys took matters into their own hands. In 1915, in an effort to bring an
extended day of threshing to an end, two boys at the Mount Elgin school placed a stone ina sheaf of wheat before it was fed into the school threshing machine. The stone did considerable damage to the machine. The two boys were strapped, a punishment the Indian
agent did not view as undue.91
In a 1923 report on conditions at Cranbrook, Indian agent G. S. Pragnell noted there wasa very lively and strongly expressed antipathy to the school. The gist of the Indians[sic] complaint is that the boys, that is, the smaller boys are far too heavily worked atsuch work as logging for the school supply of fuel in the winter and that the boys arequite insufficiently dressed as to be exposed to the cold weather in such work. The
fact that so many boys died there this Spring of pneumonia has, of course aggravatedand lent colour to their complaints.

Pragnell concluded, “Of course I have taken their complaints as largely exaggerated.”
Despite this, he felt there might be some basis to the concerns.92
In 1930, Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham noted that the Catholic school on the
Blood Reserve in Alberta had 280 acres (113.3 hectares) in crop, while the Anglican schoolon the same reserve had 225 acres (91 hectares) in crop. In his opinion,
too much land is being cultivated at these schools and that the boys are being madeslaves of, working too long hours and not receiving the close supervision they shouldhave. I do not think it is the intention of the Department to have these growing boys
working on the land from morning until night.

342 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

He thought farming should be on a smaller scale and provide for more extensive training.93 Superintendent of Indian Education Russell Ferrier said he would like to hear fromthe agent as to whether the boys were being overworked before taking action.94
In October 1931, Indian agent G. C. Mortimer reported that it had been with great
difficulty that he had been able to get students from the Kitwancool Reserve in British
Columbia to return to the Edmonton, Alberta, school. “The complaints,” he wrote, “chiefly
being, from both the parents and the children—especially the boys—that they are continually working on the farm, thereby getting little or no education.” He noted that one boy,
Eddy Smith, had refused to return to Edmonton because “he was very anxious to learn,”and had reported to the school at Alert Bay. Since this was against government policy, he
was removed from that school and sent back to Edmonton.95 In a letter to Mortimer, Smith
had written:
I am not getting along fine up here because I work all the time, and I don’t go toschool right. I’d rather stay home, with my parents or go to the other school [Alert
Bay] instead I work whole [sic] day on the farm. I just went to school, three days since
I came here, that isn’t why my father send me here to work, he send me here to go
to school and study hard, and to learn to read and write. It will be better for me to gohome before Christmas, because I am working too hard, and I am real tired, and I’ll
ask your kindeness [sic] to send me home before Christmas for sure, please.96

Schools continued to rely on students for labour and maintenance into the 1930s.
Indeed, with the onset of the Depression, this reliance may have intensified. The Alberta
Indian inspector, M. Christianson, wrote in 1932 that the provincial inspector in charge ofeach province should be consulted before large expenditures were authorized at residential schools, since “there is no reason why the employees and the bigger boys at the school
cannot do a lot of the repairs that are annually required in institutions of this kind.” Healso said the schools could do a better job in “giving the boys a better training in the careof livestock and doing all the farm work that is at present carried on at the schools, andhaving the girls milk cows, look after the chickens, etc., which very few of them are doingat the present time.”97
Indian Affairs sometimes opposed the introduction of labour-saving technology in theschools. When a Halifax company tried to sell the Shubenacadie school industrial potato
peelers and bread slicers, Indian Affairs ruled that it did not provide such equipment toresidential schools—this sort of work was to be done by hand.98
The federal government appears to have become quite concerned that female students
were not being taught how to milk cows. In 1929, Indian Affairs sent out letters to more thantwenty-five residential schools, asking if they were teaching their older girls how to milk.99
In 1936, Indian Affairs reprimanded the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
Ontario, for purchasing a milking machine, since it was “expected that the boys and girls
should be taught milking.”100 In the opinion of Indian Commissioner W. A. Graham, “theThe student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 343

milking of cows, the making of butter, the making and baking of bread, the care of the garden and similar work usually falls to the lot of the farm-house wife.”101
Many students recalled being overworked. In an interview, Bernard Pinay said he had
nothing against File Hills School. The only thing is I didn’t get much schooling because I spent a lot of time working on the farm. I still think the fhirs [File Hills Indian
Residential School] owes me about five or six years of wages, working on the farm
there. Our supervisor, he was the one that was supposed to do that but he didn’t, I
did.102

Of his years at File Hills, Alvin Stonechild said:
At our young age, we worked hard, a great deal of manual labour was carried out by
we boys at our young age, like working in the gardens. We tended to rows of vegetables so the children could eat vegetables for a good part of the school term. We stored
these vegetables in root cellars which we cleaned out from time to time. I can say that
I had six years of work experience even though we were driven like slaves. One could
term this kind of work as child labour.103

Gilbert Wuttunee, who attended the Battleford school in the first decade of the twentieth century, recalled, “They didn’t do any farm work or any kind of work until you got to,at that time, standard three, whether you were nine years old or fifteen years old.” After heturned nine, he “never saw another full day of school until I left.” By then, the school had
drastically reduced the number of trades it taught: “There was just blacksmithing, carpentering and farming.”104 Students did not have any choice as to what they would be trained
to do. “They just told you, ‘Go here. You, go there.’ And that was all there was to it.”105 He
also spent two years baking bread.106
Kenneth Albert thought that in the late 1930s, the boys at Mount Elgin had a punishing workload.
We farmed 450 acres and we did it all—harvesting and threshing wheat, silos. We
picked all the potatoes—maybe 50 acres. We grew all the wheat and corn for the
livestock—a large herd of prize Holsteins, we looked after the teams of 8–10 horses,
500 chickens, but never had a boiled egg for breakfast—not even at Easter. We had toshovel all the coal off the cars and into the storeroom.107

Harrison Burning, who attended the Mohawk Institute in the 1920s, recalled cutting icefrom the river while wearing ordinary leather shoes: “That’s all we had on when we were
cutting ice. I used to have sores on my feet all winter long—chilblains [an inflammation].
We cut ice, he never gave us different shoes—we wore them day in and day out.”108
Of his time at the Mohawk Institute in the 1930s, Peter Smith recalled, “We worked on
the farm, we were hungry all the time. We had a team of horses—you had to clean all thestock, all the stables—you had to work all the time. We got up at 6 in the morning and weworked until 6 at night.”109

344 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

When they were in the fields, the boys were under limited supervision and were able
to work in teams in which they had the opportunity to speak their own language. One boy
from the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school recalled, “There was no freedom, except
working the fields. The girls didn’t have that chance.”110 But the work was difficult, donewith little machinery, and imparted few skills. Mary John recalled that, on another occasion, a former Fraser Lake student told her, “I’m just a human bulldozer!”111
In 1902, Martin Benson reported that at the Mount Elgin school, “the care of over two
hundred head of cattle, which chiefly devolves on the pupils entails more work than isgood for them and leaves no time for other farming operations which they should betaught.” Benson noted that the boys at the school all came from reserves where it should
be possible to carry on a successful farming operation. However, he was informed by oneof the teachers that none of the boys
had ever handled a plow or were even allowed to drive a harrow [an implement for
breaking up the soil] as time could not be spared to teach them. The boys of thisschool are not only working but are being worked, and they as well as their parents
see the difference, hence the number of complaints which reach the department of
ill-treatment of pupils.112

Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham reported on the “sad neglect of Class-room training” at the Qu’Appelle school in 1916. The situation at the school had gone from “bad toworse,” with many parents complaining to him that their children were “receiving no education and that the sole aim of the Principal is to get the children to school to make themwork.” Graham said that the ailing principal, Joseph Hugonnard, had turned supervision of
the school over to Father Kalmes, who had “increased outside work to such an extent, themain idea and object of the school is being entirely neglected.” He pointed out that many
parents who farmed said their boys might as well stay at home and help them if they were“to do nothing but work” at school.113 In response, the department reminded the principalthat students under fourteen were to spend the full day in the classroom and the older
boys should get a half-day in the classroom.114 Scott reminded church official C. Cahill in
1917 that the government expected to see an improvement “in the conditions under which
the pupils have to work. It has been constantly represented that they are simply used as
so much manual power to produce revenue for the school, and this has certainly been afactor in making recruiting difficult.”115

Trades training
The trades training at the industrial schools was hindered by the fact that skilled tradespeople could make more money practising their trade elsewhere. In 1893, both the carpenter and shoemaker at the High River school resigned. A permanent replacement was
found for the shoemaker, but the school went through several carpentry instructors in theThe student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 345

next year without finding “a suitable man.”116 By 1899, carpentry was the only industry
taught at the school, other than farming. According to school principal Albert Naessens,“All the boys work on the farm, the nature of the work performed depending on theirstrength. The smaller boys help in weeding the roots and gardens, feeding pigs and otherlight work.” The girls were “kept continually employed at other household work when not
in class or recreation. Their work in the sewing-room is really very heavy for the number ofgirls, especially as there are so many young ones.”117
In 1894, the Battleford school’s blacksmith quit. As a result, the shop was in the handsof “a couple of the larger boys.” Carpentry training had been disrupted when the carpentry shop burned down.118 For much of the following school year, the school continued
to do without a blacksmith instructor, while the paint shop was supervised by a seniorpupil.119 The blacksmith shop at the Williams Lake school burned down in 1891. After it
was rebuilt, the blacksmith became ill and quit.120 In 1894, because there were no shops at
the Kamloops school, no trades were being taught, with the exception of carpentry, which
the boys learned as they helped construct new outbuildings.121 A year later, there werestill no trades being taught at the school.122 When the carpentry teacher resigned from theMetlakatla school to take a better paying job in Victoria in 1908, the school could not afford
to replace him.123 In 1909, no trades were being taught at the Red Deer industrial school.124
During the late 1920s, there was no manual training at the school at Mission, due to thelack of facilities.125
In June 1922, Indian agent G. H. Gooderham wrote of the school at Cluny that “theboys are not given very good instructions in farming, and stock raising, and wish to suggest that more thorough training along this line be given.”126 Indian Commissioner W. M.
Graham returned to the topic in more detail in the spring of 1923 when writing of both the
Cluny and Gleichen schools in Alberta. According to Graham, the students received an“inadequate training in farming” at the two schools, and the problem was not restricted
to Gleichen and Cluny: “school graduates, in many cases, are very much less capable as
farmer and stockmen than Indians who have not received a school training.” It was his
suggestion that “only men who are practical agriculturalists be appointed as principals ofour boarding schools.”127
Parents of children at the Fraser Lake school complained in 1924 that vocational training was being neglected. Departmental secretary A. F. MacKenzie reminded the local
Indian agent that the older boys were expected to work six half-days a week, but the work
should not “be beyond their physical powers” and should be “changed often enough, sothat it will not become laborious.”128
The training provided often was not appropriate to the needs of the students. In 1923,
Frank Flatfoot wrote to Indian Affairs on behalf of the Pine Creek Band in Manitoba, asking
for an investigation into the Pine Creek school. According to Flatfoot:At the present time but little time is spent in teaching the Indian children reading,writing, and arithmetic. Instead of this being done the children are employed as

346 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

labourers the major part of the time on the farm of the Roman Catholic priest who isin charge of the boarding school. It is not the desire of the children’s parents that thechildren be so employed. On the contrary it is the parents’ desire that the children betaught the English language, reading, writing, and arithmetic.129

When asked to investigate, Indian agent A. Ogletree said that Flatfoot was an agitator, “always trying to make trouble at the school and among the Indians.” According to
Ogletree, “some of the larger boys do some work on the farm and also do the milking andattend to the stables,” all of which he considered to be good training.130 The department
informed Flatfoot that the older students were expected to be in class for at least five halfdays, but were to spend the rest of the day “performing household and farm duties andreceiving vocational training.”131 Flatfoot persisted, complaining the reserve land was notsuitable for farming.
Here we are fishermen, trappers, and hunters and such we will remain regardless ofany ‘attempt’ to teach our sons farming. Our sons require to be schooled and educated in the English language and methods of doing business in order that they may
gain some knowledge of how to successfully cope with the white men.132

Departmental secretary J. D. McLean closed off the correspondence by informing
Flatfoot, “The Pine Creek Indian Residential School is guided in its activities by the wishes
and rulings of this Department. The routine cannot be disturbed by any special privilege
for your children.”133 Later that year, the Indian agent threatened to remove Flatfoot fromthe reserve.134 Ironically, two years later, Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham commented
that “the farming venture at this school has not been a success in the past, and I am of theopinion that it never will amount to anything. Stock-raising is the industry that should
be encouraged at Pine Creek.”135 In other words, he had reached the same conclusions
as Flatfoot had of the value of the training provided to students at the farm at Pine Creek.
Qualified teachers remained hard to obtain. In 1926, Inspector R. H. Cairns expresseda hope that “Manual Training” could be introduced to the school at Alberni, British
Columbia, since the senior teacher was qualified to give that instruction.136 By the following year, nineteen pupils were receiving such training. In total, about eighty First Nations
students in British Columbia were receiving instruction in manual training.137 By 1928,
students at Alert Bay were making paddles, wheelbarrows, armchairs, and cabinets.
Inspector Cairns said more advanced work could be done but for a scarcity of tools.138 At
the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta in 1929, other than farming,
the only training was “some shoemaking.”139 The following year, the Indian agent reported
that “little” manual training was being done and suggested “equipment be provided.”140
During the Depression, the range of vocational training offered to students continued
to decrease. The department sent out a circular to all schools in 1931, which stressed theimportance of vocational training. It was believed that academic training was receiving
proper emphasis, but Russell Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, feared that

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 347“in the rush to complete the routine work, the instructional function will not receive sufficient prominence.” Girls should be taught to bake small batches of bread, do small loadsof laundry by hand, tend gardens, and, of course, milk cows. Boys from farm communities
should be given “a thorough training in farming, gardening and the care of stock,” andthose from maritime communities were to be given courses in boat making, the care ofgasoline engines, and carpentry.141
The policy went largely unimplemented. In 1932, the local Indian agent described themanual training at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora as being “practically nil,” and, in
1935, the assessment was “very little.”142 In 1932, an inspector called for the hiring of anadditional teacher at the Chapleau school, saying the new teacher should be capable ofteaching both academic subjects and manual arts. The inspector thought manual training
was being neglected at the school.143 In 1932, Inspector G. H. Barry wrote that he was “notsatisfied” with manual training at the Alberni school. “The teacher does not hold as far as
I can learn any sort of certificate and does not appear to me to have much idea of what
is required.”144 In 1936 at the Catholic school on the Blood Reserve, there was no manual
training taught, although, when they turned sixteen, the boys worked on the farm, and “allthe boys help to look after the cattle.”145 In 1938, the school had finally appointed a supervisor of manual training. However, his workshop had no tools.146

The risk of injury
In any workplace, young workers are at a high level of risk. They have less experienceand skill than do older workers, their work is often repetitive and boring, and supervision can be minimal. This was frequently the case in residential schools. The risks weregreatest when students were used as a cheap source of labour, working with powerful andpoorly protected machinery. In laundries and bakeries, students operated large, steampower wringers and dryers and used industrial-scale mixers. Since it was expected that thevast majority of the girls would return to their home communities, marry, and work in thehousehold, the use of these machines could not realistically be described as “vocational
training.” They were not being provided with schooling for the future; they were working tomaintain the school. The injuries to students in these situations are best understood as theresult, not of training or education, but of the use of child labour.
The risks increased with the onset of the Great Depression. Hard-pressed for money,
Indian Affairs was reluctant to keep students in school past the age of fifteen. Principal W.
A. Hendry at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, noted that this created additional hardships forthe younger students left behind. He said, “The breakages and dangers of accidents andmishaps working with farm machinery and school equipment are greatly increased withthe employment of these young children as compared with the older ones of 16 and 17
years of age. They are not able for the heavy work either on the farm or in the school.”147

348 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

A girl working in the laundry at the Mount Elgin, Ontario, school got her hand caught
in a mangle (or steam press) in early 1929. Luckily, a school employee turned the machine
off before her hand was crushed. Principal S. R. McVitty said that the machine, which
was nearly two decades old, had no protective guards and needed replacement.148 IndianAffairs initially rejected his request for money to purchase a safer machine.149 Eventually,a new mangle was purchased and a guard installed over the old one, which remained inuse.150 McVitty’s response appears to have been unusual. Other principals tended to place
the blame on student carelessness and neglected to report such injuries to the government. In several cases, Indian Affairs became aware that students had been injured only
when parents complained or a hospital sent a bill for medical services to the department.
In 1928, the principal of the Pine Creek school petitioned Ottawa for funds to purchasea new bread oven. The existing brick oven was in a state of near collapse, with bricks regularly falling from the top into the oven. When this happened, thick smoke escaped fromthe kitchen, spreading throughout the whole school. Because of the smoke, the girls were“crying while making bread.” He feared that if the top fell in completely, the school would
catch fire.151 There was a similar problem at the Presbyterian school in Kenora. According
to a 1936 inspector’s report, the school oven was defective.
When the bread is baking a gas is given off which makes it impossible to stay in theroom. This gas strikes one when 20 ft. from the door and, before reaching the room,
one is blinded by tears. It also affects the throat, making it almost impossible tospeak. The children are unable to do any of this work and Miss Reichart is practically
overcome at the end of baking day.152

When a Manitoba government boiler inspector visited the Pine Creek school in 1929,
he declared the school laundry machine to be unsafe, due to its unguarded belts and lackof cover. He recommended it be discarded as soon as possible.153 However, safety guards
were not installed until late 1931.154
In May 1930, two girls at the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia got their hands caught
in an automatic dough mixer. Each girl lost two fingers on her right hand. The principal
blamed the girls for the accident, saying they were “not youngsters, and they have been
warned many times about tinkering with the machines.”155
In 1932, Paul Groslouis, a boy at the Spanish, Ontario, school, lost a finger to an accident
at the school sawmill.156 After receiving a complaint from the boy’s father, Indian Affairs
requested that the school provide a detailed report of the accident.157 Upon receipt of thereport, the government refused to provide the family with any compensation, saying theaccident “was due wholly to the boy’s own carelessness.”158
In January 1935, Elsie La Pierre was working in the kitchen of the Gordon’s Reserve
school in Saskatchewan when her right hand was caught in the dough mixer, crushing two
fingers. She was taken to hospital, where the fingers were amputated. In reporting on theaccident early the following month, the principal, R. W. Frayling, noted, “Ordinary care

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 349

being taken as in other matters, accidents would not happen, but I purpose [sic] having acover made that would prevent such occurrence.”159 It was revealed later that no supervisor was present at the time of the accident and that students were no longer allowed in the
mixing room when the automatic dough mixer was in use.160
In December 1935, a mangle at the Qu’Appelle school crushed several fingers on
Florence McLeod’s right hand, which were amputated. Her family hired Lemberg,
Saskatchewan, lawyer William Hall, who accused the school administration of gross negligence.161 The first that Indian Affairs officials in Ottawa heard of the accident was when theyreceived a letter from Hall at the beginning of May 1936—five months after the event.162 In
his subsequent report to the government, school principal G. Leonard stressed that “thismangle has been in use at this school for several years and all the girls are familiar with
its operation.” On the day of the accident, he said, the sister in charge of the laundry had
noticed that McLeod was improperly putting her hand over the guard rail and warned her
against continuing to do so. However, he wrote, “she did it again and her hand caught inthe mangle.”163 Indian Affairs secretary A. F. MacKenzie informed Hall that “all the necessary precautions were taken, and, while the accident to Florence McLeod is regretted, it
was through no fault of the school management.”164 According to Hall, McLeod’s father,
Henry, had been injured in a similar fashion when he was a student at the same school.165
In February 1938, the laundry at the Ahousaht, British Columbia, school claimed fourteen-year-old Clifford Tate’s left arm. He had opened the lid on the machine that extracted
water from clothing, while it was still running, and placed a hand into the machine. He
could not recall what happened after that. The matron, who was also in the laundry room,heard Tate shout that his arm was broken, and took him to the school nurse. She put asplint on his arm and had him taken to a doctor in nearby Tofino. The doctor had no option
but to amputate the arm. In reporting the accident to Indian Affairs, school principal A.
E. Caldwell wrote that since Tate had been warned not to open the extractor until it had
stopped running, “the accident can only be put down to the carelessness and disobedience of the boy himself.”166 In the spring of that year, Josephine Edgar’s hand becamecaught in the laundry machine at the Coqualeetza Institute. Her fingers were so crushedthat a doctor had to amputate two of them at the second joint and one at the first joint.
According to the principal, Josephine “says it was her fault, and that she does not know
how she did it.”167
Melvina McNabb suffered a similar injury at the File Hills school in the 1930s. “I wasworking in the laundry with no supervision. This was my first time working there. The girls
were all scrubbing. No one was watching me. I stepped on this lever, this extractor thatdries clothes. It was going slow but it still caught my arm.” She was hospitalized and left
with a twenty-five-centimetre scar on her arm.168
Although the students were not school employees, they certainly represented a largepart of the school workforce. By the 1920s, most Canadian provinces had adopted workers’ compensation laws that operated on what were termed “no-fault principles,” meaning350 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionthat workers were eligible for compensation whether or not they had been ‘careless.’ The
government position, in effect, denied young Aboriginal students access to the sort of accident compensation that was available to older, better trained, non-Aboriginal people who
were performing similar tasks in the paid workforce.
Catherine Sacks, who was refusing to return to the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, schoolin the fall of 1936, presented a statement of complaint to Indian Affairs regarding thework she had been required to do at the school.
We had to start work at 5:30 in kitchen and were kept working till 6:30 P.M…. In theeleven weeks I was employed in kitchen I spent a total of two weeks in school. Sister
Mary Armel has beaten me many times over the head and pulled my hair and struck
me on the back of neck [sic] with a ruler and at times grabbed ahold of me and beatme on the back with her fists.
I have also been ordered to stand on the outside of the windows with a rope aroundmy waist to clean windows on the fourth floor with a little girl holding the rope. WhenI told the Sister I was afraid to go on the window she scolded me and made me clean
the window and threatened to beat me if I did not do it. This is being done to otherchildren. After we get a beating we are asked what we get the beating for and if we tellthem we do not know we get another beating. The Sisters always tell us not to tell ourparents about getting a beating.169

Principal J. P. Mackey denied the allegations, saying it contained “one lie after another.”He said he would like to see her returned to school, “but I would not want her longer thantwenty-four hours.”170

Putting the training to work
There were cases of students who did become skilled trades workers while they were at
the schools. Although he was not happy with city life, Gilbert Bear, for example, found work
as a printer in Ottawa, based on the skills he learned at the Battleford school.171 George
Raymond of the Regina school worked as a printer at the Moosomin World, a newspaper in
Moosomin, Saskatchewan.172 There were also successful Aboriginal farmers. In 1904, three
young former File Hills students, Fred Dieter, John R. Thomas, and Ben Stone Child, werereported to be farming successfully on the File Hills Colony, which had been established
for former students in southern Saskatchewan. In the previous year, Dieter had “threshednearly 2,000 bushels of grain, and it is safe to say that had it not been for frost, his cropwould have been much larger than this.”173
Other students went to work for the schools. In 1894, the Middlechurch school was
employing Jessie Bird, a member of the Red Pheasant’s Band and a former Battleford student, as a seamstress. She was in charge of all “dress and garment making and the mending at the school.”174 Manson Ireland described the manual training he received at Mount

The student as labourer: 1867–1939 • 351

Elgin in the 1930s: “We had a class of copper working—we made copper chandeliers, andI learned silver soldering, and blacksmithing, and learned to temper stainless steel so we
could sharpen knives so they kept an edge, so for me it was all right.”175 Another former
Mount Elgin student, Kenneth Albert, recalled, “I could handle a job and I learned discipline. We did learn—the hard way—by doing it—agricultural methods—how to farm.”176
After he had been at the Calgary industrial school for three years, Ben Calf Robe wasplaced in the print shop. “They selected me to be the printer because I worked hard andunderstood English well. They said I would be the only student allowed to work in the print
shop, and that I didn’t have to do the other school work anymore.” Calf Robe not only set
type and ran the press, but he also translated hymns and prayers into Blackfoot. However,once he left, he did not pursue the printing trade, becoming instead a Mounted Police
scout.177
Students could find their careers blocked by racism. Rupert’s Land principal W. A.
Burman thought one of his students, Maurice Sanderson, would not find work as a printerin Winnipeg because of opposition from the printing unions. For this reason, he sought—
unsuccessfully—Hayter Reed’s support to have him trained as a teacher.178 In the end,
Sanderson did not go into printing, but became a canon in the Anglican Church.179 In 1895,
J. Paquin, the principal of the Wikwemikong school in Ontario, wrote that “farm work willbe their principal means of earning their living. There is but little room on the reserve forthe practice of other trades, and very few Indian tradesmen will ever be acceptable to workoutside their reserve, principally on account of racial prejudices.”180 Middlechurch principal John Ashby reported in 1896 that his efforts to find work for his graduates had failed
because, he said, “the employers have had to cancel their engagements, as their men will
not work beside an Indian any more than beside a Chinese.”181 He also said, “They aregood servants, but at present not very successful as masters. They have not received thehereditary training sufficient to give them confidence. They are too easy and let things gocarelessly, and so require constant supervision and direction.”182“No means of making a living when they return to their homes”
Inspector M. Christianson concluded a generally positive assessment of the
Shubenacadie school in 1937 with an expression of his concern as to whether the school
was providing students with the sorts of skills they would need to support themselves. He
observed that
the Indians all over Nova Scotia are depending, for a livelihood, on what relief they
get from the Department and the sale of Indian handicraft, such as baskets, axe andpick handles, and other articles too numerous to mention, and both men and women
are quite expert in this work. The children attending Shubenacadie are not given thistraining. Therefore, they will have absolutely no means of making a living when they

352 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

return to their homes, but will have to depend on their parents and the Department
to assist them. I am of the opinion that this is a matter that needs careful consideration as the book-learning they receive at school will not make them any more
efficient to earn their living than the others.183

The letter prompted Superintendent of Welfare and Training R. A. Hoey to ask theschool’s principal, J. P. Mackey, to make proposals regarding improvements in vocational
training.184 It does not appear that Mackey responded, for Hoey wrote him again two years
later, asking for “a report regarding the vocational training given both the boys and girls,”
and reminding him of his 1937 request for such information.185
Mackey’s 1939 response outlined a vocational training program that was limited andoutdated. For the boys, it included barn duty and working in the fields. During the planting and harvesting seasons, all the older boys were taken out of class until the farm work
was done. Those deemed not big enough for farm work were assigned work in the kitchen
and cleaning the school. Manual training was restricted to assisting in the construction
and maintenance of school buildings such as the staff house, the feed room, and the hog
house. Shoes were repaired at the school. For the girls, there was training in sewing, cooking, and cleaning. Every term, each girl spent two months in the kitchen. They were taught
to preserve fruits and vegetables and to set and serve a table. The girls also worked in thelaundry “quite regularly.” The sewing class mended clothes four mornings a week. The
girls also made new blouses, middies, skirts, and pants. The girls were taught “fancy work”:
stitching, tatting, crocheting, hooking, and quilting. In their final year, the girls could makedresses for themselves that they could take with them when they left the school.186
The exchange of letters among Christianson, Hoey, and Mackey reveals a great deal
about the limits of the system in 1939, over fifty years after the first industrial schools had
opened. Central control was limited: in 1937, R. A. Hoey, Ottawa’s senior education official, did not know what sort of vocational training was being provided at Shubenacadie, aschool that had been in operation for only seven years. Not only did he not know what sortof training was being provided, but also the principal could safely ignore his request forsuch information for a year and a half. The government’s inspector, M. Christianson, could
see no better vocational opportunity for the students than making and selling “Indian
handicraft.” It would also appear that Christianson had no expectation that the students
could learn enough at the school to enter the maritime labour market anywhere but at its
very lowest levels. From Mackey’s report, it is clear that much of the so-called vocational
training was geared to meeting the immediate needs of the school as cheaply as possible.
Martin Benson’s comment on the conditions at Mount Elgin in 1902 was still applicable in
1939: students were not only working; they were being worked.

CHAPTER 15

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939

Residential school life was highly regimented. Chores, class work, vocational
training, and religious services dominated the school schedule. Times werealso set aside for play and recreation. Some of the schools had small libraries
that provided students with books and magazines they could read, particularly during
the long winters. Choirs, brass bands, and organized sports were common at many
residential schools. Authorities believed that these activities, in addition to whateverpleasure they might give to students, would contribute to their cultural assimilation.
This flowed from the confused belief that one could not be ‘Indian’ and play the trumpet or ice hockey; a belief that ignored the fact that cultural and recreational activities
had long had a central role in the lives of Aboriginal people. This belief also failed torecognize that, for centuries, Aboriginal people had managed to incorporate a variety of Euro-Canadian technologies and activities into their lives, including arts andsports, while remaining Aboriginal.
The cultural, artistic, and sporting activities of the students at residential schools,
particularly during this period, have received only limited attention. This chapter
provides an overview of the cultural and recreational activities at the schools. Special
attention is given to reading, brass bands (which flourished at many schools), andorganized sports. The chapter concludes with an examination of the history of thecadet corps at residential schools and the links between the corps and the enrolmentof former students in the Canadian military.

Celebrations and concerts: “breath-taking and spectacular”
Musical training, particularly the singing of hymns and patriotic songs, was part of
the residential school curriculum. At some schools, the teachers also organized concerts and pageants throughout the years. These featured choral singing, dramatic presentations, and recitations. The audiences included students, parents, and residentsof nearby communities. From Kuper Island, British Columbia, in 1898, Principal G.
Donckele wrote, “Our concerts consist of recitations, dialogues and choruses, with354 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

vocal and instrumental music. Several of these entertainments were given to the public; at times for the white people of the neighbourhood and at times for the Indians,
who all appreciated them very much.”1 Principal J. E. S. Thibaudeau, at the Lestock
school in what is now Saskatchewan, wrote in 1903, “Concerts were given during thewinter months and it is with pleasure that we noticed how greatly surprised the people
were at the ability and deportment of the pupils.”2
Louise Moine recalled that her performance in a play at the Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan, school in the early twentieth century was judged a success. “Some ofthe village ladies informed me, the next day or so, that I played my part so well that I
had them crying.” Moine also had very strong memories of the pantomimes that othergirls performed.
The Sisters had created some sort of lighting effect causing the lights to turn into
different colours, red, blue, and green. While the chorus sang in the background,“Nearer My God to Thee,” the girls took different poses following the words of thehymn. Young as I was, I found it breath-taking and spectacular.3

Residential school choirs also participated in local music festivals. In 1932, a choirfrom the Morley, Alberta, school competed in the Calgary school music festival.
According to a newspaper report, the students “won high praise from Adjudicator
Maurice Jacobson for musical instinct and great possibilities for musical achievement.”4 At the Hobbema, Alberta, school in 1908, there was a fifteen-girl mandolinorchestra that performed in concerts in local communities.5
Christmastime often was marked with a student concert. In 1905, Port Simpson,
British Columbia, principal Hannah M. Paul wrote:
This year at Christmas we had a concert in a public hall. The programme, withthe exception of a few selections, was rendered by the girls. The boys from theboys’ home gave calisthenic exercises, with bells and club-swinging, which werevery creditably rendered. The programme consisted of choruses, drills, withsongs, Calisthenic exercises, with bells by the smaller girls and club-swinging
by the bigger girls. A doll’s cantata was much admired. Then we invited all theparents and friends of the girls for an afternoon and gave them refreshments,
prepared by the pupils.6

At the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school in 1909, the program consisted of “Songs, Drills,
Recitations and Dialogues, and every number showed that no mean amount of training had been required and Miss Baldwin deserves great credit. Some of the drills were
exceptionally good.”7
A Methodist missionary at Ahousat, British Columbia, J. W. Russell, wrote homeabout the Christmas celebration the school held for the entire community:
A small box of presents was sent us from Victoria and we were able to have avery pretty tree. In the afternoon the old people were given each a present andRecreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 355

the evening was entirely for the children. I suppose you can hardly think thatthe people had never seen or heard of a Xmas tree. The entire population almost
turned out to see it.8

Not everyone shared the enthusiasm for brass bands. In his 1897 report on industrial schools, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson complained of the proliferationof brass bands at the schools. They were “for outward show and help advertise theschool. More solid comfort and enjoyment,” he felt, “could be had with the other kindsof music in which all could join.”9 A decade later, Indian Affairs departmental secretary J. D. McLean felt it necessary to issue an instruction that “pupils should be given
plenty of time for sleep and out-door recreation, and that no occupation should beallowed to interfere, such as band practice.”10 From these reports, it is apparent that
not only were brass bands common at residential schools in the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, but also, in the minds of some government officials, they
were too common.
Missionaries had been quick to establish bands at the schools. The brass band at
the Mission, British Columbia, school performed at the Queen’s Birthday Celebrationin 1867 in New Westminster, British Columbia.11 In 1871, Anglican missionary
William Duncan had introduced brass instruments to the colony he was establishing at Metlakatla, British Columbia.12 The spread of brass bands to residential schools
was part of a broader expansion of brass music that was associated with social andmoral reform. Prior to the nineteenth century, most brass bands were either militaryor church bands. They were restricted to a limited number of instruments, particularly
the trombone, the trumpet, and the horn.13 However, in the mid-nineteenth century,
the number of community-based brass bands in Britain began to increase dramatically. The growth was sparked by such factors as the development of new instruments
such as the saxophone, the introduction of valves to traditional instruments such as
the trumpet, the belief that music could be morally elevating, and the hope that working-class participation in bands would undercut class conflict.14 One 1850 article on
an industrial workers’ brass band in Wales, after praising the music, concluded thatthe “habits and manners of these men appear to have been decidedly improved bythese softening influences.”15 Many of the bands were established and supported by
employers, temperance societies, or mechanics’ institutes (which were educational
centres funded by employers).16
As Benson had noted, school principals used the bands to generate a positive
image for the schools. The principal at Kamloops, British Columbia, A. M. Carion,
wrote in 1896, “A brass band is also a desideratum [a thing to be desired] which will
be filled as soon as our means permit it.”17 The Alert Bay and Cranbrook schools, alsoin British Columbia, had brass bands by 1906.18 In 1893, the band at the High Riverschool in what is now Alberta had been “engaged to play at agricultural fairs, picnics
and church socials.” The money earned at these concerts was used to buy music and356 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

instruments.19 Inspector T. P. Wadsworth reported that, in 1896, the Qu’Appelle school
band won first prize at the Territorial Exhibition in Regina. In his opinion, “Probably
nothing did more to open the eyes of visitors to the fair as to the possibilities containedin the Indian youth of this generation, than the proficiency of this band.”20 Joseph Hall,
the principal of the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British Columbia, thought theschool band not only generated good publicity for the school, but also introduced
students to the more “civilized” and influential members of settler society. In 1900,
he wrote:
Scarcely a garden party is given by any of the churches in the settlement but ourband is engaged to furnish music. We are pleased with this; for we feel that themore our children are brought into contact with the right kind of white people,
the better it is for them, and the more sympathy is felt for them, and for the work
which we are striving to do.21

In some cases, the principals’ enthusiasm for the bands was tempered with theiroverall low opinion of Aboriginal students. In 1896, for example, E. C. Chirouse, theprincipal of the Mission school, wrote that “the young musicians have made wonderful progress under the tuition of Rev. Brother Collins; one is often tempted to wish that
the Indians were equally talented in other respects.”22
The bands did provide an opportunity for students to take initiative within theschools. At Elkhorn, there was no band instructor, but, according to Principal A. E.
Wilson, the “band maintains its efficiency under the leadership of one of the seniorboys. It has already filled several engagements out of town, and has arranged to visit
other towns during the coming month.”23
Indian Affairs departmental secretary J. D. McLean’s concern that band practiceconsumed too much of the students’ time may have been justified. The eighteen
members of the Qu’Appelle school brass band were supposed to practise two hours aday. The first hour was during the time when other students were doing chores. The
second hour, however, was their nightly recreation hour.24 In his 1936 report on the
Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, A. G. Hamilton noted that band practice cut
into both the half-day of work the students were expected to do and their class time.
It was, however, he said, “a great credit to the school,” and even if it might “be of little
service to the students when discharged, the present effect is good.”25
After leaving the schools, many of the students continued to play in community
brass bands, particularly in British Columbia. Aboriginal band leaders and composers emerged. Tsimshian First Nations composer Job Nelson, for example, wrote the“Imperial Native March,” a tune that was played at the New Westminster Exhibitionin 1905.26 The Port Simpson band won the Dominion Day Prize in Vancouver in 1900
and, the following year, entertained the future King George V and Queen Mary.27 The
members of the adult bands often wore elaborate costumes that were paid for by theRecreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 357

community and passed on from member to member. The costumes mixed elementsof European military uniforms with Aboriginal motifs.28

Recreational reading: The Eaton’scatalogue and the funny papers
In his report for 1884, Inspector T. P. Wadsworth recommended that at theBattleford school, “a children’s library be established, containing interesting tales forboys; for the larger boys, the ‘Boys Own Annual’; for the smaller, ‘Chatterbox,’ andsimilar books, in which they would, during the long winter evenings, be able to findboth amusement and instruction.”29 It was not until 1893 that Indian Affairs was able
to report that a library, with “111 volumes of useful reading,” had been established at
the Battleford school.30
In the following years, an increasing number of principals mentioned the establishment and use of a school library in their submissions to the Indian Affairs annual
report. The Anglican school in Wabasca in what is now southern Alberta was reported
to have a library in 1895.31 Principal C. W. Whyte of the Presbyterian school in Kamsackin what is now Saskatchewan reported in 1896, “We have a library of upwards of one
hundred and fifty volumes, containing many of the very best and latest publications
for children.”32 In the same year, Regina principal A. J. McLeod reported, “Our school
libraries are used to advantage outside of school hours.”33 The Wikwemikong schoolon Manitoulin Island, Ontario, and the High River school had libraries by 1897.34 The
following year, High River principal A. Naessens reported, “The library continues tobe used in winter evenings, and is a great aid to the pupils in learning English, besidesfostering a love for reading.”35
According to R. Ashton, principal of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario,
in 1898, “those who prefer to read are furnished with magazines and books fromthe school library, the boys have the daily newspapers sent to their reading-room.”36
At the Regina school that year, it was reported, “The books of the school library, allcarefully selected, are in demand, especially during winter.”37 Principal N. Coccola
reported that at the Cranbrook school in 1898, the students had “a library of choice
books, and delight in reading or listening to interesting stories.”38 The following year,
Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard reported that in the winter, the “library books
are well patronized.”39 The Mission school gave its first report of a library in 1899.40
In Manitoba in 1900, the newly constructed Pine Creek school had a library,41 as did
the Birtle school.42 In 1901, Sault Ste. Marie principal George Ley King listed books
and magazines from the school library as part of the school’s recreational program.43
Port Simpson principal Hannah Paul reported in 1903, “Through the donation of afriend we have started a library for the home besides the books owned by individual

358 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

pupils.”44 The newly established Lytton, British Columbia, school also reported having
a library in that year.45 A 1903 inspection of the St. Albert school in what is now Alberta
noted the existence of a library. Since the school had not been inspected for six years,
the library may have already been in operation for several years prior to that.46
In 1908, the principal at Red Deer, Alberta, Arthur Barner, reported, “Libraries havebeen opened for girls and boys respectively, and have been very highly appreciated by
the pupils, which is manifest by the fact that several of the children have read from six
to twelve good-sized story-books each, during the winter.”47
Two years later, Barner wrote:
Reading still continues to be one of the favourite forms of recreation. We have areading-room for the boys and one for the girls, where current newspapers andmagazines are kept on file. We keep adding good books to the library, which now
contains considerably over one hundred volumes all systematically cared for.48

At Hay River in the Northwest Territories, A. J. Vale reported in 1908, “A good libraryof suitable books is provided.”49 According to Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, principal O.
Charlebois in 1910, “A children’s library, of the very best literary and moral character,has been added to the class equipment. The children are very fond of reading, and wenotice a marked improvement in their oral expressions and written compositions.”50
The libraries depended on donations. Principal Thomas Clarke had established theBattleford library with books obtained “from friends in England.”51 In 1913, the Yukon
Anglican diocese urged its readers not to “throw away your old books and magazines.
Wrap them up and mail them to us. We are always glad to get books, especially copies of Boy’s Own Paper, The Girl’s Own, Shop Notes, Technical World; and, in fact, any
publication that might prove of interest to young people seeking after information andknowledge.”52 According to Lucy Affleck, a teacher at the Round Lake, Saskatchewan,
school in 1929, the only reading material the children had other than school books
were the Eaton’s catalogue and the “funny papers.”53
Given the fact that the schools were church-run institutions, it is likely that religious works comprised a large portion of the books in these libraries. The Boy’s Own
Paper, for example, was a magazine published by the British Religious Tract Society. Itfeatured adventure stories that stressed courage, cheerfulness, and Christian values.54
It was just one example of an entire genre of children’s and young people’s literaturethat flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain andCanada. Novelists such as Rudyard Kipling, Ralph Connor (the pen name of Canadian
Presbyterian minister Charles Gordon), and G. A. Henty wrote numerous adventure
novels in which young boys proved themselves as men, usually through service to the
British Empire. These books, along with Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days,
extolled the virtues of Christian manliness, and the benefits of membership in theempire.55

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 359

Schools also produced their own reading material. The Battleford school publisheda monthly newsletter called The Guide. Each issue contained the proud statement:“All the mechanical work in connection with the guide is performed by our students.” The paper included sections called “Notes from the boys” and “Notes fromthe girls.” In December 1895, George Fiddler wrote, “I am glad to see the Indian people getting treaty payment again, because I like to see them come to Battleford sometimes.” Jennie Lane wrote, “We were all glad to see our friends when they come into
Battleford. There are a great number of them in just now. I hope we see them all before
they go home.”56 In the Yukon, the Anglican Diocese published Northern Lights, which
included regular reports from the Carcross school. One issue reported, “Johnny Johnis our business man; he runs the school store. You can always rely on Johnny giving
you the proper change and weight; he is very good at figures.”57 The motto of the Red
Deer school paper, which was printed on a duplicator, was “By Treaty, My Rights, By
Myself, My Success.”58 The Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, commenced publishing a monthly paper, The Advocate, in 1915. Much of the paper was written bystaff, but it included notes from students, including Emma Suttee’s report on how thestudents at The Pas school were exchanging letters with the students at the Anglican
school at Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan.59 In the 1930s, the Anglican schools in Onion
Lake, Saskatchewan, and Alert Bay published newsletters aimed at least in part at parents, as well as at ex-pupils.60
The Hobbema school’s Moccasin News provided coverage of local sports and carried a warning that the paper was not responsible for “black-eyes or broken limbs
resulting from articles published in this paper.”61 The Blue Quills, Alberta, school
published the Moccasin Telegram. In one issue, student Eric Martineau provided an
account that had been handed down through his family of the conflict at Frog Lake
during the 1885 rebellions.62 At the Thunderchild school in Delmas, Saskatchewan, thepublication was the Thunder Report.63 All these papers appear to have been intended
for various audiences: the students, their parents, and church members—sometimes
distant church members who would make donations to the school. Other than briefreports from students and coverage of school sports and recreational activities, muchof the material in the papers provided religious instruction. For example, the story
in the Gazette, the paper from the Anglican school at T’Suu Tina, Alberta, explainedthat “the idea of lent is that we should go into spiritual training. Having made a goodstart by self-examination, we set to work, so to speak to make a real effort to improveourselves before Easter.”64

360 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Sports: “Truly Anglo-Saxon vigor”
First Nations children had always had their own games and recreational activities,
many of which were intended to help develop skills that would be needed in adultlife. For example, in his memoir of growing up in what is now southern Alberta, Mike
Mountain Horse spoke of how young boys were given ponies once they were oldenough to ride. The older boys would then help the younger ones to learn how to ride.
In the evenings, the boys honed their skills in archery competitions.65 Charles Nowell,
who was born in 1870, recalled many of the games that the Kwakiutl children used toplay, some of which could be dangerous or painful.
The funny part of it is that our parents and the old people never stop us fromdoing any of these things, because they want us to be brave like they were in theolden days, when they was fighting and hunting all the time. If we wasn’t braveand couldn’t play all these games and be strong, they didn’t think we was much
good.66

When they were left to themselves, Simon Baker recalled, many of the children
at the Lytton school used to play games they had learned in their home community, including one called “stink hole,” which he recalled as being similar to cricket.67
Contests that tested and celebrated skill, strength, and endurance were common
throughout Aboriginal societies. Hunting skills played a large role in these competitions: contestants might shoot arrows or throw spears at still or moving targets. Youngmen also tested each other at wrestling, foot racing, and high kicking.68
The Aboriginal people of the Americas also had a long tradition of ball games, suchas the Mohawk game of tewaarathon, which evolved into lacrosse. Another game,often referred to as “shinny,” was played across western North America. It involved
driving a ball along the ground with a curved stick. The Mi’kmaq and Maliseet of the
Maritimes played a ball game that was referred to as “old fashion.” The Inuit game ofanaulataq continues to be played today. Less is known of the games women played,
although there are records of their playing their own ball games.69 Games served arange of purposes. They might further military aims by preparing young men for conflict, and ceremonies at which games were played against other groups could also
serve to cement diplomatic alliances. In 1603, Samuel de Champlain reported thatraces, with prizes for the winners, constituted part of an Innu celebration commemorating a recent military victory.70 Spiritual elements also became incorporated into
games. Games could also promote community stability.71 Games and recreational
activities were not a novelty or innovation introduced to the lives of Aboriginal people
by residential schools.
In two popular novels of the mid-nineteenth century, Tom Brown’s School Days and
Tom Brown at Oxford, British writer Thomas Hughes drew an explicit link between
the organized sports played at British private schools (generally known as “public

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 361

schools”) and the values of empire and what Hughes termed “muscular Christianity.”
In Tom Brown’s School Days, a student described cricket as being more than a game; it
was “the birthright of British boys old and young.” The book’s hero, Tom Brown, concluded that team sports are superior to those games that stress individual victory.72
Muscular Christianity, as defined by Hughes, included recognition that the strengtha Christian gained through sport was to be used for the “subduing of the earth which
God has given to the children of men.”73
Such ideas expressed in these books both influenced and reflected much nineteenth-century thinking about sports and education. The idea that organized sports
would contribute to the development of “manly” qualities was quickly picked up in
North America. “Manliness” was a difficult concept to pin down and the line between
strength and roughness was never easily or clearly drawn.74 In Canada, manlinessoften was seen as a particularly British quality that mysteriously connected sport withthe rights and responsibilities of empire. A 1911 letter in the Toronto Globe claimed,“Sport is a fundamental essential not only of English life but also of human life itself,
and the question that confronts us today is this—upon what can we better build up
and establish the character and physique of the future builder and maintainer of the
Empire than upon the foundation of sport in its highest and noblest form?”75
Since competitive sports fostered manliness, they were, by definition, inappropriate for women.76 In the late nineteenth century, women were seen as physically andmentally frail and vulnerable. Involvement in sport could, it was feared, interfere witha woman’s ability to carry out her central social role: bearing children. They were notwelcome as members in most sports clubs, and the bulky clothing they were expected
to wear, in the name of modesty, made their participation in many sports difficult.
Croquet, skating, and tobogganing were among the few physical activities deemed
acceptable for girls and women.77 Prior to 1900, in private and public schools, physical activity for girls was limited to walking, calisthenics, and the use of light weights,
all training intended to improve deportment and health.78 An 1893 textbook warned
that girls who were overly competitive might be placing themselves at risk of physicalharm. Not surprisingly, girls were not encouraged to play contact sports or any games
that required lengthy bouts of physical exertion.79
Sport played a significant role in Indian boarding schools in the United States also.
After initially banning football, the Carlisle school in Pennsylvania initiated a major
football program. In 1899, the school hired as team coach the legendary Glenn “Pop”
Warner, the man credited with the introduction of the huddle, numbered plays, andthe spiral punt. During the course of his twelve-year tenure at the school, the Carlisle
team regularly played and defeated the major college teams of the day. The school
director, Richard Pratt, attributed the students’ success to their growing assimilation. In a speech celebrating one victory, he told the students, “We put aside Indian
thoughts, and Indian ways, Indian dress and Indian speech. We don’t want to hold

362 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

onto anything indian.”80 Despite this, Warner concluded that the school teams developed a ‘racial’ rather than a ‘school’ spirit and, he felt, took their greatest pleasuresfrom beating the army team.81 The best-known graduate of the Carlisle program was
Jim Thorpe, who went on to fame as both an Olympic champion and a professional
football and baseball player. He was selected as the greatest male athlete of the firsthalf of the twentieth century by the Associated Press sportswriters.82 Other schools,
such as the Haskell Institute in Kansas, developed strong football programs. In 1925,
the Haskell Institute raised $185,000—much of it from tribes with oil revenues—tobuild a football stadium.83
The Canadian residential schools were established at the same time as the rules
were being standardized for games such as football, baseball, and hockey, and agreement was being reached on what constituted a standard playing field and the length ofplay.84 In the late nineteenth century, such sports spread throughout the country.85 Aswith band music, the promoters of these games argued that organized sports would
help reduce conflict between the classes.86 And, while manliness and sportsmanship were supposed to reflect the values of the empire, Canadians not only played
British games such as cricket, with its associations with the private schools of the elite;
they also played sports popular in the United States such as baseball, and uniquely
Canadian games such as lacrosse and ice hockey.87 These games also were played at
the residential schools.
It was hoped that these sports would contribute to ‘civilizing’ residential school
students. In his 1889 report, Indian Affairs inspector J. A. Macrae wrote of theBattleford school:
A noticeable feature of this school is its games. They are all thoroughly anddistinctly “white”. The boys use the boxing gloves with no little science, andexcellent temper and play good games of cricket and football with great interestand truly Anglo-Saxon vigor. The girls dress dolls, make fancy articles of dress,
and play such games as white children do. From all their recreation Indianism is
excluded.88

Macrae seemed to believe that “Indianism” was a static phenomenon and that toplay a European game well, a boy became less of an “Indian.” “Indianism” was, bydefinition, undesirable: an 1895 report on the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school noted
approvingly, “The manly games of cricket and football, introduced and practised by theprincipal, have done much to take ‘the sneak’ out of the boys.”89 Some school officials
also said that the role that sports played in the schools had to be closely controlled.
If this were not done, instead of spreading the values of manly Christianity, sports
would simply delay the process of assimilation. For example, a resolution adopted
by the Indian Workers Association of the Presbyterian Church for Saskatchewan and
Manitoba in 1911 identified a need “to have rigid regulations made as to the amusements permitted at each school. Nothing that encourages the survival of previous

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 363

Indian customs, the excessive desire of sports, or associations with the evilly desposed[sic] sporting white population should be permitted.”90
Identity was more complex, however. At the Regina school in 1897, the principal
reported that themost popular game in which the boys indulge is the ‘national game of lacrosse,’
for which their fleetness of foot and keenness of eye soon make them mostformidable opponents. Two things helped to popularize the game with ourpupils; first, the complete suits that from one source and another we were able togive the members of the first twelve, and secondly, a brilliant victory they gained
over a strong team of boys and young men from Regina.91

That the opportunity to play and beat a team of settlers was so satisfying suggeststhat students were finding ways to use sport to help them maintain, rather than lose,
their Aboriginal identity.
Since Indian Affairs provided little in the way of sporting equipment, principals
turned to outside sponsors for supplies. The principal of the Calgary school reported
in 1897 that sports at his school were largely restricted to “football and cricket, materials for which were provided privately.” He went on to thank “the various football teamsin this district who have taken the trouble and expense to come here and play with theboys from time to time. The effect is most marked; the boys take a pride in thinking
they are treated like human beings, and the indirect education they acquire from mixing and contact with white people is incalculable.”92 The Alert Bay school newsletter
reported in 1928, “Thanks to our good friend, Dr. Mandy, we have two complete sets offootball uniforms, one red and white, the other blue and brown.”93
By the 1890s, there were reports from schools across the country of boys playing
football, baseball, and ice hockey. Middlechurch principal John Ashby reported in
1896, “In summer the boys’ chief recreations are cricket and foot-ball; these they playin an effective and gentlemanly manner.”94 High River principal A. Naessens wrote
in 1897:
The boys take well to football and baseball, and their football eleven is a fairly
good one. Athletics are gone in for extensively, especially in the early summer
months. In winter skating is the principal amusement. Last year we commenced
curling with home-made stones, and the boys took to it immensely.95

Metlakatla principal John Scott reported in 1898, “During the hours set apart forplay the boys indulge in foot- and baseball, in favourable weather swimming andboating.”96 When the weather was poor, students played dominoes, chess, checkers,
and a variety of nineteenth-century board games.97 The Dominion Day field day at
the Anglican school at Fort George, Québec, featured races, jumping contests, and acompetition in which students carried loads over a simulated portage.98 The school
also had a tennis court for the staff with a net constructed of chicken wire.99 A report364 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

on the Morley, Alberta, school in 1933 noted that there was a hockey league on thelocal reserve and that the students also played against teams from local communities
such as Calgary and Cochrane.100
On occasion, the schools provided students with the opportunity to partake in traditional activities that were both recreational and a continuation of traditional practice. Ernest Duke, the principal of the Moose Fort, Ontario, school, reported in 1910,“The boys delight especially to shoot birds with the bows and arrows provided by theirfathers, or manufactured by themselves. Every boy has a bow and arrow, and their aim
is true, so many a poor little bird is carried home in triumph ‘after the hunt.’”101 This
practice also increased the quantity and variety of the students’ diet.
Ben Calf Robe was enrolled in a residential school in what is now southern Alberta
in 1897. There, he played kickball, baseball, and lacrosse. He recalled that lacrosse wasplayed withcurved sticks that were partly covered by nets. With them we threw a small ballback and forth to each other. It was a fast and dangerous game, and a lot of theboys got hurt while playing it. When we went to visit our homes our mothers
would ask how come our faces were bruised. When they found out it was fromplaying that game they went to the priest and complained, so the priest finally
told us we would have to stop playing lacrosse.102

The girls were expected to lead a far more sedate existence. The following excerpts
from Indian Affairs annual reports of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
make it clear that while the boys might be playing baseball, football, or hockey, themost the girls could look forward to was a closely chaperoned walk, a game of croquet,or some “quiet” indoor activities.
• 1896: Wikwemikong principal J. Paquin: “The girls love the quieter amusementsof the swing and the like. There are also play-halls for rainy weather, winter andnight recreations.”103• 1896: Middlechurch principal John Ashby: “The girls play croquet, hand-ball andgo for walks in charge of a female official; they also have swings and teeter board
in the yard, of which they are very fond.”104• 1899: Alert Bay principal A. W. Corker: “The girls have dolls, draughts and parlour croquet.”105• 1901: St. Boniface principal J. Dorais: “The girls are fond of playing ball, skipping,
picking flowers, and other quiet amusements. During berry season they are often
taken to the bush to gather the fruit—nothing gives them greater pleasure.”106• 1902: High River principal M. Lepine: “The girls amuse themselves during playtime at croquet, basketball and other healthy exercises.”107• 1902: Coqualeetza Institute principal Joseph Hall: “The girls, too, love recreation,and they like variety. But they like outdoor exercise and plenty of it. It does notmatter so much what it is if it be outdoor recreation. They are fond of walks in theRecreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 365

woods with a teacher. They now keenly relish games of croquet on our beautiful
lawn. A new set has just been purchased for their use.”108• 1909: Red Deer principal Arthur Barner: “The girls have found ample recreation
all winter on the skating rink. In the summer they walked and played outdoor
games.”109
Walks could be fairly limited events. At Kitamaat, British Columbia, schoolteacher
Margaret Butcher recorded, “Our village path takes exactly twelve minutes to perambulate and there is nowhere we can go, at any rate for a walk.”110
Occasionally, principals did allow girls to play team sports. Not surprisingly, they
enjoyed it. Middlechurch principal J. Thompson wrote in 1903, “The girls are very fondof football and play the game on their own grounds, and I have found that they derivea great deal of benefit from the exercise. They also skate, and play basket-ball andother indoor games and exercises.”111 Examples of this sort remained the exception. In
a 1921 report on the Mission school, Inspector R. H. Cairns noted that while the girls
sang sweetly, “they do not practice calisthenics. The sisters do not see that organizedplay and a course of physical culture would be beneficial from a health point of view.
The principal looks at it from the same standpoint.”112
In some cases, the boys were subject to less supervision than the girls. In the 1890s
at the Coqualeetza Institute, the boys alone were given “full liberty” on Saturday afternoons. Many of them used this opportunity to visit relatives who lived nearby.113
The Canadian schools never had the large-scale sport facilities that were constructed for several boarding schools in the United States. In St. Boniface, Manitoba,
in 1896, there was no recreation room or yard for the girls, while the principal felt “theboys’ recreation hall is far too small.”114 At the Battleford school in 1909, an inspector thought the students were left to organize their own recreation and there was no
physical education or calisthenics.115 That same year, P. R. Soanes, the principal of theChapleau, Ontario, school, wrote to Indian Affairs, “A gymnasium would be a great
boon to the boys, and drilling appliances are really needed for boys and girls.”116
In his 1907 report on the boarding schools in Saskatchewan and Alberta, Dr. Peter
Bryce, the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs, reported analmost complete absence of any drill or manual exercises amongst the boys orcalisthenics or breathing exercises amongst the girls. One would suppose thatin boarding schools the need for such exercises would be looked upon as anelementary necessity; but it was found that it was only in some isolated casesthat it had ever been heard of or put into practice.

He attributed the lack of attention to physical exercise to the difficulty the schools
had in recruiting “high quality” staff.117
The publication of a manual of games and simple calisthenics by Indian Affairs in1910 may point to an increase in the physical exercise at day and residential schools

366 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

in the following years, but, in reality, most schools were sadly lacking in playgroundequipment.118 A 1929 report on the Anglican school in The Pas noted there was “noequipment for the amusement of the children, and swings and teeters could be erected
at little cost. Football, volley ball, and basketball equipment could also be used to great
advantage.”119 Teacher Lucy Affleck at the Round Lake school wrote in 1929 about thelack of attention that was given to the students during their recreational hours. “Thelittle fellows badly need some one to take a little fatherly interest in them. From supper
until the bed time bell they get together, big and little, and get the time in with ‘horseplay’, wrestling, fighting, quarrelling, not knowing what to do with themselves, in thecold and dark.”120 Her opinion was confirmed the following year by Indian Affairs
inspector J. P. B. Ostrander, who reported that at Round Lake, “during recess and playtime, the children wander about the grounds or sit in corners, doing nothing.” IndianAffairs official A. F. MacKenzie informed the principal that it was thought “organized
games would be a great benefit.”121 Six months later, Ostrander returned to the subject,
writing that “only a feeble effort has been made in this connection and I think a real
effort is needed. There are now male members on this school staff, who are well able
to teach the games if they had the equipment and were given the time to do so.”122
During the Depression, when school budgets were subject to repeated cuts, supplies, uniforms, and facilities were all in short supply. When, in 1936, the principalof the McIntosh, Ontario, school put in a request for toboggans, hockey sticks, boots,
and skates, he was told that the only athletic equipment the department funded was“footballs, playground balls, basket balls, or volley balls.”123 In 1937, Kamloops principal Martin Kennedy drew attention to the problems created by the poor condition of
the recreation hall at the school: “Every year since my coming here we have had twoor three broken arms. This year we have already had three boys who broke their arms.
Owing to the dangerous condition of the recreation hall we have to stop all inside
games.”124 Despite repeated requests, Kennedy’s Oblate superiors declined to give him
permission to ask the government for a grant for repairs.125
The expectations of those who believed that brass bands and team sports would
take the ‘Indian’ out of a child went unfulfilled. It is more likely that Aboriginal children who participated in bands and sporting teams used these activities, at least inpart, to meet their own needs.126 For many students, the bandstand or the sporting
field represented a world into which they could escape from the daily routine andavoid some chores, and not be guilty of truancy or subject to discipline.
While some government officials and principals saw music and sport as a way ofassimilating students, senior officials did not share their enthusiasm. As with most
aspects of the residential school system, recreational activities were woefully underfunded. As a result, many principals sought to supplement their programs with theestablishment of a cadet corps, which brought the possibility of funding from the
Canadian military.

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 367

Military and cadet training
There was one recreational activity that brought together exercise, brass bands, discipline, and support for the British Empire: military training. Early Canadian publicschools provided very little in the way of physical training; few schools even had gymnasiums. Often, the only training available was military drill provided by officers fromlocal military garrison or police barracks.127 The Protestant churches mixed militarism
and Christianity in the Boys’ Brigades they organized.128
By the 1890s, some residential schools had begun to provide students with training
in military drill. Even when there was no military drill, life at the residential schools
was militarized, as Inspector T. P. Wadsworth observed in his 1884 report on life at
the Battleford school: “The boys parade (military style) for prayers morning and evening, for meals, and upon retiring.”129 Wikwemikong, Ontario, principal DominiqueduRonquet reported in 1891 that “the boys have had military drill, not occasionally,
but hundreds of times.” He admitted: “To say that they liked that exercise would besaying too much; nevertheless, it was very pleasing, indeed, to see with what precisionand exactitude they could manoeuvre at the end of the year and how military were
their mien and appearance.”130
Regina principal A. J. McLeod invited officers from the local North-West Mounted
Police barracks to provide the students with instructions in drill. In 1893, he wrote thatmany boys were becoming quite “dexterous in the different evolutions, and take great
pride in their marching. It is a common sight to see a squad of boys somewhere in the
grounds being drilled by one of the larger boys, some of whom naturally take theirplace as commanders.”131
At the Mohawk Institute, the boys were provided with quasi-military uniforms andwooden muskets, and regularly drilled, “forming squares, marching in column andline, Counter marching, and marching in echelon.” On viewing their drill in 1895,
Indian Affairs official Martin Benson wrote that he had seen “very few volunteer companies that do better.”132
By the 1890s, the federal Department of Militia and Defence was providing supplies
to cadet corps that had been organized in public schools. Shingwauk Home principal
George Ley King sought to organize such a cadet corps at the residential school in conjunction with the nearby Sault Ste. Marie Rifle Corps in 1899. Departmental secretary
J. D. McLean supported the plan, although he stressed that Indian Affairs “is not to be
put to any expense in connection with the uniforming or equipment of the company.”
McLean asked that the Department of Militia and Defence supply “arms and accoutrements” to Shingwauk Home boys, as was done for the public school cadet corps.133
The Boer War of 1899 to 1902 led to an increase in cadet training in Canadian publicschools. Calgary schools, for example, had a cadet program by 1900, and Manitoba
introduced a program in 1902.134 However, the spread of cadet training was restricted368 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

by limits on available funds.135 In 1907, Donald Smith, the former chief factor of the
Hudson’s Bay Company and by then Lord Strathcona, established the half-million-dollar Strathcona Trust. The fund, managed by the federal government, was intended topromote physical training and support military cadets in public schools.136 Under theterms of the trust, the military was to train and pay teachers who conducted cadet
corps, provide the cadets with arms and equipment, and conduct regular inspections.137 By 1926, the federal government was spending $412,000 a year on the cadet
program across the country.138 The cadet corps served as a supplement for teachers’
incomes, since teachers received $140 a year for every ninety cadets they instructed.
Some schools also used the program as a substitute for physical education.139
Although Indian Affairs supported cadet programs in theory, it continued to refuse
to finance them. Departmental secretary J. D. McLean approved the establishmentof a cadet corps at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school in 1912, stipulating that “no additional expense will be entailed and that the drill will not interfere with the work of theschool.”140 Similarly, McLean refused a request from A. K. O. Ockoniy, a teacher at
the Stuart Lake, British Columbia, school, for uniforms and “cadet guns” for a cadet
corps he wished to organize at the school. According to McLean, “Owing to the war,
the appropriation for school purposes has been considerably reduced.” Once again,
McLean asked the Department of Militia and Defence to supply the requested equipment.141 In 1922, Ockoniy organized a cadet corps at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia,
school. He did so “to develop in these boys some notions of patriotisme [sic], somefeeling of pride in belonging to the British Empire. In the second place I knew how
greatly these boys need the physical drill which is an important part of the cadet drill.”
Ockoniy believed cadet training would instill in the students a sense of discipline,“teaching them to obey immediately and without murmuring.” The army provided
a subsidy of $1.25 for every student who was in uniform at its annual inspection.
However, since Ockoniy could not get the money until he had the uniforms, he used
his own funds to purchase many of the original uniforms. His wife altered several useduniforms provided by the army so they would fit the students.142
In the 1920s, church and peace organizations began to raise questions about the
morality of military training in schools. By the 1930s, they had succeeded in convincing the Toronto board of education to disband its cadet corps.143 By the end of
the 1930s, many Canadian public school systems were no longer participating in the
cadet program.144
In keeping with a United Church policy opposing the cadet program in schools, thechurch disbanded its cadet corps at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school in 1931. Russell
Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, asked the principal to reconsider his
decision. Ferrier thought the church policy of opposition to cadet training was limited
to the public school system. “Residential schools,” he argued, constituted “anotherproposition, and I believe you will find that a cadet corps at an Indian institution will

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 369

assist greatly with both the esprit de corps and the discipline.”145 Principal F. Rhodes
responded that military training was not popular with the boys. He said there wasalready more military discipline in a residential school than in a public school, as File
Hills boys were “constantly under supervision.” He went on to remind Ferrier that theschool had no facility for drills. It was necessary to remove the table and the benchesfrom the dining room in order to hold cadet drills during the winter. He concluded bypointing out that the school had made several requests in the past for funding for a
gymnasium or a playroom, but, to date, nothing had been done.146
It appears that some schools attempted to establish cadet corps in an effort toimprove the quality and quantity of clothing they could provide to students. In a 1928
letter asking for Indian Affairs support in establishing a cadet corps unit, Shingwauk
Home principal Benjamin Fuller stressed, “Our present system of clothing the boys
for sunday [sic] service and special occasions is not as good as it should be. We havenothing uniform for the boys, their suits are of different colors and patterns, and do
not look well as pupils of a school.”147 The replacement for J. D. McLean as departmental secretary, A. F. MacKenzie, refused Fuller’s request, saying “it is not the practice of
the Department to meet the cost of uniforms.”148
Like the brass bands, cadet corps were used to generate positive publicity for theschools. The Brantford Expositor contained a glowing report of the annual inspectionof the cadet corps at the Mohawk Institute in 1920.
The cadets were particularly smart at physical drill. This has been regularly
carried on throughout the year and the boys showed the benefits derived fromthis branch of their training in their steadiness and endurance. The Colonel was
surprised to see them carry out the table of exercises such as have made many
wish this army instructor a few thousand miles away.149

Many of these cadet corps had but brief lifespans. James Dagg, the principal of the
Middlechurch school, had boasted in 1901: “We have a band of thirty instruments,that provides music every evening, which they all enjoy, and our system of military
drill, by the cadet corps, and calisthenics for the girls, as well as fancy marching for thesmaller children, interest them very much, so that they rarely ask to go home.”150 But,by 1904, a new principal at Middlechurch had put an end to both band practice andthe military drill. He thought the time could be better “devoted to those things which
will be more beneficial to those having to make their way in the world when they leave
the institution.”151 Similarly, the Qu’Appelle school had received a supply of equipment from the Canadian military in 1912 when a cadet corps was established at theschool. By 1918 and the end of the First World War, the corps was no longer active andthe military was making repeated requests for return of the uniforms. School principal
A. J. A. Dugas argued the school should be allowed to keep at least the hats and belts,

370 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

which had been incorporated into the boys’ scouting uniforms. McLean supported
the principal’s request.152
Some residential school cadet corps competed in provincial competitions. In 1912,
Mohawk Institute principal Nelles Ashton noted, “Our Cadet Corps, No. 161, took firstplace in No. 2 Military District (Central Ontario), a fact of which we are justly proud.”153
The Alert Bay corps won the International Order of the Daughters of the Empire (iode)
Challenge Shield for the best Indian Cadet Corps in British Columbia in 1928. The
Alert Bay corps also fielded a rifle team in the Canada Miniature Range Championshipin that year.154 The Alert Bay school went on to win the iode shield four times in arow.155 The corps from the Anglican school at Cardston, Alberta, won the “Army andNavy Shield for the best rural physical training of Cadets” in 1925.156 In 1933, the school
reported that, over the years, the cadet corps had won “four silver cups, three championships, and three silver medals.” In 1920, it had received the R. B. Bennett Shield,
awarded in “open competition with the white cadet corps of Alberta.”157

The cadet core and military service
Despite the obvious military nature of cadet corps training, it was not uncommon
for church officials to stress that the cadet corps was not necessarily training boys tobe soldiers. A booklet on the Anglican school at Onion Lake said the schools’ cadet
programs were meant to “develop the boys to the fullest extent physically, and to givethem the alertness of mind, decisiveness of action, and precision of character whichperhaps no other form of training can give.”158 In keeping with this argument, in thenineteenth century, Indian Affairs was not receptive to proposals to use the schools as
military recruiting grounds. In 1898, William Hamilton Merritt wrote to Indian Affairs,
requesting the right to form a permanent militia unit made up of residential school
graduates.159 Merritt was a mining engineer with a long and close association to themilitary and Six Nations, having been granted the position of honorary chief by the
Cayuga.160 He suggested the residential school principals be asked to select a “proportion of their boys” to be “drafted into a regiment upon completing their education.”
He felt that the training a student received at a residential school “would enable him
to make himself extremely useful regimentally.” The plan was rejected because it wasthought “it would be a great waste of money to go to the expense of giving an Indian
lad both a good education and an industrial training and then allow him to be drafted
off as a soldier.”161
The question of military service had come up on several occasions during thenegotiation of the numbered Treaties. During the negotiation of Treaty 3, one chief
told Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris, “If you should get into trouble with thenations, I do not wish to walk out and expose my young men to aid you in any of your

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 371

wars.” Morris assured him that England would not “call Indians out of their country tofight their battles.” During the Treaty 6 talks, he told a group of Cree chiefs, “You will
never be asked to fight against your will.”162 As a result of these commitments, whenthe Boer War broke out in 1899, Indian agents were instructed that “no Treaty Indianscan enlist for service.”163 Despite this ban, some First Nations men did enlist and servein that war.164
When the First World War broke out, Aboriginal leaders and communities declared
their support for the war effort, and many young men sought to enlist.165 Initially,
the government discouraged the recruiting of Aboriginal soldiers.166 This policy was
reversed in 1915 after a British Colonial Office request that all members of the British
Commonwealth report on the possibility of raising “native troops in large numbers.”167 The staggering death rates on the western front led to an intensified recruiting
campaign in Canada. By 1917, the government was actively recruiting among First
Nations across Canada.168 It is estimated that over 4,000 people with status under the
Indian Act—35% of the eligible population—served in the Canadian Expeditionary
Force during the First World War. This is equivalent to the percentage of the general
Canadian population that enlisted.169
Among the early First Nations recruits was Francis Pegahmagabow from the ParrySound Reserve in Ontario. A skilled and daring sniper, he was awarded the Military
Medal for acts of bravery on three occasions.170 Aboriginal soldiers served in a varietyof capacities and were acknowledged to excel as snipers and scouts.171
Several First Nations soldiers had passed through the cadet corps at the Anglican
school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta. In 1908, Principal Gervase Gale reported that
he had started a fife-and-drum band at the school. “The boys are intensely in earnest.
I have also a cadet corps and have applied for official recognition, which I am likely toreceive.”172 The corps continued to operate after S. H. Middleton became principal in
1911.173 After passing through the program, Flying Star (or, as he had been renamedby the residential school principal, Albert Mountain Horse) took a summer training
program in Calgary and was appointed a lieutenant in the Canadian militia. He wasone of the few First Nations people who successfully enlisted during the early years of
the war. He joined the army in September 1914 and was sent overseas the following
month. Before leaving, he wrote to Middleton that he was “going forth to fight for myKing and country.” He was present at the Second Battle of Ypres when the Germanarmy first made use of poison gas.174 After being gassed on three occasions, he washospitalized and diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was returned to Canada, but diedon November 19, 1915, the day after he had arrived in Québec City. He was twenty-one years old.175 He was one of approximately 300 First Nations soldiers who diedduring the war.176
Some members of the Blood First Nation had been distressed at Mountain Horse’s
decision to enlist and warned Middleton that he would be held responsible if anything372 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

happened to the young man. On hearing of her son’s death, his mother, Sikski, had to be
restrained from attacking Middleton, who thought he might be driven off the reserve.
Eventually, Sikski came to the conclusion that her son had died a hero. Two of herother sons, Mike and Joe, eventually enlisted as well, served overseas, and returned.177
A former residential school principal, John Tims, conducted Albert’s funeral service,where Middleton stated he had been “one of the Empire’s greatest sons who fought touphold the prestige and traditions of the British race.”178 Middleton’s rhetorical flourish is a useful reminder of the ways in which the residential schools were an extensionof empire and the degree to which Canada remained a colony.
As the need for soldiers grew, Indian Affairs loaned Indian agency inspector Glen
Campbell to the Ministry of the Militia, where he had a special responsibility forrecruiting from First Nations communities.179 In 1916, Campbell asked Deputy Minister
Duncan Campbell Scott for permission to recruit from the Elkhorn and Brandon residential schools in Manitoba.180 With some hesitation, Scott approved the proposal. He
thought “there should be some good material at Elkhorn where they have had physical drill for some years.” He also argued that if “the older Indians” tried to discourage
students from enlisting, they were “breaking their treaty obligations, as they promised to be loyal citizens and it is anything but loyal to prevent recruiting.”181 Scott also
gave permission for a seventeen-year-old orphan boy at the Roman Catholic schoolin Kenora, Ontario, to enlist. He said that other underage boys at the school could
enlist if they obtained their parents’ permission.182 It is not clear how many recruits
came from residential schools, but Campbell was able to recruit approximately 500
young First Nations men.183 One of those who were recruited from Elkhorn was Albert
Edward Thompson, a great-great-grandson of Chief Peguis.184 In 1915, five graduatesof the File Hills school were serving with the armed forces.185 Charles Cooke, the only
First Nations man who was working for the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa, and a former Mount Elgin student, was assigned to assist with recruiting in Ontario.186 Eightysix former Mohawk Institute students enlisted; five of them died in service.187 One
Mohawk Institute student, Foster Lickers, was captured during the Second Battle ofYpres. The torture he received at the hands of his guards left him paralyzed.188
In his Brown Tom’s School Days, Enos Montour wrote of the war’s impact on staffand-student relations at Mount Elgin. The fact that both staff members and students
had relatives who had enlisted created a new sense of fellowship. A roll of honour
was posted in the prayer room that listed the names of former staff and students who
had enlisted. According to Montour, “There was no distinction of race on it, with thenames of relatives and friends of both staff and students intertwined. It was no longer
simply a White man’s war. War had welded the soldiers into one national group.”189
The experience of Aboriginal soldiers in the First World War extends beyond thescope of this report, but it is important to note that many of these ‘sons of the Empire,’
to use Tims’s phrase, maintained and practised their own beliefs while in battle.

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939 • 373

On the eve of battle, George Strangling Wolf kept faith with the warrior custom of
cutting off a small portion of his own flesh to offer as a sacrifice. Francis Pegahmagabow,
who would come to be recognized as one of Canada’s top snipers during the war, carried a small medicine bag for protection. To show that he was fighting in the name of
the Blackfoot Confederacy, Mike Mountain Horse painted traditional victory symbols
on German guns captured at the battle of Amiens.190 Not only had residential schools,
cadet training, and service in an imperial army failed to separate these young men
from faith in their own customs and traditions, but the men were strengthened in theirbelief because they were able to call upon those traditions to survive and succeed.

CHAPTER 16

The deadly toll of infectious
diseases: 1867–1939

It cannot be gainsaid that in the early days of school administration in the
territories, while the problem was still a new one, the system was open to
criticism. Insufficient care was exercised in the admission of children to theschools. The well-known predisposition of Indians to tuberculosis resulted in avery large percentage of deaths among the pupils. They were housed in buildings
not carefully designed for school purposes, and these buildings became infected
and dangerous to the inmates. It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per centof the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from theeducation which they had received therein.

I— Duncan Campbell Scott, 19141

n 1897, Kah-pah-pah-mah-am-wa-ko-we-ko-chin (also known as Tom) was
deposed from his position as a headman of the White Bear Reserve in what is now
Saskatchewan for his vocal opposition to residential schools. In making his casefor a school on the reserve, he pointed to the high death rate at the Qu’Appelle industrial school, adding, “Our children are not strong. Many of them are sick most of thetime, many of the children sent from this Reserve to the Schools have died.” Anothermember of the band supported his position:
I have now two children, I had four. I sent two of these to the Industrial School at
Qu’Appelle. They both died there. I was told the school was good. It was not goodfor my children. I want to send my children to school on the Reserve where I can
see them every day. I love my children and wish them to live.2

Louise Moine attended the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century. She
recalled one year when tuberculosis wason the rampage in that school. There was a death every month on the girls’
side and some of the boys went also. We were always taken to see the girls who
had died. The Sisters invariably had them dressed in light blue and they always
looked so peaceful and angelic. We were led to believe that their souls had goneto heaven, and this would somehow lessen the grief and sadness we felt in theloss of one of our little schoolmates. There would be a Requiem Mass in the376 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

chapel. We would all escort the body, which was lying in a simple handmadecoffin, to the graveyard which was located close to the r.c. Church in the village.3

Neither the Canadian government nor the churches compiled annual records on
the number of students who died while attending residential school. Due to gaps
in the historical record, it is unlikely that a complete record of the number of students who died at Canada’s residential schools will ever be developed.4 As part of its
work, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has created a Register ofConfirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students (referred to from here on as
the “Named Register”) and a Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential
School Students (referred to from here on as the “Unnamed Register”). The first register contains reports on the deaths of students whose names the Commission 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 1867 to 1939, there
were 1,328 reported deaths on the Named Register and 1,106 deaths on the Unnamed
Register, for a total of 2,434 identified deaths for this period. It should be stressed thatthese figures are likely to represent an under representation of the number of student
deaths that occurred during this period. Graph 16.1 shows the annual death rate for
1,000 students of the Named and Unnamed registers combined.

Graph 16.1
Residential school death rates (Named and Unnamed registers
combined) per 1,000 students, 1869–1965
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

1869

1877

1885

1893

1901

1909

1917

1925

1933

1941

1949

1957

1965

Source: Rosenthal, “Statistical Analysis of Deaths.”

For approximately 40% of the deaths that the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada 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 ofdeath recorded, tuberculosis was by far the single most prevalent cause of death,

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 377

accounting for 50.8% of the deaths identified by the statistical analysis for the period
from 1867 to 1939 (Graph 16.2).

Graph 16.2
Causes of residential school deaths by illness(contributing and sole causes combined; Named andUnnamed registers combined), 1867–2000
Tuberculosis
Influenza
Pneumonia
Lung disease
Meningitis
Heart disease
Whooping coughTyphoid fever
Hemorrhage
Intestinal disease
Kidney disease
Appendicitis
Brain disease
Liver disease
Other unknown illness
Multiple causes
Other cause
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

Source: Rosenthal, “Statistical Analysis of Deaths.”

Many diagnoses of the cause of death may not have been accurate. The determination of cause of death would often have been made by individuals without medical
training. Many of the illnesses that were reported were not well understood in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, further contributing to the possibility of
misdiagnosis. It is possible, for example, that some of the cases of tuberculosis were
misdiagnosed as lung disease. It may also be the case that cases of meningitis weretubercular 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 arealso linked in other ways: tuberculosis, for example, can lead to pneumonia.
Tuberculosis was not only the major cause of death in residential schools in thisperiod. It was also the major cause of death among all Aboriginal people and among
the general Canadian population. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies, it was the major public health issue, both in Europe and North America. It
is best viewed as an epidemic that lasted for decades. In Canada, the federal government refused to play a leadership role in addressing the tuberculosis epidemic among
the general Canadian population or among the Aboriginal population. Because

378 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

tuberculosis is central to the story of health in residential schools, this chapter firstexamines the campaign to control tuberculosis in the Canadian population, and thenreviews the disease’s impact on Aboriginal people in general, and on those in residential schools in particular.

The background to the tuberculosis crisis in the schools
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is a communicable disease that is spread by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis bacteria. M. tuberculosis is the main cause of tuberculosis in humans, and M. bovis is more closely associated with tuberculosis in cattle.
However, M. bovis can jump the species barrier and cause tuberculosis in humans,
most commonly through ingestion of contaminated dairy products. Tuberculosis
most frequently attacks the lungs in what is termed “pulmonary tuberculosis.” It canalso attack the organs, the digestive tract, the lymph nodes in the neck (a condition
often referred to as “scrofula”), the bones, the joints, and the skin. The disease takes its
name from the tubercles or small nodules that develop where the bacteria take root.
A person infected with pulmonary tuberculosis expels tuberculosis bacteria when
they sneeze, cough, or spit. The infection spreads when a non-infected person breathes
in the bacteria. As a result, infection rates are high in overcrowded and poorly ventilated households. Eating meat or drinking milk from tubercular cattle can also spreadthe disease.
In most cases, the immune system is able to contain and often kill the bacteria,
although the illness can surface later in life. If the immune system is not able to contain it, the disease can spread throughout the body. In its initial stages, tuberculosis isdifficult to diagnose: the early symptoms are fever, fatigue, and weight loss. The symptoms of the disease may not become apparent for years. For this reason, it is common
to refer to “active” and “latent” tuberculosis. Adult tuberculosis is often the reactivation of a latent infection due to previous exposure. Not all latent cases become active.
Active tuberculosis can be a slow and painful killer. In the disease’s later stages,common symptoms include a cough that produces blood and sputum, night sweats,
and fever. Children are particularly susceptible to non-lung-related forms of the disease, such as scrofula and meningeal tuberculosis, which affects the central nervous
system. Children who drink a lot of milk are also at risk of infection from tubercular
cattle.5
The disease that is now known as tuberculosis (tb) has been described by a varietyof names in the past. Hippocrates, a Greek physician of the fourth century (Before theCommon Era), called it “phthisis,” or the “wasting disease.” In English, it was referredThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 379

to as “consumption,” because of the way patients wasted away. Scrofula was called
the “king’s evil” in France and England because it was believed that the king or queen
had the power to heal the infection simply by touch. This belief dated back to the fifth
century and continued to the early eighteenth century. Tuberculosis was not the only
wasting disease prevalent in the nineteenth century. Cases that were diagnosed asconsumption might well have been, for example, cancer or silicosis. Similarly, manyillnesses that were caused by tuberculosis bacteria were thought to be unrelated toconsumption.6 The word tuberculosis was not used to describe the disease until the1840s.7
Until the late nineteenth century, there was no clear understanding of the disease’s
origins or how it spread. Some physicians contended that it was a contagious disease,
while many others believed it to be hereditary. In 1882, German physician RobertKoch published his research demonstrating the existence of tuberculosis bacteria thatspread the disease.8 There was a similar, ongoing debate over whether tuberculosis incattle could spread to humans. It was only in 1911 that two separate reports, one in
Britain and one in the United States, demonstrated the tuberculosis risks from contaminated milk and meat.9 Until the late nineteenth century, doctors had to dependon the results of physical examinations for tb diagnosis. They relied particularly on
what they could hear through stethoscopes, and on the changes in vibration that
could be detected by tapping patients on the back and chest.10

The tuberculosis epidemic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Although the disease had always existed, the tuberculosis death rate in England
began to rise in the early eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, it was thelargest single cause of death in Europe and North America. This explosion in the incidence of tuberculosis was associated initially with urban life. It is now seen as arisingfrom the social changes and dislocation brought on by the Industrial Revolution. As
rural landlords adopted new agricultural methods, peasants were driven off the land
and went to the cities in search of work. Their living conditions were crowded andlacked proper sanitation. Their working hours were long, and their workplaces weredark, dirty, and poorly ventilated. Child labour was common.
In areas of Britain and the United States during the Industrial Revolution, theannual death rates from tuberculosis ranged from 200 to 500 per 100,000 of population. In the early nineteenth century, the death rate in the cities in the eastern UnitedStates was 400 deaths per 100,000. Poor nutrition, poor housing, and overwork wereinterlinked; death rates were highest among the poor and the institutionalized. It is forthis reason that the Canadian physician Sir William Osler famously described tuberculosis as “a social disease with a medical aspect.”11 The death rates for both England380 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and the United States peaked at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first halfof the nineteenth century, a period during which, it is estimated, half the English population was infected with the disease.12
In Europe, doctors began to send wealthy tubercular patients to sanatoria in the
Swiss Alps in the mid-nineteenth century. There, they would be exposed to healthy,
fresh air. Other sanatoria were opened by the sea. Eventually, it was recognized that
healthy and restful conditions could be established in almost any location.13 Initially,sanatoria treatment was aggressive: no matter what the weather, patients were supposed to spend the days on open-air balconies and sleep with the windows wide
open. Their days were supposed to follow a rigid and systematic routine.14 Rest, gooddiets, and clean air did not cure tuberculosis, but they eased suffering and allowed
some patients to recover to the point where the infection was no longer active andthey could return to their homes. Sanatoria provided an additional benefit by isolating
people with active tuberculosis from the general population.15
There was a concern that life in a sanatorium would render patients, particularly
working-class patients, lazy, leaving them unable or unwilling to return to work. In
response to this anxiety, Dr. Marcus Paterson, early in the twentieth century, incorporated “graduated labour” into the daily life of patients at the Frimley Sanatorium in
Surrey, England. It was his theory that physical activity would stimulate the immune
system and help patients overcome infection.16 Paterson’s system would later become
the model for an early twentieth-century proposal to turn Canada’s residential schools
into tuberculosis sanatoria.
Other than sanatorium care, there was little available in the way of medical treatment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tuberculin, an extract of
the tuberculosis bacterium, was proposed as a potential cure for tuberculosis in the
1890s, but proved more effective as a tool in diagnosis than as a cure.17 Doctors also
developed surgical interventions that reduced the spread of infection and potentiallyallowed for a faster recovery. These could involve collapsing one of the patient’s lungs(pneumothorax surgery) and even removing a portion of the ribcage. These highlyinvasive treatments required ongoing care.18 Although pneumothorax surgery had
become an accepted form of treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis by 1898 in Europe,
it was not undertaken with any frequency in North America until the second decadeof the twentieth century.19
By the middle of the nineteenth century, competing, and at times complementary,social reform movements developed. A public health movement fought for improvement in sanitation and the regulation of food and drink. Although these measures
were intended to fight more dramatic diseases such as cholera, they also had an impact
on the spread of tuberculosis. During this same period, the newly established tradeunion movement campaigned for better pay, shorter hours, and improved working

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 381

conditions, all of which led to improvement in the health of industrial workers andtheir families.20
It is thought that the combination of the isolation of tubercular patients in sanatoria, the impact of improved sanitation, and rising living standards led to a decline in
the tuberculosis death rate in Europe and North America. This decline started even
before scientists had determined that the disease was caused by a communicablebacterium, and it continued into the twentieth century—although the prevalence andrate of decline varied for different groups in society.21
The first effective tuberculosis antibiotic, streptomycin, was not developed until
1943. Its effectiveness was limited by tuberculosis bacteria’s ability to develop resistance to drugs. However, the introduction of para-aminosalicylic salts (pas) and isonicotinic hydrazide (inh; alternately isonicotinic acid hydrazide or isoniazid) into thetreatment process in the late 1940s created an effective chemical treatment of thedisease. Patients who had been diagnosed as being near death began recovering.
Although the death rate dropped, the demands on the health care system increased,since the new drugs were part of a hospital-based treatment.22 The new drugs alsomeant that certain surgical treatments could be administered more safely.23

The tuberculosis epidemic in Canada
Because Canada was later to industrialize than Britain or the United States, it was
not until the 1880s that the general tuberculosis death rate in this country reached apeak. By 1880, the tuberculosis death rate for Montréal and Toronto was 200 for every
100,000 people.24 Well into the twentieth century, tuberculosis remained the country’s
number-one public health issue. In 1901, almost 10,000 Canadians died of the disease,out of a population of 5.4 million. This was a death rate of 180 per 100,000. By 1908, thedeath rate had declined to 165 per 100,000.25 Many people who survived faced a bleak
future: it was estimated that the disease created 48,000 invalids annually.26
The National Sanitarium Association was created in 1896, marking the beginningof the Canadian campaign against tuberculosis. Five years later, the first meeting
was held of the Canadian Association for the Prevention of Consumption and Other
Forms of Tuberculosis. The association’s goal was to educate the public on measuresthey could take to prevent infection, and to establish sanatoria for the treatment of
those infected with tuberculosis.27
The report of the Canadian delegate to the 1899 International Tuberculosis
Conference, Dr. Edward Farrell, provides an overview of the measures that many medical experts of the day believed Canada needed to take to combat tuberculosis. Farrell
placed a heavy emphasis on the role of sanatoria: “The necessity for special sanatoria for treatment can no longer be looked upon as the view of a limited number of382 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

authorities; there is now a consensus of opinion among medical men that tuberculosis cannot be treated successfully in private houses.” This, he said, was particularly thecase “among the poorer classes, so that there are now being established in all countries which have given attention to the subject, special sanatoria for this purpose.” The
key elements of treatment were “open air, sunlight, good food and proper feeding,sponge baths, with careful medication, and medical supervision.” These could be provided only in a location where a “patient is surrounded by all requisite appliances.”
He also singled out for criticism the practice of serving children skimmed milk rather
than whole milk. “By these means a great wrong is done to the child; its tissues are
ill-nourished and it becomes an easy prey to the tubercle germ.”28
Farrell’s assessment of the proper method to treat tuberculosis reflected a dominant line of thought in the Canadian medical community. It is the standard against
which the treatment of residential school students should be measured in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As this chapter and following chapters ondiet and building conditions demonstrate, the Canadian government failed to meetsuch a standard.
The first Canadian sanatorium opened in Muskoka, Ontario, in 1897. Most of theearly Canadian sanatoria were built by voluntary organizations. By 1901, there were
only seventy-five sanatorium beds in Canada.29 Despite intense lobbying efforts froma variety of public health advocates, the federal government successfully avoided taking responsibility for dealing with the national health crisis that tuberculosis represented. In 1905, Parliament adopted a resolution committing the federal government
to taking measures to reduce tuberculosis mortality. However, since Parliament failed
to back this up with any financial commitment, prevention and care were left to theprovinces, municipalities, and private charities. Services often were inadequate anddelivered on a piecemeal or localized basis.30 Montréal, for example, introduced asystem of medical examinations for schoolchildren in 1906 that was soon adopted inother cities. By 1915, the Toronto board of education had a medical branch with overseventy full- and part-time employees, including a tuberculosis specialist.31 Somecities established “preventoria” for students. These were, in essence, sanatoria forstudents infected with childhood tuberculosis. They often included educational facilities and might be attached to existing sanatoria. The treatment the children received
emphasized rest, improved diet, and fresh air—a measure that could involve keepingclassroom windows open throughout the cold Canadian winter.32
Tuberculosis among servicemen and servicewomen in the First World War forced
the federal government to invest in new sanatoria for veterans.33 Despite these government initiatives, by 1919, there were only enough sanatorium beds for 15% of theCanadians needing treatment. In the 1920s, the federal government turned the veterans’ sanatoria it had established over to provincial governments and tuberculosis associations.34 As late as 1936, slightly less than half of those who died from tuberculosis

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 383

in Ontario had received sanatorium care.35 Most sufferers had to rely on clinics andnurses for treatment, much of which was limited to advice.36 The availability of care inrural Canada lagged behind the rest of the nation. Rural municipalities often refused
to support a local resident’s stay in a sanatorium unless the patient was indigent. As
a result, by the time rural tuberculosis sufferers were admitted to a sanatorium, often
they were in the final stages of the disease.37
Throughout the 1920s, municipal and provincial governments increased theirsupport of sanatoria. One of the most significant developments came in 1929 when
Saskatchewan made sanatorium care free to all residents—with the exception ofFirst Nations people, who were considered to be a federal responsibility.38 Travelling
health clinics were established in the 1920s to address rural needs.39 The introductionof x-ray technology also improved the ability to identify active cases of tuberculosis.40
Increasingly, the difference between hospitals and sanatoria diminished as sanatoria
employed a growing number of specialists and technicians. Since rest was seen as
being central to recovery, the patients spent most of their days in bed.41
Measures also were taken to limit the impact of tubercular cattle. In the mid-1920s,
it was estimated that as many as half of the cattle in Canada were infected with tuberculosis. Just twenty years later, that infection rate had dropped to less than 2%. The
most effective measure in controlling the spread of the disease was to kill the bacteria
by pasteurizing the milk: heating it to control bacterial growth.42
Canada’s anti-tuberculosis campaign played an important role in effectively isolating people with active tuberculosis, and providing them with a measure of care andcomfort. In many cases, infections went from an active to an inactive, or latent, state.
Not everyone was so lucky: 19% of the patients who were removed from the rolls of the
Saskatchewan sanatorium between 1917 and 1929 had died while in the sanatorium.
Of those who left alive, half were working, and 10% had undergone a relapse.43
Canada’s tuberculosis mortality rate fell from 87.7 per 100,000 in 1921 to 53.6 per
100,000 in 1939.44 The decline is likely attributable to the same factors that brought
down the British and American rates: improvements in living standards, improvements in sanitation, and the isolation and treatment of those with tuberculosis. The
effectiveness of the Canadian campaign was limited by the federal government’s
insistence that health was solely a provincial responsibility. Living standards also
were still in need of much improvement. Governments at all levels, however, placed
strict limitations on the provision of relief, often requiring that only people living in
absolute poverty could receive assistance.45

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The tuberculosis epidemic and First Nationsin the late nineteenth century
Human beings live in a complex relationship with their physical and social environments.46 Epidemics arise from disruptions to that relationship.47 Just as the disruption caused by the Industrial Revolution had opened the door for the European
tuberculosis epidemic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the disruptionof long-standing ecological and social conditions unleashed by colonialism in theAmericas did the same for an even more virulent epidemic among Aboriginal peoples. Colonization exposed Aboriginal people to diseases to which they had very limited levels of immunity. Outbreaks of smallpox, measles, influenza, and dysentery
often had devastating impacts.48 It is important to recognize that the impact of these
diseases was intensified by the disruption that colonialism exerted on every aspect of
the lives of Aboriginal people. It was not government policy to spread tuberculosis;
however, it is clear that government policies of the 1880s created the conditions forthe outbreak of an epidemic and that the government response to that epidemic wasshamefully inadequate.
Although tuberculosis may have existed in the Americas prior to the era of colonization, its presence is rarely mentioned in the memoirs of early missionaries or
explorers.49 Recent research indicates that French-Canadian fur traders brought astrain of tuberculosis to the Canadian West during the fur-trade period.50 The diseasereached epidemic proportions among First Nations only in the 1880s as the federal
government was forcing them into cramped housing on isolated reserves with inadequate sanitation. At a time when traditional food sources such as the buffalo weredisappearing, the government failed to provide the supports promised in the Treaties,
which were necessary to allow First Nations to make a quick and effective transition
to new economic activities. At the same time, Aboriginal governance structures andprocesses were placed under the authority of Indian agents, and their spiritual andhealing practices were attacked by missionaries and government.
One of the most extensively studied examples of this process is the health experience of people in the Qu’Appelle and File Hills reserves in what is now Saskatchewan.
Prior to 1880, tuberculosis among the First Nations people of this region was rare.51
However, with the collapse of the buffalo hunt and the forced settlement of people incramped housing on reserves, people’s vulnerability to tuberculosis grew, infections
increased, and the death rate soared. On the Qu’Appelle Reserve, the tuberculosis
death rate reached 9,000 deaths per 100,000 people in 1886. One history of tuberculosis has identified this as one of the highest tuberculosis death rates ever recorded. It is
forty-five times higher than the peak death rates for the cities of Montréal and Toronto(200 deaths per 100,000 people), which were reached in 1880.52 The rate began to fall in
the Qu’Appelle area in the 1890s. By 1901, the rate was 2,000 per 100,000, dropping toThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 385

1,000 per 100,000 by 1907.53 By 1926, the death rate had declined to 800 per 100,000.54
This rate was still almost ten times higher than the 1926 national tuberculosis death
rate: 84 deaths per 100,000.55

The failure of the federal government
Under the provisions of the British North America Act, First Nations were a federal responsibility. Through the Treaty process, the federal government had madeadditional commitments to maintain the health and welfare of First Nations people.
Treaty Six, for example, specifically committed the federal government to maintaining a “medicine chest at the house of each Indian Agent for the use and benefit of the
Indians.”56 It also made a commitment to provide relief in the event of “any pestilenceor general famine.” In his history of the Treaties, Treaty Commissioner Alexander
Morris noted that the First Nations people “dreaded … disease or famine.”57 The commissioners who negotiated Treaty 8 reported in 1899, “We promised that supplies of
medicines would be put in the charge of persons selected by the Government at different points, and would be distributed free to those of the Indians who might requirethem.”58 Despite these commitments, the federal government provided little in theway of organized health services to First Nations people in the nineteenth century.59
As late as 1954, the federal Indian Health Service took the position that it had no “statutory responsibility for the provision of either medical or dental care of the Indians.”60
The provision of medical services was initially left in the hands of missionaries, who
often had limited medical training.61
The government began appointing medical officers to provide services on reservesin 1883. Often, the doctors were selected on the basis of their political loyalties, andused their government work as a base on which to build a private practice. In puttingthese medical attendants under contract, the government was responding both to thehealth problems on reserves and to settlers’ concerns that contagious diseases could
spread to them from reserves.62 The care that the physicians provided was often subject
to complaint from the First Nations people and from Indian agents. Indian agent R. N.
Wilson reported in 1901 that there had been ten deaths in the previous two months
on the Peigan Indian Agency. At the time of writing, he said, at least two children were“dying practically without medical aid.” The government’s medical attendant, Dr. F. X.
Girard, had not responded to three urgent requests in the previous week. Wilson succeeded in getting a different doctor to attend a seriously ill girl at the Roman Catholicboarding school on the reserve. Although the doctor promised to pay a return visit,
Wilson reported, “He has not done so yet and today a note from the matron of theschool states that the sick girl is worse, in fact expected to die.”63

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A 1902 circular issued to Indian agents informed them that they were to make every
effort “to induce Indians to build their homes on high ground” with gabled roofs andenough room to allow for proper ventilation. Similarly, they were to encourage the“use of vegetables” and discourage the consumption of “bad meat,” infected milk, andpolluted water. What was lacking was assistance to build large, well-ventilated houses,
to grow or purchase wholesome food, and to ensure access to clean water. Agents werealso instructed to prohibit people from spitting on the floors of the dwellings.64 While
unenforceable, this was in keeping with sensible public health advice of the day. In
the early twentieth century, many Canadian municipalities adopted prohibitions on
spitting to reduce the spread of tuberculosis.65
The final piece of advice—to avoid “the unnecessary frequenting of and more especially holding of gatherings for dancing or other purposes in houses in which there isconsumption”—was sound from a public health perspective. However, singling out
dancing reflected government hostility to First Nations spiritual practices, and theoverall recommendation ignored the fact that consumption was so rampant that there
would be few homes from which it was absent. 66
The failure to provide needed medical services was coupled with tight-fisted government relief policies that actually served to increase hunger and susceptibility todisease. Lieutenant-Governor David Laird warned in 1878 that the government policy
was leading to starvation that could spark a rebellion.67 In October 1882, Dr. Augustus
Jukes reported to the North-West Mounted Police that there were 2,000 Aboriginal
people camped near Fort Walsh, in what is now Saskatchewan. According to Jukes,“They are literally in a starving condition and destitute to the commonest necessaries [sic] of life. The disappearance of the Buffalo has left them not only without food,but also without Robes, moccasins and adequate tents.”68 In 1884, Dr. O. C. Edwards
reported that the death rates among bands on the Plains “will increase unless a radical
change is made in the matter of food.”69 Crop failures were not uncommon. Rations
were meagre: in the early 1880s at various times, relief was limited to 0.7 pounds(0.3 kilograms) of flour and 0.2 pounds (0.09 kilograms) of bacon per day for adults.
Children were provided half-rations.70 Relief could be denied completely if people left
the reserve without permission, did not engage in agricultural pursuits, or refused toenrol their children in residential schools.71
Those First Nations people who were attempting to make the transition to agriculture were held back. The government’s promised equipment and supplies wereof poor quality, late in arriving, and often insufficient. The people who raised grain
crops faced starvation for lack of milling equipment. Some people who abandoneda hunting lifestyle found they could not afford adequate clothing for farming. As aresult, they had to leave their farm work to return to the hunt.72 Indian agents were regularly instructed to provide relief only “to very poor, aged or sick Indians” and only inextreme cases. Sugar, soap, and tea were not to be provided except in cases of illness.

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 387

Agents were to exercise the “strictest economy” and ensure that aid was not given to“those not in need or deserving of it.”73
Reserves were placed under quarantine when epidemics of diseases such as
smallpox broke out. Quarantines placed tremendous burdens on the community.
Provisions ran low, while people were prohibited from hunting, trading, and working off the reserve. At the same time, rations were kept to the lowest rate possible, toensure the people were not encouraged to become dependent on the government.74
Federal government officials were aware of the high death rates among First
Nations on the Plains. They sought to place responsibility for these death rates on
the First Nations people themselves. In his 1886 report, Indian Commissioner Edgar
Dewdney wrote, “A large percentage of the sickness, and consequent death-rate, isdirectly due to hereditary disease, which had its origin at a time prior to that at which
our responsibility began.” He argued that part of the increase in the death rate could
be attributed to an improvement in record keeping.75 As well, he felt the increase waspart of the price that First Nations had to pay to make the transition to ‘civilization.’ Aspeople adopted a “comparatively sedentary and civilized life,” he said, it was not surprising that “the death rate is in the case of many of the bands heavy.”76 A decade later,
Deputy Minister Hayter Reed acknowledged:
The majority of deaths among adults result from scrofula and consumption.
Among our western Indians of Manitoba and the Territories and some parts ofBritish Columbia pulmonary attacks are common, the Indian being particularly
susceptible to these during that state of transition from the wild state to the moreadvanced condition of civilization, and to overcome this efforts are put forth to
get the Indians to ventilate their houses.77

In 1895, Reed asked doctors in the Northwest whether First Nations health
had improved over the previous five years. The answers were not encouraging. Dr.
F. X. Girard wrote that “they are losing ground every day instead of increasing.”
Tuberculosis, “which was quite unknown in old time [sic] is now prevailing.” Dr. N. J.
Lindsay painted a similar picture: “Taking all things into consideration, I am inclined
to think the Indians are getting physically weaker and that Scrofula and Phthisis areon the increase.” Lindsay did not recognize that tuberculosis was a contagious, bacteria-born disease, but he did acknowledge that the way of life that First Nations people
had followed when their economy centred on hunting had been a healthy one. He
wrote that “civilization” had “proved so disastrous to the Indians.” But the only solution was to have it “pushed to its fullest extent, so as to thoroughly civilize them.” Only
Dr. A. B. Stewart, who pointed to the “bountiful supply of the various remedies usuallyprescribed for such chronic diseases as scrofula or tuberculosis,” claimed that conditions were improving.78
Writing in 1898, the deputy minister of Indian Affairs, James Smart, noted that “theintroduction of a civilized method of living among our Indians” was bound to have

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a “destructive tendency in the first instance.” He acknowledged that “the herding
together in small and ill-ventilated houses such as form the first advance toward abetter class of dwellings” helped spread tuberculosis. But he too placed much of theblame for the tuberculosis crisis on First Nations people. He said their dances raised
dust that spread disease; they had what he described as high rates of intermarriage
within small communities; they failed to take prescribed medicine; and their women
married too young and gave birth too soon.79 In 1904, Smart’s successor, Frank Pedley,wrote that “the first effect of civilization” was “injurious.” Adopting a sedentary lifestyle, he said, “produces the necessary conditions for the development and propagation” of tuberculosis. If civilization was the cause of disease, then more of it—the
adoption of new clothes, new diets, and new habits—would be the cure.80
The residential schools were intended to be an intensification of the government’s
overall “civilization” policy. They also intensified many of the factors that affected
health on the reserves. They became breeding grounds for such diseases as measles,
whooping cough, influenza, and tuberculosis. Poor diet and inadequate clothing
added to the students’ susceptibility and made recovery all the more difficult. It was
the government position that Aboriginal people needed to assimilate, but policies
intended to encourage assimilation aggravated health problems.

Tuberculosis in the residential schools
The initial period: 1867–1904
The first three industrial schools opened in the 1880s just as the First Nations tuberculosis epidemic in the North-West Territories was approaching its peak. The schools
were not prepared to identify and treat sick children or to prevent infection fromspreading to healthy children. Policies were developed on a piecemeal basis and theirimplementation was fragmentary. A uniform policy on the medical examination of
new students was slow to emerge. Treatment was inadequate, and crowding ensured
that infections became general throughout the student body, since there were few sickwards or infirmaries. Principals often were unwilling to abide by government policies, either because they opposed measures that would limit enrolment, or because
they simply lacked the funds to do so. Students who came to the schools healthy went
home tubercular, thus completing the infection of the community. In this tubercularized environment, other deadly and disabling diseases were able to flourish.

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 389

The schools were not prepared to provide adequate health services
The instructions that Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney issued to Battlefordschool principal Thomas Clarke upon the opening of the school in 1883 did notinclude any health-related advice. They did not require that students undergo a medical examination before being admitted to the school. Indeed, the recommendationthat the school give preference to “orphans and children without any person to lookafter them” increased the likelihood that the early recruits would be of poor health.81
In contrast, Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet’s instructions for the opening of
the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school in 1889 stated, “All pupils admitted shouldbe free from disease, and an apartment light and airy, and as far removed from theother rooms as possible, should be set apart for any who may fall sick.”82 The requirement that students be free from disease was not, however, a general policy.
The schools provided limited medical attention. When Dr. M. M. Seymour applied
for the position of medical attendant to the Qu’Appelle school in 1885, IndianCommissioner Edgar Dewdney refused his appointment, claiming there was no“necessity for a doctor.” According to Dewdney, Indian Affairs had “sent out a supply of medicines to the Industrial Schools with full instructions as to their use.” Healso noted that “the Sisters, in connection with the Institution, are somewhat expert
in attending on the sick.”83
Many of the early schools lacked hospitals or infirmaries. In 1893, Qu’Appelleschool inspector T. P. Wadsworth reported that at the school, “the want of an infirmaryis still very much felt.” The previous year, he had managed to contain an outbreak ofchicken pox only by keeping the infected students quarantined in the school garret.84
Those infirmaries that existed usually were primitive. On an 1891 visit to the Battlefordschool, Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed noted that the hospital ward was in suchpoor shape that they had been obliged to remove the children in it to the staff sitting
room. According to Reed, “The noise, as well as the bad smells, come from the lavatory underneath.” There were “quite a number of children sick in the Institution, andI fear not receiving that constant attention which might be expected in a place of thatnature.” Reed was unable to hire a nurse, having to content himself with “an Indian
woman who had a child sick there and appeared to be very attentive.”85
Problems were not quickly rectified. In 1901, Dr. H. J. Denovan recommended theconstruction of a small hospital at the Red Deer school that could be used to isolate
contagious students.86 Denovan returned to the issue in 1903, writing that the “rooms
provided for sick rooms are the most dismal in the buildings. Scarcely any sunlightever enters.” In 1904, the principal proposed the construction of a building that would
serve as both a hospital and a residence for married staff.87 A 1904 report on the deathof a student at the Regina, Saskatchewan, school due to tuberculosis revealed the needthat “a room be set apart for the nursing and treatment of such cases as they arise.”88

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At the time of the request, the school, which had been built with government approvaland support, had been in operation for thirteen years.
Not surprisingly, cases of tuberculosis quickly showed up in the schools. In 1886, atthe height of the tuberculosis epidemic on the Qu’Appelle Reserve, five children diedat the residential school. Principal Hugonnard said the deaths were not due to contagious disease. However, since he believed that tuberculosis was hereditary rather thancontagious, it is possible that the five deaths were in fact due to tuberculosis.89 In his
early annual reports, Hugonnard emphasized that the children were healthy: “veryhealthy” (1885);90 “all the pupils are well” (1886);91 or “a great deal better” (1887).92
As time passed, however, Hugonnard could not disguise the fact that the school had
an ongoing health problem. In his 1888 report, he acknowledged that “we have notthe choice of children and although we refuse admission to some on account of theirhealth, still we have to admit some that have a weak constitution.”93 Hugonnard did
succeed in 1887 in having Dr. Seymour appointed as the school’s medical attendant.
Initially, he visited the school twice a week.94 By the 1890s, the regular visits had been
reduced to once a week.95
Battleford school principal Thomas Clarke was one of the first to note the need for
medical examinations of students. In 1884, he reported that a student named Calah
had died in May of that year “from internal injuries received previous to his entering
the school.” Clarke recommended that in the future, students “should be examined bya medical officer before they are received into the school.”96 While the cause of Calah’s
death is unclear, by 1886, Clarke was reporting deaths from tuberculosis. In that year,
there was one death from brain fever, quite possibly tubercular meningitis, and one
death from tuberculosis. Clarke wrote that the cold that finally killed the second boy
was contracted last winter, when he deserted from the school one evening,with the thermometer 40° below zero, and walked home to his uncle’s reserve,a distance of eighteen miles. To the credit of Thunder Child, I feel it my duty toreport, that he at once brought the lad back, and gave him up to me.97

At Battleford, students were sometimes recruited to provide care to other students
in the infirmary. Peter Wuttunee attended the Battleford school in the late nineteenth
century. While at the school, he was often assigned to sit with children who were dyingof tuberculosis. Later in life, he recalled, “Joseph Thunderchild, you know I watchedthat man all alone for a month or more.”98
Medical services appear to have been provided sporadically. Although the
Qu’Appelle school had access to a medical attendant by 1887, three years later, theBishop of Rupert’s Land complained of the government’s unwillingness to pay for a
medical attendant for the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school. He argued that it was a“duty of the Government in placing their wards under our care to see that they areinspected from time to time, and attended by a Medical officer of the government.”99

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 391

It was not until January 1892 that Indian Affairs instructed its physician who was oncontract to provide medical services on nearby reserves to extend those services to theschool.100 In British Columbia, a doctor visited the Cranbrook school in the Kootenays
only at the request of the Indian agent. The agent “hesitated to send word to the doctor” because he felt the government was paying him too low a fee. As a result, thestudents were neglected. An Indian Affairs official inspecting the school in 1906 found“two cases of suppurating glands [possible signs of tuberculosis] and a boy with his
arm in a sling.” The local doctor reported that he had not been “instructed to operateon these cases of tubercular glands.”101

Parental response to poor quality of care
The poor quality of care led to conflict between parents and school and government officials. The conflicts could arise because of the illness contracted at the school,
because parents were not notified of illness, or because parents believed sick children
were not being attended to properly.
Such conflicts reached tragic proportions at the Anglican White Eagle school on theBlackfoot Reserve in what is now southern Alberta. Blackfoot leader White Pup told
Indian agent Magnus Begg in April 1895, “When children are taken sick at Industrial
Schools they should be sent home so that their parents could look after them, and not
be kept until they are ready to die, as generally the first thign [sic] parents hear is that
their child is dead or at the point of death.”102
In the spring of that year, seven of the seventeen children at the Anglican-run boarding school for boys on the Blackfoot Reserve had active tuberculosis. At least one ofthem, a boy named Ellis, was sent home. Shortly after his return home, Ellis died. His
father, Ajawana (his name is also given as Scraping High and Scraping Hide), vowed toavenge his death.103 On April 3, 1895, Ajawana shot and killed Frank Skynner, the local
Indian Affairs official responsible for distributing rations on the reserve.104 He thenwent to the burial site of Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot. Local official R. G. MacDonnell,
Indian agent Magnus Begg, and two North-West Mounted Police officers tracked
Ajawana to that location, where he was killed in the ensuing gun battle.105
There was a general belief that Skynner’s attitudes, and possibly his dealings
with Ajawana, had led to the tragic confrontation. Writing shortly after the events,
MacDonnell claimed the press reports that Skynner had refused to provide Ajawana
with beef for his sick child were “an unmitigated falsehood.” However, he was of theopinion that Skynner was “a thoroughly unqualified man to be placed in such a position where tact and suavity of manner are all essential qualities.” MacDonnell added
that, in the past, Skynner had told him that once when he had denied rations intended

392 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

for a man’s child, the man had threatened Skynner “with shooting or stabbing.” In
MacDonnell’s opinion, the tragic events were due
to ill feeling caused by the compulsory education rule, unsatisfactory medical
oversight and proper care of sick Indians, causing [the] murderer to brood overthe death of his child and the taking of Skynner’s life as being due to the Indian
not liking him owing to his not having a knowledge of their language and his very
hasty temper displayed towards them in the discharge of his duty.106

Deputy Minister Hayter Reed convinced himself that Ajawana “was not of soundmind.” To think otherwise would “suggest the existence of a state of feeling between
the wards and employees of the Department which would be most deplorable, andpoint to something radically wrong about their mutual relations.”107 The Mounted
Police history of 1906 stated that Ajawana was “more or less crazy” at the time of theshooting.108 But other sources, including MacDonnell, indicated that Ajawana was ofsound mind, and that there was indeed “something radically wrong” in the relations
between Indian Affairs and First Nations.
Skynner had been put in charge of the distribution of rations on the reserve in 1893.
He quickly came into conflict with the people he was supposed to be serving. In thesummer of that year, band leaders warned Hayter Reed they feared “there would be
bloodshed on the reserve sooner or later” if Skynner were not replaced. Indian agent
Magnus Begg replaced Skynner with local farm instructor W. M. Baker. However,when Baker was injured, Skynner was once more given responsibility for the distribution of rations. According to Baker, Skynner was killed for “refusing good rations
to sick Indians.”109 Another Indian Affairs official, John McCrea, wrote that Skynner
had been “totally unfit for the position, as he lacked tact, kindness or firmness.”Skynner, he wrote, would swear at people who were seeking rations and “give themless than they were entitled to.” McCrea felt that if he had not interfered, “there would
have been some sickly people die for the want of grub.” He stated he “was not surprised when Mr Skynner was murdered as the Indians detested the sight of him.”110
Magistrate MacDonnell said he had spoken to Ajawana on the day he killed Skynner.
They had had a pleasant conversation in which Ajawana arranged to pay a debt heowed to MacDonnell. Ajawana also indicated that he was not prepared to mine coalfor Indian Affairs for the pay rates the department was offering. MacDonnell said, “No
stronger proof of his sanity could in my opinion be adduced than his refusal to workon such a poor basis of remuneration.”111
In May 1895, a month after the killing of Skynner and Ajawana, the daughter ofGreasy Forehead died from diphtheria at the Old Sun’s school. (The Anglicans operated two boarding schools on the Blackfoot Reserve in this period: the White Eagle
school for boys and the Old Sun’s school for girls.) In the days prior to her death,
Greasy Forehead had asked that his daughter be sent home to be cared for by “theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 393

Indian doctor.” However, Principal John Tims and the local physician said “there wasno danger of her dying,” and she was kept in the school. Tims then went to Calgary andplaced W. M. Baker, the farm instructor, in charge. The girl died that night. Her brotherwas sent home with news of the death, while the First Nations leadership stepped
in to persuade the parents to stay away from the school. Baker said that “the Chiefs
discussed the matter freely and some said it would not be long before Mr. Tims would
cause bloodshed on the reserve.” After the girl’s death, Indian agent Magnus Begg met
with the First Nations leaders, who told him “they did not like Mr. Tims.”112 By theend of June, Tims had written Ottawa to request permission to close the school for amonth.113 His request was granted. Indeed, it was reported in the Toronto Globe that
he had been forced to “seek safety in flight.”114
There were other examples of parents being driven to extremes by the death oftheir children and by the way their concerns were treated. In September 1896, Bull
Sittingdown fired off several shots from his revolver at the High River school to express
his anger at not being told of his daughter’s death.115 A young girl at the Kuper Island,
British Columbia, school came down with an illness that neither the staff nor the
local doctor could diagnose in 1902. When her mother was informed of her illness,she insisted that the girl return home. The principal agreed: “If her malady would
have proven fatal at the School, there would have been great excitement amongst
the Indians.”116 In 1902, Elijah Manass complained to Indian Affairs that the principal at Mount Elgin, Ontario, W. W. Shepherd, had refused to forward a letter from a
student informing him that his daughter was ill. The Manass family became aware of
the illness only when the girl’s mother visited the school. She withdrew the child andtreated her at home.117 Shepherd said the girl had become ill after a vaccination andwas being properly treated—“if the Mother had stayed away the girl would have been
all right in a short time.” Shepherd claimed to have no knowledge of the letter that hewas supposed to have withheld, although he added he did not think informing theparents was “nice to do as there was no danger.”118

Staff concerns
Staff sometimes also complained about the care students received. Middlechurch
staff teacher Abbie Gordon sent her complaints directly to the Indian Affairs minister,
Clifford Sifton. She had been hired to teach at Middlechurch, but discovered on her
arrival that she was “expected to oversee the cleaning of the girls dormitories, and thelady officers’ rooms every morning before school besides looking after all the linen.”
Gordon’s chief target was Miss Lang, the matron, whose treatment of the children was,in her opinion, “heartless.” Sick children often were left unattended: “One boy, Willie
Currant whose eyes were sore for weeks gradually lost his sight. He was sent home394 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and in a month his eyes were quite well when looked after by his mother. Miss Lang
took no interest in the child and even forbid nurse Inkster doing anything to relieve
his sufferings.”119

The epidemic takes root in the schools
By the 1890s, evidence was emerging that instead of helping to combat tuberculosis
in First Nations communities, the schools were spreading infection. In 1893, IndianAffairs asked principals to provide information on the health conditions of former students. The principal of the Middlechurch school, which had been open for just three
years, reported that of seventeen former students, two had died at school, three had
died at home, and four had been sent home with illness. Eight of the seventeen students had been diagnosed with some form of tuberculosis.120 The Qu’Appelle school
reported that since opening in 1884, it had discharged 174 students, 71 of whom
died.121 In the previous year, there had been twelve deaths, eleven of which school
principal Hugonnard attributed to consumption. It was, he said, “hereditary in thefamilies of deceased and the germs of which were probably brought from home.”122
Despite Koch’s demonstration of 1882 that tuberculosis was spread by germs, the ideathat it was hereditary persisted in the Canadian West into the 1920s. This was in part
because of the high rate of infection among First Nations people.123
Death and tuberculosis were present throughout the system. According to the IndianAffairs 1892 annual report, two students at the Regina school had died from consumption in the previous year: one at the school and one at home.124 In the six years from1891 to 1897, those numbers skyrocketed; forty-eight children died at the school.125
Yet, in the face of such epidemic numbers, in his 1898 report, the principal reported
general health at the school to be “fair, consumption and scrofula are enemies wehave learned to dread.”126 Hobbema, Alberta, principal Z. Lizeé reported, “Two pupils
died in the course of the year. One died of a brain disease; the other, of consumption.
Two are scrofulous. All the others have always been well. The old building in which
they are living may have been the cause of the sickness.” The “brain disease” could
well have been tubercular meningitis.127 In 1898, the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school
principal reported that Gabriel Poundmaker, the son of Chief Poundmaker, had diedfrom a hemorrhage of the lungs—a common symptom of active tuberculosis.
This boy was a general favourite in the school, being of a gentle and amiabledisposition. He was particularly kind to the small boys, who often went to him for
comfort in their childish troubles. Though never strong, nor possessed of muchtalent, he showed great taste for music, and his cornet-playing was admired by
all who heard him.128

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 395

Some missionaries used the prevalence of disease in the industrial schools to lobby
for government support for boarding schools. In making the case for such a boarding
school on the Keeseekoose Reserve in what is now Saskatchewan, Roman Catholic
missionary J. Decorby informed Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1899 that “children could no longer be sent from here to industrial schools. Already a good number
have been sent. Although care was taken to send only those who gave the best assurances of health, all are dead, with the exception of one girl.” Decorby promised that if
the government built a Catholic boarding school on the reserve, “the number of children would be small” and “on the first symptom of the disease appearing they would
be sent home.”129
In 1896, Indian Commissioner A. E. Forget asked a series of doctors in the NorthWest Territories for their opinion as to whether residential schooling increased thelikelihood of students’ developing tuberculosis. Dr. A. B. Stewart responded that if
schools took proper sanitary precautions, they should reduce, rather than increase,
students’ risk of developing the disease. He added that “it is a well established fact that
Tuberculosis is contagious,” and that when students came down with the infection,“steps should be taken to have them isolated.” That, of course, could be done only
if the school had an infirmary. Dr. Lindsay said that whether from “faulty construction, unsuitable location, improper ventilation, uneven temperature, or negligence,”
the schools were unhealthy. Given the fact that tuberculosis was uncommon among
First Nations people during the years when they “had access to the nutritious buffalo
meat,” he thought it important for the schools to provide “a liberal quantity of goodsubstantial food.” He also thought it important that students be well clothed and getplenty of fresh air and exercise. Key to the process were selecting healthy children,
removing sources of infection, maintaining high standards of sanitation, and ensuring the regular testing and treatment of the students. Dr. J. L. Hicks wrote that “notenough care was taken to get those who are healthy” when recruiting students. Dr. S.
E. Macadam, who believed tuberculosis to be hereditary, said the disease was hastened on in the residential schools by “the greater confinement and less freedom.” Dr.
R. Spencer, who subscribed to the view that First Nations people had a hereditary tendency to tuberculosis, attributed some of the blame for the prevalence of the disease
to the poor ventilation systems in the schools.130
After reviewing the responses, Deputy Minister Reed concluded that the question
would be resolved only through the improved collection of statistics. In the meantime,schools should make use of “simple, inexpensive, yet effective” methods to improveventilation and segregate tubercular students, “especially at night.”131
In 1904, W. R. Tucker, a day school principal in Moose Woods in what is now
Saskatchewan, advised the federal government not to rebuild the Qu’Appelle industrial school, which had been recently destroyed by fire. His reason was the high death
rate of students in the schools. He provided a list of the number of students from the396 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

reserve where he worked who had attended the Qu’Appelle school or other industrial schools and who had returned to die of tuberculosis.132 In response to the issues
Tucker had raised, Indian Commissioner David Laird reviewed the death rates in theindustrial schools on the Prairies for the five-year period ending in the summer of
1903. He concluded that the average death rate was 4%. He compared this to the 4.4%
child mortality rate for the ten Indian agencies from which students were recruitedfor 1902. On this basis, he concluded that “consumption and other diseases are justas prevalent and fatal on the Reserves as in the schools.” (These can be expressed as
4,000 and 4,400 per 100,000 of population. As will be discussed later, according to theIndian Affairs chief medical officer, the overall Canadian death rate for those between
five and fourteen years of age was 430 per 100,000.)133
Laird then moved on to a problem that the schools were never able to address properly: “what is to be done with the pupils who develop consumption in an Industrial
School?” He pointed out that they should not be allowed to stay in the school, where
they would be a threat to other students, or sent home “to spread infection there.” Hesuggested converting an existing industrial school into a sanatorium for students. This
proposal, which was completely in keeping with medical thought of the day, would
be made again and again during this period by a variety of government officials andmedical authorities. On every occasion during this period (from 1867 to 1939), thegovernment failed to take action.134

Crowding exacerbates the problem
In some cases, principals recruited more students than they were authorized toenrol. Since they did not receive a per capita grant for these students, there was lessto spend per pupil on food and clothing. The practice also strained the already very
limited sanitary provisions in the schools. In 1891, there were 112 students at theBattleford school—twelve more than were authorized.135 Sarah Soonias, a former student, recalled the primitive sanitary provisions at the school in the early twentiethcentury. She said the girls all had to use the same towel. “And the same water too. We
had a roller of towels which were locked and I remember we could never find a clean
place to wipe ourselves.” For a toilet, “there were three pails and there were 20 to 30
girls.”136 Gilbert Wuttunee had similar memories of his time at the school in the earlytwentieth century: “How the Sam Hill did we survive? You see, they had no sanitaryfacilities. We had the same towels, same basin, using the same water for bathing, oncea week, I think, whether they had scrofula or not.”137
In 1908, the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school had an authorized enrolment offifty and an average enrolment of seventy.138 The Metlakatla, British Columbia, school
had so many extra students in 1905 that the infirmary was converted to a dormitory.139

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 397

In 1906, an inspector reported that “there is scarcely sufficient accommodation in theboys’ division.”140 When he was the Indian commissioner in 1887, Hayter Reed supported a proposal to expand the Qu’Appelle school, where, he wrote, “the girls arepacked together in their dormitory in a way not conducive to health.”141 Eight years
later, Dr. Seymour said that the boys’ dormitory at the Qu’Appelle school was fourtimes smaller than it should be. The beds were jammed in, the walls were only eightfeet (2.4 metres) high, and, in the morning, the smell was “simply awful.” There wasno chance of reducing what he described as the “present very high death rate” fromtuberculosis unless the overcrowding was addressed. Putting in a new furnace by thefall would, he wrote, “be the means of saving a number of lives,” since it would improveventilation and increase the space in the dormitories by allowing for the removal of
the coal stoves. Additional dormitories also were needed to further reduce crowding.
Seymour believed that Aboriginal children “do not bear confinement well” and are“more or less predisposed through hereditary taints to Tuberculosis.”142
Hayter Reed was unimpressed. He asked why, if the need for a furnace was so urgent,
had the request been delayed until it would be almost impossible to supply one before
winter? His opinion was that “some temporary arrangements can be devised for making some of the boys sleep elsewhere.” He observed that it was difficult to reconcile therequest for an additional dormitory to accommodate the existing students when theprincipal was also asking to be allowed to admit more pupils in the coming year. He
had come to view the principal’s requests as being “merely precursors of others kept
back at the time, to be brought forwards after receipt of what may first be asked for.”143
Indian Affairs official Martin Benson was convinced by 1897 that the schools were
unhealthy. He asked whether it was “any wonder that our Indian pupils who have anhereditary tendency to phthisis, should develop alarming symptoms of this disease
after a short residence in some of our schools, brought on by exposure to draughts inschool rooms and sleeping in over-crowded, over-heated and unveltilated [sic] dormitories.”144 In 1903, he supported a request from Regina school principal J. Sinclair
to spend $250 to purchase tents to house tubercular students, because the principal
had demonstrated that “the health of the students is to a great extent dependent upon
their obtaining plenty of fresh air.” He noted, ironically, that the arguments the principal used “in favor of camp life can be used with equal force against the establishmentof boarding and industrial schools.”145 He was not the only one to make this observation. Dr. Seymour had commented in 1895 that “sick pupils who are allowed to go
home, invariably improve, notwithstanding the fact that at home they are not nearly
as well fed as at the school.”146 In reporting on the deaths of six students from tuberculosis, three of whom were from “the Hudson’s Bay country,” Red Deer principal C.
E. Somerset asked in 1903 if “the change of life has not been greater than the children could stand—from the wild, free life, living largely upon fish, to the confined life
here—and one is compelled to ask if after all the boarding school on the reserve is not398 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

more likely to make strong children.”147 In short, many observers believed that conditions in Aboriginal communities, even communities with high levels of tuberculosis,
might be healthier than conditions in residential schools. They also recognized thattreating children in tent hospitals and ensuring that they get plenty of fresh air was not
so different from life in many Aboriginal communities.

Pre-enrolment examinations
Regular examinations of students prior to enrolment were a long time in coming. The 1892 Order-in-Council that established the per capita funding model for allindustrial schools required that schools maintain “dietary and domestic comfort.” The
only restriction on admission was a requirement that no child be admitted without
the approval of the Indian commissioner.148 There was no requirement for medical
examinations for all students prior to admission. Winnipeg physician George Orton
wrote in an 1895 report on the Middlechurch and St. Boniface schools that he would
recommend against
the admission in the future of children of a scrofulous character, whether
with enlarged glands or bone affections, or with any marked tendency toconsumption, both on account of the well-known infectious character of these
diseases and from an economic point of view, it being better to educate and train
thoroughly those only of robust constitutions, who are likely to live long useful
lives.149

The fact that he was speaking of future admissions suggests that, to that date, students with active tuberculosis were being admitted to the schools.
In the spring of the following year, Indian Commissioner A. E. Forget distributed
health certification forms to all principals in Manitoba and the North-West Territories.
He informed them:
It is felt that the standard of health required for admission to Boarding andIndustrial schools should be raised and that a sufficient number of healthy
recruits to keep your authorized enrolment to the maximum can be secured,thus reducing to a minimum the probability of being called upon to discharge apupil on the grounds of health before his, or her, training is complete.

Principals were to send him a copy of the completed form when a student wasadmitted.150
In 1896, Qu’Appelle school principal Hugonnard claimed he was following the policy. “The standard of health of the pupils continues to improve year by year; none
are admitted now without first passing a careful examination by the doctor.” Yet, inthe very same report, Hugonnard maintained, “Consumption still continues to be ourThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 399

worst enemy, and is the disease which has claimed most of the pupils who have diedhere, though in nearly every case it has clearly been hereditary.”151
By 1899, Indian Commissioner David Laird was boasting that
owing to improved sanitary arrangements and to the fact that the medical
examination, which every recruit has to undergo, has been made more stringent;
no alarm need now be felt in regard to the health of pupils attending industrial
and boarding schools, and all who come in contact with Indians should strive todisabuse their minds as to the danger.152

In reality, progress was much slower. Because of difficulties in recruitment, principals continued to accept children who were ill. It was only in 1900 that Middlechurch
principal James Dagg could report, “Owing to the great number of applications foradmission, we were enabled to discharge every case of scrofula and consumption we
had in the school, thus making the health of our pupils excellent.”153
Disputes could arise between principals and doctors over how students shouldbe treated. In southern Alberta, a conflict arose over who was to control the small
Anglican hospital on the Blackfoot Reserve. Like the Catholic hospital on the Blood
Reserve, the Blackfoot hospital was one of a number of mission hospitals receiving
varying degrees of government support. These hospitals constituted the limits of thefederal government’s efforts to provide hospital care to Aboriginal people during thisperiod.154 In the 1890s, Dr. James Lafferty, the Indian Affairs medical officer for theBlackfoot, Sarcee, and Stony reserves (although later spelled as “Stoney,” “Stony” wasthe spelling used at the time), sought to exercise control over the Anglican hospital on
the Blackfoot Reserve. In one case, the wife of the Anglican boarding school principal
refused to allow Lafferty to operate on two boys suffering from tuberculosis. The principal, H. W. Gibbon Stocken, later forbade Lafferty to treat any of his students. Whenpresented with written instructions from Indian Commissioner A. E. Forget to turnthe hospital over to Lafferty, Stocken refused to give him the keys to the building.155 In
response to this conflict, Indian Affairs Minister Clifford Sifton ordered that Lafferty
be givenauthority to remove any child from any such school whom he thinks mightdevelop an incurable disease which would render further expenditure on its
education unavailing and to remove any child temporarily or permanently
suffering from an infectious disease dangerous to the others; that no childshould be admitted into any school without a health certificate from him.156

The following year, in response to a request to transfer a boy with scrofulous sores
from the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve to a hospital in Calgary, IndianAffairs education official Martin Benson wrote that “if the Department’s instructions were properly followed out, no scrofulous pupils would be admitted to such
schools.”157 In the spring of 1903, when the Regina principal requested tents to house400 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

students with scrofula, Benson complained that the school had not been inspected
for a year and a half and the report from that date had made “no special mentionof the health of the pupils.” It was his opinion that “too long periods elapse between
the inspections of Industrial schools.”158 Deputy Minister Frank Pedley recommended
that the schools be inspected “at least” twice a year.159
A 1906 inspection of the Shingwauk Home demonstrated that the medical examination system was not keeping tubercular students out of the schools. The doctors
who carried out the inspection reported:
We also find that there are a few children suffering from tuberculosis attending
the school in whom the signs of the disease are quite evident in the lungs, glands
or bones. Such cases should never be admitted, and in the cases where thedisease develops in the school, should be isolated and sent home or to some
Sanitarium for the treatment of tuberculosis.160

In 1908, parents stopped sending their children to the Chapleau, Ontario, school
after seven of thirty-one children died in a three-month period. Benson could find “norecord of any of the pupils having been medically examined before admission, as they
were nearly all enrolled before the school was placed on a per capita grant.” The local
Indian agent was instructed to ensure that in the future, no children were “taken into
this school without passing a thorough medical examination.”161

Treatment or conversion?
Lafferty’s conflict with Anglican missionaries in southern Alberta underscored an
important issue. The churches sought to maintain control over the operation of hospitals on reserves on which they had a presence. To the government’s frustration, this
could lead to the costly and ineffective duplication of services.162
When students died, school officials sometimes consoled themselves that religious
instruction had provided the children with comfort and hope in their final hours. An
1873 report from the Muncey, Ontario, school reported, “Two of the girls have succumbed to pulmonary disease. Both gave pleasing evidence of their saving interest in
the atonement, and died rejoicing in the hope of eternal life.”163
In discussing student deaths in the school’s 1892 annual report, Middlechurch
school principal A. Burman wrote:
As evidence of the benefit the school is conferring upon the Indians themselves,
it may be stated that the mother of one of the deceased scholars was so touchedby the happiness of her dying child, and her earnestly expressed desires that she
would herself renounce heathenism, that the poor woman not only met sorrowwith calm resignation, but has since earnestly begged for baptism. Doubtless theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 401

future will often bear like witness to the far reaching value of the task committed
to us.164

The nursing experiment
Indian Affairs embarked on a poorly conceived effort to expand nursing services
at the prairie schools in 1901. Three nurses were hired to “give Indian girls at theseschools regular instruction in caring for the sick.” The nurses were to work out of theindustrial schools, staying at each school for between six months and a year. The principals thought the students were too young to be trained as nurses, but recommended
that those with aptitude might be kept in school for an additional year of training orplaced in hospitals.165 Dr. Lafferty questioned whether the “practical result will be very
great.” He based this judgment on the limited amount of training the nurses were able
to give and on what he viewed as the “absence of initiative and prompt decision in
the Indian character.”166 By 1906, Martin Benson had concluded that the program wasa failure. He said that the physician in charge of the project, Dr. Fraser of Brandon,
had never properly carried out the “arrangements which were entered into with him.”
Benson thought that if the government were serious about training First Nations
nurses, “some of the girls from the industrial schools should be placed in hospitals”
for training.167 The nurses, who actually spent only three months a year at any given
school, often found themselves in conflict with school staff.168

The Bryce years: 1904–1914
In 1904, Dr. Peter Bryce was appointed to the newly created position of chief medical officer of the departments of the Interior and Indian Affairs.169 Since 1896, Clifford
Sifton had been responsible for both departments. His political priority had been
to increase immigration to Canada. He sought to fill the Prairies with farmers and,to the concern of many of his critics, he did not restrict his recruiting efforts to theUnited Kingdom.170 The most dramatic increases in immigration came in the earlyyears of the twentieth century: 49,000 people came to Canada in 1901; 146,000 camein 1905.171 Many of these immigrants came from eastern Europe.172 Anti-immigration
politicians claimed that Canada was becoming “the dumping ground for the refuseof every country in the world.”173 Among the prejudices that these immigrants faced
was a fear that they were bringing communicable diseases to Canada.174 The creationof the position of chief medical officer was in keeping with Sifton’s drive to centralize control over all aspects of immigration policy.175 As chief medical officer, Bryce
helped legitimize and defend Sifton’s preference for immigrants from eastern Europe.

402 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

He continued to do this even after Sifton had been replaced as minister responsiblefor immigration by the pro-British Frank Oliver. In one annual report, for example,
Bryce argued that immigrants from Britain, rather than from eastern Europe, weremore likely to be physically unfit. He attributed this to the fact that Britons had been“for several generations factory operatives and dwellers in the congested centers oflarge industrial populations.”176
The federal government was also aware of the very serious health problems affecting the First Nations population of the country at this time. According to the 1903
Indian Affairs annual report, among First Nations peoples, the “death-rate remains
proportionately high, and consequently the aggregate increase in the population falls
short of what might be expected.” Tuberculosis and “infantile diseases” were seen to
be the underlying causes of the high death rate.177
Bryce was recognized as one of the country’s leading public health authorities.
Prior to his appointment, he had been the secretary of the Ontario Board of Health.178
In 1900, he was elected president of the American Public Health Association, the first
Canadian to hold this position. He was also a member of the Canadian Association for
the Prevention of Tuberculosis.179
Given this background, it is not surprising he made the control of tuberculosis acentral focus of his work at Indian Affairs. Over the next five years, Bryce would draw
national attention to the tuberculosis crisis in the Aboriginal population in generaland specifically in residential schools. Bryce was well aware of the socio-economicroots of the illness. In 1908, he said, “The death rate from tuberculosis in any family,community or state is the most exact measure we have of the social status of the individual, community or state.”180
His 1906 annual report outlined the extent of the Aboriginal health crisis. He
observed that “the Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more thandouble that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times.”
Tuberculosis was the prevalent cause of death. He described a cycle of disease in whichinfants and children were infected at home and sent to residential schools, where they
infected other children. The children infected in the schools were “sent home when
too ill to remain at school, or because of being a danger to the other scholars, and have
conveyed the disease to houses previously free.”181
Given the degree of infection in Aboriginal communities, he felt that treatment athome would not be effective. Hospital and sanatorium treatment were required toreduce infection and increase the chances of recovery. These views were in keepingwith contemporary thinking about the control of tuberculosis in the general population.182 But Dr. Bryce specifically recognized that the numbers of First Nations people
needing treatment were daunting. He recommended
the construction at the most central points for several bands of a simple“Home,”—in many cases large double-walled tents, strengthened with a frame

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 403

when necessary, with proper floors, stoves, and such other requisites, so thatseveral patients could be housed there comfortably and yet supplied with foodfrom the band’s funds or rations.183

Although this might sound like primitive accommodation, it was not out of stepwith medical thinking of the day, which, for example, instructed low-income people
who had no other access to fresh air to sleep on the roof.184 The homes that he called
for would also be “schools for training young Indian women as nurses and housekeepers.”185 He established such tent hospitals in Calgary and Morley in Alberta, in
the Touchwood Hills in Saskatchewan, and near Birtle in Manitoba.186 Even before
his appointment, the government had been making use of tent hospitals. In 1903,
Sam, a File Hills student with tuberculosis, was being housed “in a tent by himself.” In
addition, there were several other students at the File Hills school with what Dr. C. E.
Carthew described as “scrofulous sores.”187 By 1910, the Chilliwack, British Columbia,
school had two tent dormitories that were built at a cost of $407. They had floors, shingled roofs, chimneys, and canvas sides.188
In his 1906 annual report, Dr. Bryce was particularly critical of the conditions in thesmall boarding schools, noting that themonthly reports of the physicians attending upon the school children veryfrequently refer to the presence of cases of tubercular disease in its infectious
stage, and do not fail equally often to refer to the unsanitary condition of
the school buildings, erected, in many instances, years ago by some devoted
missionary, from the standpoint more often of proximity to the band thanof regard for a sanitary location, with inadequate ideas as to the necessity
for sunlight, ventilation and fresh air, and often with the crudest ideas ofmaintaining the water-supply and disposing properly of sewage.

These conditions led to “an unusual number of cases of scrofula in the pupils” andrequired “a systematic and thorough overhauling.”189

The Bryce report of 1907
The government was also coming under growing pressure from business organizations in western Canada to prevent tuberculosis from spreading from the Aboriginalcommunity to the non-Aboriginal community. In 1906, the Saskatchewan Medical
Association, the Battleford Board of Trade, and the Associated Boards of Trade ofWestern Canada all called on the federal government to establish sanatoria for industrial school students who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was proposed that
there be a sanatorium for each province in which industrial schools were located.190
Despite these recommendations, no such sanatoria were ever established. The following year, Bryce was instructed to inspect thirty-five residential schools in Manitoba,

404 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Saskatchewan, and Alberta. This inspection would lead to the first of two major reportsthat he would write on residential school conditions.
In 1907, Bryce inspected the school buildings, not the students, and queried thestaff about their knowledge and understanding of tuberculosis. In an age when fresh
air was seen as being central to the successful treatment of tuberculosis, he judged thebuildings to be disastrous, writing thatwith but two or three exceptions no serious attempt at the ventilation ofdormitories or school-rooms has hitherto been made; that the air-space of bothis, in the absence of regular and sufficient ventilation, extremely inadequate;that for at least 7 months in the long winter of the west, double sashes are on
the windows in order to save fuel and maintain warmth and that for some 10
continuous hours children are confined in dormitories, the air of which, if pure
to start with, has within 15 minutes become polluted, so as to be capable ofdetection by ordinary chemical tests.191

He found the school staff and even physicians “inclined to question or minimize
the dangers of infection from scrofulous or consumptive pupils and nothing lessthan peremptory instructions as to how to deal with cases of disease existing in theschools will eliminate this ever-present danger of infection.”192 He gave the principals
a questionnaire to complete regarding the health condition of their former students.
The responses from fifteen schools revealed that “of a total of 1,537 pupils reported
upon nearly 25 per cent are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable
cause of death given is tuberculosis.” He drew particular attention to the fate of thethirty-one students who had been discharged from the File Hills school: nine were ingood health, and twenty-two were dead, all from either consumption or tuberculosis.
(The table in Bryce’s report presents slightly different information: there, he says thatnine students were in good health, one was sick, and twenty-one were dead.)193
It should be noted that the 24% figure that Bryce produced was not a death rate(otherwise known as “mortality rate”). Such rates (whether expressed as a percentage or as a figure of so many deaths per 100,000 of population) record the number ofdeaths under specific circumstances in a specific time period (often, but not always, asingle year). Bryce’s figures were drawn from a period that, in the case of five schools,
dated back to the late 1880s. It is uncertain whether the 24% included both students
who had died while attending school and those who had died after their discharge.
The total 1907 enrolment for the schools he was surveying was, according to theIndian Affairs annual reports, 536 students.194 In his report and subsequent writings
on the 1907 study, Bryce never stated that all the students had died while at school. In
one article, he wrote that “24 per cent. of all the pupils, which had been in the schools
were known to be dead.”195 This lack of certainty is likely due to deficiencies in theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 405

reports the principals gave him: in his report, Bryce referred to the “defective way inwhich the returns had been made.”196
Upon its release in the fall of 1907, the report made national headlines. SaturdayNight magazine reviewed the statistics presented by Bryce and concluded, “Even war
seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the educational system wehave imposed on our Indian wards.” The headline in the Montreal Star read “Death
Rate Among Indians Abnormal.” A similar story in the Ottawa Citizen concluded thatthe schools were “veritable hotbeds for the propagation and spread” of tuberculosis.197
In releasing the report, Indian Affairs asked for comments from Indian agents andschool principals. The Indian Affairs inspector at Gleichen, Alberta, wrote that “onthe whole, I agree with the Dr.’s conclusions.” He said that “if more funds had been
expended to better the conditions complained about in this report and a great deal
less on drugs, there would have been fewer deaths among the pupils.”198 The Indian
agent in Morley, Alberta, J. I. Fleetham, wrote that “as far as the Stony Reserve is concerned I am fully of the opinion that fully 40% of the population more especially thoseunder 25 years of age have more or less tuberculosis in their blood and that 75% of thedeaths during the last three years are from this disease.”199
The churches and schools aggressively defended their records. Brandon, Manitoba,
principal T. Ferrier pointed out that when the schools were first established, there wasno medical screening of students and “a large number of pupils were taken into theschools that should never have been admitted.” Admission was now much tighter,and the diet and clothing were much improved. He argued that since the schools that
responded to Bryce’s survey had been in operation for an average of fifteen years, thedeath rate should have been stated as 1.6% per year, not 24%.200 This is an early example of how Bryce’s findings were going to be misread over the years, both by supporters and critics of the schools. As noted above, Bryce did not present the figure of 24%
as a death rate. He stated that, according to figures provided to him by the principals,a quarter of the individuals who had enrolled in these schools since they opened (andhe noted that some had opened as early as 1888) were dead. Since 24% was not a deathrate, dividing it by fifteen (as Ferrier had done) does not produce an annual death rate.
Round Lake, Saskatchewan, principal J. R. Matheson wrote angrily:
The health of the children and all connected with the school has been excellent.
In view of the present exaggerated, and in some cases, most unfair agitation,
regarding the unhealthy condition of Indian schools in general, I would like todraw attention to the fact that for the past year in this school, with a roll of over
60 children, half-breeds, Indians and whites, gathered from different places
throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan, hundreds of miles apart, there has notbeen a single case of sickness serious enough to prevent attendance of the childat school and dining table for any two days in the year, and all this without any
change in the system of ventilation and sanitation pursued by this school for406 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the last 15 years. Can any public school in Canada show a better, or as good arecord.201

The responses from other principals made it clear that many schools were still
admitting tubercular students. The principal of the Anglican school at Brocket, Alberta,
W. R. Haynes, wrote, “Anyone who has been amongst the Indians for any length oftime, know [sic] that practically all are full of tuberculosis, and how can he expect theiroffspring to be otherwise.” He said the local doctor did not admit any “who has any
signs of the dread disease.” But he recognized that if “every pupil were rejected on
the grounds of tuberculosis in their families, I am afraid you might as well close theschools altogether.”202 From Qu’Appelle, Principal Hugonnard responded that many
students with scrofula had “no better place to be sent” than his school. He concluded
that the school’s death rate, which had been declining, was “due to the poor healthinherited from their parents and not to the sanitary conditions of the schools.”203 At asingle medical clinic at the Qu’Appelle school, forty children, or 20% of the enrolment,
underwent surgery for the treatment of tubercular glands.204
Bryce’s report did not contain any recommendations. However, he prepared a separate set of wide-ranging recommendations for Deputy Minister Pedley. He did not
limit himself to health issues. While he was highly critical of residential schooling as itthen existed, he was not an opponent of residential schooling in principle. Given theirregular attendance at day schools, he accepted that residential schooling would continue to be necessary in western Canada. He expected that the schools would further
a process by which “bands gradually surrender their treaty rights and become enfranchised citizens.” In other words, he was supportive of the system’s assimilative agenda.
Like Martin Benson, Bryce thought the industrial schools were overly ambitious.
Although some industrial schools were “expensive successes,” most were “expensive
failures.” And, while he was highly critical of the health conditions in existing boarding
schools, he favoured the boarding school model of a small school with thirty to fifty
students that focused on providing agricultural training. All new schools, he thought,
should have farms, make use of the half-day system, and require student attendance
until the age of eighteen. He proposed that, on finishing their education, students besettled on homesteads laid out for them on nearby reserves. The model for this was
the File Hills Colony that had been developed by Indian Affairs official W. M. Graham
in Saskatchewan.
Bryce also called on the government to assume the “financial management andsystematic control of all Indian education.” The churches would not be completely
excluded, since each of the four churches involved in operating residential schools
would have a representative on a national board of trustees that would be responsible
for the appointment of staff and operation of the schools.
“Radical improvements” were needed for most school buildings “if the pupils are
to remain in good health while at school and be discharged strong and capable ofThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 407

earning a livelihood afterwards.” Although the details differed from school to school,
Bryce saw a need for improvement in ventilation, heating, and sanitation. He thought
there was also a need for a manual of instruction on hygiene, physical drill, and calisthenics, and that all schools should be visited twice yearly by a doctor with experiencein public health work. His final recommendation addressed the issue of tuberculosis. Where local hospitals did not exist, he recommended a continuation of the policy
he had put in place after taking office in 1904: that “a small tent hospital be attachedto the school, wherein tubercularized and scrofulous patients may receive necessary
treatment and where, instead of being sent home to die, they may in most cases, whendealt with early, be nursed back to health without jeopardizing the health of the otherpupils.”205

The Lafferty report of 1908
The following year, Dr. James Lafferty carried out a study of the students at fiveschools in Alberta. He concluded that 80% of the students at the Sarcee (near what is
now Tsuu T’ina), McDougall (later Morley), Old Sun’s (near Gleichen) on the BlackfootReserve, Cluny, and High River schools had tuberculosis of the lungs. One hundred
per cent of the students at the Sarcee and McDougall schools were diagnosed withtuberculosis. At the Cluny school, twenty-two of thirty-nine students were diagnosed
with tuberculosis. Lafferty concluded that First Nations children had little resistanceto tuberculosis, and that life in the schools was “not conducive to the increase of thisresistance.” As a result, he recommended that “no child suffering from the disease
should be admitted to any school or allowed to remain in any school after it is affectedwith the disease.” That he felt compelled to make this recommendation, and to underline it for emphasis, highlights the fact that tubercular students were still being admitted and retained in the schools.
Lafferty also felt compelled to answer a counter-argument that had been put to him
by church and school officials. Their position was that there was no need to ban tubercular students, since the level of infection in the schools and in First Nations communities was roughly the same. Lafferty said that by recruiting children into residential
schools, the government “becomes responsible for the consequences that follow.” Inparticular, he felt it was wrong to recruit a healthy child and then expose “this child tothe very great risk of contracting the disease from children in the school affected withit.”206
Lafferty was particularly critical of the Old Sun’s Anglican school on the BlackfootReserve. The school “has never been free from cases of tuberculosis in my ten yearsof attendance and at the present time there are eight or ten cases of tuberculosis invarious stages in the school.”207 On the basis of the report, Duncan Campbell Scott, the408 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

department’s accountant, recommended that the school not be allowed “to remain
open for a day longer than is absolutely necessary.”208 Deputy Minister Frank Pedleyconcurred and recommended to the minister that the school be closed immediately.209 When informed that he must close the school, the local missionary, H. W.
Gibbon Stocken, who had come into conflict with Dr. Lafferty in the past, now tried toblame Lafferty. He pointed out that the doctor had the power to prohibit the admission of students who were ill, and to remove those who became infectious while inthe school: “How is it then that the School has never been free from tubercular cases.
Who admitted them? In every case Dr. Lafferty. Who retained such cases? Dr. Lafferty.”
Why, Stocken asked, was he being punished for Lafferty’s failures? He also maintainedthat tuberculosis was less prevalent in the schools than in the community. The problems that did exist lay with the government, which had failed to provide a long-promised new school.210 Scott described the church position as “disingenuous.” He pointed
out that in correspondence going back to 1904, the church had recognized the problems with sanitation and uncontrollable disease at the school. He also noted that the
Anglican Bishop of Calgary had opposed the government’s efforts to reorganize theProtestant boarding schools. Construction of the new boarding school was delayedby conflict between the church and the government over who would pay for it. Scottcomplained that “in their dealings with the Department the Church authorities havealways been shifty on this question of funds.”211 Nonetheless, in the face of protests
from the church, the closure was delayed and the school stayed in operation for three
more years until a new building was constructed in 1911.212
In the spring of 1909, Deputy Minister Frank Pedley addressed Lafferty’s two recommendations. A recent amendment to the school application form had instructed
physicians who were inspecting potential students not to admit any “child sufferingfrom scrofula or any form of tubercular disease.” This, he believed, fully implemented
Lafferty’s suggestion that “no child suffering from the disease should be admitted toany school.” But he felt that discharging all tubercular students already in the schools
would lead to the closing of many schools and would “seriously inconvenience others
financially.” This was a problem the department failed to address. In this case, Pedleyalso chose to limit action to the five schools Lafferty had inspected. He recommended
that the infected students Lafferty had identified be dismissed and replaced withhealthy students. Where the principals were to find enough healthy students to fill theschools was a question he avoided.213

The Bryce report of 1909
Dr. Peter Bryce brought the issue of tuberculosis in the schools to a head in 1909.
In that year, he and Lafferty undertook a detailed examination of all 243 students at

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 409

seven schools in southern Alberta. The report on their work, which was prepared byBryce alone, concluded that there was a “marked” presence of tuberculosis among all
age groups. In some schools, “there was not a child that showed a normal temperature.” He noted that, although they were not included in his study, four boys recently
discharged from the High River, Alberta, school were in an “advanced state of the illness.” And, “in no single instance in any school where a young child was found awaiting admission, did it not show signs of tuberculosis.”
Bryce also provided a national context for the school’s death rates. Using the statistics for the Shingkwauk Home in Ontario, the Sarcee school in Alberta, and the
Cranbrook school in British Columbia for the period from 1892 to 1908, he calculated
an annual death rate, from all causes, of 8,000 deaths per 100,000. (He included deaths
at school and “soon after leaving” in making this calculation.) By comparison, according to Bryce, the 1901 Canadian census showed a death rate, from all causes, for thosebetween five and fourteen years of age, of an equivalent of 430 per 100,000.214 The residential school death rate was, in short, almost twenty times higher than the national
death rate.
Bryce sought Lafferty’s assistance in preparing recommendations based on theirstudy. Lafferty, however, said he was “at a loss to offer any suggestions” without firstknowing what the government was prepared to undertake.215 Bryce did not suffer fromsuch trepidation. His recommendations were clear and, once more, wide-ranging.
Given the extent of tuberculosis infection, he felt it was appropriate to consider each
student as “a case of probable tuberculosis—in a word a patient.” The schools should
be required to address the patient’s needs, specifically
his food, its amount and kind, his clothing, the amount of rest required, theamount and nature of his exercise, whether in manual labour or calisthenics,
and the facilities existing for his obtaining what is called today the fresh-air cure.
Naturally as a part of the consideration of each case, will be the treatment of any
special symptoms which may arise, such as removal of tuberculous [sic] glands,
adenoids, as well as his general medical treatment.

Under this approach, the schools would be transformed into sanatoria. The degreeof change was underlined by Bryce’s comment that all the above tasks would haveto take into consideration the “time to be spent on school work proper.” Bryce proposed that the schools be placed under his authority. He would “direct and control
the work of the school officials without interference from Church officials or others.”
He would write a manual describing how they would be operated, and select and train
the nurses and sanitary officers who would have to be hired to operate the schools.
His proposal also called for the hiring of full-time district medical officers to oversee
the public health work in the schools. The existing medical officers, who were paid per
visit, would handle only emergency cases.

410 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

To fulfill his vision, the schools would have to be fitted with balconies and semiopen classrooms. Students would need warmer clothing, and an improvement in theirgeneral diet and in their milk supply in particular. Improvements would also have to
be made in the water supply and sanitation, which often demonstrated “a lamentable indifference to or ignorance of the simplest sanitary requirements.” Drawing on
the earlier Frimley model, he included a significant work component in his proposal.
“Squads of the stronger children would be organized to assist in the indoor and outdoor work, wholly from the standpoint of their physical ability.”216
Although Bryce recommended that this new regime be phased in gradually, it represented a radical restructuring of the residential school system. It struck at both therelationship between the government and the churches, and at the purpose of theinstitutions. If implemented, Bryce’s proposals would have transformed church-run
schools into secular sanatoria, in which health care rather than education was the priority. The sanatoria would, however, continue to be instruments of assimilation, andwould continue to separate children from parents. They would also be much morecostly to operate.

The rejection of Bryce’s recommendations
These proposals were not acceptable to Indian Affairs. In a memorandum on
Bryce’s recommendations, Duncan Campbell Scott, who had become the IndianAffairs superintendent of education in 1909, wrote that while they “may be scientific,”
they were “quite inapplicable to the system under which these schools are conducted.”
By system, he meant the partnership between the government and the churches. Even
if the government were to accept the proposals, “the Churches would not be willingto give up their share of the joint control.” Scott said that Bryce’s and Lafferty’s work
had already “caused considerable irritation and brought protests from the Roman
Catholic authorities.”217 In 1908, Indian Affairs Minister Frank Oliver had indicatedthat no changes would be made to the residential school system without “the acceptance by the Roman Catholic Church of the main features of the proposition and more
complete harmony amongst the various local interests of the Protestant churches.”218
Scott recognized that what Bryce was proposing would never receive such acceptance.
Scott concluded, “If the schools are to be conducted at all we must face the factthat a large number of the pupils will suffer from tuberculosis in some of its various forms.” Rather than turning the schools into sanatoria, he felt, the government
needed to “carry out some common sense reforms to remove the imputation that the
Department is careless of the interests of these children.” His list of reforms included:• continuing to refuse admission to children “reported to be tubercular”• building open-air dormitories and workrooms where neededThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 411• establishing an obligatory diet for all children• increasing the boarding school per capita rate to $100
• setting out sanitation, diet, and exercise requirements in contracts with thechurches219
The more cautious Lafferty submitted his own proposals in June of 1910. He
stressed that his proposals were “practical,” “could be carried out at a comparatively
small expense,” and could be implemented “without disturbing the present system ofmanagement.” He did note that, if strictly enforced, the requirement that any student
suffering “to any extent any form of tuberculosis” be refused admission would leadto the “rapid closing up of all the schools as we know that practically no children are
free from it.” His proposals included the construction of sleeping galleries, open-air
classrooms, and separate sanitary facilities for infected students; the use of isolation
cottages; improvements in diet and clothing; and the employment of nurses and medical inspectors.220
Scott’s and Lafferty’s recommendations were reflected in the contract that wasreached with the churches in the fall of 1910. That contract required that all schools
have “hospital accommodation for the isolation of pupils with infectious diseases or
tuberculosis” and a “modern system of ventilation in dormitories and class-rooms
and sufficient air space in dormitories and class-rooms for the number of pupils
accommodated.” Class A schools, which were to receive a higher level of funding, were
to have “a pure and plentiful water-supply distributed throughout the building,” “aproper system of sanitary water closets, drainage, and disposal of sewage,” and “modern heating apparatus, hot water, steam or hot air.” Students were not to be admitted“until, where practicable, a physician has reported that the child is in good health andsuitable as an inmate of said school.”
The contract also raised the per capita rates for all the boarding schools. With the
exception of some schools in Ontario, all the schools had a minimum rate of the $100
per student that Scott had recommended. (The rate for some of the schools in central
Ontario was increased to $80. Those schools in the Northern Division that were 200
miles, or 322 kilometres, or more from a railway had a rate of $125.) The government
committed itself to providing the schools with medicine and to maintaining government-owned buildings “in good condition and repair and provide for proper sanitation and sanitary appliances.”221 However, there was no provision for the additional
medical staff Lafferty proposed. According to Scott, hiring such staff “would add considerably to the appropriations.” Scott made it clear that Bryce’s central proposal—that the schools be turned into sanatoria—had been rejected: the schools were to be“educational institutions and not Hospitals.”222
Bryce had been outmanoeuvred. He vented his frustration in his annual report for
1913. He wrote that government attitudes towards the First Nations tuberculosis death
rate reflected a belief in “the inevitable presence of disease amongst men, as to its

412 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

more or less incurable character, as to the limited allotted span of human life, andas to unavoidable death as the logical termination of an organism whose work andfunctions as a part of organized society have been fulfilled and are ended.” This, hepointed out, was not the attitude taken towards the presence of disease “in civilizedsocieties.”223 In effect, he was accusing Indian Affairs of taking tuberculosis among First
Nations people for granted: “so wide-spread is the presence of tuberculosis or scrofulathat its constant presence has almost ceased to excite any surprise or alarm.”224 The
result of this neglect of First Nations health could be read in the 1911 census result.
Bryce pointed out that the First Nations population was increasing at a rate of “little
more than one-fifth of the natural increase in any white community in Canada.”225
In the same year that Bryce published this attack on government policy, Duncan
Campbell Scott became deputy minister of Indian Affairs. Although Bryce remainedon the government payroll for another eight years, Scott never asked him to do any
more inspection work for Indian Affairs. In 1914, when Bryce asked for access to theIndian Affairs medical files to prepare his annual report, Scott informed him that
there was no need to prepare a report. He said the work Bryce was doing would betaken care of by Dr. O. I. Grain, who had been hired to oversee medical services on
the Prairies. Although he continued with his work for the Department of the Interior,
Bryce’s involvement in Indian Affairs had essentially ceased.226 After failing in his
attempt to have responsibility for First Nations health transferred to the newly createdfederal health department, Bryce was forced into retirement in 1921.227 The following
year, he wrote a brief pamphlet, The Story of a National Crime: Being an Appeal for
Justice to the Indians of Canada. It outlined his 1907 and 1909 reports, their recommendations, and how Deputy Minister Scott had thwarted his proposals.228 The federal government did not appoint a new chief medical officer until 1927, six years after
Bryce’s retirement. 229

The Scott years: 1913–1932
Duncan Campbell Scott was deputy minister of Indian Affairs from 1913 until
his retirement in early 1932. Having outmanoeuvred Peter Bryce in 1914, he had afree hand within the department to implement the “common sense reforms” he had
inserted into the 1910 contract with the churches. The 1910 contract did improve conditions in many schools. Certainly, the increase in the per capita grant allowed for
improvements in clothing and diets. However, the First World War meant that the government was not able to renovate many of the boarding schools. Wartime inflation also
severely reduced the value of the funding increases. As a result, by the 1920s, many of
the schools were continuing to struggle financially. Financial problems led inevitably
to further crowding, poor building conditions, increased demands for student labour,

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 413

decreases in the quality of the diet, poor-quality clothing, and reduced access to medical attention. The federal government did little to isolate contagious students or toprovide them with treatment to ease their suffering. The improvements that Scott had
inserted were in large measure either insufficient or only partially implemented. The
health problems in schools in southern Alberta, the lack of school infirmaries andmedical staff, the impact of the 1918–19 influenza epidemic, and the failure to screenout tubercular students all demonstrate that the government and church partnershipthat operated the schools failed to respond adequately to an ongoing health crisis in
the schools. In doing so, they both ignored the recommendations of senior medical
staff and undermined the health of Aboriginal people for decades to come.

Ongoing problems in southern Alberta
The limitations of the 1910 contract can be seen in the ongoing problems experienced in the schools in southern Alberta. Dr. O. I. Grain had been hired in 1914 as
medical inspector for the western provinces. In that job, he was tasked with providing“practical suggestions” on how to reduce “the scourge of tuberculosis.” There was alsoa reminder that “the expenditure is limited to a vote by Parliament and should not be
exceeded during the fiscal year.” Practical suggestions, in other words, were low-costsuggestions.230 Like doctors Bryce and Lafferty before him, Grain was highly critical ofmany of the schools and hospitals in southern Alberta. In his first year on the job, heinspected the “so-called hospital” on the Blackfoot Reserve. Having first commented
that the “less said about it the better,” he went on to say that this government-funded,church-run hospital had only two patients, an orphan and an elderly man, both ofwhom appeared to be living there “for keeps.” If the hospital were to continue to operate, he thought, it should not be under church control.231 He was equally dismissiveof the Old Sun’s Anglican school and hospital near Gleichen on the Blood Reserve.
He found the girls’ quarter “most unfit for habitation.” Again, he recommended
direct government supervision of the institutions, although he did acknowledge thatthe nearby Roman Catholic schools and hospitals, established by missionaries andfunded by the government, were far better administered.232
The Old Sun’s principal, Samuel Middleton, said that Grain’s allegation that theschool was “dirty” was “an absolute lie,” and that the charge that the children were“ill-clad” was one of Grain’s “flights of imagination,” based on his impressions of afew students returning from their afternoon walk.233 Two years later, Grain returnedand gave the school a much more positive assessment, saying “everything was insplendid order.”234 That was not the case everywhere. In 1914, Grain described the
Presbyterian school in Kamsack as “the worst residential school I have had to visit,
for the Department, as yet.” Conditions were so bad he could see no alternative other414 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

than to close it down. In its place, he recommended the establishment of a day school
and a hospital.235 That same year, he described one of the buildings at the Red Deer
school as “the worst laid out affair I ever saw and I would think it almost impossible tokeep it sanitary.” He recommended gutting the building and beginning anew.236
Grain’s was not the only voice of criticism. In January 1913, Dr. J. J. Gillespie reported
that only seven of nineteen students were in “good general physical condition” at the
Anglican school in Brocket, Alberta. Nine had tuberculosis; of those, four had “openrunning sores.” Going beyond medical issues, he commented that the staff was “toosmall and inefficient,” the clothing was unsuitable, the children were kept in a “deplorable state of uncleanliness,” and the buildings were “dirty and unsanitary.” Given thiscomplete indictment, it is not surprising he recommended the school be closed.237
Anglican Archdeacon John Tims wrote that the principal had once waited nine weeks
before the delivery of medications to treat the children’s illnesses.238 In March of thatyear, another government inspector said the school was dirty, all but two of the students were “very poorly clad,” and “the staff afforded no very uplifting example.”239 In
1913 and 1918, Indian Affairs threatened to withhold the school grant unless improvements were made in the operation of the school.240 Despite these threats, the school
continued to operate.
In 1918, Dr. N. D. Steel, the medical officer for the Blood Agency in Alberta, wrote areport about the health attitudes of the principals of the Anglican and Roman Catholicschools on the reserve, saying they had demonstrated “obstinate opposition” to his
proposals to improve ventilation at the schools to combat the spread of “very severe”
cases of pneumonia. In frustration, he wrote that “these schools had better be closed
entirely than to be operated under an improper system of ventilation and diet.” On thesubject of diet, he recommended, “Less white flour and more whole flour should be
used, less beef and more wild meats, less potatoes and more vegetables, less sugar andmore fresh fruit, less tea and coffee and more water and milk.” The health problems hesaw on reserves were not the result of any natural susceptibility to disease. Rather, hethought, they were the result of the adoption of European habits of life: “I am sorry toobserve that many of these habits have been and are being ingrained into the lives ofthese aboriginies [sic] by their white teachers.”241
In November 1920, Dr. F. L. Corbett surveyed five schools in southern Alberta.
He described the students at the Old Sun’s school as being “below par in healthand appearance.” Seventy per cent of the fifty students in the school had “somewhat
enlarged lymphatic glands of the neck.” Eight were in need of surgical treatment, andhe thought another twenty-five should have fresh-air treatment. He recommended
diets of milk, eggs, cod-liver oil, and iron supplements. In addition to the tubercularchildren, he said, eight children were suffering from serious eye disease, while 60% of
the students had scabies. “The condition has been neglected or unrecognized and has
plainly gone on for months. The hands and arms, and in fact the whole bodies of many

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 415

of the children being covered with crusts and sores from this disgusting disease.” Thedormitories were crowded; the ceilings were low; the floors were unvarnished; andthe classroom, in a detached building and heated by a stove, was “in no sense modern.” There was no infirmary at the school to allow for the isolation and treatment ofsick children.
Corbett noted that “it is a constant experience that Indian children being taken
ill with tuberculosis diseases while in the schools, and sent home, make remarkable
recoveries in the open air life of the tent.” He said that if the principles of the sanatorium were incorporated in school design, the result would be “gratifying” and tuberculosis would be “reduced to a minimum.”He gave a much more positive report on the Cluny school, only eleven kilometresaway. There, the students were healthy, well fed, and well clothed. Only one childin the seventy enrolled in the school showed any signs of tubercular infection. The
administration provided additional food to students who were ill and had arranged
an outdoor sleeping balcony.
The thirty-three students at the Sarcee school near Calgary were “in a condition
bad in the extremt [sic].” Twenty-nine “were fighting a losing battle” with tuberculosis. In the classroom, many of the students “sit at their desks with unsightly bandages
around their necks to cover up their large swellings and foul sores.” One girl in theinfirmary was in a “pitiable” state. He found hercurled up in a bed that is filthy, in a room that is untidy, dirty and dilapidated,in the north-west corner of the building with no provision of balcony, sunshineor fresh air. Both sides of her neck and chest are swollen and five foul ulcers are
discovered when we lift the bandages. This gives her pain, and her tears from her
fear of being touched, intensifies the picture of her misery.

Corbett filed his report in December. He said he expected the condition of thechildren would only worsen as winter intensified. He felt the school was not solely toblame for the poor health of the children, since conditions on the reserve were “truly
deplorable,” with most of the people he examined showing signs of tuberculosis. To
address the overall problem, he recommended closing the school and turning it—after considerable renovation—into a sanatorium.
He found that conditions at the Hobbema school were much better. Although sevenchildren looked anemic, he believed that the extra food they were being given would“bring them up to a standard of good health.” However, the dormitories were crowded
and the balconies were not used as often as he felt they should be. He thought the students at the St. Albert school near Edmonton were well-cared-for as well.242
Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham provided Dr. Corbett’s report to Scott, noting
the situation at the Old Sun’s school was the result of “gross carelessness on the part of416 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

those in charge of the School.” He said it would be a mistake to allow the Sarcee school
to continue to operate.243
Scott agreed. He informed Indian Affairs Minister James Lougheed, “The conditions at the Old Sun’s school are disgraceful, and the principal and medical attendant
are worthy of serious censure for allowing such health conditions to exist.” The conditions at the Sarcee Reserve school were so serious, Scott wrote, that the best measure
would be to turn the school into a hospital—and the reserve residents should pay forthe improvement. As Scott wrote, “Those Indians have a large reserve and more of
it should be turned into cash as soon as possible and used for their benefit, and thefunds we have on hand should be fully used.”244
In the school’s defence, Anglicans again reminded the federal government thatthey had brought conditions at the Sarcee school to the government’s attention in thepast, and had recommended that the school be closed and turned into a hospital forthe treatment of children with tuberculosis.245 By 1922, Indian Affairs reported that theSarcee school had been closed and turned into a hospital.246 In the same year, Grainwas dismissed, due to what were described as his “intemperate habits.”247

Lack of treatment facilities and medical staff
Even though the 1910 contract required all schools to have hospital accommodation to prevent the spread of infectious disease, many schools continued to be in needof a proper infirmary. Inspector W. J. Hamilton wrote of the Chapleau school in 1915
that “the one objectionable feature in connection with my inspection was seeing thesick pupils, tubercular, mingling with the well ones in their school work as well as intheir play. There has been [sic] several deaths lately in the school, yet there are no
facilities for separating the sick from the well.”248
When, in 1915, there was an outbreak of tuberculosis at the Shoal Lake school innorthwestern Ontario, the school had no “place to put them beyond the childrens [sic]dormitories,” and had requested that Indian Affairs supply the school with “Hospitalfurnishings.”249
Indian agent Alfred Lomas alerted Indian Affairs to the need to segregate “childrenof tubercular tendencies” at the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school in 1921. At
the time, those suspected of having tuberculosis were sleeping in the same dormitories as healthy children. Lomas said he was reminded of the words of a parent who
had refused to send his children to Kuper Island because “his family was free fromthe disease and always had been.” Therefore, “in justice to his children,” he could notsend them to Kuper Island. As long as the government did “nothing to try and remedy the condition,” parents would have no confidence in the school.250 In 1922, school
inspector R. H. Cairns noted that eleven students at the Kuper Island school were out

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 417

on sick leave. “The Indians,” he wrote, “are inclined to boycott this school on accountof so many deaths.”251 They had good reason: a 1919 survey of the condition of former
students indicated that 66 of 190 males and 50 of 139 females had died.252
An inspection of the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school found in 1923 that twelveof the school’s seventy-two students were sick. Inspector W. Murison noted there was“no accommodation at this school for isolation in cases of sickness.” When he pointed
out that children suffering from chicken pox were sleeping in the same dormitory as
healthy children, the principal responded that it was just as well that the disease be“permitted to run its course as no doubt they would get it anyway.”253
The churches were well aware of the problem of sick children mingling with healthy
children, and looked to Ottawa for its resolution. The Roman Catholic principals petitioned the federal government for the establishment of sick rooms, under the supervision of a competent nurse, at each school in 1924. They also objected to the sanitaryinspection of the schools by government-appointed nurses. The nurses had “ordered
measures leading to the transformation of our schools into hospitals or sanatoriums;
moreover, in their manners, their dress and their language, they have often forgotten certain requirements essential to the proper training and discipline of Indianchildren.”254
There was also a shortage of qualified medical staff. In 1915, the Indian agent on
the Sarcee Reserve, T. J. Fleetham, recommended that the department hire a trained
practical nurse to work out of the Anglican school to provide services to the students
and the families on the reserve. He noted that “the Churches can only pay small salaries, the consequence is they are not able to obtain qualified nurses.”255 Dr. Grain, themedical inspector for the West, supported his recommendation.256 The lack of medical staff at the schools was underlined by an entry in the High River school journalof 1916. Echoing Shakespeare’s King Richard III, the school author wrote, “A nurse! A
nurse! My kingdom for a nurse.”257
In other cases, sick children were not being treated. In 1915, Indian Affairs secretary J. D. McLean wrote to the Indian agent at Chapleau about “several children
afflicted with eczema who had apparently not been receiving treatment” at the school.
McLean was instructed to arrange for treatment and regular medical inspections of
the school.258 In 1922, the Indian Affairs superintendent of Indian Education, Russell
Ferrier, worried that Chapleau principal George Prewer was “somewhat slow to call in
medical attention,” although he acknowledged that Prewer was “fairly well qualified
to look after minor ailments.”259 Indian Affairs instructed the principal, “Call upon theservices of the Medical Officer without hesitation.”260
The lack of treatment facilities in residential schools mirrored a much larger problem: the lack of treatment facilities in general for First Nations people. Most sanatoria
were constructed by private charities with varying degrees of support from provincial governments. People admitted to sanatoria were expected to pay a portion of the418 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

cost of their care. Indian Affairs would pay these fees for First Nations patients, butthey could not be admitted to sanatoria without prior approval from the department.
Indian Commissioner W. A. Graham urged the federal government to establish a hospital for First Nations people. Deputy Minister Scott rejected his proposals. As veterans were discharged from the Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium in Saskatchewan, which
was run by the provincial anti-tuberculosis league, forty beds were set aside for First
Nations tuberculosis patients. These represented the only significant source of treatment for First Nations people in the West.261 The lack of treatment facilities for adults
contributed to the infection of young children, who in turn were recruited into theschools. It was a vicious cycle of children bringing disease into the schools and infecting those students who were healthy, and children being sent home with the disease,
infecting other family and community members.

Examinations and admissions: 1910–1920
The 1910 contract required that students were not to be admitted to schools “until,
where practicable, a physician, to be named by the Superintendent General, hasreported that the child is in good health.”262 The provision, if enforced, could haveplayed an important role in reducing the spread of tuberculosis and other diseases. As
the record makes clear, it was often overlooked. As early as 1910, High River principal
J. Riou was questioning the fairness of this requirement, asking, “Is this examination
required in white schools?”263
Indian agent J. MacArthur had reported in 1910 that the death rate at the Duck Lake
school was returning to its “high mark.” Two students had died and two others weredying. MacArthur felt the school was “not suitable for the purpose as it has altogether
too many dark corners and a lack of light.” While some might argue that the children
were being infected at home, he pointed out that they spent only one month a year
at home. During that month, they spent “their time on the open prairie and sleep
in tents.” The rest of the year, they were in the school. “No one responsible can get
beyond the sad fact that those children catch the disease while at school.”264 IndianAffairs secretary J. D. McLean concluded,
It is possible that one cause which increases the death rate at this school is thelack of care in examining prospective pupils. If the medical attendant does not
exercise great care and is not possessed of considerable experience in detecting
the presence of tuberculosis, it may be quite possible that he is passing pupils
who could not possibly be admitted under the restrictions laid down by theadmission forms.265

The “where practicable” provision in the contract effectively exempted remoteschools from having students examined before admission. For example, in 1911,

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 419

the Beauval school in Saskatchewan was exempted from the provision when it waspointed out that “no physician can be found” to attend the school.266 Instead, theadministration was instructed to have the students examined “on the first occasion
that a physician visits the school.”267 When seeking to have children admitted to the
Norway House, Manitoba, school in 1912, Principal E. Lecoq notified the federal government, “As there is no doctor, the page has not been filled. But I can certify that thechildren we have are enjoying perfect health.”268
The ongoing presence of tuberculosis in the schools was a sign that inspection waslax. In 1914, Indian Affairs attempted to place a student from the Chapleau school in aprovincial sanatorium.269 Several more cases developed in the spring of 1915,270 leading departmental secretary J. D. McLean to instruct the local Indian agent to ensurethat the doctor who examined prospective students took “care to see that they are ingood health and show no traces of tuberculosis.”271 By May of that year, three students
had been transferred from the school to a local hospital. Two, who were recovering,were to be transferred to provincial sanatoria. McLean instructed the Indian agent
to purchase a tent in which the third student, who was not likely to recover, could behoused under the supervision “of a competent person.”272
The certificate of health form in use by 1920 asked for the student’s age, height,
weight, and defects (if any) of the limbs, eyesight, and hearing. The physician was
also to state if there were any signs of scrofula or “other forms of tubercular disease,”
describe any evidence of cutaneous (skin) disease, state whether the child was subject
to fits, state whether the child had had smallpox, and report on whether the child had
been vaccinated. The physician was also to judge whether the child was “generallyof sound and healthy constitution and fitted to enter an Indian school.” The certificate specifically instructed physicians, “No child suffering from scrofula or any formof tubercular disease is to be admitted to school; if in any special case it is thought that
this rule should be relaxed, a report should be made to the Department setting forth
the facts.”273
Duncan Campbell Scott thought Indian Affairs officials were also to blame for the
inattention to medical inspection, observing in 1925 that “it is our own officers, whopick up orphans, delinquents and others that are causing the difficulty, as occasionally no application forms are forwarded.” He did agree, however, that there should be a“more careful checking of the medical officers’ remarks in the case of all applicants.”274
Two years later, Kamloops, British Columbia, school principal James McGuire complained to Indian Affairs that the Indian agent had “sent us three children with measlesin the early spring. We had over a hundred children down with them at once.” McGuire
bitterly complained that not only was Indian Affairs sending him infectious children,
but it was also not supplying him with a place to house the healthy ones. “Your miserable accommodation here last year for small boys, which I had to tear down, as it wascondemned by the public health officer, did not mend matters.”275 Principals also were420 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

reluctant to discharge students with active tuberculosis. Qu’Appelle school principal
G. Leonard refused to carry out a local physician’s instructions to send tubercular students to a local sanatorium in 1922, claiming they would be “better off at the school
than in the sanatorium.”276
The Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school opened in 1930. In July of that year, Principal
J. P. Mackey reported he had managed to have two of the five tubercular students in
attendance admitted to a local sanatorium. Indian Affairs secretary A. F. MacKenzie
congratulated Mackey on the discharge of the two students, but had concerns about
the three still at the school. MacKenzie explained, “If no other means can be foundto care for them [tubercular children], they must be sent back to their reserves eventhough that seems hard on them. In such a case they are no worse off than if they had
not come to the school.”277
Ten years after the 1910 federal contract for residential schools came into effect, theSaskatchewan government struck a royal commission to examine the extent of tuberculosis in the province. The study examined 1,184 non-First Nations children and
162 First Nations children to see if they had been exposed to, or infected with, tuberculosis. The infection rate for the entire group was 56.6%. However, for First Nations
children, the infection rate was 93.1%.278 With that rate of infection, all First Nations
children in the province were, as Dr. Peter Bryce had previously realized and reported,
potential patients. According to the prevailing views of the day, they required healthy
conditions, good diets, and adequate medical treatment. They had not received thoseup until that point, and they still would not for many years to come.279 A second study,
carried out between 1926 and 1928 at residential schools in Saskatchewan, underlined the role the schools were playing in completing the tubercularization of First
Nations children. The study was carried out at schools that did not discharge students with active or infectious tuberculosis. These students were often referred to as“spreaders” by medical investigators. The study found that students who showed nosigns of having been infected by tuberculosis at the time of their admission to theseschools had been infected within the first two years of their enrolment.280 In short,
Duncan Campbell Scott’s “common sense” measures were actually spreading tuberculosis rather than working to contain it.
Scott retired in early 1932. His departure coincided with the onset of the Great
Depression. With the exception of work initiated by the Saskatchewan AntiTuberculosis League, the neglect of First Nations health in general and in residential
schools in particular would only intensify during the 1930s.

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 421

The Depression era: 1930–1939
Federal inaction
After Peter Bryce’s forced retirement in 1921, Indian Affairs did not have a chief
medical officer until 1927, when Dr. E. L. Stone was appointed to the position. The gap
is actually greater, since, from 1913 onwards, Bryce had not been doing any work on
First Nations issues.281 Stone, who had previously worked in Norway House, Manitoba,
was personally aware of the extent of tuberculosis among First Nations.282 At the timeof his appointment, Canada was spending $27,000 a year on health services at residential schools ($9,000 for drugs, $4,500 for dental services, and $13,500 for medical services). The overall amount being spent on First Nations health services was $485,978.
Of that, $30,000 was allocated for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis (anamount that the government announced it intended to increase to $50,000).283
In 1930, Stone described the First Nations tuberculosis epidemic as the “most acutepublic health problem in Canada at the present time.” At that time, the First Nations
tuberculosis death rate was twenty times higher than the national tuberculosis death
rate. In places such as Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands), he said, the disease constituted a “menace to the existence of the Bands, and to the white community
as well.” Dr. Stone also knew that the government’s response was inadequate. “At thepresent time it is being found necessary to refuse applications for sanatorium treatment due to lack of funds for maintenance.”284
Throughout the 1930s, the First Nations death rate from tuberculosis never fell
below 600 deaths per 100,000, while the death rate from tuberculosis for the overall
Canadian population fell from 79.8 per 100,000 in 1930 to 53.6 per 100,000 in 1939.285
In western Canada, the differences in the health conditions between First Nations
people and the rest of the population could be starkly measured by the tuberculosis
death rates. In 1934, First Nations people made up 2.2% of the Manitoba population,
but accounted for 31% of the tuberculosis deaths. In Saskatchewan, the comparable
figures were 1.6% of population and 27% of deaths; in Alberta, they were 2.1% and34%; and in British Columbia, they were 3.7% and 35%.286
Stone’s negative response to Manitoba health minister E. W. Montgomery’s offer
of co-operation in the establishment of a sanatorium for First Nations people in 1930
indicates just how little was being done. According to Montgomery, Stone statedthat the tuberculosis problem was “almost beyond the power of the Department tomeet.”287
To reverse this situation, Stone proposed that Indian Affairs adopt a ten-year planfor treating tuberculosis among the First Nations population. The first year would haveseen a $100,000 increase in spending. This money would be used to finance four travelling clinics, comprised of a specialist, a dentist, a surgical nurse, and a public health422 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

nurse, who would travel from reserve to reserve, providing diagnostic services andlimited treatment. Under his plan, an additional $100,000 a year would then be added
to the tuberculosis budget. This money would be used to create sanatoria beds andto pay for treatment. By the end of the ten-year period, a total of 450 sanatoria spaces
would have been created and the government would be spending a million dollars a
year on the treatment of First Nations tuberculosis.288 In making an appeal for support
for his plan, he noted, “At the same time the work now being done, and which consumes all available funds, cannot with humanity be lessened.”289
He was wrong. Not only did the federal government fail to implement his proposed
ten-year plan, but it also cut back on the work it was doing. In 1932–33, the IndianAffairs health budget was reduced by 20%. The Indian Affairs annual report for 1932
admitted that the government had been obliged to “limit admissions of tuberculous
Indians to sanatoria and hospitals,” a measure that it acknowledged would “result in
an increased spread of the disease.” The report claimed that a remedy to the crisis was“not impossible, either from a scientific or financial standpoint.” Indian Affairs placed
the blame on the people of Canada. Acting Deputy Minister A. S. Williams wrote thatthe department was ready to go forward, but could not do so “until popular demand, as
expressed in parliamentary appropriations, makes it possible to proceed.”290 Table 16.3
shows the reduction in government spending of First Nations health in this period,
demonstrating that over a two-year period, it fell by 24.5%. This table appeared in the
Indian Affairs annual report for 1933. For comparison purposes, the department had
included the amount the Ontario government was spending on health on a per capita
basis, although it did not specify the year to which the $30 per capita figure refers. It isclear, however, that Ontario was spending three to four times more per person on thehealth of its general population than Canada was spending on First Nations health.
Table 16.3. Cost of Indian Health Services During the Fiscal Years 1931–32, 1932–33,
1933–34.
Appropriation for 1931–32$1,050,000

Appropriation for 1932–33

839,000

Appropriation for 1933–34

793,000

Number of Indians, 110,000
Cost per capita per annum, 1931–32

10.00

Cost per capita per annum, 1932–33

7.60

Cost per capita per annum, 1933–34

7.20

Cost per capita per annum for the population at large, as estimated by the
Ontario Provincial Department of Health30.00

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1933, 14.

After the 1932 budget cuts, an Indian Affairs circular advised staff that it was “necessary to take measures to curtail expenditure to medical and hospital attendance.”

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 423

Tubercular patients were to be authorized for admission to hospitals or sanatoria only
if they were in a condition of “actual suffering.” Those who were at risk of disfigurement were to be given “special consideration” if their “outlook” was deemed to be“hopeful.”291 In 1934, a British Columbia doctor proposed to extend the tuberculosis
work he had carried out in the Chilliwack residential school. Stone responded thatIndian Affairs “was not in a position at present to embark on any definite tuberculosis
work.”292
It was not only direct health spending that was cut during the Depression. Within ayear of Dr. Harold McGill’s appointment as deputy minister in the fall of 1932, Indian
agents were instructed that relief granted to “able-bodied Indians should be drastically curtailed.”293 Later that year, categories for sick relief were redrawn in an effort
to “reduce rather than increase … expenditures on sick relief.”294 According to a 1934
circular, Indian agents were restricted to providing the following food items to First
Nations people on relief:Tea, sugar, salt pork, rice, beans, molasses, macaroni, rolled oats, barley, lard,baking powder, flour, canned tomatoes, salt, yeast, dried peas, the cheapest
cuts of fresh meat or the cheapest kind of fish. Root vegetables or apples, of thecheapest variety, may be supplied only in cases where the Indians have had noopportunity of raising these products on their own lands.295

These policies had a tremendous impact on the health of many First Nations people. It is estimated that during the Depression, approximately 20% of the general
Canadian population received some form of relief. For the First Nations population,
the figure was 33%.296 The level of relief that was provided to all unemployed Canadians
was meagre.297 However, compared to that provided to First Nations people, it appears
generous. The per capita spending on relief for all Canadians in 1932 was $44.33. By
1936, this figure had risen to $61.69. Comparable per capita spending on First Nations
relief for those years was $20.30 and $20.57—less than half, and then less than a third,of what other Canadians on relief were given.298 As noted earlier, by the 1930s, it waswell known that decent living conditions and a good diet constituted the best protection against the development of tuberculosis. The government’s miserly approach torelief policy actively undermined First Nations’ health.

The situation in the schools
Despite the fact that for over twenty years the schools had prohibited the admissionof tubercular children, tuberculosis remained a serious and ongoing problem in the
1930s, and continued to be the leading cause of death in the schools. The assistantIndian commissioner for British Columbia, C. C. Perry, concluded in 1930 that the
Cranbrook school was “a veritable tubercular institution.” The school was in the worst

424 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

condition of any he had seen in his twenty-three years of working with First Nations
people. He reported that parents of healthy children had objected to sending theirchildren to an institution with so many tubercular students. “Children were kept in
the school in tubercular condition until they were perforce sent home to die.” He said
it was the opinion of one doctor that “if the physically unfit were eliminated from the
School on medical examination, the School would have to be closed.”299 A common
method of testing for tuberculosis during this period was through the administrationof what was referred to as a “tuberculin skin test.” By measuring the response to an
injection of tuberculin, an extract of the tuberculosis bacterium, to the upper layer ofthe skin, doctors could determine if a student had been infected with tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis was an ongoing problem in southern Alberta, and in 1930, of 189
students given tuberculin skin tests at the Roman Catholic and Anglican schools on
the Blood Reserve, 88.3% tested positive for tuberculosis infection. Nine per cent of
the students had visibly swollen glands.300 The study was repeated annually. By 1934,
the number of students testing positively for tuberculosis was only slightly down, at
77.3%.301 In a 1937 survey, the figure had climbed back up to 84.03%.302
In October 1933, Dr. H. K. Mitchell complained that seven of fourteen students
admitted to the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school had active tuberculosis. The doctor
who had accompanied that summer’s Treaty payment expedition had approved themfor admission. Dr. Mitchell, who was offering himself for the job in the future, said it
took “a Physician of some experience to examine these children properly.”303 However,budget cutting also prevented doctors from using the best available technology whenscreening students. In 1934, Dr. J. J. MacRitchie noted that in the past, he had given
all prospective Shubenacadie students an x-ray examination. However, since government had eliminated these examinations, he was forced to “depend altogether on
clinical examination.”304
In 1933, the form that physicians were to fill out after examining students wasamended. It no longer included the instruction: “No child suffering from scrofula or
any form of tubercular disease is to be admitted to school.” This provision had beenin the form since 1909.305 Instead, it asked, “Has this child active tuberculosis in youropinion?” If the answer was yes, the doctor was to describe the infection. The presenceor absence of trachoma and other communicable eye diseases and syphilis were to
be reported. The doctor also was to describe any condition that would make the childunsuitable for residential school or of which the principal should have a warning.306
In 1935, the principal of the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school (also known as
the Lejac Indian Residential School) reported that Dr. C. Pitts had not carried out ageneral examination of the students at the school.307 When asked for an explanation
by Indian Affairs, Pitts claimed that because his father was the principal of a residential school, he knew that the “attention I am giving the Lejac School is as good or better
than in any other place in the province.” (Dr. Pitts’s father, F. E. Pitts, was the principal

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 425

of the Alberni, British Columbia, school in the 1930s.)308 Dr. Pitts could not see any
benefit in a general examination of the students, sincewere I to apply the standards of health to them that is applied to children of thewhite schools, that I should have to discharge 90% of them and there would be
no school left; and when I know that they are under the constant observation ofa staff who have the opportunity of reporting any ill health to me either on myweekly visit to the school or by phone.309

Indian agent R. H. Moore was not impressed, saying that, in his opinion, “the examination of the School children is much too casual, not only for the Application for
Admission Forms but also during the time that they are in the school. It would appear
as if 150 or 160 pupils are now examined in less than one hour.”310
Two years later, Philip Phelan, the chief of the Indian Affairs training division,
observed that several children who were suffering from tuberculosis had been admitted to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school in recent years, despite the department’s requirement for thorough medical examinations before admittance.311 He wastold that the students had been recruited by missionaries who had sent them to theschool without first getting authorization from the Indian agent.312 In 1938, IndianAffairs issued instructions that all students recruited to the school “shall be examinedby the best means available at the point nearest to their homes.” The government’s
preference was that x-rays be taken of their chests.313 As was so often the case with theresidential schools, this was not a general instruction, but a specific instruction to a
specific school.
The doctor inquiring into the 1936 death of a student due to tubercular meningitis
at the Kamloops school in British Columbia concluded that the “child was no doubt
developing the disease before admission to the school.”314
In 1939, Dr. D. F. MacInnis complained to Principal Mackey at the Shubenacadie
school that, due to poor screening, the school was being sent “all the advanced t.b.” inthe Maritimes. This, he wrote, was “very unfair to the children who are clean and welland are attending the school.” He noted that one boy was “sent to us last fall in such anadvanced state of t.b. that he died before we could get him to a sanatorium.” The boy’s
condition had been diagnosed by a local doctor before he was admitted but, despite
this, Indian Affairs had insisted that he be sent to Shubenacadie. He urged Mackey toinform Indian Affairs that “this is not a t.b. Clinic and a syphilitic home.”315 The chief
medical officer, E. L. Stone, responded that the admission of the boy with tuberculosis
was “a clear error such as sometimes occurs in the best organizations.”316
While tubercular students continued to be admitted to the schools, access to treatment remained minimal. When W. M. Graham sought to have a boy from Lac La
Ronge admitted to a Saskatchewan hospital in 1931, E. L. Stone recommended that426 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the boy be left in his home community. Based on the information provided to him,
Stone had concluded that the boy had a tubercular spine.
It would be a doubtful service to him to bring him away from his people in the
North and confine him in the hospital. The expense to the Department would
be very considerable, and unless you can assure yourself that his life would
probably be saved by treatment I am inclined to counsel you to leave him where
he is.317

The case of Martina Storkerson illustrates the multiple barriers that Aboriginal people faced in getting treatment. Martina’s mother was of Inuit ancestry and her father
was Norwegian. He had come to Canada as a member of ethnologist Vilhjalmur
Stefansson’s Arctic expeditions of the early twentieth century. Storkerson returned
to Norway alone, leaving his family to seek shelter at the Anglican residential schoolat Hay River in the Northwest Territories. When the school principal, A. J. Vale, wastransferred to the Chapleau school in Ontario, he and his wife took Martina withthem, planning to “get her accustomed to the ways of civilization.” Instead, she developed tuberculosis. The local municipality would not fund the sanatorium treatment
she needed, and neither would Indian Affairs, since she was Inuk (referred to by government as “Eskimo”) and not an Indian under the terms of the Indian Act. A request
to the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch of the federal government for support
was turned down because the girl was no longer a resident of the territories.318
In 1932, the son of John Albert of the Sweet Grass Reserve in Saskatchewan was
diagnosed with tuberculosis. According to Albert, despite his requests to the doctor
who made the diagnosis and to the Indian agent, the boy was not placed in a sanatorium or provided with any treatment. He died in August 1933. In December of thatyear, two more of Albert’s children were diagnosed with tuberculosis. One child washoused in what was described as the Roman Catholic convent in Delmas (possibly theThunderchild residential school), but neither child was given any special treatment. In
April 1934, Albert wrote to Indian Affairs, pleading, “If something is not done for thesechildren in the near future they are going to die.” The residents of the Sweet Grass
Reserve and the Cut Knife municipality backed his appeal.319 Indian Affairs responded
that, due to its limited resources, it reserved “sanatorium treatment for those who had
no homes.”320
School administrators often were unwilling to transfer students with active tuberculosis to sanatoria. In 1935, Bishop Guy of Alberta reiterated his opposition to thegovernment’s sending children from the Qu’Appelle school to the Fort Qu’Appelle
Sanatorium. He said that at the sanatorium, the children were “out of their atmosphere,” and, as a result, “were pining away and dying.” His preference was to havethe government build sunrooms as additions to residential schools in which tubercular students could be isolated.321 When instructed in 1937 to discharge all active

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 427

tubercular cases to the local Anglican hospital, Cluny principal J. Riou objected. He
said that in the past, the school had simply isolated active cases and placed themunder the supervision of a nurse. He believed the hospital, which had no separate
tuberculosis ward, offered inadequate care. Also, at the school, the patients could“receive the visit [sic] of their playmates during the recreation hours.”322 The 1935
report of the United Church’s Commission on Indian Education argued that in residential schools, “the children’s health is more carefully conserved.” They stated thatsurveys at the Brandon and Chilliwack schools showed that four of five children “enter
Residential School with some evidence of t.b.—either active or quiescent.” The schools
provided additional care for “those whose cases demand special attention.” Two girls
at Chilliwack had been pronounced cured, while other students were showing “tremendous improvement.” The health section of the report concluded, “According tocompetent authorities, the Residential School is the key to the solution of the problems of Indian health.”323 While arguing for the effectiveness of the schools as treatment centres, the United Church report also demonstrated the degree to which it wascommon practice for schools to admit infected children. As had been demonstrated
by the Saskatchewan study of the late 1920s, the infected children admitted to theschool would eventually infect the healthy children.
The federal funding cuts directly affected all medical services in the schools. In April
1932, after a medical examination of the Shubenacadie school students, Principal
Mackey asked for funding for treatment of forty-eight tonsil cases and eighteen students with vision problems.324 (During this period, tonsil infections were thought to beclosely associated with the development of tuberculosis. Tonsillectomies were considered preventive measures.)325 Indian Affairs informed him that, “owing to orders
for strict economy,” it would be possible to treat only “the more urgent cases.”326 In
the spring of 1936, Indian Affairs informed Mackey that the department would not
be providing a “tonsil and dental clinic for his school.” Departmental secretary A. F.
MacKenzie noted that one had been held at that school the previous year, while otherschools had done without such service for two to three years.327

Cuts in payments
Later that summer, Dr. D. F. MacInnis resigned as doctor for the Shubenacadie
school to protest the government’s decision to cancel semi-annual medical examinations. In so doing, he drew attention to the death of a student at the school in Marchof that year. MacInnis wrote that when he had visited the school on March 13, he wastold a child had collapsed during mass the day before. He diagnosed her with a case of
peritonitis (an inflammation of the inner lining of the abdomen) and recommended
her immediate hospitalization. She was sent to the local hospital that night and died

428 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the following morning. He concluded that, because the school staff did not seek medical attention for the girl immediately upon her collapse, he did not “consider the people in charge of an institution which would cause such negligence fit people to be incharge.”328 Principal Mackey argued that the doctor was simply angered by the loss of
income coming from the elimination of one of the annual inspections. According toMackey, the girl had not appeared to be seriously ill until the morning that MacInnis
inspected her and had been sent to hospital on the first available train.329 She wasoperated on shortly after her arrival and died the next day after developing pneumonia.330 Indian Affairs did not conduct a further investigation into the matter.

Reporting of deaths
It was not until 1935 that Indian Affairs adopted a formal policy on how deaths at
the schools were to be investigated.331 Under this policy, the principal was to informthe Indian agent of the death of a student. The agent was then to convene and chaira three-person board of inquiry. The two other members of the board were to be theprincipal and the physician who attended the student. The board was to complete aform provided by Indian Affairs that requested information on the cause of death andthe treatment provided to the child. Parents were to be notified of the inquiry andgiven the right to attend or have a representative attend the inquiry to make a statement. However, an inquiry was not to be delayed for more than seventy-two hours toaccommodate parents.332 The department would not pay parents’ transportation costs
to attend the inquiry.333 Indian agents often required prompting to comply with thepolicy. For example, when two pupils died at the Sturgeon Landing school in northern
Saskatchewan in 1937, Philip Phelan, the chief of the Indian Affairs training division,
had to remind the local Indian agent to complete a memorandum of inquiry.334 The
agent, S. Lovell, responded that it was almost impossible to meet the requirements of
the reporting policy. He pointed out that he was located in The Pas, Manitoba, andthe Sturgeon Landing school was sixty miles (96.5 kilometres) away. A doctor fromThe Pas visited the school only once every three months. Lovell thought that, at best,
it would take a week for word of a death at school to get to him and then for him to
get to Sturgeon Landing. He said that in almost every case, “it would be impossible tonotify the pupil’s parents of the death as they live, for the most part in very remote districts, a great distance from the school.”335 When a pupil died at the Sturgeon Landing
school in 1939, no formal inquiry was held, since the Indian agent, the doctor, and theparents were all unable to travel to the school. Instead, the Indian agent filled out theform, based on information provided to him by the principal.336

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 429

Overcrowding
By 1933, Canada’s residential schools were full to their capacity.337 In the coming
years, many were actually at more than full capacity. In 1930, Deputy Minister Scottordered the principal of the McIntosh, Ontario, school to reduce enrolment fromeighty-one to the sixty-five students he was allowed.338 The principal’s explanation wasthat he had taken in the children to help relieve the destitution faced by the Grassy
Narrows Band.339 He said there really was no overcrowding problem: the nuns had
given up their dormitory for some students, and the weaker ones were sleeping in theinfirmary. This should not be viewed as a problem, since, he claimed, the government
allowed students to sleep two to a bed at certain Protestant schools. As for their health,
he said the students were better fed at the school than at home. The government
should, he said, either allow him to admit the students or keep an earlier commitment
and expand the school.340 A year and a half later, the school was still housing its additional students in makeshift arrangements, and asking the government to expand thenumber of pupils for which it was funded.341
When Indian Affairs sought to have a recently orphaned boy admitted to the Fraser
Lake school in 1939, it was noted that although “the school is crowded to capacitywith an excess number of more than ten children; the Principal will always be glad toharbour—even free of charge, such orphans as the one you are referring to.”342 With apupilage of 160, the school actually had 173 students.343 Shortly after taking over theMission, British Columbia, school in 1939, Principal F. O’Grady informed the local
Indian agent that although the pupilage was 160, the school had close to 195 students. The daily allowance was “barely sufficient to provide food, clothing, fuel andother necessary expenses. How then am I to provide for those children for whom thegovernment allows nothing?” He said he would not provide the extra students withless than the rest of the students, or discharge them, since they were often “weakand sickly.”344 While the department declined to increase the overall pupilage to theamount requested by the principal, it did agree to allow the Roman Catholic Church
to take advantage of the fact that the Williams Lake school had enrolled fewer students
than were allowed by its pupilage. Indian Affairs transferred some of the pupilage(and the grants that went with it) from the Williams Lake school to the Mission school,
thereby increasing the school’s revenue.345
An Indian agent’s report on a 1935 death from measles at the Kamloops school
noted that “the sleeping accommodation for 285 pupils in the school consists of fivedormitories, which are crowded. During an epidemic it is impossible to properly isolate the patients and contacts. The need for separate quarters to house sick children isevident.”346 The Kamloops school was not an antiquated mission school. It was housed
in a $300,000 structure that had opened in 1929.347

430 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Sanitation and hygiene problems also continued into this period. A nurse’s inspection of the children at the Anglican school in The Pas in 1933 found that the “conditionof the girls was disgraceful. Almost 80% of the girls had nits [lice] in their hair, manyof them being very bad, and over 50% were dirty in person. Both nurses agreed thatin many cases the girls’ underclothing was dirty.”348 At the Sechelt, British Columbia,
school in 1930, there were only four bathtubs available for forty male and forty female
students. According to Indian agent F. J. C. Ball, this meant that each tub of water had
to serve two students, a fact he considered “disgraceful.”349
Tuberculosis and other infectious illnesses would have spread quickly in thesecrowded conditions.

The Fort Qu’Appelle Health Unit
Research spearheaded by the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League (satl) andthe staff of the Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium helped demonstrate both the problems
with existing residential school admission policies and the ways in which the healthof First Nations children could be improved and protected. With funding from the
National Research Council and Indian Affairs, the satl established a Qu’Appelle
Indian Demonstration Health Unit (commonly referred to as the “Fort Qu’Appelle
Health Unit”) in 1930. The unit promoted measures intended to improve living conditions, including the provision of better housing and water supply, dietary supplements, visiting nurses, and hospitalization of all active tuberculosis cases. These
measures led to a 50% decline in the First Nations tuberculosis death rate by 1932.350
The health unit ensured that students at the Qu’Appelle and File Hills residential
schools were given a tuberculin test. Students judged to be in a contagious condition
were discharged. The policy had a positive impact. In 1926, before the health unit wasestablished, 92% of the students at these two schools had tested positive for tuberculosis. By 1933, when the health unit had been in operation for three years, the percentage of students testing positive for tuberculosis had dropped to less than 60% in
the two schools. This was the same percentage as was found in children being tested
prior to admission to the school. Dr. George Ferguson, the director of medical services for the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League and medical director of the Fort
Qu’Appelle Sanatorium, concluded that, as a result of the strict admission and discharge policy the health unit enforced, healthy students at those two schools were
protected from infection.351
Given these results, he recommended that Indian Affairs extend the unit’s work
to the rest of the province. His specific plan called for the testing of all residential
school dairy herds, x-ray testing of all First Nations students at the start of each school
year, and the conversion of a residential school into a sanatorium dedicated to theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 431

education and treatment of children who either had active tuberculosis or were infectious. Dr. Ferguson estimated that there were ninety children in the province who
needed such care.352
In assessing the proposal for Indian Affairs, E. L. Stone said that it was “sound inevery way from the scientific viewpoint.” Stone thought the residential school cattle
herds could be cleared of tuberculosis for less than $3,000. By employing a special
examining officer, he thought, it would be possible to do a better job of screening out
infectious students—although he did not commit himself to x-rays. But, he believed
the churches would represent a major stumbling block to the other reforms Ferguson
proposed. None of them would be willing to have one of the existing schools transformed into a sanatorium. Neither would they be happy with the establishment of
single, government-run sanatoria. If there were to be sanatoria, there would be objections to “the Department putting Protestant children in a Roman Catholic institution, or vice versa.” As well, he thought parents would object to sending their children
to a distant treatment centre.353 Stone was accurate in his surmise. In 1935, Bishop
Guy of Alberta expressed his opposition to the establishment of sanatoria solely for
Aboriginal students. A government-run sanatorium, he argued, would end up being a
Protestant facility with “protestant staff and direction.”354
Although the government was not prepared to establish a sanatorium, it did agree
to support a travelling clinic that examined the students in all the residential schools
in Saskatchewan.355 In its first survey, conducted in 1933, the clinic identified twelve
active cases of tuberculosis and sixty-four potentially infectious students. In his reporton this research, Ferguson wrote that identification and segregation of the “spreaders” “would certainly appear to be the most important and feasible single action to betaken with regard to tuberculosis in Indian Boarding Schools.”356 A 1934 survey of 921
students at eleven residential schools found 67 students who needed to be removed
from school. Ferguson recommended that seventeen of the students be sent to a sanatorium or hospital. He reiterated his belief that a single residential school should be
dedicated to the treatment and education of the remaining fifty contagious students.
Segregating these “spreaders” was the “most important action that can be taken for the
reduction of tuberculosis among Indian School children.”357 In schools where intense
efforts had been made in the past to remove infectious students, the infection rate waslower than elsewhere.358 Although the report did not name the schools that had takensuch measures, it is probable he was referring to the File Hills and Qu’Appelle schools,
since these were the two schools in which the Fort Qu’Appelle Health Unit had been
undertaking preventive work.
Ferguson’s repeated recommendation that some schools be transformed into sanatoria was endorsed by D. A. Stewart, the medical superintendent of the Sanatorium
Board of Manitoba, in 1934.359 The proposal even gained the support of some church
leaders. The Anglican Archdeacon of Saskatchewan, W. E. J. Paul, wrote to Prime

432 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Minister Mackenzie King, urging the construction of a sanatorium for First Nations
people in Prince Albert.360 Despite these recommendations, no such sanatorium wasbuilt during this period.

Vaccination and experimentation
The Fort Qu’Appelle Health Unit also conducted a test of the bacillus CalmetteGuérin (bcg; alternately bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine. The bcg vaccine is a weakened strain of tubercle bacillus that can reduce vulnerability to tuberculosis. In 1926,
after successful tests of the vaccine in France, it was tested on the infants of tubercularfamilies in Montréal. The results of nine years of testing in that city indicated that,
depending on age, bcg lowered children’s mortality rates by between one-quarterand one-third. There were, however, concerns that the infection could flare up laterin life. In addition, bcg was associated with the death of seventy-one children in
Lübeck, Germany, in 1929–30. (The resulting court case gave rise to one of Europe’s
earliest informed-consent laws.) As a result, many researchers recommended continued reliance on sanatorium treatment as opposed to vaccination. However, it wasthought that where infants were very likely to be exposed to tuberculosis, the use of
bcg was warranted.361 This meant that it showed particular promise for use in First
Nations communities.
Dr. George Ferguson had misgivings about the use of the vaccine, writing in 1931
that it was unwise to conduct human experiments on people who were wards of thegovernment.362 Despite this uncertainty, Ferguson decided to go ahead with the teston First Nations students at the health unit hospital and in the Qu’Appelle and File
Hills residential schools, and, before he began, he had his own six children vaccinatedwith bcg.363 In the fall of 1933, fifty-one infants born in the File Hills hospital were
vaccinated. An additional fifty-one infants, who were born at home, were selected toserve as the control group.364 Over a twelve-year period, 306 infants were vaccinated,of whom 6 developed tuberculosis, leading to 2 deaths. Among the control group of
303, there were 29 cases of tuberculosis and 9 deaths from tuberculosis. The children
were still vulnerable to the health risks that arose from life on the reserve: seven years
into the study, 105 of the 609 infants who had been vaccinated were dead, mostly
from pneumonia and gastrointestinal problems.365 In the fall of 1933, Ferguson had
begun the selective vaccination with bcg of children in residential schools. He also
maintained a control group of students.366 There were no deaths among the schoolchildren who had been vaccinated or from the control group. This may have been due
to Ferguson’s policy of excluding infectious students from the schools.367

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 433

Provincial pressure
Provincial governments in western Canada, concerned that tuberculosis could
spread from reserves to the non-Aboriginal community, put increasing pressure on
the federal government to take action. In 1934, the Saskatchewan health minister
called on Ottawa to employ more doctors on reserves, to increase the diagnostic andtreatment services provided to First Nations people, and to take steps to ensure thatstudents with tuberculosis were not allowed to infect other students.368 A Manitoba
government memorandum from the mid-1930s concluded that 90% of the new tuberculosis infections in the general population had their origin on reserves. To control
the disease, the memorandum stated, First Nations people should receive “at least as
adequate care as the rest of the population.” It was proposed that the services be provided by the existing provincial agencies, but be funded by the federal government.369
In a 1936 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the Manitoba
Sanatorium Board’s D. A. Stewart wrote that, in the past, tuberculosis among Aboriginal
people had been seen as “a kind of relentless process of nature, like an earthquake that
we could stand in awe of, and be very sad about but do nothing to check or change.”370
It was time, Stewart wrote, to recognize that preventive and treatment measures would
have the same positive impacts on Aboriginal tuberculosis as they did on tuberculosis
in the general population. Stewart gave two reasons for stepping up the fight against
tuberculosis in First Nations communities. The first was moral. Canada owed the First
Nations person treatment because “we took and occupied his country, but especiallybecause we brought him the disease.” The second argument was based on self-interest: if left untreated, tuberculosis would spread from reserves to the rest of the country. “The province will not be clear of any disease nor safe from its menace until every
group is clear and safe.”371“No commitment,” no program: 1937–1939
Despite the growing provincial pressure for action on tuberculosis prevention, in
1937, the federal government imposed another round of cuts on Indian Affairs. In
January of that year, Dr. H. W. McGill, the director of Indian Affairs (Indian Affairs
had been demoted from a department to a branch of Mines and Resources in 1936)
instructed all staff that “their duty in the immediate future is to keep the cost of medical services at the lowest point consistent with reasonable attention to acute causes of
illness and accident. Their services must be restricted to those required for the safetyof limb, life or essential function.” Spending on drugs was to be cut in half. The list ofservices for which there would be no funds included “tuberculosis surveys; treatment
in sanatoria or hospital for chronic tuberculosis; or other chronic conditions; tonsil

434 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and dental clinics; artificial teeth and limbs; spectacles except for prevention of blindness; dental work except for the relief of pain or serious infection.”372
On the following day, McGill informed the assistant director for medical services in
British Columbia that it “may not be possible to continue the operation of the tuberculosis segregation units at Kootenay [Cranbrook], Coqualeetza [Chilliwack] andMission Indian Residential Schools.” He expected that the budget for medical expenditures was likely to be cut by up to $200,000 in the coming fifteen months.373
The government came under considerable pressure from the Canadian Tuberculosis
Association (cta) for these decisions. In 1936, the cta called on the federal government
to hire full-time staff with expertise in diagnosing and treating tuberculosis. It also recommended that First Nations students be screened annually, and that students withcontagious diseases be either segregated or removed from school.374 An editorial in
the March 1937 issue of the Canadian Tuberculosis Association Bulletin commented
that “the facilities for early diagnosis, treatment and prevention that have been used
to such good advantage in the White population have never been made available forthe attack on the Indian problem.” According to the Bulletin, Indian Affairs had “neverdeveloped a progressive policy for the control of tuberculosis.”375 In the face of a cta
lobbying campaign, the government established a Standing Committee on Indian
Tuberculosis.376 At that committee’s first meeting in June 1937, Indian Affairs made it
clear that, although Dr. McGill had managed to add $50,000 to his Indian Affairs budget for tuberculosis work in that year, the “Government has given no commitment nor
has it authorized the Department to embark on a tuberculosis program.”377
Indian Affairs medical officer E. L. Stone recommended the $50,000 be used initially to clear “out the sanatorium cases from the schools” and isolate the infectious
cases. But where to put the cases that should be isolated? According to Stone, the“Churches have shown no eagerness, so far, to offer one or two schools” for facilities for tubercular students, and Indian Affairs had “little disposition to force or argue
the idea.” Stone was also opposed to establishing isolation sections within existing
schools. These projects, in his opinion, had proven to be failures.378
He was referring to the small-scale preventoria that had been established at a number of schools. The preventoria, which served as isolation units, were more acceptable to churches than full-fledged sanatoria, since they allowed them to maintain
enrolment and control over the students. The first of these facilities was opened at theCoqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack in 1935 after a survey in which 77% of the 214 students who had been given the tuberculin had tested positive for tuberculosis. Locatedin a converted farm building, it housed fifteen students, who were supervised by anurse. The facility was expanded in 1936 and porches were added to the building.379
The Coqualeetza project was followed by similar establishments at Alert Bay andMission, both in British Columbia.380 The Alert Bay preventorium, which opened in
1939, was located in a building that had previously served as the principal’s residence

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 435

and had been renovated by the students as part of their manual training.381 A preventorium had also opened at the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school in 1938.382
By maintaining infected children on the school site, however, the preventoria did
not fully isolate infectious or potentially infectious students from healthy students.
In the Fort Alexander preventorium’s first year of operation, officials placed students
who were of below-average health, but not suffering from tuberculosis, in the special
facility along with tubercular students.383 The preventorium operated in close conjunction with the school, and concerns soon were raised that the sick students could
infect the rest of the student body.384 In the spring of 1939, Indian Affairs decided to
discontinue the operation of the preventorium.385
The federal government increased its commitment to spending on First Nations
tuberculosis to $275,000 in 1938 and $575,000 in 1939.386 (If the government had
accepted Dr. Stone’s 1930 proposal, it would have been spending $800,000 and$900,000, respectively, on First Nations tuberculosis treatment in those years.) In
February 1938, Stone and McGill informed Indian agents of the department’s tuberculosis priorities. The first was to “secure tuberculosis control of residential schools.”
This would involve removing students who had active, communicable tuberculosis.
They were to be discharged, and their “disposal will not be a matter of further interest to school Principals.” Those who had “a promising future,” but needed “extra careand feeding,” would remain segregated within the school under a “modified school”
regime. The second priority was to apply the same level of supervision to day schools,
and the third priority was to provide care for children with tubercular joints and bones
to prevent their becoming crippled. Adults were the fourth priority. Sanatorium orhome care would be provided to adult patients who had a “reasonable hope of recovery with a moderate term of treatment” or who represented a threat of infection toyoung children. Sick adults had to be “willing to accept treatment and intelligent
enough to profit by it.”387
The policy of clearing out the infected students continued to meet with resistancefrom the schools. Cluny school principal J. Riou continued to maintain that the caregiven at his school was as good as would be received in a sanatorium. Over the previous four years, he said, he cut school hours, augmented his cattle herd, and employed
a nurse with experience in treating tuberculosis. As a result, no student who cameto the school in the “no disease” category had ever become an “active” case. He recognized that the proposed measures might be needed in most other schools where“nothing has ever been done to fight tuberculosis,” but Cluny was an exception. He
also indicated that parents opposed a policy of sending children with active tuberculosis to distant sanatoria.388
In the fall of 1938, the federal government significantly expanded the number ofstudents being tested for tuberculosis and enhanced the sophistication of the technology used to test them.389 The goal was to remove children with active tuberculosis

436 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

from the schools.390 The fact that this was still the government’s priority suggests
the ineffectiveness of the medical examinations in the past. By failing to treat eachchild as a potential patient, the schools had turned an increasing number of children
into actual patients. The low-cost “common sense” approach that Deputy Minister
Duncan Campbell Scott had adopted when he rejected Dr. Peter Bryce’s proposal toturn the schools into sanatoria had pleased the government because it was not expensive, and it had pleased the churches because it left them in control of the schools andthe students. Yet, the first matter of business for E. L. Stone some twenty-five years
later, in 1938, was to discharge from residential schools those students who neededsanatorium treatment. It is clear evidence that the government never had put in placea proper screening process, or developed facilities for providing students who developed tuberculosis with proper treatment. The prevention of disease and the treatmentof sick Aboriginal children were a shameful failure.

Other diseases and health issues
The same conditions that left students vulnerable to tuberculosis—overcrowding,inadequate housing, poor diets, faulty sanitation, and limited access to medical treatment—also left students vulnerable to a range of other, often fatal, health problems.
The most dramatic of these was the influenza pandemic (an epidemic on a global
scale) that followed the First World War, which demonstrated the inadequacy of medical services in residential schools.

The influenza pandemic of 1918–19
In the spring of 1918, a deadly influenza virus, often referred to as the “Spanish flu,”
swept the globe. It is thought that nearly a third of the world’s population had been
infected with the illness. Estimates of the number of deaths range between 50 and
100 million. The pandemic began in March of 1918, rose to a peak in a second wave
in the fall of 1918, subsided, and returned in a third deadly wave in the early winterof 1919.391 In Canada, it left 55,000 people dead, 4,000 of whom were Aboriginal. The
difference in the health conditions of Aboriginal people and the general population isapparent from the fact that the overall Canadian death rate for the pandemic was 610
deaths per 100,000 people, while the Aboriginal rate was 3,770 per 100,000.392 The vulnerability of Aboriginal people to influenza is attributable in part to government socialand economic policies that had left Aboriginal people impoverished, poorly housed,
and lacking access to medical care.

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 437

The 1918 epidemic was felt throughout the residential school system, but it was
not the only influenza epidemic to ravage the schools. Early Indian Affairs annual
reports made regular reference to outbreaks of what was referred to as “la grippe” (asinfluenza was often called.) In 1892 in Cranbrook, school principal Nicolas Coccola
prepared a report on students who had left the school since its opening two years
earlier. Three students died of “la grippe” and six had been so weakened by the illness
that they had been returned to their homes. 393 Principal Gervase Gale of the Anglican
school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta reported in 1906 that the school had been hit
by an epidemic of grippe and pneumonia. He felt the school was “most fortunate in
not losing more than one little boy, who was delicate, and had not the stamina to fightan ordinary sickness.”394
The 1918 epidemic overwhelmed medical services wherever it hit. Its impact on
remote, understaffed boarding schools was devastating. Influenza struck the Shoal
Lake school in northwestern Ontario in October 1918.395 Although no students died,the principal, Mr. Mathews, was infected. The local doctors were all ill themselves. It
was several days before Indian Affairs could find a physician to send to the school.
By then, Principal Mathews was beyond recovery; he died within a matter of days.
The Indian agent noted that elsewhere in the region, the epidemic was severe as well:nearly the entire Rat Portage Reserve was, in his words, “laid up.” There were an additional thirty-five cases at the Roman Catholic school at Kenora, although he said thosewere of a “mild type.396
Indian Affairs instructed Kuper Island principal J. Geurts “not to allow pupils of
the school to visit outside Indians, nor the Indians to visit the pupils.”397 The local
Indian agent considered closing the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school and sending
the children home.398 By the time permission was given to send the children home,the local reserves had all been placed under quarantine, so the students stayed at theschool, which was also under quarantine.399 At the Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
Ontario, there were seventy-six cases of influenza by October 24, 1919. According to
the acting principal, “Most of the staff have been laid up—for days all we could do was
to attend to the sick.” Despite staff efforts, one child had been lost to the epidemic.400
On October 21, 1918, the first case was reported at the Spanish, Ontario, girls’
school. Three days later, all but three girls and a few staff members were confinedto their beds. Within a few days, all the boys except three at the Spanish boys’ school
were also bedridden. In just over two weeks, eight girls and eight boys died.401 Basedon the 1918–19 school year enrolment of 112 boys and 96 girls, this amounts to 7.14%(7,140 per 100,000) and 8.33% (8,330 per 100,000) mortality rates for the boys and girls,
respectively, due to the flu.402
By the end of October, all the students and four members of the staff at the Sarcee
school in Alberta were confined to bed. According to the Indian agent, “Voluntary
help has been secured from Calgary, and the situation is well in hand.”403 In the spring438 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof 1919, the Indian agent reported that two Sarcee students had died from influenza
and two more from tuberculosis.404 Since the Sarcee school had thirty-three pupils in
the 1918–19 school year, the mortality rate there was 12.12% (12,120 per 100,000).405
In December 1918, the High River, Alberta, school was stricken with the epidemic.
Former principal A. Naessens was sent to provide assistance. When he arrived, hefound that “all the children, both boys and girls were in bed and many of them in a very
critical condition. Then some of the staff, through overwork, were forced to retire.” The
one nurse Naessens brought with him from Calgary proved to be insufficient, and hesecured two additional nurses. Since the school doctor was sick, he had to arrange
medical care from Calgary. Despite their efforts, three boys and the principal died.406
Although there were no deaths, all the students and staff at the Lestock,
Saskatchewan, school came down with influenza.407 Eleven students at the Roman
Catholic school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, were dead by December 18, 1918, as
was one student at the Anglican school there.408 By mid-December, all the students
and half the staff in the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school were in bed. Three students had
died.409
Four children died at the Red Deer, Alberta, school in the fall of 1918, and a fifth
died after running away from the school. When the influenza epidemic subsided,
Principal J. F. Woodsworth complained to Indian Affairs:
For sickness, conditions at this school are nothing less than criminal. We have
no isolation ward and no hospital equipment of any kind. The dead, the dying,
and the sick and the convalescent, were all together. I think that as soon as
possible the Department should put this school in shape to fulfil its function as
an educational institution. At present it is a disgrace.410

Duncan Campbell Scott informed Woodsworth that he regretted that the school
had “been so severely visited, and especially I regret the deaths that have occurred.”He added that “all our work in connection with our educational institutions has during
the past four years been greatly curtailed owing to there being no appropriation forany extensive expenditure.”411 At Red Deer, an undertaker was paid $130 to bury thedead—two to a grave. As Woodsworth put it, the burials were “as near as possible tothat of a pauper.”412 The impact on the school was so demoralizing that it contributed
to its permanent closure in September 1919.413
The Red Deer school was not a small, church-founded, mission school. It was oneof the industrial schools that the federal government established in keeping with therecommendations of the 1879 Davin Report. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, school officials had been lobbying, with little or no success, for improvements infacilities to care for sick children.414
In February 1919, the flu struck again. The Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, was quickly placed under quarantine.415 When the outbreak was over, twoThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 439

students were dead.416 Just as the flu was subsiding at Shingwauk, it was taking hold at
the Birtle, Manitoba, school, with sixteen children reported to be running high temperatures on February 21, 1919.417
The epidemic also hit British Columbia in waves. In the fall of 1918, it struck thirteen schools, sparing only the Kuper Island, Kamloops, and Lytton schools. Of the887 students in the affected schools, 521 developed influenza and 11 died.418 This
amounted to a mortality rate of 1.24% (1,240 per 100,000). At the Fort St. James, British
Columbia, boarding school, the epidemic struck almost the entire staff and all but twoof the children overnight, sparing only the principal, two of the nuns, and two small
boys. Together, the five of them cared for fifty patients. According to Principal Joseph
Allard, the boys “were a great help to me for packing water from the lake to the kitchen
and to the dormitories of boys and girls.”419
Margaret Butcher left a vivid picture of conditions at Kitamaat, British Columbia,
when influenza hit the school in 1918. Within a few days, thirty students were bedridden.
Those children were very sick and what with vomiting, dysentery, nose-bleeding& senior girls’ troubles, we had a horrible time. I never saw such nose-bleeding.
We could not stop it & when it transpired that the only girl whose nose did not
bleed, suffered hallucinations & was out of bed and trailing bedding or clothes
crying she had killed herself or the house or her darling, or else asking me to
cut her in pieces or she [was] hunting for her lungs or other parts of her bodythat had fallen out, I sure put up with the bleeding as a beneficent evil rather
than have several crazy ones. After bleeding came congestion in varying degrees& horrible expectoration until it seemed impossible that children who a few
days previously had been in good health could throw up such quantities of vilemucous.420

In 1919, influenza recurred at the Mission, Chilliwack, Squamish, and Sechelt
schools. Of the 310 students at these schools, 298 came down with influenza and 8
died.421 This was a mortality rate of 2.58% (2,580 per 100,000).
Even when the global epidemic had subsided, influenza remained a presence inthe schools. In February 1920, thirty pupils, most of the staff, and the principal of theChapleau school came down with influenza.422
The devastating impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the Aboriginal population was reflected in residential school recruiting policy. In 1919, Indian Affairs
decreed that no child with living parents was to be admitted to a residential school
until all the children orphaned by the epidemic had been taken into the school.423
For example, in Alberta, the Joussard school, with a pupilage of fifty students, wasallowed to take in seventy-three students, and Grouard, with a pupilage of fifteen,
was allowed to take in twenty-six. Indian Affairs believed “there was no other means,in that northern country” of taking care of the children who had been orphaned by
the epidemic.424 The epidemic indirectly stimulated the development of residential

440 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

schooling in Labrador (at that time part of the British colony of Newfoundland). The
Grenfell Mission opened its first boarding school specifically for children who had
been orphaned by the 1918 epidemic.425
The government was not prepared to let First Nations people mark the end of theepidemic according to their own traditions. In the spring of 1919, the chief and council
at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, petitioned to hold a Sun Dance to commemorate theend of the First World War and the influenza epidemic. The request was denied, but
the band members attempted to hold it anyway, only to have the police appear anddisperse the people who had gathered for the occasion. The police broke up similar
ceremonies that year on the Piapot and Big River reserves in Saskatchewan.426

Measles, smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid,pneumonia, and whooping coughTuberculosis and influenza were the two major causes of death in the schools, but
the schools were also regularly hit by smaller, more localized, epidemics of measles,
smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid, pneumonia, and whooping cough. These infections
could spread quickly, particularly since most schools had primitive sanitation facilities, cramped dormitories, and limited ability to isolate infected patients. All theseillnesses placed tremendous strain on staff and those students who remained healthy.
For students who had already been weakened by tuberculosis, they often proved
deadly. For example, at the Lytton school, a combination of measles and whooping
cough killed thirteen children over the winter of 1926–27. Ten years later, an influenza
attack affected 170 students, 11 staff members, and 4 emergency nurses.427 In 1937,
a similar combination of measles and whooping cough killed three children at the
Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie.428 At the remote Beauval, Saskatchewan, schoolin that same year, an attack of influenza was followed by cases of measles and pneumonia that left fourteen students dead.429
A study of the Norway House, Manitoba, school, compiled by researcher Melissa
Stoops (Table 16.4), shows the almost ceaseless rounds of epidemics the school faced.
The Norway House school weathered fifteen separate epidemics over a thirty-sixyear period.
In 1903, Norway House principal J. A. G. Lousley wrote:
We have suffered, in common with the reserve upon which we are situated,from a most virulent epidemic of whooping-cough, bronchitis and pneumonia;
most suffering from all three diseases at the same time, and in addition, somehad chicken-pox. Lilian Yeomans, M.D., and Miss A. Yeomans, a trained nurse,
did all in their power to check and cure the troubles, but in spite of this we lost
three girls and one boy from the above cause, and one girl from eating poisonousThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 441

Table 16.4. Outbreaks of disease at Norway House school, 1902 to 1939 (does not include
tuberculosis).
Disease OutbreakYear

Whooping cough, bronchitis, pneumonia

1902/1903

Chicken pox

1902/1903

Scarlet Fever

Fall/winter 1904/1905

Measles

Fall/winter 1904/1905

Mumps

Fall/Winter 1904/1905

German measles

1906/1907

Diphtheria

1906/1907

Diphtheria

Winter 1908/1909

Erysipelas

1911/1912

Spanish Influenza

Winter 1918/1919

Diphtheria

Fall 1923

Influenza

Winter 1928/1929

Whooping cough1933/1934

Chicken pox

Fall 1935

Colds/pneumonia

1937/1938

Source: Stoops, “Health Conditions,” 77.

berries while out in the bush. This, however, could not be taken to indicate
unhealthy conditions in or around the school, as there were about sixty-five
deaths on the reserve from the same cause. Nearly all the children suffered moreor less from these diseases. We gave the children and staff a week’s holidays at
Christmas, which was unusual, to rest and regain strength after the long siege ofsickness. With regard to sanitation, I found the cellars very wet and no drain tocarry off the water. This is being remedied as fast as possible. I have also built awharf, from the outer end of which we get much better water than was formerly
secured off shore.430

The following year, Lousley reported, “No virulent epidemics have swept throughthe reserve. The Great White Plague [tuberculosis] still lays his grim hand heavily upon
the people, and we have lost five children through his untimely ravages.”431
As Lousley’s report makes clear, these diseases operated together. In August 1896,
at the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school, Dr. George Orton reported:
During the past winter and spring an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out,
and though all passed through the various stages of the fever, no less than six
succumbed to consumption, induced, doubtless, by the depletion of the fever
and in some by a complication of pneumonia and bronchitis. One girl died frommeningitis, doubtless of a tubercular character.432

442 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

There were several examples in which students received minimal or questionable
medical attention. In 1888, the principal of the McDougall Orphanage and school atMorley, in what is now Alberta, was dissatisfied with the care the local doctor had
provided to a young boy who died from measles. He said the physician stayed only a
few minutes and never returned, despite the presence of others in a “bad state” on thesame reserve.433 Similarly, the Regina school principal felt the school had been poorly
served by the doctor on contract with Indian Affairs during an outbreak of smallpox
in 1904. The doctor had not ordered that the boys’ dormitory be disinfected immediately, and there had been a delay in vaccinating students for smallpox. Some boys had
to wait five days before being vaccinated.434
There were also problems with diagnosis. A 1901 outbreak of measles in the Roman
Catholic school in Onion Lake, in what is now Saskatchewan, was initially reported as
being smallpox.435 On November 16, 1915, the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa received
a frantic telegram from the Anglican school in The Pas, announcing that twenty-six
students had been stricken by gas poisoning.436 Nine days later, Dr. O. I. Grain visited
the school on behalf of the department. He found that the children had been misdiagnosed. They had not been poisoned by a blocked sewer, as had been originally
thought; they had typhoid fever. By then, thirty people, including four staff members
and the hospital matron, had come down with the illness, and more cases continued
to develop. Grain thought that the milk at the school was the likely cause of infection.
He noted that the school had no source of hot water, since the hot-water tank had
burst.437

Lack of care and treatment facilities
Government penny-pinching also contributed to the poor handling of a series ofsyphilis infections at the Shubenacadie school. Although syphilis is most often spreadthrough sexual contact, pregnant women can pass the disease on to their fetus, resulting in what is known as “congenital syphilis.” From 1909 onward, the disease could betreated with repeated injections of the drug arsphenamine (also known as Salvarsan).438
Residential schools had the capacity to identify the disease in new students and provide them with treatment. In 1932, when it was believed that some students at the
Shubenacadie school were suffering from the disease, Indian Affairs considered having all the students tested.439 The proposal foundered when the local doctor asked fora fee of $1 a student instead of the $50 flat rate that Indian Affairs sought to impose.440
The following year, a father complained to Indian Affairs that his three children, who
had been diagnosed with syphilis, were not receiving proper treatment at the school.
Department secretary A. F. MacKenzie forwarded the complaint to the Shubenacadie
principal, J. P. Mackey. In doing so, he noted that Indian Affairs was familiar with theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 443

father and “not inclined to make too much of his complaints,” while acknowledging
that “residential school pupils who have had treatment for syphilis should have theirtreatment followed up.”441 By early 1934, MacKenzie was instructing Mackey to ensurethat the children received the treatment they needed.442 He later recommended that
Mackey have all new students tested for syphilis.443 This should not have been necessary: since 1933, the medical examination form for residential school admission had
required doctors to state whether or not the student had syphilis.444
These diseases also drew additional attention to the lack of treatment facilities. A
boy at the Anglican school in Onion Lake came down with smallpox in 1921. He was
kept in a small dormitory with a sheet hung over the door that was regularly sprayedwith disinfectant until a doctor could confirm his diagnosis and put a quarantine into
effect.445 In 1924, the Mission school put up two buildings to use as an isolation hospital after an outbreak of diphtheria and smallpox.446 After a 1935 outbreak of measles
at the school at Muncey, Ontario, school administrators were hopeful that the government would approve construction of a planned isolation ward in the third storeyof the building. Instead, Indian Affairs instructed the principal to take advantage ofthe fact that most of the children were away on summer holiday and turn some of thedormitories into isolation wards.447 A few months later, forty-two students had fallen
ill with German measles.448
In some cases, the staff simply resorted to prayer. When students at the
Shubenacadie school came down with streptococcus infections, Sister Mary Charles,of the Sisters of Charity, arranged to have all the children in the school pray to Kateri
Tekakwitha (a Mohawk woman who had converted to Catholicism in the seventeenth
century). According to Charles, ten children recovered overnight and no new cases
developed.449

Lack of funding
The federal government often sought to limit its financial responsibility. The secretary of the British Columbia board of health thought that all the Mission students
should be immunized after an outbreak of diphtheria in 1905. The Indian Affairs
medical officer, Dr. A. J. Stuart, noted, “This, of course, is true; but the expense!” Fullimmunization would cost $200. In the end, the decision was made not to immunize
unless new cases appeared.450 In other cases, the government did vaccinate. After anoutbreak of smallpox at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school in 1916, a local doctor
was hired to vaccinate all the First Nations people who were in the agency at the timeof Treaty payment. He was to be paid fifty cents a person.451 After an outbreak of diphtheria at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1909, efforts were made to inoculate all the students at the school. The nine students who became ill were placed in a “large isolated

444 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

house.”452 After a typhoid outbreak at the Kuper Island school in 1939, all the students
were inoculated.453
The per capita system of funding punished schools that followed policy and did
not enrol children with infectious illnesses. In 1936, Blue Quills, Alberta, principal
Joseph Angin complained that Indian agent W. E. Gullion, whom he described as a“hypocrite,” had undermined the school by forbidding parents to return their children to school at the end of summer holiday after an outbreak of whooping coughin the community. Angin argued that it made no sense to keep seventy-five children
home from school because “only 6 or 7 were sick.” Angin was particularly concerned
because Gullion’s decision would affect the amount of the school’s per capita grant.454
While Angin claimed that Gullion had acted against the instruction of the local doctors, Gullion maintained that they had supported his decision. He claimed that Angin,
in contravention of his orders, had “started to urge the Indians to take their children
back to school.”455

Limiting and opposing parental involvement
Into the late 1930s, parents were still expressing concern that they were not being
properly informed about the health of their children. In 1931, Mrs. W. F. Dreaver
informed Indian Affairs that she was refusing to return her daughter, Mary, to theAnglican school at Onion Lake because of the poor medical treatment her son had
received there. She wrote that her son had returned to the school in the fall of 1930. At
admission, he was examined and declared to be in good health. He became sick, but
his parents were not informed of the illness until December. In response to the telegrams that the concerned parents sent the school, Henry Ellis, the school principal,
assured them their boy would soon be out of bed. Eventually, the parents were able toget him back home, a trip they had to pay for themselves. The local doctor, who had
originally approved him for entrance to the school, announced he was “far gone witht.b.” He died a few months later. Mrs. Dreaver said that rather than send her daughter
to a school where “the children are neglected,” she would send her to the local day
school.456 She apparently succeeded: the school records show that Mary Dreaver had
been discharged that term and was attending the Mistawasis day school.457
Despite such incidents, schools continued to keep parents uninformed when theirchildren became ill. In November 1936, a student from the Edmonton, Alberta, school
died in the Edmonton hospital. Apparently, his parents had not been informed of his
hospitalization, since Indian Affairs later instructed the Indian agent to inform theprincipals of St. Albert and Edmonton “that in future, when a pupil is placed in hospital due to serious illness the parents or guardian should be immediately notified.”458
A parent from northwestern Ontario wrote to Indian Affairs in March 1937, asking “ifThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 445

you could be good enough to arrange that parents be notified of any sickness or deathof their children at Pelican School [at Sioux Lookout], while in attendance there. It isalways through other sources that we find out of the children’s welfare, and not by theschool authorities.”459
Religious control over the delivery of medical services also generated conflicts
with parents. In 1936, Andrew Gordon, a member of the Pasqua First Nation in
Saskatchewan, tried to withdraw his older daughter, Edith, from the Qu’Appelleschool. In making the request, he noted that he had attended the school as a youth
for fourteen years, adding they “were 14 years of my life wasted.” He stated that he wasa pagan in religion, but had sent both his daughters to the school. However, his eleven-year-old daughter had died from pneumonia at the school. He thought she wasgiven proper treatment by the Fort Qu’Appelle doctor and the Indian Affairs nurse. His
daughter had asked him to keep the nuns and priests out of her room. She said they
were telling her that she
was going to die for her father’s sins, that she must get her father to join thecatholic faith before she died, and many other things. The child was so earnest
about this that my wife stayed with her as much as possible, but the moment
she might be away for meals or a little sleep this Nun would get in and worry thechild, and on my wife’s return, she would find her in tears.

Despite his requests to the school principal, Gordon said, a nun continued to visit
and worry his daughter, who, after rallying briefly, died. Gordon said the school staff
told him he should be glad his daughter was in heaven, where she was “praying for
you to be saved from your sins.” Given these events, Gordon asked that he be allowed
to have his other daughter officially discharged from the school.460 School officials
denied Gordon’s allegations, saying the deceased “girl was not bothered in any way atall.” The Indian agent, Frank Booth, noted that Gordon was an “outstanding Indian,”
who was convinced that his statements were true and would be able to see to the education of his daughter if she were discharged. Therefore, he recommended that thedaughter be discharged.461 Despite this, J. D. Sutherland, the acting superintendentof Indian Education, denied the request, saying that “it is considered that Gordon’sdaughter received every possible care and attention previous to her death.”462 As aresult, the older daughter, Edith, was not discharged until the fall of 1938, when she
turned sixteen.463

The pressure on staff
Outbreaks of infectious illness could put tremendous stress on staff. Thirty-six students were bedridden as a result of a measles outbreak at the Sioux Lookout school
in 1936.464 Earl Maquinna George, who attended the Ahousaht, British Columbia,

446 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school, recalled in his memoirs how hard-pressed the school nurse had been during
epidemics. “There was a time when the school had a measles epidemic, and the whole
200 kids except one, a teenage girl, were put to bed. Miss Reed and this one young girl
together looked after all the 200 kids who were in sick bay.”465
When a measles epidemic hit the File Hills school in 1912, the Indian agent orderedthat a nurse attend to the sick students. But when the Presbyterian Church tried to get
the federal government to pay the nurse’s $155 bill, it said no. The department said
it was responsible only for the cost of medicine.466 There were other cases where theschools, either on their own or with government support, hired additional medical
help. When a smallpox epidemic struck the Kuper Island school in 1920, an additional
nurse was hired to help look after the thirty-five infected children.467 In response to aserious outbreak of pneumonia linked with whooping cough at the Chapleau school,
Indian Affairs arranged to hire and pay for a nurse to assist at the school in 1922.468
Similarly, a nurse was hired after a serious outbreak of pneumonia at the Edmonton
school in 1934.469
These illnesses sometimes led to placing the schools under quarantine. This happened at Regina in 1903,470 Alert Bay in 1923,471 and The Pas in 1929.472 In other cases,
little was done to protect the broader First Nations community from infection. Whensmallpox broke out among the students at the Mission school in 1919, the principal
sent the sick children home by train. The result was a serious outbreak of smallpox in
the general First Nations population. The local Indian agent wrote, “I cannot understand the action taken by the Principal of St. Mary’s School at Mission in sending thesechildren back onto the reserve to scatter any disease amongst the others even if they
did not know what the dreaded disease was.” He said that it seemed to be a particular failing of the school to “send children home when anything is wrong with theminstead of taking care of them as they should.”473

Trachoma
Trachoma is an infection of the eyes that can lead to blindness. Spread by bacteria, it is associated with overcrowding and limited access to water and health care.474
It deserves special discussion because of its prevalence among Aboriginal people
and because of the role residential schools played in spreading the disease. As early
as 1906, the Indian Affairs annual report noted that diseases of the eyes tended tospread rapidly in boarding schools, particularly if towels and washbasin water werebeing shared among students. The report recognized that these diseases could resultin chronic trachoma.475 Dr. Peter Bryce believed the originating cause of eye disease
among Aboriginal people was the “habits of life of the Indian, whether in the teepee
or cabin.”476 He placed particular blame on irritation from smoke from campfires.477

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 447

These eye diseases, he wrote, could end in “trachoma, corneal ulceration and evenblindness,” and were “not unfrequently seen in its chronic results in school children.”478
In the early twentieth century, there were reports of residential school students
with severe vision problems. In April 1906, a Mount Elgin student’s eyes had been
so sore all winter that he was not able to study. However, “he had been made to work
all the same.”479 In his 1920 report on health conditions in a number of schools on
the Prairies, Dr. F. H. Corbett noted that at the Cluny school in 1920, “though a few
cases of ancient trachoma are found, they are all cured so far as is possible.” At theSarcee school, he reported, “Twelve of the children have sore eyes.”480 At the time,
there was no safe, effective treatment for trachoma. Common practice was to treat theeye with copper sulfate in an effort to destroy the infected tissue, rendering the disease
inactive.481
Trachoma was known to be rampant also among Native Americans in the UnitedStates in the early twentieth century. A 1912 survey found that 20% of all Native
Americans examined had the disease; at boarding schools, the rate was 30%.482
Despite all this evidence, Indian Affairs appears to have downplayed the risk of trachoma. In 1928, Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott reported that trachoma was“very rare among Canadian Indians, if indeed, it exists at all.” It was noted, however,that there did appear to be a condition in Alberta consisting “of an acute inflammationof the eye, with a small ulcer on the eyeball, and often leads to impairment of vision.
It occurs chiefly among undernourished children, and is probably to a large extent a
deficiency disease.”483 At that time, there were no national statistics on the prevalenceof trachoma in Canada in the general population.484 By 1929, Indian Affairs medical
officer E. L. Stone was concerned by reports of trachoma at schools and hospitals in
Saskatchewan, noting that “this disease is one of the worst pests which the American
government has among Indians.”485
The depth of the problem was finally brought to light by Dr. J. J. Wall’s 1930 studyof the incidence of trachoma among First Nations people in the prairie provinces andthe interior of British Columbia. He concluded in his report to Indian Affairs that “25
to 30 per cent of the Indian population were afflicted with trachoma in its various
stages. Pupils of the residential schools showed a high incidence of the disorder.” As
Indian Affairs acknowledged, up to that time, “no organized effort had been undertaken to eradicate the disease.” According to the 1937 Indian Affairs annual report:
Many of the schools at that time, unknown to the school authorities, wereserving as centres for the spread of this eye disease. The principals and otherofficials were entirely unaware even of its existence. Casual observation of theexternal appearance of the eye certainly did not suggest anything amiss with thelids, which had to be everted [turned over] for proper examination. Most of thecorneal ulcers and other eye diseases in the children were attributed largely totuberculosis. No suspicion was aroused at that time that the greater number of448 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

these disorders were due to extension of a trachomatous process from the lids
into the transparent portion of the eye. This extension is most insidious and slow
in character.486

There were measures that could have been taken to control the spread of trachoma.
Dr. Gordon M. Byers, professor of ophthalmology at McGill University, had been calling for improved detection and prevention of trachoma since 1901. In 1932, he wrote,“If through the years the Department of Indian Affairs had maintained even one
whole-time oculist for the detection and correction of visual defects alone among theIndian children of Western Canada, the presence of trachoma among its wards would
long ago have been discovered.”487
In October 1931, Indian Affairs did issue instructions to residential school principals on controlling the spread of the disease. Under these guidelines, each pupil
was to be provided with an individual towel and soap, and taught to use no other.488
However, in March 1932, Indian Affairs instituted a 10% cut to the school per capita
grant, retroactive to January.489 The cut in the grant rendered the advice to improve
sanitary supplies meaningless.
Dr. Wall was hired as a full-time specialist to organize clinics and provide treatment
for trachoma for First Nations people. Residential schools were given particular attention. Under Wall’s direction, students were treated with copper sulphate and measures were put in place to reduce the spread of the infection. In 1939, Indian Affairs
reported that although trachoma remained a menace to the First Nations population
in western Canada, its incidence among residential school students had been reduced
by 50% since 1934.490 Birtle principal E. Lockhart reported in 1939 that Dr. Wall had
concluded that his school was making “good progress” in dealing with trachoma.
“Four cures, and eight arrests since the last visit. None of the old cases are more than
Plus 2 [a measure of severity].”491 However, when poor health forced Wall’s retirementin 1939, he was not replaced.492
Effective treatment for trachoma was finally developed in 1938, when Dr. Fred Loebegan treating trachoma patients on the Sioux Reserve in South Dakota with a new
antibiotic drug, sulfanilamide.493 After this development, Indian Affairs used sulfanilamide successfully for the treatment of residential school students.494

Accidental deaths
Students were also at risk of accidental death, particularly by drowning, since manyof the schools were located on lakes, rivers, and even, at times, oceans. In some cases,
the students died while they were engaged in prohibited activities. In other cases, they
were participating in school-organized events. Herby Gabourie, believed to be either
five or six years old, drowned in late December 1898 at the Kuper Island school. The

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 449

circumstances of his death were unknown. After it was apparent that he was missing
from the school, a search party found his body in the water near the school pier.495 Two
weeks after the girls’ school in Spanish, Ontario, opened in 1913, a group of students
was taken out for a picnic, travelling by boat up the Spanish River. The boat capsized
and two girls, Anna Lahache from Kahnawake and Jennie Robertson from Garden
River, drowned.496
On June 29, 1919, twelve boys from the Moose Factory, Ontario, school were in a
canoe, crossing the Moose River on a berry-picking expedition, when it overturned.
Seven boys, Alfred Loutitt, Thomas Loutitt, Arthur Sutherland, James Sutherland,
Harry Wesley, John Sailors, and Sinclair Nepaneshkum, drowned. One fourteen-yearold boy, John Carpenter, kept an eight-year-old boy afloat until Archie Sailor, a local
First Nations man, could remove them both from the water.497 Although the local Indian
agent, H. N. Awrey, found the principal blameless for the accident, department official
A. J. MacKenzie felt “that to allow such a large number of boys in a canoe should nothave been permitted. It is hoped that this accident will not result detrimentally to the
future recruiting of pupils for the school.”498 Principal W. Haythornthwaite said he did
not agree with “Mr. Awrey’s most charitable opinion regarding our responsibility.”499
Four men from the Moose Band, Chief Woomastoogish, George Hardisty, Andrew
Butterfly, and John Dick, also did not agree with Awrey. They wrote the following submission to the government. (It was written in syllabics and translated by Thomas O.
Moore of Moose Factory.)
There were twelve children in the canoe and the children were alone, and thecanoe which they were using was very bad. A canoe which was not fit for anyone
to use. The canvas of the canoe was half ripped.
Now these children were allowed to go crossing the river every day in it and very
often twice one evening. The canoe was that far gone that the thwarts were justnailed on top of the gunwale.
There was not one boy big enough to have any sense.500

On a March morning in 1929, the gardener at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
Ontario, took two boys out in a canoe to go hunting for muskrats. The canoe tipped
over, and one of the boys, Edgar Smith, fell under the ice and was not recovered. The
trip had been undertaken without the approval of the principal.501
Twenty-one students from the Hay River school in the Northwest Territories went
swimming at a lakeside bathing beach in July 1929 (the lake is not named in reportson the drowning). There was only one staff person supervising them. At the end of theswim, one boy’s clothing was not claimed. It was only then that it was realized he had
likely been swept into the lake and drowned.502
During a recess period at the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school in 1934, someboys left the playground and went to the lakeshore that bordered on school property.

450 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

They began to play with a boat (apparently against school orders). The boat began todrift out onto the lake, with one boy, Joseph Louison, on it. According to the otherboys, Louison panicked and jumped into the water when the boat was sixty-one
metres from shore. After a two-hour search, the boy’s body was recovered. A coroner
concluded that the death was an accident and no inquest was held.503
Other, non-drowning, deaths raised questions about supervision and building
safety. John Alexander, a student at the Anglican school in Brocket, Alberta, died when
the roof of a root cellar collapsed on him in October 1895. The local Indian agent said
he believed that no one was to blame for the death.504 At the same school in January
1899, two boys died when a snow slide swept down a hill on which they were sledding.
No inquest was held.505 According to Principal W. R. Haynes, “The Indians behaved
exceedingly well, seeing that it was the boys [sic] own fault, and that the boys had constantly been warned by them as well as by us of the danger.”506
In 1939, Courtland Claus, a five-year-old boy who had been left alone in the dormitory with an infected ear, fell from a second-storey window at the Mount Elgin school.
Although he survived the initial fall, he died in hospital later that day. The principal
took the body home in a casket to the boy’s father.507 The Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training, R. A. Hoey, commented that the accident underscored“the fact that young children confined to the infirmary should not be left alone unlessevery precaution has been taken to prevent any accident. In this particular case it
would appear that if there had been a proper screen in the window the boy would nothave fallen out.”508
There are also reports of suicides from this period. In her memoirs, Eleanor Brass
spoke of a boy who had hung himself for fear of discipline at the File Hills school.509
A later chapter in this report will discuss the relationship between discipline at theschool at Williams Lake, British Columbia, and what may have been a suicide pact
among a group of boys in 1920.510 In 1930, the local doctor was not able to determine
the cause of death of two boys at the Fraser Lake school. It was later reported that theboys had been seen with water hemlock prior to their becoming ill.511

Conclusion
As early as 1899, Indian Commissioner David Laird had boasted of the schools’“stringent” medical examination.512 Dr. Peter Bryce had stressed the need to improve
the screening process for tuberculosis, to discharge infectious students, and to improvetreatment. Dr. James Lafferty had also called on the government to restrict admissions
and discharge infectious students. Dr. O. I. Grain made similar recommendations.
Dr. E. L. Stone’s proposal of 1930 would have focused on reducing the number of
infectious students in the schools and increasing treatment capacity. The work of theThe deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939 • 451

Qu’Appelle Health Unit demonstrated that these measures would have had a positive
impact on student health. Reducing the infection of healthy students also would have
reduced the flow and spread of infection from the schools to the community.
The government failed to adopt these many measures recommended by medical
professionals because they would have increased costs and because they would havebeen opposed by the churches. The policies the government put in place instead, as
recommended by non-medical specialists, were inadequate and largely unenforced.
The schools could have helped children to reduce their vulnerability to tuberculosis
by providing them with sanitary, well-ventilated living quarters, an adequate diet,warm clothing, and sufficient rest. Rather, the residential schools regularly failed toprovide the healthy living conditions, nutritious food, sufficient clothing, and physical regime that would prevent students from getting sick in the first place, and would
allow those who were infected a fighting chance at recovery.

CHAPTER 17

Building and maintaining
the schools: 1867–1939

In 1897, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson concluded that most of the industrial schools in Manitoba and the North-West Territories had been poorly sitedand poorly constructed. Instead of schools being located close to good farmland,
one found “hay and grazing land some miles away from the school, water supply altogether inadequate, no timber or wood land.” Overcoming such errors would require
investments in expensive equipment and the purchase of fuel. In addition, considerable time was lost in hauling hay from distant fields. School sites often were poorly
drained, with little attention paid to “ordinary sanitation laws.” Buildings had been“hurriedly constructed of poor materials, badly laid out, without due provision forlighting, heating or ventilation.”1 Benson’s was a sweeping condemnation of past decisions. Yet, the coming years would not see much improvement. Little money was provided for needed renovations. As a result, the problems that Benson identified would
only fester as buildings deteriorated. The risk of fire, illness, and disease would mount.
Government architects and builders did not appear to learn from the past: new buildings constructed after 1897 continued to exhibit many of the same flaws that Benson
identified. Problems with water supply, sanitation, and heating occurred again andagain. During the Depression of the 1930s, when the per capita funding rates werecut, there was even less money available for maintenance, and buildings continued todeteriorate. As the previous chapter on health made clear, it was recognized by the latenineteenth century that susceptibility to disease was largely determined by housing
quality, particularly ventilation, crowding, and sanitation. Government and church
failure to build and maintain adequate residential school facilities must be seen as asignificant contributing factor to the health problems that plagued the schools during
this period.
In photographs, residential schools often appear to be imposing structures. The
industrial schools usually were constructed with federal government approval,
and often were designed by government architects. For example, in the 1890s, theDepartment of Public Works had set out a detailed set of specifications for the construction of the school in Red Deer, North-West Territories.2 But, while they were454 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

substantial-looking buildings, looks can deceive. As Martin Benson said after the
Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, was rebuilt, “The new building 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 ashabby back.”3 The Anglican Rupert’s Land school in Middlechurch, Manitoba, wasa striking-looking three-storey brick building. But, shortly after the school opened in
1890, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land laid the following complaints about the school’s
construction before Indian Affairs Minister Edgar Dewdney.
• The attic, which was intended to sleep forty students, was “useless for this purpose.” Among its other limitations, it was impossible to get bedsteads up the narrow staircase.
• The basement floor had not been cemented.
• The eavestroughs were incomplete.
• The water tank was too small, and would be useless in a fire.
• There was not an adequate separation between the girls’ and boys’ dormitories.
Because of construction defects, the school could accommodate only forty students, as opposed to the anticipated eighty, creating a funding crisis for the school.4
In some cases, particularly in the system’s early years, the churches built boarding schools on their own and then sought government funding. Overall, however, thegovernment could not escape responsibility for the quality of the residential schoolbuildings that operated in Canada. By the late 1890s, it was not uncommon for thegovernment’s chief architect to review the building plans of boarding schools as wellas industrial schools.5 Government architects often selected school sites, designed
new schools, and drew up the plans and specifications for additions and renovations
to the schools.6
Despite this level of government oversight, new buildings exhibited the flaws of thepast. In 1922, the Lejac school, the last industrial school to be built in Canada, opened
at Fraser Lake in British Columbia. The government had approved the design andissued the tenders for the construction of the building—which, according to IndianAffairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott, was “shorn of all luxuries and is completely economical.”7 The school was built under the supervision of a government-appointed inspector of construction.8 But when the Indian Affairs superintendent ofeducation, Russell Ferrier, inspected the school during its first year of operation, he
had to report that the water system was out of order, the lighting was insufficient, andthe staff was too small. And there were not enough washrooms and lavatories.9
In 1925, Principal J. F. Woodsworth reported to Ottawa that the roof of the newly
opened United Church school in Edmonton, Alberta, leaked badly during heavy rains.
Beds in the girls’ dormitory were soaked, pails of water in staff rooms filled rapidly,
and furnishings were drenched. The windows were so poorly made and fitted that “all

Building and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939 • 455

winter the wind came in making some of the rooms almost unfit for occupation, andthis in spite of heavy fires going all the time.”10
The Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia opened in 1930. Indian Affairs’ own architect designed the building, and the government issued the tenders and supervised theconstruction of the school.11 It had been open only a few months when Principal J. P.
Mackey reported that “with a driving rain storm, there is a considerable leakage ofwater on every floor on the front of the building.” The water was damaging the plasterand seeping into the basement, which had an improperly finished floor. The pumphouse was not working, and the kitchen chimney did not provide sufficient draft toallow the cook to prepare meals.12 Two years later, the principal was complaining thatthe building was still leaking, the plaster was continuing to come down, and plans topaint interior walls had been largely abandoned as a waste of time and money.13“Damaged beyond repair”: The failure to maintain
The problems with poorly built buildings went unaddressed. The inadequacy of the
per capita grant meant that due to limited spending on maintenance, older problems
got worse and new ones kept emerging. In 1907, Inspector John Semmens reported
that the Methodist school at Norway House was in such a dilapidated condition that it
was a danger to the students. Benson commented that the money provided for repairs“appears to have been thrown away.” The Indian commissioner recommended thatthe school be closed before winter. Methodist Church official T. Ferrier said:
The cellar and basements are in tumble-down condition with about a foot ofwater in each, and the only relief is in bailing it out with pails or pumping itout. There is no drain and it is in a most unsanitary condition. The furnaces areplaced in these dilapidated basements, which are merely holes in the ground,and the way they are installed makes it impossible to heat the buildings.14

In 1908, when the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school was less than twenty
years old, Principal P. Claessen was petitioning for a new building. He described thebuilding as “insanitary” [sic] and “ruinous.” There was “insufficient air capacity andwant of ventilation in some rooms, state of decay on the ground floor and foundationsin the boy’s [sic] building, irregular and insufficient heating.” The problem, he wrote,
had been confirmed by medical experts.15 He renewed his appeal the following year,
adding that “the very foundations in some parts are rotten and giving away.”16 The
year after that, the principal reported that the school consisted of twenty buildingsthat he described as “old and some damaged beyond repair by long use and weather,”and that were “scattered in a very disorderly way, at the southern corner of the school
property.” Much of the boys’ industrial training consisted of the “incessant repairing”
of these buildings.17 A new building was not built until 1915.18

456 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Sixteen years later, Indian Affairs official G. H. Barry conducted an inspection of
the Kuper Island school and concluded that the toilets were too few in number andthe washrooms were poorly ventilated. Even with twice-daily cleaning, “there is quitea smell.”19 When he returned three years later, there were still too few toilets and onlya “very limited number” of them were in working order. Addressing this issue was “avery urgent matter,” he wrote.20 In 1935, the Indian agent reported that the floors of theboys’ and girls’ playrooms were “completely gone,” since the supporting sills had rotted away; the stove and oven needed replacing; and the upstairs walls needed resurfacing.21 In 1936, the principal was informed that, due to a cut in Indian Affairs funding,roofing repairs would have to be limited to “the work that is absolutely necessary.”22
To Inspector F. H. Paget, the Regina, Saskatchewan, school in 1908 looked “morelike a deserted place than a government institution.” The building was old, the floors
worn, the plaster broken, and the paint worn off. Neither the children nor the dormitories appeared neat and tidy.23 There was no money for paint or bedspreads, orfor replacing mattresses whose springs had sprung. According to a local Presbyterianminister, E. A. Green, the girls, having no playroom, were obliged to play in the dormitories; the blackboards were “a disgrace and largely useless”; and the school wasunderfunded, compared to Catholic and Methodist schools.24 By the following year, it
was apparent that outbuildings were on the verge of collapse. But, no repairs were to
be made until the future of the school was determined.25
Inspector Paget had even harsher words for the schools on the Blood Reserve inAlberta. He described the boys’ dormitory at the Anglican school as “an old log building of two stories with low ceilings, unplastered and quite unfit for the purpose it isbeing used for. It was without exception the worst building I was in on my travels andno time should be lost in replacing it.” Of the Catholic school, he wrote, “The roof leaks
and requires repairs, ventilation is deficient and there are no outside fire-escapes but
plenty of staircases.”26 Sixteen years later, the building was still standing—and it was ineven worse condition. Because Paget had condemned it in 1908, no significant repairs
had been carried out since then.27 It was not until 1927 that new Catholic and Anglican
schools were built near Cardston to serve the Blood Reserve. A government inspector
described the buildings as “first class,” but noted that “the rain seeps through the brickwork at both schools.”28 By 1929, faults with the two schools were all too apparent. At
the Anglican school, corrosion was blocking the water pipes, and a girls’ fire escape
was needed. The roof had no eaves, and rainwater was leaking into the walls. A government inspector wrote that “the interior of the school will be ruined if this continues.” In heavy rains, water continued to soak through the walls, staining the plaster inboth schools.29
In the Indian Affairs annual report of 1909, Jennie Cunningham, the principal of
the school at File Hills, Saskatchewan, noted, “For the past 2 years 10 boys have slept

Building and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939 • 457

in a tent both winter and summer.”30 It was to take another two years before an addition was constructed.31
In 1914, Indian agent Blewett gave the following description of the Presbyterianschool in Kamsack, Saskatchewan: “Dormitories fair, play rooms dirty, water closets
dirty. Many pupils dirty and poorly clad. Miss Gilmour’s retirement from this school
seems to have started it on the down grade and now it is not fit for children to stay inunder its present conditions.” In commenting on the report, Martin Benson noted thatthe school seemed to be going from “bad to worse.”32
Church officials were well aware of the problems. In 1922, T. B. R. Westgate, the fieldsecretary for the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, inspected
the Anglican schools on the Peigan and Blood reserves and concluded they were bothin need of replacement. At Peigan, the heating was inadequate, the chimney threatened to collapse, and the bedding needed to be replaced. The Blood Reserve schoolbuildings were “in almost every way unequal to the purpose for which they exist.”33
In 1923, Westgate reported on the dismal conditions at three more schools. The boys’
school at Alert Bay, British Columbia, was “old, leaky, drafty and rests on timbers
which in places have almost completely rotted away.” The Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
school buildings were “old, unsafe, antiquated in design, and incapable in every wayof accommodating the number of children awaiting admission.”34 The school buildings at Whitefish Lake, Alberta, were “very poor and do not measure to the standards
required by your Department.”35 Conditions at these schools did not improve. In
January 1931, the Alert Bay principal wrote that because “no action has yet been taken
to remedy existing drainage and flood conditions,” heavy rains had once more led toflooding of the boiler room.36 By the fall of that year, the principal was still unable
to get funding to waterproof the school’s outside walls.37 In 1936, the Anglican Lord
Bishop of Athabasca described the Whitefish Lake and Wabasca, Alberta, schools as
being “in deplorable condition.”38 The following year, Indian agent N. P. L’Heureux
wrote that although the Anglican school at Wabasca had undergone repairs, the buildings remained “unfit for anybody to live there.”39
Conditions worsened during the Depression. In 1928, conditions were so bad at
the school in Mission, British Columbia, that Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scottrecommended closing the school until a new one could be built.40 In the face of church
opposition, he relented, and temporary classrooms were constructed.41 By the fall of
1930, the building still had not been replaced, and the school’s new principal, Father
T. J. Fahlman, described the living conditions as “deplorable.”42 In December 1930,
Inspector George Pragnell wrote that he dreaded “the possibility of fire” at the school,
and recommended the installation of rope fire escapes in the boys’ dormitory.43
In March 1931, Indian agent A. O’N. Daunt drew the department’s attention to “theabsolute necessity of a new School at Mission. Years have gone by since it was firstpromised.” He pointed out that if the government had not promised to build a new458 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school, the church would have carried out more extensive repairs. Daunt concluded,“I absolutely refuse to assume responsibility for anything that may happen to the
School and pupils in the future.”44 He had promised to say no more on the issue, but,a month later, reported that due to poor weatherproofing, “the wind blows in one walland out the other, and wreaths of snow may be seen along the walls, and for that matter may be felt around ones [sic] neck in bed.”45 In 1933, Inspector Pragnell reminded
the department that the Mission school was “a very old building, and not at all easy tokeep in good order.”46
Later that year, with no support from the federal government, the Oblates constructed a new building at Mission. It accommodated an ice plant, dairy, technicalclassrooms, kitchen and its storeroom, dining room, and a dormitory.47 The project
was funded in part by a significant “bequest of one of its earliest graduates.”48 On thebasis of this work, federal officials decided it was no longer necessary for them tobuild a new school at Mission.49 Yet, the school’s problems were not over. As the 1930s
drew to an end, it became apparent that the water supply was contaminated.50 Harold
McGill, the director of the Indian Affairs Branch, originally stated that there were nofunds in the budget to redress the problem.51 Eventually, money was found to rebuild
the reservoir by the end of the year.52
In 1935, Roman Catholic Archbishop Sinnott found the Sandy Bay, Manitoba,
school to be “not only inadequate to meet the needs of the Reserve, but it is in a mostdisgraceful, not to say disgusting, condition.” It needed either significant repair or
replacement.53 Two years later, when the Gladstone, Manitoba, Board of Trade heardthat the school might be condemned and the school relocated, its secretary treasurer,
V. A. Vincent, wrote to Indian Affairs, asking whether the new school could be locatednear Gladstone, since the town “has not been the recipient of any form of Governmentbuilding.”54
Mount Elgin principal Oliver Strapp submitted a lengthy assessment of needed
repairs in 1937. The pupils’ bathroom, which had been set up on an emergency
basis several years earlier, lacked appropriate ventilation; the dining room and theboys’ reading room were in need of replastering; the walls in the boys’ recreation
room leaked when it rained; all the dormitories needed a proper ventilation systeminstalled; the stairways were in poor condition; the roof needed repair; and the building’s ornamental towers swayed in high winds and contributed to the cracking of interior plaster.55
At the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that the joists and crossbeams holding
up the floor of the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school were sinking. The local Indian agent
had concluded that the situation was “urgent and dangerous.”56 The Pine Creek school
had been constructed in 1899 without government involvement.57 In 1939, inspectors
attributed many of its problems to poor construction. The age of the building and thenumber of defects led a government architect to conclude that the building did notBuilding and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939 • 459

merit repair. Even measures that would halt the deterioration of the building would
be expensive.58 The government authorized its repair anyway, instead of building a
new school.59

Sanitation and drinking water
Problems with sanitation and water supply were constant and demonstrated thelack of planning that characterized the establishment of the residential schools. In
1904, Indian Commissioner David Laird echoed Martin Benson’s 1897 commentson the poor location of many schools when he wrote that the sites for the boarding
schools seemed “to have been selected without proper regard for either water-supply
or drainage. I need not mention any school in particular, but I have urged improvement in several cases in regard to fire-protection.”60
Findings of poor sanitation are common in reports on the nineteenth-century
schools. In 1892, J. W. Butler of the McDougall Orphanage in Morley, in what is now
Alberta, informed the head of the Methodist Missionary Society, A. Sutherland, thatthe “school accommodation” was inadequate. There was a pressing need for “lavatories and bath rooms for boys and girls.”61 The following year, an inspector described
the sewer at the Presbyterian school in Kamsack as “a menace to the health of all
occupants of the building.” He recommended that the sewer be removed as wellas the soil beneath it, as it had been contaminated by leakage.62 Dr. M. M. Seymour
reported that an 1897 test of the drinking water at the Qu’Appelle school in what is
now Saskatchewan was “contaminated with organic matter… that is to say excreta andthe water should be condemned for drinking purposes.” The conclusion vindicatedSeymour’s long-standing criticism that the “present arrangement of closets and disposal of sewage is contaminating the soil in the vicinity of the wells.”63
Matters were not much better at the Red Deer school. In 1896, Principal C. E.
Somerset reported:
The water supply is very poor, there being only a small well holding about twenty
gallons, which is pumped dry about three times a day. We have also two largetanks to catch water from the roof. Our supply being so small, water has to be
drawn from the river in a tank, causing great labour and loss of time.64

It was not until 1901 that Somerset was able to report, “Our water-supply is now
very satisfactory. By the aid of our steam-pump we have all we need from the Red Deer
river.”65
In his 1897 report, Martin Benson also commented on the poor quality of the toilet systems installed in the industrial schools. He wrote that the Brandon, Manitoba,
school principal was “constantly complaining of foul air arising from these closets.”
He recommended that they be replaced with outdoor “earth closets” that could be460 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

reached by a covered walkway in winter.66 Because few schools had showers, Benson
said, he had seen “eight or ten boys run through the same water in an ordinary bathtub, water being scarce but very dirty at the last.”67
The problem was not limited to the West or to the nineteenth century. A 1901 analysis showed that one of four water samples at the Mount Elgin school in Muncey was“distinctly objectionable and probably dangerous.” The problem likely arose fromthe fact that the ground over the tile pipes through which the water was pumped wascovered with manure that was being used to fertilize the ground.68 Benson pointed
out in 1902 that at Mount Elgin, the boys had no “bathing facilities except the waterof the Thames in summer and washtubs in winter, taking their morning wash at thepump.” He also recommended that baths for the girls be placed in the laundry.69 In theprevious year, the principal of the Battleford school reported, “Our main well having
failed us, we are connecting the water system in the school with a good spring somelittle distance away on the premises, a spring from which we have been hauling our
supply of water for some time past; the water is of very good quality, and the supply
plentiful.”70
According to Presbyterian minister E. A. Henry at the Regina school in 1908, “every
spoonful of water for a large building had to be carried in pails from a distant well.” Asa result, it was sometimes not possible to bathe the students.71 In 1915, the principalof the Birtle, Manitoba, school pointed to the inadequacy of the school water supply.72
The Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school sewage system was “entirely unsatisfactory” and inneed of immediate repair in 1927.73
There were ongoing problems with the sanitation system at the Catholic schoolin Kenora, Ontario. A 1927 report noted that the “toilet outside the building is mostunsanitary and too close to the school.”74 By 1932, the Ontario health department wascomplaining that sewage from the school was polluting Lake of the Woods.75 Two students were hospitalized and twenty-four more became sick from an outbreak of intestinal influenza at the school in 1939. Indian agent Frank Edwards linked the outbreakto the problems with the sewage disposal system, which, he said, was overflowing
into the lake.76 The following year, Edwards reported that the disposal system was notworking, and the water from the taps in the playroom and dining room “is not good.”77
In June 1927 in Kamloops, British Columbia, at the request of Principal J. McGuire,the medical health officer, M. G. Archibald, conducted an inspection of the school.
He reported that the younger boys’ recreation room—which was located in the former laundry—was “most inadequate and most unsanitary.” The wooden floors werewater-soaked, as was the ground over which the room was built. He suggested theroom had contributed to “numerous infections, colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia
during the past winter.” The older boys’ dormitories were “scarcely an improvement,
being “cold in winter and absolutely unsuitable for the purposes for which they wereintended.” The washroom was “decidedly dilapidated and unsanitary.” He saved hisBuilding and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939 • 461

strongest language for the outside toilets, which were “in a tumble-down, rotten condition; the soil about them is saturated with sewerage and the stench from them is
unbearable. These toilets are a distinct menace to the health of the children and not
at all in keeping with appointments of a modern school.” He recommended they bedestroyed at once.78
McGuire hoped to use the report to pressure Indian Affairs into paying for improvements at the school. In passing it on to the local inspector of Indian agencies, he noted:“We may consider ourselves extremely fortunate that we have succeeded in carryingout these investigations without the news spreading among the Indians. The nearest
approach to it was when Joe Jules, during the cold weather, removed his boy fromschool.”79
By 1930, the government was forced to consider rebuilding the school at Sandy
Bay. It had no permanent water supply and, according to Indian Commissioner W.
M. Graham, “there is no chance of carrying out farming” at the school location.80 Four
years later, the Sandy Bay principal said the water situation was urgent. During thewinter, the school had used a sleigh to haul water from the nearby lake. He reported:“This spring we are still more embarrassed than ever as we haven’t even our usual
quantity of rain water. We have had so far only one barrel-full of water from our roof,
which I may say was far from being fit to drink.” As a result, three tanks of water had tobe hauled from the lake on a daily basis. He asked the department to provide a truck,a tank, and a pump, as a stopgap.81

A fur coat in the classroom: Failures of the heating systems
The heating systems were often as inefficient as the sanitary systems. Sister Félician
gave this description of the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school in the 1890s:
In vain did we run around to keep warm; we shivered and our teeth chattereduncontrollably. The refectory was the coldest. The stove roared until we thought
the chimney was on fire, yet the room remained icy. The meat, coffee, everything was frozen, and Sister Saint-Fabian had to summon all her strength to cut
the beef steak which was like rock. In cooling, the dishes stuck to the table. The
nights were frigid.82

In 1897, at the Presbyterian school in Kamsack in what is now Saskatchewan, theteacher wore a fur coat in the classroom, water in a jug remained frozen all day, and asewing machine could not be operated because the room was too cold.83 In 1899, thenewly appointed Brandon school principal, T. Ferrier, complained that the school’s
heating system

462 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

has been so tampered with and mutilated that it exists no longer in its originalform. The projection of the main building is heated by two additional furnaces,
which have so many disconnected pipes and broken doors, disordered draughts
and dilapidated grates, that it is impossible for the circulation of air to takeplace.84

The Calgary school had opened in December 1896.85 According to Principal George
Hogbin, much of the exterior originally had been simply boarded over with “shiplap”(wooden sheathing). By 1904, it had been lathed and plastered, making it possible“to keep the building fairly warm, which before had been practically impossible.” Thebaths were moved from the basement to the top floor and students no longer “hadto climb the whole height of the building past every door to the exterior, in order toreach their dormitories.”86 But heating problems persisted. In 1906, Hogbin reported
that classroom work was “regularly carried on during the winter, that is, whenever thetemperature of the schoolroom will allow. Owing to the defects repeatedly reported
in our heating system it is occasionally found that the school-room is so cold as absolutely to forbid its use.”87
The school principal in Regina concluded in 1904:
Our heating system is several degrees short of perfection. We burned last year
very little short of three hundred tons of soft coal. Even at that we were none too
warm. The long rambling shape of the building makes it very difficult to heat by
the hot-air system, especially during the stormy days, of which we had many last
winter.88

In 1908, due to a coal shortage, the school had to be heated with straw, leaving acovering of fine straw ash throughout the building.89
The boiler at the Birtle school in Manitoba was in such poor repair in 1927 that it
could not push the temperature above 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) in
the winter. There was no hot-water supply. According to the principal, H. B. Currie,“Every bit of hot water required for bathing 90 pupils and the Staff has to be carried
from the kitchen up to the bath rooms, up one or two flights of stairs, in buckets.”90
Not all schools were in a state of collapse. In 1908, as he was deploring the conditionof the schools in Regina and on the Blood Reserve in Alberta, Inspector Paget judged
the buildings at the Battleford school in Saskatchewan (run by the Anglican Church)
to be in good repair, clean, and neat. He found the Brandon school (operated by the
Methodists) to be “excellently conducted,” its buildings “scrupulously clean and tidy.”91
And, in a 1920 report, W. M. Graham, after criticizing the management of the Gleichen
school in Alberta, commented that the school at Hobbema, Alberta, while old, was“spotlessly clean.” The St. Albert, Alberta, school was “wonderful,” “the finest Indian
Institution I was ever in, large, airy and well lighted. The beds and bedding could not
be better. There was no crowding, and the food was good and wholesome.” Similarly,

Building and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939 • 463

the Cluny, Alberta, school was “large, airy and well lighted.… There was nothing in thewhole Institution that a person looking for trouble, could find fault with.”92
Although there are many more examples of positive assessments of specific schools,
the most telling assessment of the overall quality of the residential school buildings in
Canada can be found in a lengthy memorandum that Welfare and Training superintendent R. A. Hoey wrote in 1940. Hoey estimated that, by then, Canada had invested$10 million in residential schools.93 Since he started with Indian Affairs in December
1936, there had never been “the funds necessary to undertake the repairs required
at a majority of our residential schools.” As a result, many government and churchowned schools were “in a somewhat dilapidated condition” and had “become acutefire hazards.” He laid responsibility for the “condition of our schools, generally,” on
their “faulty construction.” This construction, he said, had failed to meet “the minimum standards in the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions forthe education of children.”He pointed out that poor brickwork at schools at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, andAlert Bay, British Columbia, meant that the walls constantly leaked rainwater. Bothschool buildings had been in operation for only a decade. The foundation of the tenyear-old school at Birtle was sinking. Faulty eavestroughing was causing the north wallto buckle at the Presbyterian school in Kenora. The roof of the twelve-year-old Lytton,
British Columbia, school leaked and was in need of repair. Over the previous three
years, the department had made improvements to the water supply at nine schools.
There were, however, “still a large number of schools where the water supply is wholly
inadequate.” He noted critical shortages at the Chapleau school in Ontario, and theBrandon and Sandy Bay schools in Manitoba.
Hoey’s roll call of disaster continued: the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school
needed a new sewage plant; the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school had been on theverge of collapse and still needed substantial repair; the Round Lake, Saskatchewan,
school was “one of the most dilapidated and insanitary schools we have at present”;
the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school was “in poor state of repair,” as were the Wabasca,
Whitefish Lake, and Sturgeon Lake schools in Alberta; the Anglican and Roman
Catholic schools in Brocket, Alberta, were so strangely constructed that they swayed
and rocked in a high wind; and the ramshackle Squamish, British Columbia, school
was “an acute fire hazard.”
The location of some schools defied logic. After noting that the Elkhorn school in
Manitoba 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.” The school principal at Edmonton, Alberta, J. F. Woodsworth,
was deemed to be “one of our best principals,” but, even though he was allowed to464 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

recruit students from the British Columbia coast, he had not been able in recent years
to fill a school “that cost more to erect than any other in our entire system.”
Hoey recommended that the government close twelve schools: in Manitoba,
Portage la Prairie and Pine Creek; in Saskatchewan, Round Lake and Delmas; inAlberta, Wabasca, Whitefish Lake, Sturgeon Lake, and two in Brocket; in British
Columbia, Kitimaat, Port Simpson, and Squamish. He further recommended that the
government transfer funding of the St. Paul’s Hostel in the Yukon, where the majorityof the students was Métis, to the Yukon administration, saying, “This is not an Indian
Residential School in any sense: there is not at this date a single Indian student in
attendance.” He wanted to replace the schools whose closing he recommended withat least twenty-five day-school classrooms. This policy of school closures is one that
Hoey would continue to advocate into the 1940s.94
Superintendent Hoey apologized for the length of the memorandum, explainingthat “I have felt very keenly, however, owing to the condition of our residential schools
since I entered the Department, and my inability to keep these schools in a properstate of repair and efficiency.”95
Perhaps the most chilling revelation in the memorandum is Hoey’s statementthat he was “personally of the belief that no residential school should be built in the
future—either new or designed for replacement—other than those of fireproof construction throughout.”96 The fact that fireproofing was not already an establishedbuilding standard is an indictment of government policy—particularly in light of thelong history of fires at residential schools.

CHAPTER 18

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939

At 3:00 a.m. on September 28, 1873, Shingwauk Home principal E. F. Wilson
was awoken by the sounds of boys running about in the dormitory over his
bedroom. He opened the door to discover that “flames were leaping up at
the back of the house, seeming to come from the cellar, which was entered by a staircase from the outside.… Everyone was now crying ‘Fire!’ and all seemed to be rushingabout frantically.”
Efforts failed to put out the flames with water hauled from the nearby river.
Fortunately, no lives were lost, but the boarding school, which had opened only six
days earlier at Garden River, Ontario, was destroyed.1 Wilson’s daughter died of a nonfire-related illness a few days later.2 For Wilson, it was a time of tremendous trial: “Wesuspected incendiarism and knew not whom to trust, and my little daughter was deadand my wife seemed to be dying.”3 Despite these tragedies, he launched a new fundraising campaign, and opened a new Shingwauk Home, located closer to Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario, in 1875.4
The Shingwauk fire underscores the serious risk that fire posed in the late nineteenth century. Residential schools were often poorly built and isolated from help
in case of fire. Many of the boarding schools were of wood-frame construction. The
wood- and coal-burning stoves used to heat the buildings could throw off sparks
that could result in a blaze. Heat was transmitted from room to room by stovepipesthat were themselves a potential source of fire. Most of the schools were far from any
source of electricity, and, for years, most of them were lit by gas lamps. For example,
at the Yale, British Columbia, school in 1908: “Coal-oil lamps are almost entirely used
for lighting purposes. These lamps are attached to the walls or ceiling, in rooms occupied by the children, or in the passages. Candles in addition to lamps are used in thechapel, and sometimes by the teachers.”5
The January 1904 fire that destroyed the Qu’Appelle school started in the school
lamp room that stored 150 lamps along with a supply of coal oil and other inflammable materials. In reviewing the fire, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson noted that
although the fire had been caused accidentally, the school administration had beencareless in not ensuring that students did not have access to the room.6

466 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Over time, most schools acquired electrical generators, but poor wiring wasoften the cause of school fires. An electrical short circuit started a fire that destroyed
the rebuilt Qu’Appelle school in 1932.7 A 1938 inspection of the Cranbrook, British
Columbia, school noted that the poor condition of the plaster walls throughout thebuilding meant that “should fire break out it would be drawn up through the walls
and ceilings through the places where the plaster is missing, and run under thefloors all over the building before anyone would be aware.”8 Efforts to control student behaviour also increased the fire risks. The school principal at Shubenacadie,
Nova Scotia, J. P. Mackey, thought that a 1936 boiler-room fire could have been the
result of “boys sneaking their way to the boiler room, in order to have a smoke” andthrowing their cigarettes away to avoid detection.9 Some fires were deliberately set
by students. Although there was no official determination that the 1873 Shingwauk
Home fire was the work of an arsonist, there were reports that the fire was started byband members. According to some accounts, the opponents of the school objected
to English-language education; other accounts suggest they were opposed to the cultural change that the school presented; and, in yet other accounts, the arsonists may
have harboured a personal grudge against Wilson.10
From the records produced and available to it, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada has determined that at least thirty-seven schools were destroyedby fire between 1867 and 1939. During this period, there were never more than eighty
schools in operation at any one time (see Table 18.1). In addition, at least thirty-two outbuildings were destroyed by fire during this period (see Table 18.2). There were at least
forty-eight additional recorded fires (see Table 18.3). It was suspected or proven that atleast 26 of these 117 fires were deliberately set (see Table 18.4).
There were three tragic building fires throughout this period (from 1867 to 1939).
The 1905 fire at Saint-Paul-des-Métis, in what is now Alberta, claimed one life;11 the1927 fire at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school claimed twenty;12 and the 1930 fire at
the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school claimed thirteen.13 In addition, in three separate
incidents (Middlechurch, Manitoba, 1895;14 Beauval, 1909;15 and Fort Resolution,
Northwest Territories, 192416), students died from burns when garbage-disposal
fires set their clothing on fire. It also appears that a girl from the Ahousaht, British
Columbia, school died of fire-related injuries in 1916.17
Even when there were no deaths, fires could be devastating. When fire destroyed
the Anglican school at Wabasca, Alberta (also known as Lake Wapuskow), in 1903,
staff and children lost everything but their nightclothes.18 After a fire at the Kamloops,
British Columbia, school in 1925, one of the Sisters of St. Ann lamented, “All ourwardrobe, library, and valuables acquired during the fifty years of service went up in
flames.”19 When fire destroyed the Qu’Appelle school in 1932, the boys were able tosalvage some clothing and bedding, but the girls, who were in church when the fire
broke out, lost everything but the clothes they were wearing.20

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 467

Table 18.1. Schools destroyed by fire: 1867 to 1939. (Religious affiliation of the school is
identified when there are two schools in a single location.)
Île-à-la-Crosse, North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan) (1867)1
Shingwauk Home, Garden River, Ontario (1873)2
Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, boys’ school and girls’ school (1885)3
Coqualeetza Institute, Chilliwack, British Columbia (1892)4
Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake, North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan) (1894)5
Fort William, Ontario, orphanage (1894)6
Elkhorn, Manitoba (1895)7
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario (1903)8
Anglican school at Wabasca, North-West Territories (now Alberta) (1903)9
Qu’Appelle, North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan) (1904)10Saint-Paul-des-Métis, Alberta (1905). One student died in this fire.11
Kitimaat, British Columbia, girls’ home (1906)12
Rupert’s Land school, Middlechurch, Manitoba (1906)13
Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, girls’ school (1911)14
Norway House, Manitoba (1913)15
Fort Vermilion, Alberta (1914)16
Alberni, British Columbia (1917)17
Ahousaht, British Columbia (1917)18
Sechelt, British Columbia (1917)19
Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan (1920)20
Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan (1920)21
Crosby Girls’ Home, Port Simpson, British Columbia (1921)22
Joussard, Alberta (1923)23
Kamloops, British Columbia (1925)24
Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan (1925)25
Beauval, Saskatchewan (1927).26 Nineteen students and one staff person died in this fire.27
Gleichen, Alberta (1928)28
Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1928)29
Gordon’s Reserve, Saskatchewan (1929)30
Cross Lake, Manitoba (1930). Twelve students and one staff person died in this fire.31
Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan (1932)32
Fort Vermilion, Alberta (1932)33
Anglican school at The Pas, Manitoba (1933)34
Alberni, British Columbia (1937)35
Carcross, Yukon Territory (1939)36
Fort Albany, Ontario (1939)37

468 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 18.2. Outbuildings destroyed by fire: 1867 to 1939. (Religious affiliation of theschool is identified when there are two schools in a single location.)
Mount Elgin at Muncey, Ontario, playhouse (1889)1
Battleford, Saskatchewan, carpenter’s shop (1894)2
Elkhorn, Manitoba, girls’ dormitory (1895)3
Old Sun’s, T’suu Tina, North-West Territories (now Alberta), stable (1896)4
Mission, British Columbia, laundry building (1896)5
Metlakatla, British Columbia, girls’ dormitory, laundry, and the school workshops (1901)6
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario, barns (1903)7
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario, temporary boys’ dormitory (1903)8
Birtle, Manitoba, stable (1903)9
Coqualeetza Institute, Chilliwack, British Columbia, several outbuildings (1906)10
Hay River, Northwest Territories, henhouse (1907)11
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, boys’ playhouse (1907)12
Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, pump house (1913)13
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, barns (1915)14
Gleichen, Alberta, laundry building (1921)15
Round Lake, Saskatchewan, classrooms (1923)16
Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve, Brocket, Alberta, principal’s house (1925)17
Chapleau, Ontario, the former school building (1926)18
Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, the former school building (1926)19
Lestock, Saskatchewan, laundry and garage (1931).20 The school engineer was injured in the fire
and the government declined to pay his medical bills, saying they were a church responsibility.21
Blue Quills, Alberta, stable (1928)22
Spanish, Ontario, boys’ school, chicken coop (1930)23
Shingle Point, Yukon Territory, principal’s residence (1934)24
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, principal’s residence (1934)25
Birtle, Manitoba, poultry house (1934)26
File Hills, Saskatchewan, poultry house (1935)27
Fraser Lake, British Columbia, piggery (1935)28
Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, power plant (1936).29 Although there were no fatalities, twopeople were badly burned by the fire.30
Roman Catholic school at Fort George, Québec, laundry (1938)31
Roman Catholic school at Kenora, Ontario, staff residence (1938)32
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, pump house (1939)33
Roman Catholic school at Kenora, Ontario, the priests’ residence (1939)34

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 469

Table 18.3. Additional reported fires that did not destroy buildings. (Religious affiliationof the school is identified when there are two schools in a single location.)
Battleford, Saskatchewan (1885)1
Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, girls’ school (1888)2
Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (1889)3
Anglican school on the Blood Reserve, North-West Territories (now Alberta) (1895)4
Kuper Island, British Columbia (1895)5
Metlakatla, British Columbia, main building (1899)6
Red Deer, North-West Territories (now Alberta), piggery (1899) 7
Birtle, Manitoba, basement (1901)8
Rupert’s Land school at Middlechurch, Manitoba, laundry and kitchen (two separate fires, twodays apart) (1903)9
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, kitchen (1906)10
Elkhorn, Manitoba (1908)11
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, barn (1908)12
Presbyterian school at Kamsack, Saskatchewan (1913)13
Alberni, British Columbia (1913)14
Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1913)15
Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan (1914)16
St. Albert, Alberta (1917)17
Duck Lake, Saskatchewan (1917)18
Alert Bay, British Columbia (1918)19
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, kitchen (1922)20
Fraser Lake, British Columbia (1923)21
Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories (1923)22
Alert Bay, British Columbia (1924)23
Birtle, Manitoba, boys’ dormitory (1925)24
Marieval, Saskatchewan (1926)25
McIntosh, Ontario, laundry (1927)26
Morley, Alberta (1927)27
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1928)28
Mission, British Columbia (1928)29
Anglican school at The Pas, Manitoba (1929)30
Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories (1929)31
Blue Quills, Alberta (1929)32
Pine Creek, Manitoba (1930)33
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1930)34
Hay River, Northwest Territories, laundry (1931)35
Blue Quills, Alberta (1932)36

470 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Grouard, Alberta (1932)37
Grouard, Alberta (1933)38
Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories (1933)39
Cluny, Alberta (1933)40
Morley, Alberta (1935)41
Hay River, Northwest Territories, school roof (1935)42
Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, boiler room (1936)43
Sioux Lookout, Ontario, engine room (1936)44
Morley, Alberta, stables (1938)45
Fraser Lake, British Columbia, laundry (1938)46
Alert Bay, British Columbia, boys’ dormitory and sitting room (1939)47
Fraser Lake, British Columbia, laundry and roof (1939)48

Table 18.4. School fires that were suspected or proven to be deliberately set. (Religious
affiliation of the school is identified when there are two schools in a single
location.)
Shingwauk Home at Garden River, Ontario (1873)1
Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, girls’ school (1888)2
Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario (1889)3
Kuper Island, British Columbia (1895)4
Anglican school on the Blood Reserve, North-West Territories (now Alberta) (1895).5 Staff member
suspected of starting fire.
Birtle, Manitoba, barn (1903). Barn destroyed.6
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario (1903). School destroyed.7
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario, barn (1903). Barn destroyed.8
Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario, boys’ temporary housing (1903). Housing destroyed.9
Saint-Paul-des-Métis, Alberta (1905)10
Mount Elgin, Muncey, Ontario, barn (1908)11
Presbyterian school at Kamsack, Saskatchewan (1913)12
Duck Lake, Saskatchewan (1917). Several attempts in one year.13
Ahousaht, British Columbia (1917)14
St. Albert, Alberta (1917)15
Alert Bay, British Columbia (1918)16
Alert Bay, British Columbia (1924)17
Marieval, Saskatchewan (1926)18
Morley, Alberta (1927)19
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1928)20
Mission, British Columbia (1928)21

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 471
Blue Quills, Alberta (1929)22
Pine Creek, Manitoba (1930)23
Cross Lake, Manitoba (1930). School destroyed.24
Cluny, Alberta (1933)25
Morley, Alberta (1935)26

The fire risk in public buildings
By the late nineteenth century, the risk that fire presented to large public institutions such as schools was well recognized throughout North America. In 1883, theChurch of the Holy Redeemer Parochial School in New York City caught fire. Theinterior stairwell became blocked and, as the number of children in the stairway
increased, it collapsed. Fifteen children died in the disaster. Despite the fact that since
1871, public buildings in New York City had been required to have fire escapes, theHoly Redeemer school had no such escape.21 The following year, twenty-two children died in an orphanage fire in Brooklyn. Again, the building had no fire escape.22
A school fire in suburban Cleveland in 1908 killed 172 children. These tragedies led to
an increase in laws and in the enforcement of laws requiring schools to have enclosed
exterior fire escapes, fireproof basements, and unimpeded exits.23
Fire escapes were essential in otherwise unsafe buildings, but they were a measure of last resort. By the early twentieth century, it was recognized that student safety
was best ensured by improved building techniques, including the use of fire-resistantmaterials. Many people also argued that public schools should not be more than two
storeys in height, effectively decreasing the difficulty in evacuating students fromthe building in case of fire.24 By the 1920s, the benefit of fireproof-construction techniques in New York City was apparent. In 1921, there were forty-four school fires incity schools, but no fatalities.25
Canadian officials were well aware of the fire risk to large public buildings:
most famously, in 1916, a fire took seven lives and destroyed most of the Canadian
Parliament Buildings.26 Between 1907 and 1938, there were five disastrous fires atschools and orphanages in Québec.
• February 1907, Hochelaga School in Montréal, sixteen students and one teacher
dead27• February 1918, Montréal Grey Nuns Orphanage, fifty-three children dead28• Summer 1922, Shawbridge, Québec, Jewish Orphanage camp, twelve children
dead29• December 14, 1927, Québec City, St. Charles Convent (orphanage), thirty-sevenchildren dead30

472 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• January 18, 1938, St-Hyacinthe, Québec, College of the Sacred Heart, at least
forty-five students and staff dead31
As noted in the previous chapter on building quality, in 1940, the Welfare andTraining superintendent, R. A. Hoey, informed the Indian Affairs director, Harold
McGill (the most senior official within Indian Affairs), that most of the country’s residential schools had been poorly built and poorly maintained. Because the minimum
standards for the construction of public buildings had not been adhered to, manybuildings were fire hazards.32 Hoey was merely restating what was both obvious andvery well known within the department. For decades, field staff had been identifying and reporting fire hazards, insufficient fire-fighting capacity, and inadequate firesafety planning and equipment at school after school.
In investigating a fire that broke out in 1901 at the Birtle school when a furnace
pipe overheated, causing a joist to ignite, Indian agent G. H. Wheatley commented
that he was amazed “to see what a fire-trap the work about the furnace pipe hole was.”Given the school’s condition, he said, it was “a mystery that the building has escaped
so long.”33 A 1927 inspection by W. Murison of the same school twenty-six years later
concluded, “This building, as you know, owing to its narrow and intricate passages
would be a death trap in case of fire.”34 Inspector J. G. McKechnie wrote of the Gordon’sReserve school in Saskatchewan in 1918, “The danger of fire in the present building,lighted as it is by kerosene lamps and heated by stoves and without an adequate watersupply is very great. It is providential that no tragedy has so far occurred.” He recommended that the building be replaced.35 In 1927, the principal of the Peigan school at
Brocket, Alberta, reported that, at this recently constructed school, “all the doors leading to the fire escapes open in: I have always been wondering why Mr. Gardner Smith
allowed the contractor to make that mistake.”36
In 1928, local Indian agent A. O’N. Daunt reported to Ottawa that the British
Columbia fire marshal and the local fire chief “have registered severe complaints of
the Fire hazzard [sic]” at the school at Mission, British Columbia.37 In October 1929, theSault Ste. Marie fire chief, W. J. Phillips, described the Shingwauk Home as being “in avery dillipated [sic] condition and almost falling down and Fire trap to keep Children
in this Building the Roof is leaking something terrible all over.” He recommended
the purchase of new hoses and fire extinguishers, and the construction of three newfire escapes.38 Even though the federal government and the Anglican Church had
acknowledged that the school building at Wabasca had been in need of replacement
since 1923, it was still in operation in 1934. By then, T. B. R. Westgate of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada (mscc) had informed Ottawa that becauseof the “ever-present danger of fire,” the mscc would not accept any responsibility “forany consequences which might result from an outbreak of fire.”39
A March 1932 inspection of the Qu’Appelle school noted that in two of the school
furnace rooms, the pipe “leading from the furnace is almost burned through in places

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 473

and should be renewed.” The inspector wrote that a fire could start easily in the paperthin pipes used to conduct throughout the building.40 Later that year, a fire did start,
originating in the wiring, rather than in the pipes. It destroyed the school.41 After the1932 fire, the boys were moved to a nearby Oblate institution and the girls moved into
the town hall of the village of Fort Qu’Appelle. Eleven months later, 125 girls were stillin the town hall.
Inspector J. D. Sutherland described the town hall as “over-crowded, unsanitary,
and a fire-trap. The girls are sleeping in bunks, 5 tiers deep, in the main building, whilein the annex, sleeping in the loft, were 54 girls.” The main hall was used as a dining
room, recreation room, and dormitory. There were no bathing facilities and the sanitary arrangements were “of the most primitive type.” According to Sutherland, “theodor in the building, mostly of creolin, used for disinfecting purposes, was nauseating.” In case of fire, he doubted anyone would escape alive. There was also danger ofthe outbreak of epidemics. In all his experience, he wrote, “I have never seen a situation such as is provided for the girls.”42
In 1938, according to an Indian Affairs inspection report, the stove pipes at the
Cranbrook, British Columbia, school were in need of replacement. Many of the fire
alarms were out of order, while those that did work were too small, and there wasa need for “panic bolts” on the fire-escape doors to ensure they would not become
locked or hard to open in case of a fire.43

Inadequate firefighting equipment
The high risk of fire was coupled with a poor water supply at many schools. In 1896,
Indian agent Samuel Lucas reported that the Sarcee boarding school at T’suu Tina, inwhat is now Alberta, had no fire protection other than a hose that was not long enoughto reach from the water supply to the school.44 In April 1923, Inspector R. H. Cairns
wrote that “inadequate water supply makes the fire protection very uncertain” at theschool at Fraser Lake, British Columbia.45 Two months later, a fire caused between$1,200 and $1,400 damage to the school.46 Afterwards, Principal N. Coccola observedthat “the water supply gave out so quickly it would have been impossible to check amore serious fire.”47 This was not a case of a problem arising at an old, poorly built
school. At the time, the school was only two years old.48
When a fire destroyed the laundry building at the Old Sun’s Anglican school at
Gleichen, Alberta, in 1921, Principal P. H. Gentleman wrote that it was only due to theefforts of the staff that the entire school was not destroyed. Gentleman also reported
that the unsuitable fire-protection equipment at the school provided only “a verysmall protection.”49 An inspection of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school in 1927

474 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

found that the fire hoses, which were fourteen years old, were “rotten and useless.” At
the time, the Portage school was viewed as one of the best-run schools in the system.50
In April 1924, Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham described the water system atthe Edmonton school, which had opened only two weeks earlier, as “an absolute failure.” He said the system could supply only half the school’s needs.51 The significanceof this failure was demonstrated a year later when, in May 1925, fire destroyed muchof the school’s engine and laundry room. According to Principal J. F. Woodsworth, theEdmonton fire department saved the school from destruction; “Our own fire protection equipment was as we expected absolutely useless.”52 In the late 1920s, an inspector reported that the fire hose at The Pas, Manitoba, school was “worthless.”53
The lack of water pressure remained a problem into the 1930s. In 1932, G. Forbes,
principal of the school at Williams Lake, reported to Ottawa, “Our real worry is a fire.
There is not sufficient water pressure for hoses.”54 The problem at the school at Fort
Alexander, Manitoba, was even more severe. In 1934, Principal S. Perrault reported
that the only method available for fighting a fire at the school was from water hauled inbuckets. Since there was not enough staff at the school to organize an effective bucket
brigade, the school was, in his opinion, “an easy prey to the flames.”55
A 1937 inspection of the school at Ahousat, British Columbia, noted that while
the fire escapes and fire-fighting equipment were in good order, “nothing that can bedone prevents this old building from being a fire trap.”56 Two years later, Inspector G.
H. Barry commented, “There is a definite fire hazard at this school.” The water pressure was so low that “it would not be possible to fight a fire at this school should it havetaken any sort of hold on the old buildings.”57 He was correct: on January 26, 1940, theschool was destroyed by fire.58

Fire protection
The federal government was slow to develop adequate fire-protection policy. It
appears not to have enforced the policies that it did establish. Deputy Minister Hayter
Reed was spurred into action by an 1895 attempt by students to set fire to the schoolat Kuper Island, British Columbia. He instructed British Columbia Indian superintendent A. W. Vowell to inform residential school principals in that province thatthey were expected to adopt a number of fire-protection measures. These included
locating buckets of water throughout the building, training staff in the use of any
fire-fighting equipment, and training staff and students in what to do if fire brokeout. Reed’s instructions were typical of Indian Affairs practice. They were limited, inthat they applied only to British Columbia, and they were inadequate, in that it wasleft to Vowell to determine the specific content of the instructions.59 It was not until
1907 that Indian Affairs instructed all principals to establish a system for fire drills.60

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 475

The following year, Indian Affairs issued an instruction to principals in schools on
the Prairies that required that “all dormitory, school-room, interior hall, and exterior
doors should open outwards” to ensure that “the building may be emptied quickly
and without danger of blockade in case of fire.”61
It took another twenty years and a major fire disaster before this became a national
expectation. In October 1927, weeks after a fire claimed twenty lives at the school at
Beauval, Duncan Campbell Scott issued a national instruction that fire-escape doors
should open outward. If they were sealed, “it should be possible for even a young pupil
to break through with a chair or boot.” In dormitories for young students, there was tobe either “an older trusted pupil or a member of the staff” assigned to a bed near thefire-escape exit. There were to be monthly fire drills and sufficient fire extinguishers
located throughout the school. Schools that did not employ a night watchman wereto assign a staff member to “make a thorough inspection of the building at ten o’clock
and again at midnight.” There was also to be a patrol in the morning.62
Another instruction issued in 1932 improved upon these measures by requiring that fire escapes were to be “efficient, kept in repair, free from snow or ice andunlocked exits to them must open out.”63 Despite these instructions, there were continual reports during this period of schools with insufficient fire escapes and of principals keeping the doors to these fire escapes locked.
An effective fire-escape system was one that allowed students to leave a school
quickly and safely. From the point of view of a residential school principal, such a system had two potential drawbacks. First, a fire escape that allowed students to leave theschool quickly during a fire could also be used by students who simply wished to run
away from the school. Second, an exterior staircase from a dormitory to the groundran both ways. Boys could climb up such a staircase to gain access to the girls’ dormitory. As a result, principals resisted the installation of outside fire escapes. Whenthey were finally obliged to install them, they often chose dangerous and frightening
pole-style escapes that students were expected to slide down in the event of fire. And,to prevent students from using them in ways deemed improper, they locked the doors
and windows leading to the escapes. The federal government tended to support theuse of pole-type escapes, on the grounds of cost, but, after 1932, locking access to fireescapes was contrary to repeated federal instructions. The fact that the government
was unable to achieve compliance on this matter is a sign of the failure of responsibility that characterized the administration of the residential school system.
One of the first signs of resistance to fire escapes came from Mount Elgin principal
W. W. Shepherd, who informed Indian Affairs in 1890, “We have not any out side [sic]fire escapes, and cannot well have as the pupils would be likely to escape when we
did not want them to. We have experience in that line.”64 (It is not clear if the sentence
was underlined by Shepherd or the letter’s recipient.) Two decades would pass before
Indian Affairs instructed a new Mount Elgin principal, S. R. McVitty, to install outside476 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

fire escapes on the student dormitories.65 When he inspected the work in 1912, architect Robert Ogilivie reported that although the fire escapes had been installed, theyshould not have “finished at the lower story.” While Ogilivie’s note provides no additional information, it is likely that this means that the escapes did not go down to
the ground.66 Improvement at Mount Elgin—one of the oldest residential schools in
Canada—was slow. A 1924 inspection report pointed to the “very inadequate provision for preventing loss of life in case of fire. Suitable arrangements for fire escapeshould be made at once to insure the safety of the residents of the main building.”67
Using much the same language, a 1927 report commented on the “very inadequate
provision for the safety of the children in case of fire” at Mount Elgin.68 In August
1929, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs A. F. MacKenzie concluded
that “fire protection is not at all satisfactory” at the school. He instructed Principal
McVitty to install two steel-stair fire escapes and to remove flammable material fromthe school attic.69 The risk of fire at Mount Elgin was far from hypothetical: from 1906
to 1922, there had been at least five fires at the school.
Throughout this period, many schools lacked adequate fire escapes. A 1923 inspection of the Squamish school in North Vancouver reported that the fire alarm gongs
were in very poor condition, the fire extinguishers needed recharging, the fire hoseneeded replacement, and there were no outside fire escapes.70 In 1926, Indian agent
A. O’N. Daunt called for “some system of fire escapes” at the school at Mission, British
Columbia.71 At the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1926, Inspector
Bennett noted, “One of the doors leading to the fire escape is ‘Frozen’ solid,” and recommended that the ice be cut away.72 The following year, Indian agent Frank Edwards
recommended that a chute-type escape be installed at the school.73 When one more
year had passed, another inspector concluded that the school had insufficient fireescapes.74 Ten years later, an inspection report on the same school noted that the fireescape was unsafe because it was too close to the school windows. According to thereport, “if a fire should break out on the first or second story the escape would be cut
off by the fire going out of these windows.”75
In September 1929, Indian Affairs inspector A. G. Hamilton reported that at theRound Lake, Saskatchewan, school:
The fire escape from the girls’ dormitory on the west side of the building is sosituated that a child in sliding down the pole can hardly avoid coming in contact
with the railing along the steps leading into the boys’ playroom. This railing isabout six or eight feet off the ground, and a child striking it coming down as
swiftly as they do is liable to meet with an accident. I would suggest that this fireescape be North to the next window which would then give plenty of clearance
to anyone coming down the escape. The pole of this fire escape is secured at
the top by a brace against the school. This brace I found to be detached andthe pole was swinging free. I pointed this out to Mr. Ross, who was aware of it,

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 477

but as this fire escape has not been used for fire drill he has neglected fixing it.
Since the return of the children, the Principal has had no fire drill. Upon myrequest this was carried out, but, as a number of the staff were unaccustomed tothe proceedings, it was necessary that they be told and consequently I did notconsider the drill was a real test.76

In 1934, G. H. Barry wrote that although, in his previous report on the Christie
school on Meares Island, British Columbia, he had noted that the only fire escape atthe school was a set of “wooden stairs and wooden ladder attached to the back wallof the school,” he now reported that “even this poor escape has been done awaywith.” In case of fire, he did not see how the children could be saved.77
Not all principals were opposed to fire escapes. The principal at the school at Lac
La Ronge, Saskatchewan, Charles Hives, wrote in 1923 that he was “not at all satisfied
about our fire escape system.”78 He had good reason to be dissatisfied: the three-storey
building was only two years old and had no fire escapes.79 In 1927, at Birtle, Principal
H. B. Currie reported that the junior girls’ dormitory would be a fire trap, since theschool had no ladder long enough to reach the dormitory windows.80 That same year,
at Portage la Prairie, Principal W. A. Hendry asked the federal government for support
in making improvements to the existing fire escapes. In some cases, the fire escapes
did not go all the way to the ground; in others, they were built over the furnace room,
which was often where residential school fires originated.81 Similar problems existedon the west coast. In 1928, L. Choinel, the newly appointed principal of the Cranbrookschool, wrote to Ottawa to confirm his predecessor’s opinion that the school fireescapes were “absolutely inadequate.”82
In other cases, however, it was Indian Affairs staff members who drew attention to
the need for improved fire escapes. In 1929, when Indian Affairs identified the problem of a lack of fire escapes at the Anglican school at Whitefish Lake, Alberta, T. B.
R. Westgate, the field secretary of the Missionary Society of the Church of Englandin Canada, responded that “the height from the dormitory window to the ground is
not so great that a child would receive much injury if it jumped from the window toa mattress on the ground.” Despite this, he agreed to add fire escapes to the school.83
In 1930, W. M. Graham described the Hobbema, Alberta, school as “nothing but a fire
trap,” and recommended that until it was replaced, it be supplied with two new fireescapes.84
There was no unanimity on the type of fire escape to be installed at residential
schools. In 1923, P. Bousquet, the principal of the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school,
opposed Ottawa’s proposal for a wooden ladder fire escape for the girls’ dormitory. It
would, he said, “give an easy way to climb up to visit the girls.” Instead, he proposed
the installation of an iron pipe, three inches (7.6 centimetres) in diameter, down
which girls could slide in the case of a fire.85 Two years later, Indian Affairs informed
C. Perrault, school principal at McIntosh, Ontario, that it wanted him to install an478 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

inexpensive, pole-type fire escape, rather than the more expensive type he had proposed.86 The pole-type escapes could be quite primitive. Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan,
principal C. F. Hives said that “if we had the proper sliding brass poles, it would bealmost perfect. We have just the spruce pole now, which is alright until it becomespolished by constant usage. Then it becomes dangerous for the small children, on
account of their not being able to control their descent.”87

The Beauval and Cross Lake fires
The dangers inherent in poorly built schools with insufficient and inaccessible
fire escapes were realized in two tragic fires. On the evening of September 19, 1927, afire broke out at the Beauval school in northern Saskatchewan. The blaze originatedin the basement furnace room and moved quickly up two separate stairways to theboys’ dormitory on the third floor. The boys, along with the nun who was supervisingthem, were trapped by the two fires and could not get access to the exterior fire exits.
Although the flames had soon engulfed the entire building, the girls had more time toleave the building, “many of the older ones carrying their small companions in theirarms, thus saving their lives.”88 Nineteen boys, aged seven to twelve, and the supervising nun died in the blaze.89 An inquest absolved the school of blame. However, an
editorial in a local paper (The Standard) reached a harsher verdict, arguing that “theDepartment showed gross negligence according to the implication contained in theverdict of the jury.”90
The second disastrous fire took place at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school on
February 25, 1930. Principal G. E. Trudeau had inspected the basement at 11:00 p.m.
and midnight. Another staff member inspected the basement at 2:00 a.m. At 3:00 a.m.,“the basement and ground floor of the old part of the building was found to be all inflames with flames coming up stairways to the second floor.” The fire was detectedby Sister Angus, who had been awakened by the smell of smoke. She woke the fiveother nuns who were sleeping with her on the second floor. Sister Superior Marguerite
Marie instructed Sister Angus to fetch the male staff members, who lived in a separate
wing of the school. Marguerite Marie then mounted the staircase to the third floor toawaken the children. She was never seen alive again.
When the fire prevented Sister Angus from reaching the wing of the school housing
the male staff, she returned to the sister superior’s room and gathered up a four-yearold girl who had been sleeping in that room. She took the child to the front balcony,
threw a comforter to the ground, and then threw the child from the balcony in hopesthat she would land on the comforter. The girl missed the comforter, but landed safely
in a snowbank. Sister Angus later jumped from the balcony into a blanket being heldby two of the school staff. The four sisters whom she had awoken could not get throughFire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 479

the flames to the room on the second floor that had access to the fire escape. Instead,they had to jump from their windows; one suffered a fractured back as a result.
The boys’ and girls’ dormitories were located on the third floor and were separated
from each other by a solid wall. There were two, sliding, pole-type fire escapes fromthe boys’ dormitories and only one from the girls’ dormitory. The fire had destroyed
the electrical system, so the dormitories had to be evacuated quickly in the dark. The
children were badly panicked. Sister Marie des Anges stood at the top of the girls’ fireescape, where she had to “almost force the small girls down as they did not wish todescend the cold iron pipe with only their night clothes.” While performing this duty,
she froze her feet.91
Evelyn Jebb, a former Cross Lake student, provided the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada with the following description of the fire.
It was, it was on a cold winter night in 1930 when the fire broke out. It must havebeen about 40 below at that time. At around 3:00 after midnight we heard big
noises; the supervisor came yelling. She said, “Fire! Fire!” So we all got up and I
just put my socks on and I ran to the fire escape.
The fire escape door was frozen and one of the girls kicked it and it opened wide.
Then we ran, I remember the door was frozen. After that they took us to thebarn.92

Bella Quekeapow, another former Cross Lake student, provided this description of
the fire.
Well, it was there while we slept, while we slept that we were called “get up theschool is burning.” Right away I woke, and right away I ran to the metal poles
to slide down, there were two? [Yeah.] But I reached the metal poles and I slid
down as much as I could. And when I made it down, we then went and stoodat the side. We stood in the snow, there were no socks. Only what we had, ourbare feet. While we stood there I felt my feet start to freeze. So we stood there
not knowing what was going to be done to us. Then we were told if we could run
to the barn if we could. And truly I ran there following others; the barn—it was
further away. I don’t know how I felt but my feet were freezing, and after I ran I
got to the barn. So I went there, where the cows were. And there until morning,
until they came and gave us clothes to wear. It was only then that I knew when
I was given clothes to wear sitting there. That’s what I remember until morningwhen parents came to look for their children, many were not found.93

Eleven girls died in the fire.94 Because the boys had more fire escapes, only one boy
died.95 According to the provincial inspector, J. L. Fuller, the fact that there was only
one fire escape in the girls’ dormitory, coupled with the fact that their dormitory wasin the wing where the fire started, “accounts for the heavy fatalities among the girlpupils.” Fuller wrote, “If the building had been equipped with proper stair fire escapes,

480 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and an adequate means of giving alarm in case of fire, that could be turned in from any
floor in the building, there would have been little, if any loss of life.”96

Ineffective fire escapes
Concerns over the effectiveness of existing fire escapes, particularly the pole type,continued into the 1930s. An inspection of the File Hills school in 1932 noted that
although the young children could use the pole fire escape during fire drills, “theymight let go of the pole and suffer a serious fall under excitement.” The inspector also
noted that flames could come out of nearby windows, making use of the pole impossible. He recommended the installation of the type of spiral staircases used in publicschools, even though they were expensive.97 The principal opposed such a measure,saying the pupils would “use it for getting away from the dormitory and other undesirable purposes, at night.” Indian agent George Dodds said that the improper use of fireescapes was a problem at all schools, but did not think “it is a good way to solve this bylimiting the means of escape.”98
Dr. J. J. Wall, who visited the schools on behalf of Indian Affairs, vividly depicted
the limitations of the existing fire escapes. Wall wrote in 1938 that whenever he stayed
overnight at the Sandy Bay, Round Lake, Cowessess, or Hobbema schools, he always
had his “flash-light, overcoat, socks and gloves available and prepared for a sudden
dive into the winter night.” All four schools were vulnerable to fire and, in his opinion,needed improved fire escapes. The existing “iced poles of iron, narrow snow or ice
filled metal stairs on the outside possibly open to a wall of flames from some window
it passes will only add to the panic at night.”99
These four schools were far from being the only ones with ineffective fire escapes.
A 1935 inspection of the Cluny, Alberta, school reported the fire escapes were “nogood: in fact, dangerous if ever used.”100 In March 1938, John Marshall, the principalof the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school, reported that the school fire escapes “havealways been nothing less than a death trap owing to the fact that this building has
no eaves trough and that there is a continual drip from the roof onto the centre of thestairway of the fire escapes, making them very dangerous.” He said it was impossible
to keep the escapes free of snow and ice.101 There was a similar, long-standing problem at the school at Fraser Lake, British Columbia. In February 1932, Indian agent
Moore reported that the fire escapes at the school were covered by ice in the winter.
As a result, the steps were slippery and the pulleys to lower the escapes were difficult
to operate.102 According to an inspection report from six years later, “the dripping of
melting snow from the roof not only covers the fire escapes with a sheet of ice but also
completely seals the windows leading to the fire escapes, prevents the lowering of thebottom landing and on the North side of the building covers the ground at the bottom

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 481

of the fire escape with sheer ice.” These conditions made it almost impossible to havefire drills during the winter, and, in the opinion of the principal, W. Byrne-Grant, inthe event of fire, “would almost certainly lead to serious injury.”103 In the following
year, an inspector recommended that wooden rails be placed on top of the iron handrails on the fire escapes at the Lytton, Fraser Lake, and Cranbrook schools in British
Columbia: “It is impossible for small children to make their way down such escapes
at night in sub zero weather as their hands would stick to the iron rails and the skinwould be torn off each time they tried to catch hold of the guiding rails.”104
By the end of the 1930s, there were still reports of schools that did not have enoughfire escapes. A 1937 inspection of the Thunderchild school in Delmas, Saskatchewan,
concluded that while most of the school was well provided with fire protection, there
were no fire escapes for a recent addition, which included a second-storey dormitoryand staff quarters on the third floor. Permission was granted to remedy the problem.105

Locked doors
Even if a school had a safe, working fire escape, another barrier existed to students’
being able to exit a burning building quickly: principals across the country had taken
to locking the doors leading to those escapes. An inspector found in 1908 that theboys’ dormitory at the Regina school was locked on the outside. Since the person withthe key slept a distance away from the dormitory, it was thought this represented ahazard in case of fire. The principal was instructed to have someone sleep next to thedoor if the practice of locking it was to continue.106
The Indian commissioner for the Prairies, W. M. Graham, was one of the harshest
critics of the practice of restricting access to fire escapes. In 1925, he was in a fury overthe habit of the principal of the Anglican school at Brocket, Alberta, of nailing windows shut to prevent escape. “It is almost criminal,” he wrote, “and it shows the classof man we have in charge of that institution.”107
In 1930, Graham discovered that at the school at Fort Alexander, Manitoba, the“floors the fire escape poles run through [were] surrounded by a trap door with a hasp,
staple and padlock on, and the key in the possession of the Brother, which means if
the Brother was away from the building and the fire alarm rang, everyone would rush
to the fire escape and pile up and it would be a very serious situation.” In response to
his instruction to remove the lock, he received “the usual argument that the boys canescape, or that someone can come into the dormitories.”108 After learning the following year that the exits to the boys’ dormitories at the Sandy Bay school were lockedat night, Graham informed Ottawa, “The practice of locking these exit doors is common in many of our residential schools.”109 Seven months later, an inspection by A.
G. Hamilton of the Anglican school in The Pas revealed, “All doors leading to the fire482 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

escapes are locked. The Principal and the Matron claim they can do nothing else as thechildren run away at every opportunity.” For the same reason, the bedroom windows
were kept closed to prevent the students from getting “out by the use of bed sheets.”110
Graham called this a “terrible thing,” recommending that the principal be ordered
to remove the locks.111 Three months later, the doors were still locked. The principal
explained that without this measure, “several boys and girls would go out during thenight, and boys from the Reserve would come into the girls’ dormitory.” The key tothe door was kept in a glass case next to the lock.112 Graham did not comment on thisreport; he had been forced into retirement at the end of March 1932.113
Despite the fact that in 1932, Indian Affairs had sent out instructions that fireescapes were to be kept unlocked, in 1935, Indian Affairs inspector M. Christianson
noted that the fire escapes at the Morley, Alberta, school were padlocked. The principal, Edgar Staley, defended the practice, saying that several staff members had keys
to the doors and that there was an axe on the wall by the door that would allow students to break down the door. Christianson was not satisfied. He recommended that
if Staley wished to prevent students from using the fire exit to run away or to facilitate
visits between the boys and girls, he should install an alarm on the door that would
go off whenever it was opened.114 An inspection of the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school in1937 found that although the fire escapes were in good condition, the “doors leading
to the escapes were locked and there was considerable delay in securing a key to fit.”115
Even though Indian Affairs issued instructions in 1907 that there be a system of fire
drills and, in 1927, required that they be held monthly, the department was having difficulty gaining full compliance with this policy. In 1937, Inspector G. H. Barry reported
on the “great trouble” he was having in getting the principal of the Port Crosby, British
Columbia, school “to train the children in Fire Drill.”116 In a follow-up report, theinspector wrote that although the principal said that fire drills were being held regularly, he found the news “difficult to believe.” He discovered that the reason why such
drills had not been held in the past was that fine wire-mesh screens had been “nailed
outside the windows leading from the dormitories to the escapes.” Furthermore, thewater supply was not sufficient to fight “even a small fire.”117 By the following year, thewindows had been set on hinges that opened outwards and students in each dormitory had been given training on how to care for younger students in case of a fire.118
Even when the doors or windows leading to fire escapes were not locked, students
might face other barriers to getting out of a burning residence. As late as 1927, according to W. M. Graham, in many schools, the fire exits were “reached through a small
private room where access to them might be rendered extremely difficult by the carelessness, fright, or timidity of the occupant.” He also noted his concern that the plans
for the school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, which had not yet opened, called for theexit doors to open inwards.119

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 483

Fire escapes and fire drills did save lives. When fire destroyed the Gleichen, Alberta,
school in 1928, T. B. R. Westgate of the Anglican mscc wrote that the regular fire drill“proved its value for on the alarm every child jumped from bed, wrapped itself in aquilt, picked up its clothes and marched down the fire escapes.”120

Deliberately set
Deliberately setting fire to a public building with the intention to damage or destroy
it can be seen as an act of wanton vandalism or the symptom of a psychiatric disorder.
It also can be a very dangerous and risky form of protest. The record indicates that atleast twenty-five fires were either suspected or proven to have been deliberately set by
students. It is impossible to put an exact figure on the number of fires that were deliberately set or to know why they were set. Some suspicions probably were unjustified;some other attempts to set fire to a building probably were never detected. When theywere, the consequences for students could be significant. In some cases, individuals
were tried and convicted for their involvement in these fires. In others, they were notcharged, but were punished by school officials. Often, the students had admitted totheir involvement and were not represented by legal counsel. Although the evidence
is limited, it does not appear likely that the students who made these admissions did
so in the presence of their parents or a responsible adult.
Deliberately set fires could have tragic results. The students who set fire to theAnglican school at Onion Lake in 1928 gave warning to other students, ensuring thatthey were able to escape safely.121 However, at Saint-Paul-des-Métis, Alberta, andCross Lake, Manitoba, students died attempting to escape from student-set fires.
Government officials recognized that the deliberate burning down of school property was a form of protest. In April 1903, the three-storey, brick Mohawk Institute wasdestroyed by fire. Although the fire broke out at night, all the children escaped safely.122
A fire in May of that year destroyed the school barns.123 The following month, anotherfire destroyed the building in which the boys had been housed after the first fire.124
The rash of deliberately set fires led Indian Affairs official Martin Benson to conclude
that the government faced two problems. The first and most pressing was to find andpunish “the perpetrators of the crime.” But he also believed that the second problem
was that the fires were evidence of an underlying failure. In a reflection of the department’s attitudes towards Aboriginal people, he wrote, “Even an Indian will not set fireto buildings, destroy valuable property and endanger life from pure cussedness. There
must have been some real or imaginary grievance which led some of the boys to commit incendiarism.”125
In some cases, it appears students set fires to protest their treatment at the school.
According to Principal E. F. Wilson, in 1889, a boy who had been confined to the484 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Shingwauk Home “lockup” for theft “set fire to his prison, and we thought the wholeplace would be burned down.”126 Nelson Hughes said that he took part in setting the1930 Cross Lake, Manitoba, fire because the principal was always punishing him.127
After Nelson’s conviction for conspiracy (he was acquitted of the charge of arson)in setting the fire, his lawyer, John L. Ross, called upon the federal solicitor general
to hold “a full and complete investigation … as to why two school boys should set aschool on fire.” He said the evidence presented in court showed that “every boy in that
school had a hatred of the officers in charge there. Such a condition is not right, nor
is it moral in an Indian school.” He suggested that, had the trial been held in northern
Manitoba, “perhaps the Court and jury would have agreed with my contention that
the State had failed in its duty to the Indian and half-breed of the North Country.”128
In other cases, the students were responding to school policies. When asked why
they had tried to burn down the Kuper Island school in 1895, three boys said, “We
have done so because we were informed that henceforth the holidays would be
abolished.”129
In writing about a series of fires at the Pine Creek school in 1930, an Oblate
observed, “It is a known fact that some Indian children will not hesitate to set a firein the hope of going home.”130 That is clearly the motivation in several cases. The two
girls who attempted to burn down the Alert Bay school said they hoped they “would
have a good holiday before a new one could be built.”131 The boy who instigated the1905 fire at the school at Saint-Paul-des-Métis referred to the school as a “prison.”132
The boy who attempted to burn down the St. Albert school in 1917 had been advised
by a relative, who had attended Saint-Paul-des-Métis when that school was destroyedby fire, that if he “wanted to get out of the school all he had to do was burn it down.”133
In the spring of 1901, relations between the principal and members of local First
Nations at the Mount Elgin school had deteriorated to the point that the principal
feared some community members might attempt to set the school on fire. As a result,the federal government agreed to pay for the employment of a night watchman at theschool.134 Principal W. W. Shepherd wished to see charges laid against one member ofthe local reserve for attempted arson, but Martin Benson thought the charges were too“indefinite,” and the matter was dropped.135
Punishment for setting fire to schools varied. If the damage was limited, discipline
usually was left to the principal and the local Indian agent. Cases that involved theloss of life or the destruction of buildings usually were turned over to the police. The
local Indian agent suggested that the principal give the girls who attempted to burndown the Alert Bay school in 1918 “a good thrashing,” but not prosecute or discharge
them.136 Chief Inspector W. E. Ditchburn disagreed. He pointed out that this was
the fifth fire at a school on the west coast in nine months and the third arson. (The
Ahousaht, Alberni, and Sechelt schools had been destroyed by fire, and the fire at the
Clayoquot school had done little damage. The record is not clear as to whether theFire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939 • 485

Clayoquot fire was at the Clayoquot day school or the Christie school, which was also
located on Clayoquot Sound.)137 Departmental secretary J. D. McLean disagreed with
Ditchburn and recommended against prosecution.138 Six years later, in 1924, whenthree girls attempted to burn down the Alert Bay school, McLean once more recommended against prosecution, informing the Indian agent that it was sufficient that“they were whipped in the presence of yourself.”139
Indian Affairs thought it would be difficult to convict the boy who had attempted
to set fire to the St. Albert school in 1917. Instead, as a form of punishment, the Indian
agent recommended that the boy be sent to the residential school at Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan.140 In a similar fashion, the boy who had attempted to set fire to theMorley, Alberta, school in 1927 was transferred to the United Church school in
Edmonton.141 When several boys tried to burn down the Morley school in 1935, theprincipal requested that, instead of sending the boys to reform school, he be allowed toadminister “a severe strapping” and keep them at the school. Indian Affairs approved
the request, suggesting that the punishment be administered in the presence of the
Indian agent, by either the parents or the principal.142
Indian Affairs recognized that stories about students burning down schools
amounted to bad press. Indian agent A. O’N. Daunt tried to have Mission principal
E. Maillard fired after he turned the two girls who attempted to set fire to the school
in 1928 over to the provincial police without first consulting with him. The girls, aged
twelve and thirteen, spent short periods of time in the Oakalla, British Columbia, jailand the British Columbia Industrial School for Girls before Daunt was able to arrange
their transfer to the Roman Catholic school in Kamloops. Daunt was irritated that by
involving the police, Maillard had attracted “undesirable publicity to the institution.”143
In many cases, students were sent to correctional facilities. The boy who attempted
to burn down the Shingwauk Home in 1889 was sentenced to a year at the reformatory at Penetanguishene, Ontario.144 Three of the boys involved in setting the fires at
the Mohawk Institute in 1903 were sent to the Mimico, Ontario, industrial school for
between three and five years. A fourth boy was sentenced to the Kingston, Ontario,
penitentiary for three years.145 An Indian Affairs official informed the father of one of
the boys sent to the Mimico industrial school that his son would be sent back to him
after his release. When the boy didn’t return home, an inquiry to the superintendentof the Mimico school revealed that the boy had found a job locally. The Mimico superintendent thought it best if the father not be allowed to “interfere at all with the boy.”146
According to a report written three decades after the fact, the boys who had been
charged with burning down the Saint-Paul-des-Métis school in 1905 were pardoned.147
The boy who set fire to the Mount Elgin school barn in 1908 was turned over to theauthorities for prosecution.148 Two students who admitted to setting fire twice to theCrowstand, Saskatchewan, school were sent in 1913 to the Manitoba Industrial Schoolfor Boys (a home for delinquent boys operated by the Manitoba government).149 One

486 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof the students who attempted to burn down the Duck Lake school in 1917 was sent
to a reformatory school.150 The two boys who set fire to the Anglican school in Onion
Lake, Saskatchewan, were sentenced to five months in jail.151
In 1930, the Roman Catholic church at Pine Creek, Manitoba, was destroyed by fire,and four attempts were made to burn down the nearby Pine Creek school. Two boys
confessed to setting the fires, although one of them did not do so until he had beenpromised that, aside from being expelled from the school, he would not be punished.
Thomas Baird, the Indian Affairs official investigating the case, decided that “no good
purpose could be gained by laying a charge of arson” and recommended the matterbe left to “church authorities to deal with the boys as they may see fit.”152 Despite thepromise that no action would be taken, the Oblates requested that one of the boys beprosecuted.153 In the end, both were charged. The principal arranged for the release of
one boy, but the other boy, who had been told he would not be prosecuted, was convicted and given a two-year suspended sentence. The principal thought the sentence
was too lenient and inquired if he could be prosecuted a second time.154
Two students were convicted for their roles in the 1930 fire at Cross Lake, Manitoba,
that left thirteen people dead. One student was convicted of conspiracy and given
what was described as a “short term of imprisonment.”155 The other student was aminor at the time the Cross Lake fire was set. His case was transferred from juvenile
to adult court. He pleaded guilty to the charge of arson and was given a life sentence.
Indian Affairs declined to appoint a lawyer to represent him, saying this was done onlyin “charges of murder.”156 In 1939, eight years after his conviction, Indian Affairs also
declined to support his application for parole, saying he had served only “a comparatively short” portion of his sentence.157
In 1933, two girls attempted to set the Roman Catholic school at Cluny, Alberta,
on fire. As a result, they were transferred to the Home of the Good Shepherd in
Edmonton.158
With regard to fire safety, the government failed in both policy and implementation. It was slow in developing fire-safety policies and incapable of enforcing them.
Low levels of funding meant that many of the buildings were poorly built and poorly
maintained, and were potential fire traps. The harsh discipline and jail-like nature oflife in the schools meant that many students sought to run away. To prevent this, many
schools deliberately ignored government instructions in relation to fire drills and fireescapes. In other cases, the system bred such hostility that some students were driven
to attempt to destroy the schools by fire.

CHAPTER 19

Food and diet at residential
schools: 1867–1939

By the late nineteenth century, Canadian health officials were well aware of theclose link between diet and health. As noted in a previous chapter, officials
believed that children who were at risk of developing tuberculosis should haveaccess to a good supply of whole milk. A key element in sanatorium treatment, in addition to rest and fresh air, was the provision of nutritious meals—including large servings of milk.1 Despite this knowledge, from the time of Confederation to 1939, there
is no record of the federal government’s issuing a clear, detailed statement setting out
expectations of nutritional standards to be followed in all residential schools. Instead,as with other aspects of the operation of the schools, there was a series of vague andpartial instructions and recommendations.
In 1883, Indian Affairs prepared a dietary list for the Battleford and Qu’Appelleschools that were being established at that time. It proposed a daily student rationof a pound of flour, a quarter-pound of bacon, a half-pound of beef, a half-ounceof tea, two ounces of sugar, a half-ounce of rice, one ounce of dried apples, threeounces of oatmeal, a half-ounce of pepper, as well as three gallons of syrup a month.2
Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney’s 1883 instruction to Battleford school principal Thomas Clarke, that “the strictest economy must be practised in all particulars,”
certainly had implications for school food policy.3 As in virtually every aspect of residential school life, this overriding concern with controlling costs usually meant that
residential school diets would be substandard. Although many Indian Affairs officials
would report on the inadequacy of the diet, the government was never prepared toprovide the detailed direction needed to improve the diet—in large measure because
officials were aware of the fact that few improvements could be made without a corresponding improvement in funding.
This chapter discusses the lack of policy, the clearly identified problems with diet,particularly in the case of milk, and reports on student experiences with diet, and concludes with an examination of the ways in which students and parents responded tothe poor diets at the schools.

488 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Little policy: Many complaints
In his 1889 letter to Bishop Paul Durieu, outlining his expectations for the operation of the new Roman Catholic industrial school in Cranbrook, British Columbia,
Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet wrote, “The food should be
plain, good, and well cooked.” He specified the meal times (which he thought shouldbe 7:00 a.m., noon, and 6:00 p.m.) and the language the students should be allowed
to speak at the dinner table (English only). A “plain dietary” chart was also included.
Breakfast was milk, porridge, bread, lard, and tea (with no milk on Sunday).4 An 1892
Order-in-Council had established per capita rates for existing industrial schools. It
stated nothing more than, in exchange for the grants, “the management shall agree to
conform to the rules of the Indian Department, as laid down from time to time, and tokeep the schools at a certain standard of instruction, dietary and domestic comfort.”5
The 1910 contract that set out the responsibilities of the government and churches
for the operation of boarding schools obliged the churches to provide students with“subsistence … necessary to their personal comfort and safety.”6
When each industrial school was established, Indian Affairs would develop a
dietary table or scale. This scale would set out the expected annual consumption of
specific foods. According to Indian Affairs official Martin Benson, these were used toprepare the initial estimates for the cost of operating the schools, and were “neverintended to apply to schools on the per capita basis and it is not now, and never was,enforced in such schools.”7
It does appear, however, that some schools attempted to operate in keeping withthe scales. In the process, they used them as maximums not to be surpassed, rather
than as goals to meet.8 In some cases, consumption of some food items at schools
exceeded what was allowed in the scale; in other cases, consumption did not meet thescale provisions. At the Regina, Saskatchewan, school, beef consumption in 1900 was
13,866 pounds, while the dietary scale had assumed an annual consumption of 21,580
pounds. Flour consumption in that year was 43,286 pounds, somewhat more than the
39,420 pounds that the scale had assumed.9
Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard wrote in 1891 thatthe present ration scale may be good for children but is not suitable for the
majority of our pupils, one third of whom eat more than men and women andanother third eat fully as much. I have seen them at the end of a meal come tocomplain that they had not enough to eat and upon inquiry have found that itwas never without good reason.10

Student complaints about food hurt recruitment. Kuper Island school principal J.
N. Lemmens pointed out in 1891 that it was very important to provide the students
with good food and clothing at his school on the British Columbia coast. He said that,
unlike First Nations in other parts of the country, coastal First Nations “did not sufferFood and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 489

for want of food.” Their children were “used to being well fed at home.” If the qualityof food provided at the school was poor, the school might fall into disrepute.11 The
following year, the principal, at the advice of a doctor, sent three pupils home because“the diet of the school did not agree with their former way of living; they were used tolive [sic] almost exclusively on fish and oil.”12After an 1894 cut in funding, Kuper Island principal G. Donckele wrote that the foodsituation at the school was so dire that he had been forced to slaughter the school’slone remaining pig. The practice had been to feed the pig with table and kitchen
scraps. However, rations were so short that there were no scraps. If there was a further
cut, he said, the parents would all withdraw their children from the school.13
In 1910, Kamloops, British Columbia, principal A. M. Carion wrote that “the scaleof rations allows 12 ozs. of raw meat daily for each pupil.” However, due to inadequacies in the per capita grant at the school, “this quantity has been reduced to 8 ozs., thus
making a saving of 17 lbs. of meat a day and, at the present high price of meat, morethan $300 a year.”14
Dependence on school farms was risky. In 1917, Indian agent John F. Smith
reported that at the Kamloops school, the yield from the school vegetable crops “isvery nearly a complete failure,” and “they have practically no hay with which to winterthe few animals on the place.”15This combination of vague instruction and piecemeal application characterized thegovernment’s policy on student diet throughout this period. After receiving reports in
1921 that students at the Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, were being
served poor-quality bread and only water to drink, Duncan Campbell Scott instructed
the Anglican Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada that “the children
be provided with good, substantial and well cooked food.”16 The following year, Russell
Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, sent out a circular asking principals
to send him copies of their school’s dietary scale, outlining what students were being
fed and the quantity of food each student was receiving.17 He planned to have theresponses analyzed by the health department. The results would be used to assess theschool ‘diet sheets.’ Apparently, they were to be the basis for a revised dietary scale.18
One of the few responses on file did not provide enough information to allow for analysis.19 There is no record of any analysis being carried out, or of any ongoing assessment of school menus or attempts to ensure compliance with Scott’s directive.
In 1929, when the federal government was establishing its first and only residential
school in the Maritimes, Dr. E. L. Stone, the director of medical services for IndianAffairs, was asked to provide medical advice to Father J. P. Mackey, the Shubenacadie
school’s newly appointed principal. It was as vague and permissive as the instructions issued by Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Vankoughnet forty years earlier. Stoneadvised Mackey that

490 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

you will have to feed your pupils better than you would think necessary. The
healthiest schools are those in which the feeding is best. I suppose you are
getting cows. If you can give the children plenty of clean, whole milk you will
be going far to keep them healthy. I do not believe in making butter at schools.
The pupils ought to have the milk fat and butter too. A diet high in protein—fish,
meat, beans, cheese, etc., seems best for Indians. Give them brown bread if possible. Your cows, of course, ought to be free from tuberculosis.20

This was good advice, and in keeping with contemporary dietary thinking. But it
was presented as advice only, not as policy direction. The government set no standards. When it found that children were being underfed, it rarely looked for the underlying cause, but instead told the principals to do better. This lack of firm direction,
coupled with the never-ending need to control costs, created ongoing problems.

School menus, 1893
The Indian Affairs annual report for 1893 contained school menus for theschools at Qu’Appelle, Gordon’s Reserve (both schools were located in what is now
Saskatchewan), and Middlechurch, Manitoba (see tables 19.1 to 19.3). The phrase ad
libitum used in these menus (sometimes abbreviated as ad lib.) means “at one’s pleasure,” implying that student consumption of a particular food item was not regulated.
Bread was the only food item available on this basis. “Dinner” was the name usually
given to the noon meal and was often the most substantial meal served at the schools.
Usually, the evening meal was referred to as “supper,” but in some cases, it was termed“tea.”
The appearance of an item on the menu is no guarantee that it was actually served.
The menus do not provide any information about the quantity of food students
were served. They are, however, useful indicators of what the government thought
was appropriate.
The menus present a highly monotonous food plan. The Qu’Appelle school rotated
two breakfasts, and at the Gordon’s Reserve school, there were only two breakfasts
and two dinners. Three of the suppers were offered twice a week. The fact that the
Qu’Appelle menu does not provide as much detail as the other menus suggests that
all the dinners and suppers were, in essence, interchangeable. The menus are morethan monotonous. They appear to be insufficient. At the Middlechurch school, forexample, nine meals per week consisted solely of bread, butter, and tea, and two moreconsisted of only bread, butter, fruit, and tea. Protein was never served at the evening
meal at that school. At the Gordon’s school, rice or suet (meat fat) pudding was themain protein source at the evening meals, with fish being served on occasion.

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 491

The Gordon’s Reserve school appears to have done the best job of providing students with milk. Milk is on the menu thirteen times a week (plus “tea or milk” on
two additional occasions). It is difficult to tell how often milk was served at the
Qu’Appelle school. At breakfast, cereal was served “with either milk or syrup”; at dinner, “bread and milk” rotated with two other desserts, but the daily dinner beverage
was water, and tea was the supper beverage. Milk was served only once a week at the
Middlechurch school during the winter, but butter was served twelve times a week.
The principal provided an additional note: “Fish in season has been given three times
a week instead of meat. Cured meat is seldom used, as the children do not care for it.
In summer time vegetables are used in great variety, also a great deal of milk.”21
Table 19.1. Menu for the Qu’Appelle, North-West Territories, Industrial School, 1893.
Meal

Menu

Breakfast

Four days in the week porridge of oatmeal or cornmeal with either milk or syrup,
this is served with hot tea and bread; the working pupils, and those not in robust
health, receive butter in addition.
On three days all the pupils receive butter and cheese with their bread instead of
porridge, this is served with hot tea.

DinnerSoup, meat or fish, vegetables and bread ad libitum. For dessert, rice or stewed
apples, or stewed rhubarb or syrup, or bread and milk, with cold water to drink,
excepting to the weak children, and those working outside, who get hot tea.

SupperMeat for the working pupils, hashed meat and vegetables for the rest, bread ad
libitum and dessert similar to that named for dinner, hot tea.

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 174.

Table 19.2. Menu for the Gordon’s Reserve, North-West Territories, Boarding School, 1893.
Breakfast

DinnerSupperSundayOatmeal porridge andmilk, bread, beef orbacon, tea.

Beef, potatoes and othervegetables, bread, tea.

Bread, prunes or apples,tea or milk.

MondayOatmeal porridge andmilk, bread and butter,tea.

Irish stew, bread ad lib.,milk.

Bread pudding, bread andsyrup, tea or milk.

Tuesday

Oatmeal porridge andmilk, bread, beef orbacon, tea.

Irish stew, bread ad lib.,
milk.

Same as Sunday, or fish
and bread and tea.

Wednesday

Oatmeal porridge andmilk, bread and butter,tea.

Irish stew, bread ad lib.,
milk.

Rice pudding, bread andmilk.

ThursdayOatmeal porridge andmilk, bread, beef orbacon, tea.

Irish stew, bread ad lib.,
milk.

Suet pudding, sugar,
bread and tea.

492 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Breakfast

DinnerSupperFridayOatmeal porridge andmilk, bread and butter,tea.

Irish stew, bread ad lib.,
milk.

Same as Monday, or fish
and bread and tea.

SaturdayOatmeal porridge andmilk, bread, beef orbacon, tea.

Beef, potatoes and othervegetables, bread, tea.

Rice pudding, sugar,
bread and tea.

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 258.

Table 19.3. Menu for the Middlechurch, Manitoba, Industrial School, 1893 (Winter diet).
Breakfast

DinnerTea

SundayBread and butter, tea.

Cold beef pudding or pie,
vegetables.

Bread and butter, fruit,tea.

MondayPorridge and milk, breadand butter.

Meat stew, vegetables.

Bread and butter, tea.

Tuesday

Bread and butter, tea.

Boiled beef and gravy,
vegetables, bread.

Bread, syrup, tea.

Wednesday

Porridge and syrup, bread Cold beef, vegetables,and butter.
pudding or pie.

Bread and butter, tea.

ThursdayBread and butter, tea.

Meat stew, vegetables,
bread.

Bread and butter, fruit,tea.

FridayPorridge and syrup,
bread, butter, tea.

Soup, bread, boiled beef
and gravy, vegetables.

Bread and butter, tea.

SaturdayBread and butter, tea.

Meat stew, vegetables,
bread.

Bread and butter, tea.

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 256.

Inspectors’ reports
In 1893, when these menus were in force, Indian Affairs inspector T. P. Wadsworth
reported on meals at the Qu’Appelle school. “I was present during several of the meals,
the food was plentiful, well cooked, and well served, and each pupil appeared to havethe opportunity to eat all that he or she wanted.”22 An 1895 report on an inspectionof the Middlechurch school came to a more sombre conclusion: “The ‘bill of fare’ isplain. I believed it to be barely sufficient for the older pupils, who have now, at fifteen
to eighteen years of age, larger apetites [sic] than they will have when older.”23
In 1918, Indian agent John Smith inspected the Kamloops school and reported his“suspicion that the vitality of the children is not sufficiently sustained from a lack ofnutritious food, or enough of the same for vigorous growing children.”24 A local doctor

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 493

concurred that “for some months past the food supplied has been inadequate for theneeds of the children.”25
There were, however, numerous positive reports on school food. In 1905, A. E.
Green stated that at the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school, “during my stay ofsix days at the institution I took my meals in the same dining-room as the boys, where
I could see that the food was plentiful and good. Meat is served twice a day, a beef
being killed every ten days.”26
In 1908, Green reported that at the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British
Columbia, the “children have plenty of good wholesome food and are well andwarmly clothed”; at the Mission school, “the food is wholesome and abundant, while
the clothing is neat, clean and suitable”; at the All Hallows school in Yale, the “food isplain, but good and abundant”; at the Lytton school, “food and clothing were goodand sufficient”; back at Williams Lake, “the food was good and sufficient”; at the
Cranbrook school, “the food is plain, but well prepared, suitable and sufficient”; andat Port Simpson, the “food though plain, was good and sufficient.”27
Martin Benson was suspicious of such positive assessments. In 1897, he wrote, “Inalmost every instance when meals are mentioned by Inspectors they are said to bewell cooked. I doubt very much whether they ever took a full regulation school meal ofbread and dripping, or boiled beef and potatoes.” In Benson’s opinion, “The bill of fareis decidedly monotonous and makes no allowance for peculiarities of taste or constitution. What is one man’s meat is said to be another man’s poison, but at our schools
it is die dog or eat the hatchet.”28 (The colourful phrase means to fully commit oneself;
in this case, to eating the unpalatable.29)
Students thought the schools put on a show for inspectors. According to Dorothy
Day, when she attended the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, the only time she“had a good meal was when guys came from Ottawa to visit the school, and then we’dhave a good meal. We’d have juice and a boiled egg—we’d have a wonderful meal.”30
On occasion, teachers also raised concerns about the quality of food at the schools.
In a letter of complaint to the United Church, Lucy Affleck, a teacher at Round Lake,
Saskatchewan, wrote in 1929 that while the food at the school was of a good variety
and sufficient quantity, “it is not very well chosen and is very unattractively served. As
there are a great number of pigs raised on the farm, much of the milk must go to themso only one table of girls (about 12) get milk at meal-time. None of the children everget butter. It is always lard, that they must use on their bread (bought in barrels).”31
A 1929 report on the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta concluded that the “pupils do not get a sufficient supply of butter and milk.”32
Inspectors admitted they felt constrained. Indian agent F. J. C. Ball wrote in 1931,“It is difficult to keep a close check on the food supply as officials are courteously but
none the less effectually prevented from any close investigation and one is naturally

494 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

desirous of avoiding any unpleasantness with the reverend principal who has been in
charge so long.”33
However, many inspectors did file negative reports that reveal ongoing difficulties
in providing students with adequate supplies of food staples. This was a problem not
only in the nineteenth century, but one that also continued into the 1920s and 1930s.

Milk
The basics often were hard to obtain at the schools, a fact that was well known in
Ottawa. Milk, in particular, was frequently in short supply. Although milk was not partof a traditional Aboriginal diet, North American medical experts viewed it as an essential part of a child’s diet and a key component of the diet of anyone with, or at riskof developing, tuberculosis.34 Government officials of the day had no knowledge ofthe high degree to which Aboriginal people experienced lactose intolerance, a condition that can lead to a variety of digestive disorders. This is just one example of thebelief that all Western practices were inherently superior.35 In 1914, W. M. Graham, theIndian commissioner for the Prairies, complained that the students at the High Riverschool in Alberta “get very little milk.” There were only three cows at the school, where,
he felt, there should be ten. The principal laid blame for the problem on the sisters,
who, he said, “were strongly opposed to the girls milking.”36
Nurse Margaret Jean Ramage visited the Cluny, Alberta, school in the fall of 1921
to investigate complaints over poor diet.37 The Indian agent reported that Ramage had
concluded that the “children got very little milk, no pudding nor butter. I have sincegone into this matter and submitted a tentative diet sheet, with quantities which achild should get daily and have had the assurance that everything will be entirely satisfactory in the future.”38
Russell T. Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, was alarmed to discoverin 1922 that all the milk provided to the fifty-nine students at Delmas, Saskatchewan,came from two cows, who were producing only 7.5 litres a day.39 The principal wasable to increase the number of cows being milked.40 A similar problem existed at the
Qu’Appelle school in that year. Inspector M. Christianson reported that “the conditionof the stable is the worst feature at the Qu’Appelle Industrial School.” Buildings werein bad shape and manure was piled up behind the stable. The cattle were poorly fed
and tubercular, and the milk supply was inadequate. He believed that the entire herd
should be disposed of and a new one acquired.41
In his inspection report on the brand-new school at Fraser Lake, British Columbia,
in 1923, R. H. Cairns noted, “There is really not enough milk for the children. Thisschool should have more cows than it has at present.”42 Principal Nicolas Coccola
responded that he could not purchase more cows without first constructing additional

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 495

stables and barns.43 In 1923, travelling nurse I. M. Lucas provided a negative report on
the nutrition at the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school. According to Indian Affairs official
A. F. MacKenzie, Lucas felt “the children at this school do not get the proper nourishing food, or enough. They get no milk and no vegetables, except potatoes, and verysmall portions.” MacKenzie instructed the local Indian agent to inform the principalthat “it is expected that the children will receive a sufficient quantity of nourishingfood, also that an ample supply of milk will be furnished for the use of the younger
children.”44 Again, the message was indirect and lacking in detail.
A 1926 report on the Roman Catholic school in Onion Lake reported that “they keep
ten milch cows [dairy cows], seven of which were giving milk at the time. The Sisterin charge informed me that they were poor milkers and they should have at least four
more cows to provide for their requirements.”45 In his report on the Birtle, Manitoba,
school in 1927, A. G. Hamilton noted that the available farmland was distant from theschool and, since the cows were “of very poor type,” the milk supply at the school was
not sufficient.46 An inspection later that year found that the number and quality of thestock had improved and the “food was ample and wholesome.”47
A nurse’s report on the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, in 1927 concluded
that the students were not getting enough milk.48 Indian agent J. Waddy’s investigation
reported that the cows “do not appear to thrive on the rough forage in that place.”
Increasing the herd was not an option, since the principal had “no room for more.”49
The situation was slow to improve. In 1928, Waddy noted that the cows still were notproducing and, as a result, the “pupils are not receiving much milk.”50 A 1929 inspection report observed: “The school is very short of milk and now receives about 1 gal.
twice a day. At present there are about 75 pupils in residence. I understand 4 of thecows are of little use as their udders are partly destroyed, so that this leaves only 5
good milk cows and at present they are practically dry.” The inspector thought the
problem could not be remedied without the appointment of a good farm instructor.51
Inspector A. G. Hamilton concluded that the school herd at the Roman Catholicschool in Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, was in such poor shape that it was“impossible for the cows to provide milk sufficient for 108 children, as well as a staff
of 12 or 14.”52 Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham identified the need for additionalcows at the school as “a very important matter,” and added that “if there is no wayof producing feed for these cows it is another matter, but I have no doubt there is ameans of supplying the necessary feed or the Department would never have built aschool at this point.”53
Milk supply problems continued into the 1930s. In 1931, it was reported that at the
Squamish, British Columbia, school, “the children who have been ill and a few others get two cups of milk daily, while other children do not get milk to drink.”54 Twoyears later, a visiting nurse wrote that at the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba,
the students’ “diet consists mostly of tea, bread and meat, milk supply is low, butter

496 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and eggs also.” 55 As late as 1937, disease among the cows at the Kamloops school had
cut milk production by 50%. To the principal’s frustration, Ottawa refused to fund theconstruction of an additional barn, which would increase milk production and allow
for the isolation of sick animals.56
Even when the dairy herds were producing satisfactorily, the students did notalways get the full benefit of the milk the school produced, since often the milk was
separated, and the skimmed milk was served to the children. In 1922, Inspector R.
Cairns wrote of the Kuper Island school:
I do not think these pupils are well fed. I have gone into this matter with the Principal very thoroughly. All the milk is separated. That means that all the butter fat
is taken out of the milk and the pupils receive skim milk. I went into the boys’
dining room at supper time. Here is what each boy had: soup, bread and apple
sauce, and tea with milk. If I had my way I would banish every separator fromthese Industrial and Boarding Schools. The pupils need the butter fat so much.57

Cairns also reported that at Alert Bay, British Columbia, the school had sold 26 of
the 170 litres of milk produced in one month, along with two of the four kilogramsof butter that had been produced. Ferrier believed this left the school with “quite an
inadequate supply of milk.” After saying that none of the milk or butter should be sold,he instructed the local Indian agent to “consult the Principal regarding the obtainingof more milch cows, and inform the Department as to what he proposed to do in thismatter.” There was no direct instruction to tell the principal to stop selling milk andbutter.58 In 1924, Cairns reported on an “insufficient milk” supply at the Cranbrook,
British Columbia, school.59 Two years later, he wrote that at Alert Bay, “the food giventhese growing boys is too meagre,” and the senior teacher, Miss Long, who was also
a nurse, thought “more fats were needed to obtain the best results.”60 Inspector W.
Murison noted in 1925 that at Elkhorn, Manitoba, the school’s cows were producing
enough milk for the school, but the students were not getting “the full benefit of thismilk as I found that they were making about 30 lbs. of butter a week, and a great dealof the milk given the children is separated milk, which has not much food value.”61
Throughout the 1920s, most of the milk and eggs produced at the Cranbrook school
were sold to help cover school costs.62
Separating the milk was not necessarily a problem if the milk fat was returned tothe children as either cream or butter. But, in many cases, these products were either
sold by cash-starved schools or served to staff. Students were well aware of this practice. In her memoir of attending the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century,
Louise Moine wrote,
Although the boys milked cows, we never ate butter or drank whole milk. It wascommon knowledge that the butter was being sold to the villagers. Why was
it sold when the children went without? The priests and nuns ate butter. Even

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 497

though the children complained among themselves, it didn’t change mattersany.63Former Mount Elgin student Lila Ireland recalled that in the 1930s, the milk “was soskimmed it was blue,” and the cream was sold to a local dairy.64 According to Emmert
General, who attended the Mohawk Institute in the mid-1930s, “They sold the cream,and gave us the skim milk. Not very often we got whole milk—never, that I can remember.”65 Simon Baker recalled how at the school at Lytton, British Columbia, butter fromthe creamery was sold, along with the vegetables and fruit the school farm produced,
to help the school cover its costs.66 When C. M. Turnell took over as principal of the
Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, in 1915, one of the first things he did was todouble the students’ butter ration, since he believed “children such as he has require
more butter fat in their food.”67

Bread
Complaints about the quality of the bread were not uncommon. When children
at the Spanish, Ontario, school complained in 1920 that the bread was sour, Duncan
Campbell Scott asked for an analysis of some sample loafs. The chief government analyst of the Department of Trade and Commerce concluded that the nutritive valueof the bread was “about average,” but the taste was “slightly sour.”68 Scott advised the
Spanish principal that since “bread is one of the staple articles of diet” at the school,
care should be taken to make sure “that only that of the best quality is furnished thechildren.” The record gives no indication that either the children or their parents were
informed that their concerns had been largely justified. Also, Scott did not inquire
deeply into why the bread at the Spanish school was substandard.69 Two years later, on
the basis of a visiting nurse’s report, departmental secretary J. D. McLean instructed
the Qu’Appelle school principal, “Kindly arrange for a little more variety in the dietoffer, and insist upon a more careful preparation of the bread.”70 The implication
was that the problems were not a result of federal underfunding and that the central
responsibility for solving them lay with the principals.
Indian agent H. Graham noted in 1922 that at the Lytton school, it was “impossible
to bake sufficient bread” in the school ovens.71 In 1925, when parents protested that
the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve was “feeding the children sour bread” andinsufficient amounts of “milk and butter,” Commissioner W. M. Graham concluded
that the parents “have good grounds for complaint.”72

498 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“The staff—they got the best of everything”
Since the students and the staff lived together in the same quarters, students werealso aware of what the school staff was being fed. Students often recalled that staff
members were better fed than they were. Sarah Soonias attended the Battlefordschool from 1900 to 1914. She recalled that a common beverage at the school was “teawithout sugar,” and porridge was served with skimmed milk, which the students did
not like. She assumed that “the staff must have had all the cream.”73 Former File Hills,
Saskatchewan, student Ivy Koochicum chafed at the inequality she saw: “They got thecream and we got skim milk.”74 Former Mount Elgin student Melva George recalled,“The staff—they got the best of everything and the butter, we just got dry bread. We
had skim milk—they had to have the butter for the staff.”75
The dietary scales used when the industrial schools were established assumed thatteachers would eat better than students. Table 19.4 sets out some elements of the scalethat was used to calculate the per capita grant for the Regina school.76 It indicates thatthe staff beef ration was more than double the student ration, while the student flour
ration was two-thirds of the teacher ration.
Table 19.4. Dietary scale used in the establishment of the Regina Industrial (partial).
Item

Annual allowance per pupil

Annual allowance per staff member

Beef

182 pounds

400 pounds

Cheese5 pounds

5 pounds

Currants

2 pounds

2 pounds

Beans

12 pounds

12 pounds

Flour

360 pounds

540 pounds

Raisins

1 pound

1 pound

Source: Library and Archives, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A. J. McKenna, J. Menzies, and J. MacKay to
Superintendent General Indian Affairs, 11 March 1904. [RIS-000077]

The following table sets out the monthly dietary scale for industrial schools in
Manitoba and the North-West Territories in 1894.

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 499

Table 19.5. Scale of rations for industrial schools in Manitoba and North-West Territories, 1894.
ArticlePer month
Employees

Pupils

1 lb

1 lb

Bacon

4 7/12 lbs

1 lb 4 oz

Beans

1 lb

1 lb

Beef

33 1/3 lbs

15 lb 2 2/3 oz

Cheese6 2/3 oz

6 2/3 oz

Apples evaporated

Cornmeal

13 1/3 oz

13 1/3 oz

Currants

2 2/3 oz

2 2/3 ozFish

2 3/4 lbs

2 3/4 lbs

Flour

45 lbs

30 lbsLard

3 1/3 oz3 1/3 oz

Oatmeal13 1/3 oz

1 1/4 lbs

Oil Coal

1 pint1 pintPeas, split

8 2/3 oz

8 2/3 oz

Raisins

1 1/3 oz

1 1/3 oz

Rice

1 lb

1 lb

Soap

1 1/2 lbs

1 1/2 lbs

Suet

1/2 lb

1/2 lbSugarwhite 3 5/6 lbs

yellow 1 lb 12 oz

Syrup

1 pint1 pint1 lb 8 oz

9 1/3 oz

Tea

Source: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1.

Again, beef, bacon, flour, sugar, and tea rations were all considerably higher for thestaff than for the students. The only item on which the students’ ration surpassed theteachers’ was oatmeal, presumably because it made up such a large portion of theirdiet. The inclusion of coal oil and soap in a dietary listing is somewhat unusual. At
many of the schools, coal oil was brushed into students’ hair to kill lice.77
The students were not the only ones with opinions about how some staff members
were being fed. Martin Benson believed that the Presbyterian Church had failed inits proper financial control over the principal of its school in Regina, Saskatchewan.
In 1904, he pointed out that Principal Sinclair had ordered the following items froma wholesale grocer: “syruped strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, plums,
red cherries, pears, pineapples, apricots, raisins, figs, tomatoes, corn, macaroni, kippered herring, dates, honey and toothpicks, by the case monthly.” A Regina grocer
supplied “gelatine, marmalade, sardines, lemons, oranges, shelled walnuts, icing
sugar, lunch tongue, canned salmon, toilet cream, bananas, Fry’s chocolates, olives,
candies, tobacco, jelly powder, canned peas (French?) [sic].” In addition to these food500 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

items, “two Stetson hats,” along with “razors, collars, ties, braces and other wearing
apparel were purchased singly and the highest prices paid.” Benson declared himself
astonished that the “Principal of an Indian school conducted on a fixed per-capita
grant, with any conception of the fitness of things, can justify himself in the purchasing of such luxurious and superfluous articles as are charged in these accounts.”78
It is possible to make one comparison between the actual food consumption of
students and staff. Tables 19.6 and 19.7 present the staff and student meal plans for the
Gordon’s Reserve, Saskatchewan, school for May 1931. Reviewing the menus leads tothree conclusions: 1) the staff menu is far superior to the student menu; 2) the student
menu appears inadequate to the students’ needs; and 3) the student menu of 1931
appears to be even skimpier than the student menu for the same school of 1893 (seeTable 19.2 above).
Table 19.6. Staff Meals for the Month of May, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.
Breakfast

DinnerSupperSundayOrange, Cereal, Milk &Sugar, Bacon & Eggs,
Bread & Butter, Tea or
Coffee.

Cold Meat, Pickles or
Salad, Potatoes, Pie or
Pudding, Cheese, Bread& Butter, Tea.

Fish or Cold Meat,
Potatoe [sic] Salad,
Cheese, Fruit, Cake,
Bread and Butter, Jam,
Tea.

MondayCream of Wheat, Milk,
Sugar, Scrambled
Eggs, Bread & Butter,
Marmalade, Tea or
Coffee.

Roast Beef, Carrot or
Turnip, Potatoes, Pie or
Pudding, Bread, Butter,
Tea.

Boiled Eggs, Cheese,
Bread & Butter, Fruit,
Cake, Tea.

Tuesday

Rolled Oats, Milk &Sugar, Bacon, Potatoes,
Marmalade, Bread andButter, Tea.

Roast Pork, Turnip,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Cheese, Bread andButter, Tea.

Cold Meat, Salad,
Cheese, Fruit, Cake,
Bread & Butter, Tea.

Wednesday

Cornflakes, PoachedEggs, Milk & Sugar,
Marmalade, Bread andButter, Tea or Coffee.

Stewed Beef, Vegetables,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Bread and Butter, Tea.

Macaroni & Cheese, Fried
Potatoes, Marmalade,
Cheese, Bread & Butter,
Tea.

ThursdayRolled Oats, Milk &Sugar, Bacon & Eggs,
Marmalade, Break &Butter, Tea or Coffee.

Roast Beef, Carrot,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Cheese, Bread, Butter,
Tea.

Boiled Eggs, Cheese,
Fruit, Cake, Bread &Butter, Tea.

FridayCream of Wheat, Milk,
Sugar, Poached Eggs,
Marmalade, Bread,
Butter, Tea.

Fish, Potatoes, Turnip,
Pie or Pudding, Cheese,
Bread, Butter, Tea.

Omelet, Fried Potatoes,
Fruit, Cake, Jam, Bread,
Butter, Tea.

SaturdayRolled Oats, Milk, Sugar,
Fried Bacon & Eggs,
Marmalade, Bread,
Butter, Tea.

Meat Stew, Vegetables,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Cheese, Bread, Butter,
Tea.

Beef Steak & Onions,Fried Potatoes, Cheese,
Fruit, Cake, Bread andButter, Tea.

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 312-11, “Staff Meals for the Month ofMay, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.” [GDC-011803]

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 501

Table 19.7. Children’s Daily Menu for the Month of May, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.
Breakfast

DinnerSupperSundayCornflakes, Sugar & Milk,
Bread, Butter, Stewed
Prunes, Tea, Cocoa.

Cold Beef or Pork,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Bread.

Bread, Butter, Fruit, Cake,
Tea.

MondayBoiled Eggs, Rolled Oats,
Sugar & Milk, Bread,
Butter, Tea, Cocoa.

Soup, Cold Roast Beef,
Vegetables, Potatoes,
Bread, Rice Pudding.

Beef Stew, Bread, Butter,
Jam, Tea.

Tuesday

Cornmeal, Sugar & Milk,
Bread, Butter, Jam, Tea,
Cocoa.

Roast Beef, Carrots,
Potatoes, Pie or Pudding,Bread.

Scrambled Eggs, Bread,
Butter, Jam, Tea.

Wednesday

Boiled Eggs, Rolled Oats,
Sugar & Milk, Bread,
Butter, Tea, Cocoa.

Soup, Meat Pie, Turnips,
Potatoes, Pie, Bread.

Bannock, Jam, Bread,
Butter, Tea.

ThursdayCornmeal, Sugar & Milk,
Bread, Butter, Jam, Tea,
Cocoa.

Boiled Beef, Carrots,
Boiled Eggs, Bread,
Potatoes, Pudding, Bread. Butter, Cake, Tea.

FridayRolled Oats, Sugar & Milk, Soup, Fish, Beans,
Fried Potatoes, Bread,
Potatoes, Milk Pudding,
Butter, Jam, Tea.
Bread.

Eggs, Bread, Butter,
Bannock, Jam, Tea.

SaturdayCornmeal, Sugar & Milk,
Eggs, Bread, Butter, Tea
or Cocoa.

Bread & Butter, Jam, Tea.

Soup, Beef Stew,
Vegetables, Potatoes, Pie,
Bread.

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 312-11, “Children’s Daily Menu for theMonth of May, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.” [GDC-011802]

For breakfast, the teachers had eggs six times a week and bacon four times a week,
while the students had eggs three times a week and never had bacon. For dinner, in
addition to the main meat dish, the teachers were served potatoes and an additional
vegetable every day, cheese six times a week, and butter with every meal. The students
had two dinners at which potatoes were the only vegetable. They were never served
either butter or cheese at dinner. The teachers were served tea with every dinner; nomention is made of any beverage being provided to the students, which suggests they
were not being served milk at dinner.
It is in the supper menu that one finds the starkest difference between student andstaff. At supper, the staff was served a protein with every meal; the students had threesuppers a week with no protein (other than the buttered bread). In addition to themain protein, the teachers were served cheese on six occasions; the students were
never offered cheese at supper. The teachers were served potatoes at four suppers;
the students were never served potatoes at supper. The teachers were served salad
twice at supper; the students were never served salad. The teachers were served fruit
at six suppers; the students were served fruit at one supper. The teachers were served
cake at six suppers; the students, at two. Since the menus indicate that the students

502 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were served tea at supper, it would appear that they were not served milk with theirsupper, either.79 This assumption is probably valid, since two other menus from thisperiod (Elkhorn 1934 and Brandon 1936) list water as the dinner beverage at bothschools. For supper, the Brandon school served tea; the Elkhorn school served milk
on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and water the rest of the week.80
Table 19.8 sets out the key differences between the dinners served to staff and to
students at the Gordon’s Reserve school in 1931. Not only are the meals limited, but
it also appears that in terms of the availability of milk, conditions at the Gordon’sReserve school were worse in 1931 than they were in 1893. In 1893, milk was supposed
to be served at between thirteen and fifteen meals; in 1931, it was available at fewer
than half as many meals.81
Table 19.8. Key differences between the dinners served to the staff and students at theGordon’s Reserve school in 1931.
Teachers (Number of servings
per week at supper)

Students (Number of servings
per week at supper)

A main protein

74Side serving of cheese

60Potatoes

4

0

Salad

2

0

Fruit

6

1

Cake

6

2

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 312-11, “Staff Meals for the Month ofMay, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School”; [GDC-011802] “Children’s Daily Menu for the Month of May,
1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.” [GDC-011803]

The 1930s: Students being “insufficiently fed”
Many of the examples of food consumption cited are from the 1920s, a period of
relative economic prosperity in Canada—and after the signing of the 1910 contract,which had significantly increased funding for boarding schools. So the problems that
schools already seemed to have in properly feeding their students in such relatively
good times would only intensify with the funding cuts that were instituted at the onsetof the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In 1931, Indian agent F. J. C. Ball informed Ottawa that the pupils at the Squamish
school were being “insufficiently fed.” Ball said, “The only meal I have actually seen
was one at mid-day which consisted of a piece of bread and a raw carrot. It may havebeen a fast day, and I have not since been successful in actually seeing a meal on thetable.” Agent Ball noted that Chief William of Squamish had informed him that his son

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 503

lost ten pounds (4.5 kilograms) in one month at the school, adding, “The chief is quite
reliable.”82
Complaints about the quality of the food at the Anglican school in The Pas in 1931
were investigated by A. G. Hamilton. He reported that there were staff tensions at theschool that affected the management of the institution, and concluded that “plenty ofgood food is provided, but lacks proper cooking and serving.”83
In the spring of 1936, Inspector G. H. Barry reported to Ottawa that he did not think
the food at the Kuper Island school—which had suffered from a poor milk supply inthe 1920s—was “satisfactory in either quantity or variety.”84 In 1937, a parent wrote tohis daughter at the Kuper Island school, “I am really lonesome for you, my dear daughter in school far from here. O yes Mr Graham [the local Indian agent] told some one
here that the childrens [sic] at Kuper Island school do not get enough food nowadays.”
The school principal, J. Geurts, intercepted the letter and asked Graham to “clear this
up—and to give the guilty one his desert.”85 Whether or not Graham had made theclaim, the following year, Inspector Barry still felt that, despite some improvement, thestudents at Kuper Island “should have more to eat here. Breakfasts are too light andcould be greatly improved by the addition of a little stewed fruit and more bread.” He
added that, in light of a number of recent deaths due to tuberculosis, “the food should
immediately be very greatly improved.”86
Indian agent N. P. L’Heureux reported in 1935 that at the Wabasca school in Alberta,
all the school’s vegetables had frozen during the winter, and, as a result, “the children
appear dull and sickly.”87 In his report, L’Heureux noted that the children “did not lookvery healthy.”88

The student experience
Basil Johnston, who was enrolled in the Spanish, Ontario, school in 1939, haddistinct memories of being served “mush, mush, mush, sometimes lumpy, sometimes watery, with monotonous regularity every Monday, Wednesday, Friday andSaturday.”89
In this, he was not alone. Of his time at the Mohawk Institute in the 1870s, First
Nations political organizer F. O. Loft wrote, “I recall the times when working in thefields I was actually too hungry to be able to walk, let alone work. When parents visitedthe child, invariably the first question was, ‘Did you bring anything to eat?’”90 Both
Isabelle Knockwood at the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school, and George Manuel at
the Kamloops, British Columbia, school had similar recollections of how they looked
forward to the food that family members brought from home when they visited.91
Students at Mount Elgin and the Mohawk Institute in southern Ontario came torefer to their schools as the “Mush Hole” because of the porridge that was a breakfast

504 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

staple.92 Doris King, who attended Mount Elgin in the 1930s, said, “I was always hungry—we didn’t seem to have enough food. For breakfast we would get a glass of milk,a slice of bread and porridge. That’s why they gave it the name ‘Mush Hole.’”93
Another former Mount Elgin student, Dorothy Day, recalled the food as being
terrible. In the mornings we would get oatmeal and it would be half-cooked, nosugar, skim milk to put on that—just like water—white water—after they took
the cream off it they gave it to the children. You had a glass of milk to drink—thatsame stuff, but I never drank it. One slice of bread—no butter, nothing else on
there.94

Of his time at the Mohawk Institute in the 1930s, Raymond Hill said, “The boys werealways hungry—that’s for sure.”95 Mary Englund, who attended the Mission, British
Columbia, school in the early twentieth century, had similar memories: “And we had afork and a spoon. There was no, never much of knives because you didn’t get no butter
and you didn’t get no meat to cut up, everything was grounded up. And green tea. We
never got no milk except skim milk to put in your tea.”96
Edward Groat, a former Mohawk Institute student, was less critical. He recalledthat during the 1930s, his family had little to eat at home. “I can remember my grandmother going out into the back shanty and grinding the corn, bringing it in and making
cornmeal mush out of it, going down the cellar and getting a jar of fruit, putting fruiton the mush to make it palatable. We had no milk, we had no butter.” By comparison,
the food at the Mohawk Institute “wasn’t the best, but you got three meals a day—kids
you know, they’ve got hollow legs when it comes to eating—you can eat all day. We
got enough to sustain us—probably not enough to satisfy us, but there was enough.”97
Food was also a currency at the schools. Students could trade it for favours or protection. Ron Deleary recalled that at Mount Elgin, “we did have a bun every Sunday,
but when I first went there I never got my bun, because I had traded it away and always
owed it to someone. We had whole milk once a year and we never got any meat.”98
When Mary John first went to the Stuart Lake, British Columbia, boarding school,
she desperately missed the meals her mother used to prepare. There was no more“roast moose, the dried beaver meat, the fish fresh from a frying pan, the warm breadand bannock and berries.”99 Some principals sought to provide meals that were morefamiliar. At the Kitamaat school in British Columbia in 1913, “Native food, such as dry
fish and grease, is used when procurable.”100 Far more common were the contests ofwill as supervisors attempted to force children to eat food that was unfamiliar and—all
too often—poorly prepared. Harrison Burning recalled that at the Mohawk Institute in
the 1920s, “the food—the whole supper or three meals anyway—you couldn’t eat it—
don’t care how hungry you were.”101 Former Mount Elgin student Clyde Peters said he
was told that if he did not eat his serving of boiled onions, he would be strapped. He
was saved from either fate by his older sister, who knocked the onions to the floor andFood and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 505

told the teacher, “He’s not gonna eat those onions.”102 Another Mount Elgin student,
Melva George, recalled, “One time we were having cornmeal for breakfast, and mycornmeal wasn’t cooked.” She said the principal stood over her shoulder and insisted
she finish it all.103

Protests and resistanceNot surprisingly, students often chose to fend for themselves. The Kuper Island
school had a conduct book in which student misbehaviours and punishments wererecorded. The entries for the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century list
numerous examples of students being punished for taking food. For “pulling carrots,”
three boys were required to kneel during the supper hour—a form of public humiliation. At least eight boys were punished with “confinement” for “stealing apples.”Another boy was given the same punishment for stealing fruit. On the second occasion that one boy stole apples, he and his two accomplices were punished with both“whipping & confinement.” Two boys were punished with “kneeling” for stealing
apples. For stealing plums, at least five boys were put on bread-and-water diets (theconduct book does not state for how long). One boy was confined for two hours forstealing plums. Another boy was put in confinement for up to three hours for stealing
plums on two occasions and for stealing fruit on another; he was also given a reprimand for stealing bread. Two other boys were also reprimanded for stealing bread.
Another boy was put in confinement for stealing turnips, a food most students professed to hate.104
On one occasion, the students at the File Hills school came across barrels of apples
that were meant for the staff. Over time, the students worked their way through theapples. When the deed was discovered, they were strapped and sent to bed without ameal.105 In fair weather, the boys at the school would trap gophers and roast them overopen fires to supplement their diets.106
At some schools, the principals encouraged students to hunt. Gilbert Wuttunee
recalled being allowed to hunt at the Battleford school:
There would be a bunch of us and we would go out together. One would have a
gun and the others would have bows and arrows. Bows and arrows that we madeourselves, oh boy, we could handle them too. There were rabbits racing back andforth and we would pull back on the bow and let the arrow go. Sometimes wewould provide supper with rabbits.107

Red Deer, Alberta, principal J. P. Price reported in 1905, “The bigger boys are sometimes allowed to hunt, in which they are quite expert, providing wild fowl for the whole
school a number of times. There is also good fishing right at our doors, the river being
full of fine fish including magnificent mountain trout.”108

506 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

When Doris King worked in the Mount Elgin kitchen, she and other girls would slip
extra food into their long bloomers. One girl would “keep look out,” and alert the restof the group to the presence of a staff member by saying “Jiggers on track.” Once, King
stuffed what she thought were two hard-boiled eggs into her bloomers, only to discover when she sat down on them that they were raw.109 Lila Ireland said, “We’d steal
food—that was part of being at Mount Elgin! We didn’t steal it out of the kitchen—they
used to have the carrots piled for the winter in a big pile of earth and we’d dig themout.”110Pauline Creeley, a former File Hills student, “used to steal bread for the boys; put
them in the milk cans. I would watch them eating the bread as they made their way tothe barns. I didn’t care if I got caught but I never got caught.”111
In 1935, a parent from Thicket Portage, Manitoba, complained to Ottawa that thestudents at the Brandon, Manitoba, school “don’t get enough to eat.” As a result, someof them were obliged to steal food from local stores, landing them in trouble with thelaw.112
Runaways often said they had been motivated to leave by the poor quality of thefood they received at the schools. The inquiry into the death of Duncan Sticks, a boy
who froze to death after running away from the Williams Lake, British Columbia,
school, heard several complaints about rotten food and students being punished forrefusing to eat food they found unpalatable.113 Ruth Miller and her sister ran away from
the Mohawk Institute in 1913 because they did not like the food there. The punishment they received was so severe that their parents were able to launch a successful
court action against the principal.114
Parents often took up their children’s complaints. In 1915, parents did not send theirchildren back to the Norway House school because they were unhappy about the poor
quality and quantity of the food and clothing at the school. According to Methodist
church official T. Ferrier, the decision to operate the school for that year, which was
located in northern Manitoba, was not made until just before the close of navigation.
Once the rivers and lakes froze, it had been impossible to send in additional supplies.
As a result, “the supply of food and clothing sent in ran out in some lines before navigation opened up.” The problem was compounded by the fact that the school lacked
a proper facility for storing food.115 An Indian Affairs official also investigated the parents’ concerns, and, after overcoming his initial belief that such parental “complaints
often lack proper and sufficient cause,” he concluded “there have been some grounds
for the Indians to complain as they have done.” There was, he wrote, an “absence ofa sufficient quantity of fatty foods and such food as would put the children in good
physical condition.” The bread was “not readily digestible.” According to the local doctor, several students who had been hospitalized began to recover “when they received
proper nourishing food in the hospital.” The principal agreed that the school had
but a limited supply of vegetables, but he hoped the coming crop of potatoes would

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 507

amount to 200 bushels. He intended to also grow turnips, carrots, beets, and cabbage.
This was to be supplemented by imported food. Inspector George Bunn wrote that
“this however is not very satisfactory. The school should certainly bend every effort toraise all the vegetables they require. After next spring there should not be any lack ofthis essential in the dietary of this institution, I intimated this to the Principal.” Bunn
also recommended that the principal increase the proportion of beans in the school’s
Boston Baked Beans, and not serve the children “sucker” fish, since they were “poorfood.”116
Four parents with children at the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack wrote to
Indian Superintendent A. M. Tyson in 1915 with their concerns that “the food is
not sufficient and that some children’s shoes are worn out.” The parents noted that
because the school was so distant from their communities, they could not inspect itthemselves.117 Tyson inspected the school three months later, determined the foodto be plentiful and of good quality, the children in good health, and their clothing—with exceptions—“clean and substantial,” and concluded the parents had “no cause
for complaint.”118
After the death of a student at the Elizabeth Long Home in Kitamaat in 1922, parents withdrew their children from the school, which was operated by the Methodist
Church. According to a Mounted Police investigation, virtually every member of thecommunity signed a petition demanding the dismissal of the entire school staff. The
petition claimed that the children “had been compelled to eat rotten fish and oat meal
with worms in it.” The principal, Ida Clarke, acknowledged “it was often impossible
to obtain fresh meat or fish; but the children always have sufficient food to eat.” At apublic meeting held on the issue, an Indian Affairs official said that the parents had noright to withdraw their children, having signed a contract “for them to remain there.”
The First Nations people responded that “the contract with the school was to the effectthat the children would be well cared for, provided with sufficient clothing, food etc.”
At the end of the meeting, the parents agreed to return their children to the school on
the condition that the principal “sign her name to a paper before us that she would
see that the children got all the food they wanted, that they would be well cared for,and be supplied with sufficient clothing.” She signed the paper and the conflict was
defused. In this instance, resistance came at a price: John Adams, who had protested,
was convicted, in the words of the Indian agent, of “having used insulting language”
to one of the school staff. His sentence was stiff: two months in jail or a fine of $20. He
paid the fine.119
In 1923, the parents of Edward B., a student at the Anglican school at Onion Lake,
Saskatchewan, received the following letter:
We are going to tell you how we are treated. I am always hungry. We only get two
slice of bread and one plate porridge. Seven children ran away because there[sic] are hungry, two from Saddle and one from Frog Lake, and two from Snake508 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Plain, 3 girls and 4 boys because are always hungry too. I sold all my clothes away
because I am hungry too. Try and send me some money, $2.50, please to buy
something to eat and send me pictures those I left in the wagon.120

The letter ended up in the hands of F. C. Mears, a parliamentary press gallery
reporter, who forwarded it to Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott. He brushed
off the complaint and said the student had “no cause for complaint.” He also wrote,“Ninety-nine per cent of the Indian children at these schools are too fat.”121 IndianAffairs eventually identified the boy and informed his father that “your boy is being
well fed and clothed.”122 In reality, there had been ongoing concerns about the quality of food at the school, and Scott knew that. Just two years earlier, school inspector Sibbald had reported negatively on the quality of the bread and the fact that thechildren had no milk to drink. A follow-up report by Indian agent L. Turner had concluded that, although the food was adequate, “there was nothing to drink upon thetables.” He recommended that the principal be instructed that “these conditions must
be improved.”123 Scott himself had issued instructions that the food at the school be
improved.124 It does not appear that a news story on the issue was ever published,despite the fact that the parents, or their acquaintances, had taken the issue tothe press.
Instructions such as Scott’s to improve food were of little benefit to students. The
root problem was Ottawa’s underfunding of the system, an underfunding that was
at least initially based on a belief that children’s labour would be able to produce
enough food to make the schools largely self-supporting. For some schools, economic
self-sufficiency could be achieved only by cutting the students’ diet, and selling foodor food products that might otherwise have gone to them. This was apparent to F. O.
Loft when he was a student at the Mohawk Institute in the 1870s. He later wrote, “I canfrankly say that another serious evil is the false economy that is practised in denying
the children a satisfactory measure of diet, and that in the midst of plenty produced on
the farm and garden by the labor of the boys.”125
By the turn of the century, the fallacy of this expectation had been exposed.
Officials such as Martin Benson were well aware that the dietary problem could not
be resolved without more money. In 1903, when supporting a request for an increase
for the Qu’Appelle school per capita, he wrote that “there is almost too much economy
exercised at this school as regards the clothing and diet of the pupils,—this having
been rendered necessary by the increased cost of supplies, fuel and labor and the difficulty of recruiting pupils.”126
The principals also stressed the link between inadequate grants and poor diet.
Kamloops principal A. M. Carion justified a 1909 request for an increase in the school
pupilage by pointing out that “the cost of flour, meat and cord wood is a great deal
higher than it was formerly.”127 The struggle to feed students properly even led to arare moment of Catholic–Protestant unity. In 1920, John T. Ross, the principal of theFood and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939 • 509

Presbyterian school in northwestern Ontario, agreed with his counterpart at the local
Catholic school, C. Brouillet, that the per capita grant was “not sufficient to meet ourneeds in buying food for the children.” It was, he said, “absurd to imagine that an
Indian child can be fed on 40 cents per day, leaving clothing out of the question.” Hesuggested that the two of them work together to lobby the local business community
for support for an increase in funding.128
In the early 1930s, the federal government cut the school per capita grant by 15%.
In 1938, the Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential School Commission pointed outthat from 1935 to 1938, the cost of flour had gone up 43%; rolled oats, 8%; tea, 24%; andsugar, 6%.129 As funding declined and food costs went up, it was the students who paid
the price—in more ways than one. By the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that thecook at the Presbyterian school at Kenora was actually selling bread to the students, at
the rate of ten cents a loaf. When asked if the children got enough to eat at meals, she
responded, “Yes, but they were always hungry.” The agent ordered an end to the practice.130 The fact that hungry students would be reduced to buying bread to supplement
their meals in 1939 underscores the government’s failure to provide schools with theresources needed to feed students adequately throughout this period.

CHAPTER 20

School clothing: 1867–1939

At the beginning of each residential school year during this period (from 1867
to 1939), newly arrived students were stripped of their home clothing andprovided with a school-issued wardrobe. At many schools, photographs weretaken of students in their new uniforms and used to publicize the work of the schools.
The schools were expected to produce much of the clothing that students wore. In
1883, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney informed the newly appointed Battleford
industrial school principal, Thomas Clarke, that he would be provided with material
from which he was to have clothing made “at as moderate a rate as possible.”1 The
requirement that spending on clothing be held to a “moderate” level meant that, justas students were poorly fed, they were poorly clothed.
From material provided by the federal government, students at the Qu’Appelle andHigh River industrial schools were expected to produce the following wardrobe foreach student in 1884.
2 grey flannel shirts
2 pairs of trousers (of étoffe, grey in color, one pair to be of better material thanthe other for Sunday use)
2 coats of the same material as the trousers (one for Sunday use)
3 pairs of socks
2 pairs of boots
1 cloth coat
3 handkerchiefs
2 pairs of mittens
1 leather belt2

At the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, in 1889, the students were to beprovided with between one and one and a half suits of clothing a year, all made in
the institution. According to Hayter Reed, then the Indian commissioner, the students“had no undershirts nor drawers.” They also did not have nightshirts, “the boys having
to sleep in those worn through the day.” At the nearby Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
students were given three suits of clothing, three undershirts, and night shirts, which

512 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were replaced annually.3 In 1895, the girls at the St. Boniface school in Manitoba madeall the clothing for the students, with the exception of the boys’ dress suits. According
to Inspector T. P. Wadsworth, “the boys’ suits for fatigue as well as for dress parade
excel in texture and value any as yet furnished in government conducted schools.”
The girls wore “dresses, made of a neat, brown material, wearing also brown Holland
pinafores, trimmed with red braid.”4
The schools depended on the churches for a portion of their clothing supply. The
Anglican Church encouraged Sunday schools across Canada to make a financial commitment to support students at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, inthe nineteenth century. According to the school, $25 would clothe a boy for a year in“two suits of strong clothes, one hat, one winter cap, two pairs of boots, one pair moccassins [sic], four pairs of socks, three shirts, two under-vests, two pairs of drawers,
four pockethandkerchiefs [sic], one muffler, one pair mits [sic], one overcoat.”5
Beginning in the 1880s, the Women’s Auxiliary of the Anglican Church collectedclothing that was sent to church missions and schools across Canada.6 The Methodist
Church’s Women’s Missionary Society played a similar role, collecting and shipping
bales of clothing to Methodist schools in such locations as Chilliwack and Kitamaat
in British Columbia.7 Indian Affairs paid for the shipping costs to the schools. From1930 onward, the federal government also paid for the shipment of clothing bales toschools in the Northwest Territories attended by Inuit children.8
Whether clothing was purchased or donated, it did not necessarily fit the students.
At the school in Birtle, Manitoba, Inspector Wadsworth noted in 1895, “Although agreat deal of the clothing is received made up; there is much of it that requires alteration to be made to fit.” The inspector observed that although the girls had nightgowns,
the boys did not. He said this problem was to be “rectified forthwith.”9 In some cases,
it appears the clothing was either inappropriate or not distributed to the children.
For example, a 1908 report on the Presbyterian school at Shoal Lake in northwestern Ontario concluded that “the children were not too warmly clad, although there
were ample supplies of unused clothing on hand furnished by the Women’s Foreign
Missionary Society.”10
There are also many reports of students being well clothed. For example, in his 1905
report on the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school, A. E. Green wrote, “Clothingis suitable to the season and sufficient. I did not see a child with a patched article ofclothing. I also saw the children in their Sunday suits—the girls in a neat blue sailor
suit, and the boys in a suit of the same material.”11
It was common for schools to ensure that students had a good suit of clothing towear when they appeared in public. Susie Doxtator, who attended Mount Elgin in
the 1930s, said, “We had to wear uniforms—one for everyday and one for Sundays.
On Sundays we’d get to wear our own clothes to go to Church.”12 Martha Hill, who
attended the Mohawk Institute during the First World War, said:

School clothing: 1867–1939 • 513

We wore uniforms, we didn’t wear ordinary clothes. We had our school uniformthat we wore to school, our play uniform that we played around in, and then we
had our church—see we went to the Mohawk Chapel, and we had our uniforms
for that. We used to look quite nice in our navy-blue trimmed with white, walking down the road—the girls ahead and the boys behind.13

In his 1897 survey of conditions in industrial schools, Indian Affairs official Martin
Benson recommended giving students a new outfit when they left the school, rather
than—as he said was done at many schools—asking them to return their school
clothes and obliging them to leave in “any old worn out garments that come to hand.”14
Not only were students being stripped of their traditional clothes, but they also were
not being provided with a decent wardrobe upon dismissal from the school.
Some students remembered the daily clothing as being uncomfortable. Ivy
Koochicum, who attended the File Hills school in Saskatchewan in the 1920s, said,“We wore slips and bras made out of flour sacks. We had loose dresses; they used tomake them; they were just plain with a belt. Then we wore black stockings with boots.
The boots were ill-fitting in that they were very tight.”15
Pauline Creeley attended File Hills in the 1930s. She recalled:
Our boots were not warm. We only had one pair of cotton stockings. Our coats
were made of heavy melton [a heavy woollen fabric], which were warm. We had
mitts. I cannot remember if we had sweaters. We had big bloomers. Our uniforms were made like a jumper with a dress underneath. They were not warm.
On Sundays, we had a black-and-white outfit, midi and a jumper, sleevelessdress with a white blouse under. That was our Sunday best which we wore tochurch only.16

Along with the positive inspection reports such as those of A. E. Green, there werealso reports of students being dressed in inadequate and worn-out clothing. In 1893,
Inspector T. P. Wadsworth wrote that at the Qu’Appelle school, “very great economy
has been exercised in repairing the children’s clothing, darning, patching and repairing blankets. In this connection, I may observe that much of it was worn after thepoorest white person would have considered the garment worn out: the condemned
clothing is only fit for the rag bag.”17Louise Moine, who was at the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century,
recalled:
We wore black stockings that were made on a knitting machine, operated byhand by the older girls who worked in the sewing room. We all dressed alikein loose fitting ‘menage’ dresses during the week and our dress-up clothes on
Sunday. We usually wore aprons for work. Our hair was braided and rolled back.
We wore little black veils on our heads while at chapel during the week, and wore
white ones on Sunday.18

514 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Martin Benson reported in 1902 that the supply of clothing at Mount Elgin was“scanty and well worn,” although he was told there was a new supply on its way.19
Footwear was often in a state of disrepair. According to Qu’Appelle principal Joseph
Hugonnard in 1894, “The amount of repairing done here keeps the shoemaker and hisboys fully occupied, there being always at least fifty pairs of boots waiting for repairs.”20
Although there is less information on bedding than on clothing, there are indications that it too was limited and of poor quality. At the Qu’Appelle school in the 1880s,
students were supposed to be issued a cot, a mattress, two blankets, two sheets, andtwo pillowcases.21 Former Mount Elgin student Susie Doxtator recalled a shortage ofwarm bedding: “In the winter time I didn’t like it either because we didn’t have noquilts to be warm, for the bed. We used to sneak up to the attic and they had great big
fur rugs up there and we used to bring those down to cover us.”22 Dorothy Day recalledthat at Mount Elgin, students were issued only two sheets and a blanket. In winter, thebedding was not warm enough: “We used to push those beds together we’d be so cold,
and all sleep together, before we could go to sleep, to be warm. All the Oneida girls
would sleep together, and the girls from Cape Croker would all get together!”23
The principal of the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, in 1931 said that the“dormitories have a foul smell chiefly from the dreadful mattresses we have to put up
with.” He said he believed the mattresses had come from the Battleford school, which
had closed in 1914. “They are dreadfully foul and should be burned.”24
Indian Affairs was well aware of the problems that schools had in providing students with sufficient clothing, but the department rarely budged from its position thatthe per capita grant was adequate.
In 1910, Kamloops, British Columbia, principal A. M. Carion asked for an increasein the per capita grant, saying that at the existing level, “decent clothing could not beprovided.”25 Even after the increase in funding provided in the 1910 contract between
the government and the churches (discussed in an earlier chapter), schools found it
difficult to clothe students. A different Kamloops principal, J. B. Salles, wrote in 1917,“Half of the boys have not even one pair of stockings, they repaired their own shoes,
but these are too old to last long and their uniform is so old and so worn out that we do
not dare to show them to anyone. The girls [sic] shoes are also worn out and although
the boys patched them up many times they cannot hold much longer.” He appealed to
Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott to “help us buy shoes for our children and adecent uniform for the boys.”26
During his 1925 inspection of the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school, W. S. Murisoncommented that he had never seen “such patched and ragged looking clothing as
worn by the boys. The girls had better clothing but appeared listless, indifferent andhad a frowsy look.”27
In her letter to Indian Commissioner W. A. Graham regarding conditions at thesame school in 1929, teacher Lucy Affleck wrote that Principal Ross

School clothing: 1867–1939 • 515

has complete charge of the foot-wear for both boys and girls, and he gives themthe most ridiculous outfits. The little girls go teetering around in pumps with outlandish heels, or those old fashioned very high boots with high heels, sizes toolarge, or silly little sandals that won’t stay on their feet—cheap lots that he buys
for next to nothing, or second-hand misfits that come in bales. The boys have towear theirs until they can scarcely keep their feet in them, with binder twine forlaces, and garters [to hold up their socks], quite often. Of course, each child has abetter outfit, the one he puts on for “church” and takes home with him at holiday
time.28

When, in 1927, Indian agent J. G. Burk put in a request for funds to purchase underwear for students recently recruited to the Fort William, Ontario, school, Indian Affairs
departmental secretary J. D. McLean informed him that the schools were expected
to purchase clothing out of the per capita grant.29 In the face of inadequate funding,it appears that some schools turned to the parents for support. In 1929, a father of a
student at the Fort William school said he was being “obliged to spend a lot of money
buying her clothes. I also have to pay for having her shoes repaired.”30
The funding cuts of the 1930s exacerbated the difficulties. In 1936, Inspector A. G.
Hamilton wrote that at the Birtle, Manitoba, school, “some of the clothes and stockings
required to be mended should have been discarded. A patched garment is certainly
no disgrace, but some laid out for repairs were really past mending.” He added that thechildren had good outfits, but they were reserved for Sundays and when the children
went out in public: “In other words, when out where they can be seen, they are welldressed.”31 The following year, Inspector A. G. Smith wrote that “quite a percentage ofthe girls” at the same school were wearing “old leather boots” that were “quite unfit
to go outdoors in during the winter months.” When the problem was drawn to theprincipal’s attention, he agreed they were a problem, but added “he did not know thatthey were in that condition.”32 In his 1936 report on the Presbyterian school at Kenora,
Ontario, A. G. Hamilton wrote that “the girls were not as well outfitted as might be
expected. Some appeared somewhat scantily clad especially considering the cold
weather.”33
In 1938, at the end of this period, the churches were reduced to asking the federal
government to take over responsibility for clothing students. Writing on behalf of all
the church societies, T. B. R. Westgate, of the Anglican Church’s Indian and Eskimo
Residential School Commission, recommended to the federal government thatuniforms for all Indian boys and girls in the Schools should be provided by theGovernment. This opinion has not been generated solely by the heavy burden
now resting on the Church organizations to supply all the clothing required,even though this consideration alone would be sufficient to justify its expression,
but also because of the helpful effect such action would have in various ways.

516 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Uniforms would ensure that all students were satisfactorily dressed and that nostudent had clothing that was superior to any other student’s, and would foster pride“in the children themselves, their race, their school, their Government, and theirCountry.”34 The almost inevitable outcome of the 1883 instruction that clothing be
provided “at as moderate a rate as possible” was that, by 1938, the government’s funding was so low that, to use Westgate’s words, it was completely impossible to ensurethat all students were “adequately and becomingly clothed.”35

CHAPTER 21

Discipline: 1867–1939

In 1931, Principal Ed Maillard at the school in Sechelt, British Columbia, wrote tohis Oblate superiors, seeking extra help in maintaining discipline at the school.
He wrote that the students had no respect for the two men he had hired to maintain order among the children. “This life is worse than a life of a jail keeper. So I do not
feel very keen in looking after these ruffians if I do not have the help of a Brother.” Hefelt unjustly accused of being too harsh, and suggested that the problems at the school
were not his fault, but should be laid at the feet of his predecessor, a man he referred
to simply as “Brother Dave.” This man, according to Maillard, “had to yield” to theparents’ “wishes and desires to cover his tracks. I am really fed up with these savages.”1
Maillard’s frustrated, angry, and racist sentiments are a stark reminder of the degree
to which the residential schools were places of compulsion that relied on the application of force. This should not be surprising. Many of the children had been placedin the schools against their will. Most of the children whose parents had voluntarily
placed them in the schools would have preferred to have been at home. At the schools,
they were poorly housed, poorly fed, and poorly clothed. They were at risk of infection, hard-worked, and forced to study a curriculum that had little cultural relevanceto them in a language they did not know. Their cultural traditions were derided while
they were indoctrinated in a foreign religion. Not surprisingly, the lonely, neglectedchildren did not always do what they were supposed to do. Resistance might takemany forms: talking out of turn, passing notes, speaking their own languages, refusing
to eat unfamiliar food, taking extra food, neglecting chores and homework, and running away. Boys and girls also would find ways to be alone with one another. Olderchildren bullied younger ones. When punished by the staff, some of them fought back.

Maintaining order
The schools responded to such predictable resistance with a regime of harsh discipline. In the context of residential schools, discipline refers not simply to punishment of wrongdoers, but also to the maintenance of order and obedience. Given that

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the schools were understaffed and poorly equipped, they sought to control student
behaviour through strict regimentation. As early as 1883, Wikwemikong, Ontario,
principal R. Baudin wrote, “It is true that a strict watchfulness is kept over them at all
times by some member of the Institution. Besides their studies and working hours,
they have a person constantly in attendance to know what they are doing.”2 At the St.
Boniface, Manitoba, school, an inspector noted, “The sisters immediately in charge
have sleeping apartments at one end of this dormitory, simply screened off; therefore
they [the students] are under constant supervision, night as well as day.”3 There werealways gaps in this surveillance. A later Wikwemikong principal, G. A. Artus, reported
in 1890 that “very frequent religious exhortations” had been the main method toimprove morals at the school. “However, the scattering of the boys all over the premises for their daily work and industrial training, has a tendency towards weakening
their spirit of obedience and relaxing the discipline.”4
On an 1895 inspection of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, Indian Affairs
official Martin Benson was struck by theorder, regularity and precision with which all the pupils conducted themselves.
This school is as well regulated and controlled as a piece of machinery, going on
without stop or hitch from morning to night. The boys have a thorough militaryorganization, being divided into four squads, forming a company, each squadhaving its corporals and sergeant who act as monitors, and the whole is in chargeof a sergeant major.

A similar system for the girls also met with Benson’s approval. 5
In 1905, Christie, British Columbia, principal P. Maurus wrote, “The discipline ismild, but firm. The pupils are under constant supervision and their conduct is watchedmost carefully.”6
In 1915, Simon Gavin, a student at the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, wrote
a brief article for the school paper that showed the role that bells played at that school:
I carry wood into the kitchen and bakery every day; when I finish there I go to
the skating rink and sweep it. When I hear the big bell I come in and brush my
hair; when the little bell rings I line up with the other boys in the play-room andmarch in to school. I learn arithmetic, spelling, reading, to write stories from the
3rd Reader and to draw maps.7

Of his years at Battleford, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Gilbert Wuttunee recalled, “We were controlled altogether by the bell.”8
A passage from the Anglican history of the Chapleau, Ontario, school, written
in 1939, gives a sense of how regimented daily life was for students at the end of
this period.
On week days the rising bell rings at six o’clock; at six-thirty another bell calls
bigger girls to help with the work in the kitchen and dining-room, and the bigger

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 519

boys to help with the work at the barn; at seven o’clock the bell is rung again tocall all to breakfast, and at seven-thirty prayers are conducted. While the bigger
boys and girls are helping in the way indicated, the younger ones are engaged
in looking after their respective beds and the dormitories. After prayers thechildren assist in washing the dishes, sweeping floors, dusting furniture, and on
wash days a certain number of them are assigned to the Laundry Supervisor toassist her in that work. At eight forty-five the warning bell for classroom work is
rung, and at nine o’clock all who have not been assigned to some special duties
enter their respective classrooms. Bells are rung again at recess, at noon, andat various times in the afternoon, each ring having a definite meaning, wellunderstood by all, until the final bells of the day are rung for evening study, choirpractice, lights out, and go to bed.9

Basil Johnston wrote in his memoir of his years at the school at Spanish, Ontario,“Our treatment implied that we were little better than felons or potential felons.”10
Many of the Roman Catholic schools employed staff members who were given thetitle of “school disciplinarian.” The principal of the Christie school, G. Forbes, provided a good summary of the work of school disciplinarians when he described theways in which the one at his school was not doing his job.
Time and again, I have told him that he must remain with the boys during therecreations, that he must let them go certain places or talk in other places, that
he must have the beds made tidily, the dormitory and other places kept clean,that he must see to it that the boys come immediately after the bell rings, that hemust have them change boots and stockings when they are wet, they must notleave their work or the recreation room without permission—but all to no avail.

Forbes was so frustrated that he thought he would have to take over the work himself. “The disciplinarian must be on the job: we have had a couple of kissing and hugging parties between the boys and girls already: I do not want what they had last year,
fornication.”11

Religious scripture and corporal punishment
The churches and religious orders that operated the schools had strong and interrelated conceptions of order, discipline, obedience, and sin. They believed that humanbeings were fallen, sinful creatures who had to earn salvation through mastery of theirnature by obedience to God.12 The approach to discipline in schools was based inscripture: corporal punishment was a biblically authorized way of keeping order andof bringing children to the righteous path.13
Nineteenth-century educational bureaucrats such as Egerton Ryerson were critical of excessive force in the school, but even he believed that the “best Teacher, like520 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the best Parent, will seldom resort to the Rod; but there are occasions when it cannot
be wisely avoided.” Ryerson, a leading figure in the Methodist Church, believed that
opposition to corporal punishment was “contrary to Scripture.”14 The birch rod was
the staple disciplinary tool of the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1880s, at
the Central School East in Ottawa, there was an average of sixty strappings a month.15
At the Jesse Ketchum public school in Toronto in 1888, students were strapped forsuch offences as “fighting, misbehaving in line, lying, eating in school, neglecting tocorrect wrong work, shooting peas in the classroom, going home when told to remain,long continued carelessness and general bad conduct.” At that school, a strapping was
between four and twelve beatings on the palm of the hand.16 The strap was still in
use a half century later: in 1933, the strap was administered to 1,500 Toronto school
students.17
Provincial governments provided public schoolteachers with only limited guidance as to how children were to be disciplined. In 1863 in New Brunswick, the department of education urged teachers to “exercise such discipline as would be pursued bya judicious parent in his family.”18 The 1891 Ontario Education Act instructed teachers
not to exceed measures that would be taken by a “kind, firm, and judicious parent.”19
Teachers who went beyond these boundaries could be charged with assault under
the Criminal Code. Canadian courts had ruled that corporal punishment could not
be unreasonable, exceed the severity of the offence, or be carried out with malice.
Teachers who hit students on the head or took other actions that could lead to permanent physical harm ran the risk of conviction. Courts also ruled that discipline
was not excessive if the teacher had an honest belief that the student had committed an offence and that belief was supported by probable grounds.20 While corporalpunishment was an accepted part of education and child rearing in Euro-Canadiansociety, the courts had placed limits on its use. However, historically, corporal punishment did not have this same level of acceptability among Aboriginal people. And,in many cases, residential schools imposed punishments on Aboriginal children thatwere in excess of the norms that would be accepted even in Euro-Canadian society
at that time. The large number of recorded parental complaints, coupled with theschools’ ongoing difficulty in recruiting students, is evidence of occasions where discipline imposed by the schools exceeded what would have been acceptable in either
Aboriginal or European communities.
Although the schools felt justified in using discipline, including corporal punishment, to establish and maintain order, Indian Affairs never provided system-wide
guidelines or regulations that placed limits on the use of discipline. Instead, instructions were provided on a case-by-case basis. This was so in the 1880s and it still continued in the 1930s.
Indian Affairs officials were aware that, since the beginning of residential schools,
staff members were using corporal punishment. In 1885, Albert Lacombe, theDiscipline: 1867–1939 • 521

principal of the High River school in what is now Alberta, wrote in the Indian Affairs
annual report:
We have found by past experience that it is impossible to control and manage
these Indian boys by mere advice and kind reprimand. If we have not somesystem of coercion to enforce order, and at least a little school discipline, then I
assure you it will be very hard to conduct the school with that measure of successwhich, it was hoped, would attend its establishment.21

His successor, E. Claude, wrote in the 1887 Indian Affairs annual report, “The system of discipline is a military one and strictly carried out, no breach of the regulations
remaining unpunished, but must say to the honour of our pupils that all, with few
exceptions, observe perfectly the daily routine.”22 Hayter Reed, then Indian commissioner for the Prairies, recorded in 1889 that corporal punishment, while resorted toonly in “extreme cases,” was administered at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford.23
As noted in an earlier chapter, in 1889, Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet
instructed Bishop Paul Durieu, regarding the proposed Kootenay school in Cranbrook,
British Columbia, “Obedience to rules and good behavior should be enforced, but
corporal punishment should only be resorted to in extreme cases. In ordinary cases
the penalty might be solitary confinement for such time as the offence may warrant,
or deprivation of certain articles of food allowed to other pupils.”24 This is similar to
instructions issued to Roman Catholic assistant principals in 1888. They were told to“avoid giving nicknames to his pupils and using too rigorous means with regards tothe most rebellious.” The only punishments recommended were:1)

The standing or sitting in the corner of the School room.

2)

The confinement during one recreation or more.

3)

The diet, which is of two kinds, the half diet or deprivation of one plate, thetotal diet or deprivation of a meal, and then, the pupil shall stand in the centre of the refectory. This last punishment cannot be inflicted without recource[sic] to the principal.25

Such vague instructions led to abuses. Parents withdrew five students from the
Rupert’s Land school in Middlechurch, Manitoba, in 1892 because two students had
their “clothes taken up and been whipped in that state,” and a boy had been thrashedon the back. The local Indian agent said, “Thrashing at the school, which is a remnant of the dark ages, has caused nearly all the trouble at this School.”26 Seven years
later, Indian Commissioner David Laird was obliged to conduct an inquiry into eventsat the same school. He concluded that several children had been “too severely punished.” He acknowledged that it appeared that a girl (whose age was either eight ornine) had been impertinent, but Laird felt that no “child should show marks on her
person several days or weeks after being strapped.” To Laird’s mind, Principal J. F.

522 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Fairlie’s treatment of another boy, which included “strappings on the bare back,” was“too suggestive of the old system of flogging criminals,”27
In 1895, after allegations of excessive discipline being employed at the Red Deer
school in what is now Alberta (an event discussed in greater detail in an earlier chapter in this volume), Hayter Reed, who was then deputy minister, instructed the assistant Indian commissioner in Regina to issue a directive to the effect that “children are
not to be whipped by anyone save the Principal, and even when such a course is necessary, great discretion should be used and they should not be struck on the head, or
punished so severely that bodily harm might ensue.” Corporal punishment was to bereserved for grave offences and where it could serve as a deterrent.28 Although the assistant commissioner may have issued that directive, as he was specifically instructed todo, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate a
copy of it in federal government records. If such a directive were sent out by the assistant Indian commissioner in Regina, its circulation likely would have been restricted
to the schools in Manitoba and the North-West Territories (the regions for which hehad authority). It would not have applied to all the schools the government funded.
Reed’s instructions contained no direction as to what other types of discipline were
to be used, what the children could and could not be punished for, whether a recordof punishments was to be kept and reported annually or otherwise, whether parents
were to be notified, whether more than one adult was to be present, whether it was
acceptable for clothing to be removed prior to the administration of corporal punishment, or whether children were to be punished in front of other students.
There are other problems with Reed’s instructions: no limits were placed on thenumber of blows that could be administered, or on the instrument that was to be
used in administering them. In the Indian Affairs correspondence on corporal punishment, there are frequent references to students being “whipped” or “thrashed.” Italso appears that principals devised their own disciplinary tools. For example, Birtle,
Manitoba, principal George McLaren wrote in 1892 that he did not use severe punishment, but on occasion he made use of “a small raw hide when the guilty person waslarge and the offence serious such as persisting in running away.”29 In December 1896
in British Columbia, the Kuper Island school’s acting principal gave two boys “several
lashes in the Presence of the Pupils” for sneaking into the girls’ dormitory at night.30
Reed’s admonition that children were not to be struck on the head may also havegiven principals perceived licence to administer blows to any other part of the body.
In their annual reports for 1896, many principals provided information on theirdiscipline policies. Principal John Scott at Metlakatla, British Columbia, wrote that, at
his school, disciplinary measures consisted of “extra lessons, work in play-time, deprivation of a meal or being sent to bed during part of their play-time of an evening, andas a last resource for persistence in serious wrong doing, expulsion from the school.”31

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 523

The principal of the girls’ school at Port Simpson, British Columbia, J. Redner,
reported: “Discipline is firm but kind. The pupils are trained as much as possible togovern themselves. The punishments used are private reproof, corporal punishment
in rare instances and solitary confinement in extreme cases.”32
The principal at Mission, British Columbia, E. C. Chirouse, wrote:
As regards punishment, I must confess that our methods seem rather strange tothose who have only had dealings with white children. The Indian thinks it anawful disgrace to be struck, and to avoid the bad effect which would more thancounterbalance any good arising from such treatment, we usually punish theboys by giving them lines to write, depriving them of play, or by giving them ameal on their knees in the refectory, though occasionally they receive a slap on
the hand with a light cane. The girls are so docile and gentle that punishment
even of the mildest kind is altogether unnecessary.33

At the Shingwauk Home in Ontario, Principal G. L. King reported, “The methodsof punishment adopted are: fines, impositions and kept in to work on half-holidays.
Corporal punishment is administered only as a last resource and in cases of repeatedacts of disobedience.”34
Principal A. M. Carion, at Kamloops, British Columbia, wrote:
A system of marking faults committed has been adopted, and twice a day, atroll-call, attention is called to those faults and the wrong-doers are reprehended, and, if deemed necessary, punished by being confined during recreation or
deprived of dessert. Corporal punishment is resorted to only in extreme cases.35

Kuper Island principal Father G. Donckele wrote, “The discipline laid down in theregulations of the department was strictly carried out, and for punishment for occasional infractions moral persuasion seemed to have a better effect than any kind of
corporal punishment.”36 The Alert Bay, British Columbia, principal wrote, “The pupils
have been well-behaved, and are generally industrious, and punishment is rarely necessary.”37 Middlechurch principal John Ashby noted, “Punishments have been very
few. I have found a kindly talking to more avail than any punishment. I have whipped,
but it only hardens instead of softening, deprivation of privileges being generally
sufficient.”38
No matter what the European standards of the day might have been, residential
school discipline clearly violated the norms by which Aboriginal parents expected
their children to be treated. In her memoirs, Louise Moine recounted an incident
in which a student at the Qu’Appelle school complained to her parents about being
strapped. The girl’s mother “marched right down to the playroom where she confronted the Sister by shaking her fist at her and telling her off in Sioux. The Sister, fearing abuse, held her cross up in front of the woman but she knocked it out of the Sister’shand.”39

524 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Principals recognized they were violating parental norms, but concluded that suchnorms were ‘inappropriate.’ In 1922, Andrew Paull, the corresponding secretary of
the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, wrote to W. E. Ditchburn, the chief inspectorof Indian agencies in British Columbia, to complain that the principal of the Alberni
industrial school, Mr. Currie, “unmercifully whips the boys on their backs, which isobjected to as well as Mr. Curry fighting and kicking the boys for the purpose of correction. It is further reported that Mr. Curry gets extremely mad at the slightest provocation, and whips or hits the boys with his fists, or chokes them.”40 Currie said he thought
himself to be “patient, kind and lenient with every child who shows any attempt at
obedience to the rules, but certain offences must be dealt with firmly.” But, he said,
Aboriginal parents never punished their children. “The result is that when the teacher
does it they magnify the thing to appear that the child was being murdered.”41
In the absence of guidelines and directives, individual principals decided for themselves what was and was not appropriate. When principals, or perhaps other staff
members, changed, the pattern of discipline also changed, resulting in inconsistency
within schools from year to year, and from school to school.

Other disciplinary options
As the principals’ reports indicated, corporal punishment was not the only tool
employed in an attempt to maintain discipline. Students might be forced to eat everything on their plates or be denied holidays. At the Sechelt school in 1936, the school
disciplinarian held extended drills, requiring boys to hop on one leg “for longer periods than usual,” in an effort to force them to reveal who had stolen a set of the school
keys. The method failed to bring about the recovery of the keys, but the boys did complain to their parents, who in turn complained to Indian Affairs. The disciplinarian
defended the punishment, saying it was not as vigorous as the activities the boys
engaged in during their own playtime.42
Many former students spoke of having their ears twisted as a classroom punishment. This punishment is not often referred to in the documentary record. However,in 1906, parents complained that at one of the schools at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
students were having their ears twisted. Indian Commissioner David Laird instructed
the Indian agent that “ear twisting for punishment should be dropped.”43 Again, thiswas not a system-wide instruction, but one that was limited to one Indian agent, who
was expected to pass the instruction on to a single principal.
Cornelius Kelleher, a half-Irish, half-Nooksack boy who attended the Mission
school in the nineteenth century, recalled that when a student’s work was not prepared, the teacher would “hit you on the fingers with a rod, I’ll tell you. There was nosoft things in them days.”44 It was not uncommon for runaways to have their hair cut

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 525

short or shaved off, in addition to being strapped. Alice Star Blanket attended the File
Hills, Saskatchewan, school in the 1930s. She recalled that runaways at that school
were “punished with a strap, shave their hair off, get bald heads.”45 Sarah Soonias(known as Sarah Wuttunnee when she was in school) was enrolled in the Battlefordschool in 1900. She recalled being strapped by a Mr. Denten: “I got a good strappingfrom him because I wouldn’t say a word. I got sad, I waited too long, I couldn’t speakand I got a strapping.” She recalled that another teacher was always distressed at having to strap students and sought to console them afterwards.46
In extreme cases, bad behaviour might be dealt with by expulsion. Kuper Island
principal George Donckele expelled one boy in 1891 for his “very offensive disobedience and insubordination.”47 In February 1935, the department supported the principal of the Kuper Island school in discharging a student who was “having such a bad
influence on the other pupils and the discipline of the school.”48 Chapleau, Ontario,
principal A. J. Vale sought in 1936 to discharge a girl who had been at the school foreight years. He said,
We have had considerable trouble with her due to her stubbornness. I have
tried severe whipping and various methods of punishments, such as extra work
instead of play, being sent to bed early and loss of extra privileges but all seemto have failed to cure her of exhibitions of temper and passive resistance to therules of the classroom and school in general.

Vale could see no alternative but to send her “back to her own people at Ruperts
House where she belongs.”49 In 1938 in British Columbia, one girl, who ran away fromthe Williams Lake school twice in one year, was discharged.50
In 1907, much to the displeasure of the students’ parents and Indian Commissioner
W. M. Graham, Principal W. McWhinney of the Presbyterian school at Kamsack,Saskatchewan, tied ropes around the arms of boys who had run away and “made themrun behind the buggy from their houses to the school.” Their parents complained that“the children are not dogs.” Graham told the principal to cease the practice: if he had
trouble with runaways, he should seek permission to send “the worst offenders toanother school.”51 Martin Benson asked the deputy minister whether McWhinney’s
behaviour entitled the department to demand his resignation.52 McWhinney explainedthat he had gone looking for a group of runaways in the school buggy, accompanied
by his wife. When he encountered the three boys almost thirteen kilometres from theschool, he took the smallest boy into the buggy. The older boys were instructed to walkbehind the wagon.
After going a little distance while drawing near a bluff, the boys showed unmistakeable signs that they were going to make a break for liberty. I stopped and tieda rope loosely around one arm of each and threw the other end of the rope overthe back of the buggy and over the seat. The rope was not tied to the buggy in526 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

anyway. Thus we proceeded to the school, the horses walking or trotting slowly,
so that the boys could follow without danger of hurting themselves in any way.53

Punishment could also take the form of cancelling vacation. This happened at
the Mohawk Institute in 1926 when it was discovered that a group of older male andfemale students had been meeting secretly at night for what the principal describedas “a series of wild escapades.”54 When two girls ran away from the Gordon’s Reserve
school in Saskatchewan, the principal and the Indian agent informed them that theirdischarge from the school would be delayed for six months as punishment for their
behaviour. Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham refused to authorize the punishment, saying that the principal and the agent had no authority to impose it.55
Another option was to transfer a student to a different school. In 1923, Indian agent
M. Christianson reported “an epidemic of truancy at the Gordon’s Reserve school.”Students said they had run away because they “did not like the Farming Instructor.”
However, the problem continued after the instructor was replaced. Christianson recommended transferring two of the more persistent runaways to a more distant school,saying it would “put a stop their escapades” and have a “salutary effect on otherboys and girls.”56 In 1927, Paul Bousquet, the principal at Fort Alexander, Manitoba,
sought permission to transfer persistent runaways to the school at Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan.57 In 1932, the principal of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school attempted
to have two boys transferred to the Muscowequan school in Lestock, Saskatchewan.58
The department denied the request, pointing out that, since the boys were only fourteen and thirteen years old, the school was expected to “exert sufficient moral suasion
to prevent these boys from being chronic truants.”59 In 1935, the principal sought tohave another boy transferred to Muscowequan. In this boy’s most recent episode of
truancy, he and two other boys had ridden a boxcar to Winnipeg. The principal felt
the boy could not be discharged, since his father’s whereabouts were unknown andhis mother was in a sanatorium.60 In 1937, Mount Elgin principal O. B. Strapp was
given approval to transfer six students—“the ring leaders among the truants”— to theschool at Chapleau, Ontario.61
Students were also sometimes punished for things beyond their control. It is notuncommon for children who have been removed from their homes and placed in institutions to develop involuntary bedwetting.62 In Canada’s residential schools, humiliating punishments were created for those who wet their beds. At the Spanish, Ontario,
school, these students were called “piskers” and they were thrashed regularly. In 1924,
one chronic bedwetter was placed in a tub filled with hot water. According to a staff
member, “After a half-hour stay, he became sick to his stomach so had to take himout. It cured him from wetting his bed for two nights, but now he is as bad as ever.”63
In 1927, the boys were given seat baths in cold water in an attempt to cure bedwetting.
This led to short-term improvements, but, by 1931, bedwetters were being spanked.64

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 527

Since these measures served only to intensify the students’ feelings of anxiety andinsecurity, they were ineffective.65
Some schools had rooms specifically set aside as the ‘punishment room.’ In 1985 at
the Mohawk Institute, Martin Benson reported:
A room at the head of the landing leading to the rear of the Principal’s house, isset apart for the solitary confinement of very refractory boys with a similar placeon the girls’ side of the building. These two rooms are about 6 x 10 and are only
lighted by a barred fanlight over the door. I asked the Principal if he ever had occasion to make use of these rooms, and he replied that he sometimes did so forshort periods and he found this mode of punishment has a most salutary effect.
Confinement in the rooms lasts during playtime.

According to Benson, no one but the principal could order a child’s confinement
or administer corporal punishment.66 The rooms were still in operation a dozen years
later when the Ontario inspector for Indian agencies, J. G. Ramsden, reported: “I cannot say that I was favourably impressed with the sight of two prison cells in the boys
playhouse. I was informed, however, that these were for pupils who ran away from theinstitution, confinement being for a week at a time when pupils returned.”67
Martha Hill, who attended the Mohawk Institute from 1912 to 1919, could recall thepunishment room vividly. “They had one little room—it had just room to crawl in andgo in the bed if you done anything wrong. That’s how he’d punish you—he’d make you
go in that room. No light—shut the door and lock it from the outside.”68
According to some reports, the treatment given to students was heartless. In 1903,
missionary W. S. Moore of Mistawasis, Saskatchewan, wrote to the Presbyterian
Church about the treatment of children at the Regina industrial school. In particular,
he told of a girl who, having been shut in a room for running away, had tried to hangherself. Her teacher was able to save her; however, he then gave her a revolver and told
her to shoot herself. She pulled the trigger, only to discover it was not loaded. Anotherrunaway was “tied behind the buckboard and made to trot or run back to the schoolin the manner of an animal.” Moore said the teacher in question had told both thesestories to him and his wife.69
In 1912 at the school at Round Lake, the matron, who was also the principal’swife, had struck a girl so hard in the head that she had been knocked to the floor. A
complaint was made, and a missionary, Hugh MacKay, investigated on behalf of thechurch. He concluded that neither the principal nor the matron could control theirtempers.70 In this case, the church took action: the principal and his wife were gone by
the end of the year.71
Sometimes, students who came into conflict with the law were sent to provincial
reformatories (often called “industrial schools”). For example, when a group of boys
from the Mount Elgin school were arrested in 1920 for stealing from the local store,
the principal recommended they be sent to the Victoria Industrial School in Mimico.72

528 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In other cases, students might be sent to such institutions if they were thought to be‘uncontrollable.’ In 1922, Gordon Smith, the Indian superintendent in Brantford,
Ontario, concluded that three boys, at least two of whom were sixteen years of age,
were beyond the control of the Mohawk Institute and their families. He also recommended they be sent to the Mimico school.73 Duncan Campbell Scott concurred,suggesting that “one or two of the worst boys be committed to the Mimico Industrial
School. This action would have a good all round effect on the general discipline, notonly at the school but on the reserve.”74
In 1936, the principal of the Gordon’s Reserve school in Saskatchewan wanted topress criminal charges against three boys who had attacked the school’s engineer, Mr.
Sworder. The attack was brought on because Sworder had demanded to know why
one of the students had been—against regulations—in the engine room. The local
Indian agent thought the corporal punishment the boys had been subjected to was
sufficient. In his opinion, “If the police are to be called in for every breach of disciplinein the schools they would be on the road the whole of their time, and the effect on theminds of the Indian parents would be bad.”75
In 1938, Indian Affairs agent Eben McKenzie and the Grayson, Saskatchewan, principal recommended that a fifteen-year-old orphan boy be sent to a “reformatory for
an indefinite period.” According to McKenzie, “This lad has incited the other pupils
especially the younger ones to grumble about the food un-necessarily, cause generaltrouble, and has instigated recently five pupils to run away from the school.” Judging
the boy to be “unmanageable,” he thought a year in a reformatory might “fill in justwhat is needed and would be well worth the trial.” As in other cases, there was concern
about the example that might be set. It was thought that expelling the boy “establishes
a precedent that if all a lad has to do to get expelled from school is to become a generalnuisance which would set a bad example for any other pupils.”76 In the end, the boy
was transferred to another residential school.77
In 1937, a young boy who had run away from the Joussard, Alberta, school broke intoa store in Enilda, Alberta, and stole $30 worth of goods.78 He was arrested and charged
with break, enter, and theft.79 At the recommendation of R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, it was decided to send the boy back to
the Joussard school until his father returned from hunting, at which time he would be“placed in his father’s care.”80 Principal Paul Serrand objected to the decision, writingthat the boy “having committed a serious offense should be punished according to
the natural law.” If he was discharged, Serrand feared that other “children lonesome
at school” might be tempted to steal in hopes of being discharged.81 In defending thedecision, Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan wrote that “after making very extensive
inquiries it was not found possible to locate any institution in the Province of Alberta
to which this boy could be sent. I feel you will agree that it is not likely he would profit
by being sent to any of the regular penal institutions.”82

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 529

Conflict and confrontation were never far from the surface. The principals and government officials worried about what might happen if they appeared to be weak inthe students’ eyes. Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander refused to transfer a boy from theCowessess school at Grayson to another school in 1919 for fear that “the other boys
may form the opinion that the Brother [in charge of discipline at Cowessess] is afraidof the big boys.” Ostrander’s letter made it clear that staff were expected to physicallydominate students. He wrote, approvingly, “Of course when he is strict there will bea big boy occasionally who will try him to see how far he can go, but so far the boys
have found that the Brother is their master and I think it does them good.”83 In othercases, as students got older, they successfully stood up to staff. Susie Doxtator, who
attended Mount Elgin in the 1930s, recalled, “There was a lot of staff there that caredfor us, but there was some staff that would rather beat us up. I was so glad when I got
big enough to stand on my own feet. I got in trouble sometimes hitting staff back, butthey always asked for it—they always hit me first and I hit ’em back.”84 Raymond Hill
had similar memories of the Mohawk Institute during that period: “I got the strap until
I was big enough to take care of myself and then they didn’t dare strap me. I foughtback and that was it—that ended the strapping I got. I got a talking to but I didn’t geta strapping.”85
Louise Moine recalled being strapped for speaking back to a teacher when she
attended the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century.
She took me into the bathroom where she strapped me so hard that she got red
in the face. What irritated her the most was that I wouldn’t cry. I was as stubborn
as they come. When she stopped for air, I threw in an apology (not that I meantit). She stopped then and kissed me, but the damage had been done. As she had
strapped on the seat, I couldn’t sit down properly and I couldn’t stand anything
touching my behind for a while.86

When a boy was caught in the act of attempting to burn down the File Hills school in
1932, he was immediately strapped on his hands. The principal wished to send him to
the Regina Detention Home. The local Indian Affairs inspector, W. Murison, reported,“This boy is of very low mentality; as a matter of fact he cannot be considered normal.” The Indian agent favoured taking a lenient approach to the case. Murison said
he feared that directly discharging the boy into the care of his parents would “act as
an incentive to other boys to attempt the same thing in order to bring about their discharge.” Therefore, he suggested transferring him to another school, and, from there,
discharging him to his home. Officials were unwilling to take the correct step directly
and immediately—in this case, returning a boy to his family when the school was incapable of caring for him—for fear of appearing weak or vulnerable. Among the reasons
why Inspector Murison opposed having the boy sent to the Regina Detention Homewas the fact that the case would first have to be brought before a juvenile court. This
would have involved an expense that he knew Indian Affairs was “anxious to avoid.”87

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Sometimes, conflict broke out into the open. In the spring of 1896, Brandon principal John Semmens sought advice from Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget about
how to deal with a group of rebellious students. One boy had “collared” and threatened a staff member, and, on separate occasions, two others had challenged anotherstaff member to a fight. Semmens had been able to obtain apologies from the students
in each case, but he feared that they might “combine and give trouble to all concerned.
It may be necessary to handcuff or imprison if the ordinary corrective influences failus.”88 Without reference to any specific policy, Forget recommended that, in the face ofrepeated behaviour of this kind, Semmens would be justified in punishing the boy bydepriving him of a holiday, placing him on a “simple diet,” or, “as a last resort, unlessthe boy had great provocation, by corporal punishment.” This “should not be more
severe than a strapping on the hand, which should be administered in the presence of
the whole school, and after such a full explanation of the case as will leave no doubt
in the mind of any one as to the justice and necessity of the course pursued.”89 Forget’s
letter did place limits on where blows could be landed when punishing students. It did
not limit the number of blows. It also incorporated humiliation into the punishment
process by having the student strapped in front of the entire school population.
By the time Semmens had received Forget’s advice, the situation had escalated:
at the principal’s request, three boys had been arrested for attacking a staff member.
Semmens had recommended that the sentence be only one night in duration, but themagistrate, angered by the boys’ defiance in court, sentenced them to a week in jail.90
In 1902, Indian Affairs Minister Clifford Sifton received a telegram from ThomasRoss, who identified himself as a teacher at the Red Deer school in what is now
Alberta, stating that the boys at the school were armed with knives and out of control.91 These allegations were exaggerated. Students were not brandishing knives, andneither the staff nor the principal was being threatened. Two separate investigations
raised questions as to the qualifications of Ross and another former staff member who
had made the complaints. One of the Red Deer teachers successfully prosecuted a
student for assaulting him. However, the student received a suspended sentence, andthe Methodist Church official who investigated the affair questioned whether the conviction was merited.92 A government inspector said older students swore, disrupted
prayers, and threatened teachers. The principal appeared unable to provide direction
or order. According to the inspector, “The boys have no respect for authority unless it isbased on the personal strength of the particular officer exercising it. Each officer who
is physically able punishes and disciplines his boys after his own methods.” The officer
who is not endowed with this physical capability is helpless, he said.93 The principal
resigned at the end of the school year.94
There was ongoing conflict at the Anglican school in The Pas in the 1920s and1930s. In 1922, a group of boys who had previously been punished for drinking at theschool were found to have purchased peppermint extract in town with money they

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 531

had acquired by selling the school skates to a second-hand store. The clerk who soldthe boys the extract was jailed, but the Indian agent was uncertain about what to dowith the boys. “I could handle them as was done previously, but it seems useless tobeat them, and I do not think it possible to cure the wild ones.”95
An inspector of Indian agencies, A. G. Hamilton, wrote in the early 1930s that the
only way to control the older boys at the Anglican school in The Pas would be if “aproper boys’ supervisor were secured, and he would need to be a real man, it would bea big step towards handling the children. This would also strengthen the authority ofthe other members, who at present find themselves unable to control the children.”96
But this forceful approach had real limits. In 1932, a teacher at the same school
tried to maintain his authority by striking a student on the arm with a shovel.97 A
church investigation concluded the teacher had been provoked, but recognized that
only the principal was authorized to administer corporal punishment at the school.
The field secretary of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, T.
B. R. Westgate, proposed that the teacher in question be allowed to stay at the school
until he could be transferred to another school.98 Instead, the teacher was dismissed,
but Indian Affairs noted that there would be no objection to his being hired at another
Anglican-run school.99
In 1936, a boy refused to do some barn work and struck a staff member at the
Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario. The staff member retaliated by hitting theboy with a horseshoe. Inspector A. G. Hamilton wrote that he did “not like the ideaof a man forgetting himself to such an extent that he would resort to methods of thisnature.” The staff member was not a teacher, but a hired hand and, to use Hamilton’sterm, “of foreign birth.” Hamilton, revealing the levels of racial prejudice in operation at the time, wrote he was “not enthused with the employment of such people
as instructors of our Indian children. I am quite sure that their method of discipline
would be on a much lower level than ours.” For his part, the principal said the man
had regretted his action and should not be fired.100
Changes in staff, particularly in principal, could bring about changes in discipline.
When C. M. Turnell took over the Mohawk Institute in 1915, he found it necessary
to “relax in some respects the somewhat rigid discipline” he found at the school.101
Martha Hill, who attended the school during this period, recalled how the approachto discipline changed when Turnell took over from Nelles Ashton, the previous principal: “Ashton—when he was there—he was cruel. When he gave you a licking he usedthe cat-o’-nine-tails [a multi-tailed whip]. Until Turnell went in—he took that out. All
you could use was the strap, and he couldn’t hit you no place—only on the hands.”102
In 1918, without consulting the federal government, the New England Company
dismissed the more lenient Turnell. Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott initially
opposed the move, threatening to cut off the school’s funding unless the New England
Company sent an official to Canada to discuss the matter with him.103 However, in July

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1918, Turnell left. His replacement, a former school employee, complained that the“boys are out of hand as Mr. Turnell was not strict enough with them.”104

School case studies
The rest of this chapter examines a series of discipline-related issues at residential
schools from 1892 to 1939. They are a reminder that although corporal punishment
was acceptable in Euro-Canadian schools, the degree and severity of punishment
administered at Canadian residential schools for Aboriginal children were regularly
viewed by government officials as being excessive. In some cases, the violations were sosevere that they landed principals and staff members in court. In other cases, the government investigated and absolved the principals and schools of excessive behaviour.
The government’s response to discipline-related problems remained piecemeal,vague, and contradictory. The absence of any overall regulations, standards, or policies meant that government officials had to draw their conclusions about whether
discipline had been excessive based on their own instincts and prejudices. Their judgment also would have been affected by the belief that decisions that favoured parents’complaints would serve only to weaken the authority of the system. Disciplinary policies were clearly in the hands of the schools, despite the fact that the 1910 contract
between the federal government and the churches provided the government with theauthority to impose any regulations on the schools that it deemed necessary.
The contradictory nature of Indian Affairs policy is captured in its handling of
two events from the 1920s. In 1922, Russell Ferrier, the Indian Affairs superintendent of Indian Education, described the disciplinary regime at the Chapleau school
as “severe.”105 The following month, Indian Affairs instructed the principal, George
Prewer, “Give careful and thoughtful attention to the discipline problem of the school
and assiduously avoid any corporal punishment that could be considered by outsiders as pitiless.”106 In 1928, when commenting on the treatment of runaways fromthe Gordon’s Reserve school in Saskatchewan, the local Indian agent noted that all
but three of the boys had been “punished corporally but whether severely enoughto check them remains to be seen.”107 Principals, it would appear, were expected to
be severe enough to stop children from running away, but could not be seen to be“pitiless.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has yet to locate a single, system-wide, directive on discipline that applies to this historical period. The churches
and, more specifically, individual principals were left to develop their own policies.
When these policies attracted unwanted attention, the government might step in anddemand that the policy be changed or that the principal be dismissed. In many cases,
the churches refused to comply with such instructions.

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 533

The death of Lazarus Charles: Battleford, 1892
Indian Affairs sent Inspector A. J. Macrae to the Battleford school, in what is now
Saskatchewan, in the spring of 1892 to investigate parental complaints about discipline at the school. Much to the principal’s displeasure, Macrae took control of discipline at the school. In the opinion of another Indian Affairs official, Alex McGibbon,
Macrae actually increased the severity of discipline at the school. In a report from thefall of 1892, McGibbon wrote:
Locking a boy up in a cell, tying a girl’s hands behind her back as has been done
here, not with the consent of the Principal, however, will neither redress faults,
nor will they tend to develop good qualities. Making pupils stand for two hours
along side of a fence as punishment has been the case here. Punishments likethese are more calculated to bring contempt on a school than to accomplish any
lasting good.

The boy locked in the cell by Macrae was Lazarus Charles. He later became ill andwas sent home. Principal Thomas Clarke contended that Macrae’s punishment of theCharles boy contributed to his death from unreported causes in October 1892. In his
defence, Macrae stated that the boy was confined only at night in “a well ventilatedroom about 14 feet by 16 feet” to prevent him from running away. The dispute quickly
shifted from a discussion over whether students were being poorly treated to a dispute as to whether Macrae had exceeded his authority, and had been consistent inlater descriptions of the events. In the end, Macrae was transferred and his responsibilities were reduced. His demotion was the result of his attempts to avoid responsibility for his actions, not his overly harsh disciplining of students.108 The Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has not located evidence of any further investigation into the cause of Lazarus Charles’s death.

The death of Duncan Sticks: Williams Lake, 1902
On February 8, 1902, nine boys ran away from the Williams Lake, British Columbia,
school shortly after lunch. A teacher chased after them, and later organized a searchthat returned eight of the boys to the school. The principal, Henry Boening, was notat the school at the time, but when he returned at 5:00 p.m., he was informed that theninth boy, eight-year-old Duncan Sticks, was still missing. Boening later stated that
he did not send out a search party because he expected that Sticks would find shelter
under a haystack for the night. Boening did spend the night looking for four other boys
who had run away in a separate incident that day. The following day, he sent a schoolstaff member to a First Nations settlement “to see if he could get some Indians to go534 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

after the boy.”109 Later that day, a local man, Antonio Boitano, found Sticks frozen to
death.110
The coroner initially opposed holding an investigation into the death, reportedly
saying that “he thought the Government would not allow the expenses as he could see
nothing to warrant an enquiry.”111 However, a local businessman named E. C. Gibson
and a former teacher named Brophy lobbied for an inquiry. Brophy claimed to have
kept a record of the mistreatment of students at the school. The local Indian Affairs
representative, E. Bell, doubted its accuracy. He viewed Brophy, who had been fired
for absence from the school, as untrustworthy.112 Bell gave this report of his investigation into why students were running away:
I examined the boys as to their reasons for running away from School and theonly reason they gave me was “the teacher whips us.” I asked them if it was the
Principal they said no asked if he whipped their head they said ‘no’ only on thelegs. The teacher showed me his book where a record of all the chastisements
the pupils get is kept and I must say they are slight indeed compared to the time
I went to school. I asked the boys why they were whipped and the reply was“When we don’t have our lessons.” I have frequent letters from the parents of theboys who have been running away from this institution asking me to find out
why the boys run off claiming they cannot do so from their children. My own
opinion is there is no good reason for their absconding only the wild nature of
the Indian hates confinement as they are well fed and cared for.113

In late February 1902, a coroner finally conducted an investigation. The inquiry
heard from several students who complained about the food and the discipline at theschool. Eleven-year-old Mary Sticks, sister of the boy who died, stated:
The sisters scold me all the time—they gave me bad food—the beef was rotten I
couldent [sic] eat it—they kept it over and gave it to me next meal—they tied myhands and blindfolded me and gave me nothing to eat for a day. My hands weretied with a piece of rag behind my back. I saw them strike Ellen Batiste acrossthe face with a strap and I afterwards saw a bandage on her face. I ran away fromthe school last fall and came home no one came after me from the school. I was
brought back to the school by my father. I was never allowed to speak to mybrother at the school, and dont [sic] know how he was treated.114

Christine Haines, who had been at the school for five years, told the coroner:
I ran away twice from the school because the sisters dident [sic] treat me good—they gave me rotten food to eat and punished me for not eating it—the meatand soup were rotten and tasted so bad they made the girls sick sometimes—I
have been sick from eating it—they shut me up in a room by myself for 3 days
and gave me bread and water—the room was cold and dark—they beat me witha strap, sometimes on the face, and sometime took my clothes off and beat me.
This is the reason I ran away.115

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 535

Fifteen-year-old Ellen Charlie told the coroner she ran away “four times because
the Sisters and the Fathers did not treat me good; they gave us bad food which was fit
only for pigs, the meat was rotten, and had a bad smell and taste.” As punishment, shesaid, “they would sometimes lock me in a room and make me kneel down for half anhour or an hour. They once kept me locked up for a week—they gave me some work to
do. They sometimes whipped me with a strap on the face and sometimes stripped me
and whipped me.”116
Ellen Batiste, who had been a student at the school for nine years, stated that
she had been whipped for talking to another girl. On that occasion, a sister “hit mewith a strap on the head several times but did not hurt me very much.”117 Ten-yearold Francis, a boy who had run away with Sticks, said he had been horsewhipped by
Principal Boening for throwing rocks at the school fence. He said that “the whip left
blue marks on my legs, and my legs hurt me.”118 Another boy, twelve-year-old Louis,
said he had run away a number of times in the past because “they whipped him all
the time.” He said he was always whipped on the legs, never on the face or head.119
Augustine, another boy who had run away with Sticks, said he ran away because “theteacher whipped me with a strap on the legs for not knowing my lessons.”120
Duncan’s father, Johnny Sticks, told the inquest that his son had been at the schoolfor three and a half years. He told the inquiry:
I was glad for him to be at the school. He ran away from the school about ayear ago and was found on the road and brought to the Rancherie—he had two
companions with him. He gave as his reason for running away that he did not
get sufficient food and that they whipped him too much—he said he was beatenwith a quirt [a riding whip]—he said the food was bad and he could not eat it,
and he was allowed no other food until he had eaten it. He was sick when hearrived home and when he got better I brought him back to school—I made nocomplaint to the fathers at the Mission about his treatment.

Mr. Sticks had not been informed that his son had run away on February 8. If he had
been told, he said, he would “have gone at once and hunted for him.”121
Joseph Fahey, a teacher at the school, said he had sometimes punished Sticks for
not finishing his lessons, adding that he “never punished him severely—used a leather
strap across the legs—seldom exceeded 6 blows.”122
Principal Boening had taken over the school less than a year earlier. In a statement
prepared for the inquiry, he wrote that, for the last nine months, boys had been regularly running away from the school. He said that when he tried to find out why they
were running away, the only reason they had given was the poor quality of the food.
He said he had
never known the teacher punish [sic] the boys with undue severity or too frequently, and the strap which he uses I do not think too severe. I sometimes have

536 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

occasion to administer corporal punishment to the boys myself for special faults,
and I use a strap similar to that used by the teacher—I have used on perhaps 3
occasions a saddle whip or quirt to punish boys for immorality—I limit myself onthese occasions to 8 10 or 12 blows across the back outside of the clothes on theseat, and on only one occasion have I punished several boys after taking off theircoats and then used the ordinary strap.

He said the punishment of the girls was left to the discretion of the sister superior,but he knew of no unduly severe punishment being given to the girls.
I have never known of a girl being confined alone in a room for a week, or being
whipped with a strap across the face, at least since my arrival, though I am awareof such a case occurring in the past. No child has ever been confined in a darkroom since my arrival, though I have heard from others that cases of the kind
have occurred in former times.123

The sister superior, Sister Euphresia, said:
The girls sometimes have to be whipped with a strap—generally on the back,sometimes on the hands, and on the occasion when Ellen Batiste was hit on
the head, she raised her hands to her head and the blow took part effect on thehead unintentionally—I found fault with the Sister on that occasion and I believe
it has never occurred since. Sometimes girls are shut up in a room for serious
faults for periods varying from a few hours to 10 to 12 days—this is the longest
time—this latter has only happened once, they are fed on bread and tea, or waterat breakfast when confined as above and get the ordinary school diet for theirother meals. If a girl is whipped it is always done outside some of their clothes.124

Deputy Chief Little Pete told the inquest that although he had been glad when theschool was established, he now felt that “ill treatment is the cause of the deceased
running away and meeting his death.”125 The coroner’s jury concluded that Sticks diedof “exposure and exhaustion from want of food and fire, after a long walk throughdeep snow.” The jurors also said the issue of discipline and food at the school should
be addressed by an independent inquiry.126 No such independent inquiry was held,
although the Indian superintendent for British Columba, A. W. Vowell, did interview
several boys and girls at the school. He concluded that nothing he was told reflected“in any serious way upon the management.” What he was told was the following:• One boy “was whipped on the legs with a strap by the teacher for not knowing
his lessons.”• One boy “ran away because the teacher whipped him on the legs.”• Another boy “ran away because he was punished in like manner.”• Another boy “ran away because he did not get enough food, and also because he
was whipped on the legs.”• Another boy “repeated what the last boy said.”

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 537• One girl ran away because she had been “whipped at school for talking to anothergirl”—in the course of the whipping, which was meant to be administered to her
hands, she held her hands close to her head and was hit on the head.
• “Other girls” said that they ran away because “they wanted freedom of restraint
from the school discipline and wanted a chance to play with the boys.” (Thesuperintendent described these as “foolish excuses.”)
Vowell wrote that he thought the older boys ran away because they thought they
could get jobs and make money, and the younger students accompanied them, “wishing to appear brave.”
He also said that the former teacher, Bridger, was creating problems by making “themost serious charges against the Management.” He spoke with Christine Haines andEllen Charlie, two of the girls who had testified at the inquest. They “both persisted instating that the meat was bad in the soup and that at times the bread was like putty.
Ellen Charlie said she was whipped sometimes for talking to and looking at the boys;
whipped on her hands mostly, sometimes her clothes were turned up.” The superintendent added that Christine Haines and Ellen Charlie had been discharged from theschool for “bad conduct.” The principal told him that, because a number of boys wet
their beds at night, the principal had taken to refusing to allow them any water after
the evening meal. The inspector told him this “was bordering on cruelty,” to which theprincipal replied that “in most cases they were not actually in need of a drink but took
it out of mischief.”127
In the wake of the tragedy, Indian Affairs issued no policy recommendations—neither specifically to the school nor generally to all principals—that provided directions
on food, punishment, or the policy to be pursued when students ran away. The complaints of former staff and students were discounted or dismissed. There was no question that students were subjected to corporal punishment, and that, at least on someoccasions, this punishment was administered with a riding whip. Superintendent
Vowell made no effort to determine if all other forms of discipline had been tested
before the supposedly “last resort” of corporal punishment was administered.

The confinement of Hazel and Ruth Miller: The Mohawk Institute, 1913
In 1913, eleven-year-old Hazel Miller and her thirteen-year-old sister Ruth wereconfined to the school’s punishment cell after running away from the Mohawk
Institute. There, they were also subjected to corporal punishment and had their haircut short.128 Their father, acting through a law firm he had hired, asked for an investigation into conditions at the school. In making the request, his lawyers stated that538 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

children are being punished from time to time in a shameful manner for trifling
offences and that they are treated from time to time as though they were criminals. For instance, boys are whipped until they are cut, girls have had their haircut off close to the scalp, and parents are not allowed to see their children if they(the children) happen to be under punishment at the time.129

Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott advised the Indian Affairs minister that
there was no need for an investigation, since the father, George Miller, was a Baptist
and was simply motivated by denominational jealousy against an Anglican-run
school. Scott did acknowledge that the rules governing discipline at the school were“antiquated,” and that he had set in motion measures to improve them. He noted thatthe children were “whipped with a strap allowed by the Department of Education in
Ontario.” At this point, Scott expressed his personal view: “I do not believe in striking Indian children from [sic] any consideration whatever. If children resident in theschools prove themselves continuously so untractable as to require physical punishment, they should be discharged from the school. This school is not a reformatory.”130
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not found any evidence
that Scott ever ordered the sort of ban on corporal punishment that would have been
consistent with the views he expressed to the minister. Scott informed the parents’lawyers that, while it might be necessary to make “minor improvements in disciplineand dietary,” there was no need for an investigation. They were, he added, free to takethe case to court.131 He advised the minister that, by taking this stand, “we will not hear
very much more about the matter.” He was also concerned with saving face: holding
an independent inquiry “would only be considered a triumph, first of these men personally, and second of their faction.”132
The suit proceeded, although the government attempted to frustrate its progress.
The Six Nations council had offered to support the girls’ parents by making a $100
deposit with their law firm. Indian Affairs refused to allow this expenditure of band
funds, deeming the case a “personal matter.”133 By this time, Scott had reviewed theschool’s disciplinary code in detail, and concluded it was “too severe.” However, hefelt, “this has been in use so long in the Mohawk Institute that it is difficult to changeit.” The best he could report to the minister was, “As time goes on it will be possible
perhaps to relax it.” In the same letter, he described the Mohawk Institute as “one ofour best conducted schools.” These were words he might come to regret.134
The case went to trial in April 1914. According to the Brantford Expositor, Ruth
Miller testified that she
had run away from the Institute because she did not like the food. When broughtback she was put in the cell on the third floor, which was 3 feet by 6 feet, witha little hole in the door. There was no light, no bed and no chair. In this she
remained for three days, getting bread and water on Sunday. Her hair was cut
off on Monday. She was put on the black list, having to walk in a ring in place ofDiscipline: 1867–1939 • 539

playing, and not being allowed to talk to the other girls. She tried to get away asecond time, but was caught. She got a birching the next day, receiving thirteen stripes on the bare back while laying face downwards on a bed, from Miss
Weatherall. The latter had been told to give her 12, but she gave her 13. Afterthat for a week and a half it was hard for her to sit down. She had never received
such a whipping before for it was hard. Her back was black and blue and had red
marks.135

Principal Nelles Ashton said that although the whip had been used in the past,
upon his becoming principal, he had “ordered that the whip be prohibited to any officer.” He stated that he did instruct Weatherall to “whip” Ruth Miller but that he had not
instructed her “how it was to be done.” Ashton maintained that Ruth had been punished with a strap. Weatherall had left the school and was living in Medicine Hat. As aresult, she was not called to testify. Other students testified that the punishment had
been administered with a strap, not a whip, and gave lower counts as to the number ofblows that were inflicted.136
The court dismissed the claim for damages for cropping the girls’ hair and for providing them with poor food. However, the court awarded Ruth Miller’s father $100 indamages for the school’s imprisoning her for three days on a water diet and $300 for
the physical punishment to which she had been subjected.137 Ashton, who had been
principal since 1911, was replaced that year.138 On his departure, Indian Affairs official
Martin Benson inspected the school and concluded that the pupils “are disciplined todeath. What is needed at this school is an entire change of system, as the one inaugurated by Mr. Ashton has been too long in existence.”139 Although the next principal, C.
M. Turnell, did relax discipline at the school, his time in office was only four years.140

Shoal Lake: 1914–1917
In 1914, rumours were circulating in the Lake of the Woods area of northwestern
Ontario that one of the students at the Presbyterian school at Shoal Lake had been sobadly beaten that her death a short time later was due to humiliation.141 John Semmens,
the Indian Affairs inspector (and the former principal of the Brandon school), investigated and concluded there was no truth to the rumour. He concluded that the girl inquestion had not been punished and her death was the result of measles. However, hewrote, “the Principal has resorted to corporal punishment at times and the children
have reported this to their parents and dissatisfaction is the result and recruiting has
been made difficult.” Semmens instructed the principal to use “other means of correcting the pupils.”142 Departmental secretary J. D. McLean agreed that the principal
should “adopt other means of correcting pupils instead of resorting to corporal punishment, as the Indians are so prone to take offence.”143

540 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In their correspondence, neither McLean nor Semmens made reference to any
existing policy documents relating to discipline or the use—or banning—of corporal punishment. While it would appear that senior Indian Affairs officials such as
Scott, Semmens, and McLean viewed corporal punishment as being self-defeating
and unnecessary, no one was prepared to ban it. Three years later, an Indian Affairs
inspector reported that at the school:
Quite a number of the children have run away, and have travelled through allsorts of hardships to reach their distant homes. When such things happen on an
extensive scale, one begins to look about for some adequate cause, and careful
enquiry showed that two reasons were given, first, too much hard work, andsecond frequent punishment. Information showed that boys were not treatedwith the same leniency which marked the treatment of the girls, and that when
the Principal enforced discipline he displayed considerable temper possibly forgetting his own strength, without realizing the subjects of correction were only
children after all.144

Hemlock poisoning: Williams Lake, 1920
In August 1920, a First Nations man (identified by the Indian agent only as “a Canoe
Creek Indian named Sam”) asked the Indian agent, Arthur O’N. Daunt, to discharge
his son from the school at Williams Lake, British Columbia, because the disciplinarian was “much too free with his cane.” Daunt stated he would not normally havetaken such a request very seriously, since “Indians are very much averse to any kindof restraint, and to put it mildly, not to be believed as a general thing when they complain about Schools or similar institutions, as they let their imaginations run riot, if
they think that by so doing it will help them to gain what they happen to want at the
moment.” However, in this case, the father reported that a school death that had beentreated as an accident was, in fact, suicide. According to Sam, the level of disciplineat the school had put several of the boys “in a very depressed state of mind.” Nine ofthem decided to try eating poison hemlock. One boy, Augustine Allan, told his friends“he would eat the hemlock first and that they should eat after him.” Allan died, andthe others became very ill. The local coroner had decided not to hold an inquest into
the death because, according to Daunt, “there was nothing suspicious about children
eating a poison weed.” Daunt himself did not believe the death was the result of suicide, but noted that “anything of that sort will spread like wildfire among the Indians.”
It is apparent from Daunt’s letter that he believed the school administration would
not co-operate with the government in any investigation into either the death or the
alleged harshness of the disciplinarian. To get around such opposition, he suggested

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 541

to the Indian Affairs departmental secretary in Ottawa that the department tell theschool it wanted to carry out a medical examination of all the boys in the school.
By this means we should know whether boys were unduly flogged as claimed by
the Indians, and if the examination were held for some other reason, such as tolocate possible cases of Rupture etc, the School authorities would not be awareof what we were doing. Should the doctor find no trace of abuse, as I do notthink he will, the matter can rest there, and we can ignore the complaint of the
Indian.145

While the Indian agent was recommending that the department employ this ruseto find out what was actually going on in the school, the department was funding thebulk of the cost of the school and had the right, by contract, to inspect the schools
whenever it wanted. That an Indian Affairs employee felt it necessary to propose theuse of such a deception is a sign of the degree to which Indian Affairs had failed toassert control over the schools it was funding.
Rather than authorizing the surreptitious medical examination, Indian Affairs
instructed Daunt to conduct an inquiry into complaints of “unduly severe punishment” at the Williams Lake school.146 By the time Daunt received this instruction,
he thought the time to carry out a medical examination had passed, since many ofthe boys had gone home for their vacation. Also, he was not hopeful about the outcome of any further investigation, since the case would be reduced to “unconfirmed
statements of Indian children, against the testimony of the church authorities, andto take action upon that will bring a religious hornets [sic] nest around the ears of
the Department, unless the reverence in which missionaries are held in the East has
undergone a great change since I lived there.”147 As a result, Daunt did not carry out
the inquiry as instructed.
The issue was revived in late August when Paul Stanislaus, a member of the Canim
Lake Reserve and the father of Augustine Allan, the boy who had poisoned himself
with hemlock, requested that Daunt assist him in having another son discharged fromthe school. Stanislaus pointed out that after the death of Augustine, the school did“not send any notice to me to say that he died they wrote and say [sic] that he wasgoing to burry [sic] him in the morning. You know how it is for a man not to see aboy of his before the body is put away.” He was asking for the discharge of his son
Patrick because he feared he would kill himself as well.148 Daunt forwarded the letter to Ottawa, noting that “the Indians are not well satisfied with the conduct of theMissionary schools in this part of the country.”149
The inspector of Indian schools, R. H. Cairns, was instructed to investigate. In discharging this responsibility, Cairns never bothered to visit the Williams Lake schoolor speak with any of the children or parents. Instead, he met with John Duplanil, who
had been in charge of the Williams Lake school at the time of Augustine Allan’s death.
By then, Duplanil was the principal of the school at Mission, British Columbia. The

542 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissioninterview took place at the Mission school. According to Duplanil, one of the students
had called the Williams Lake disciplinarian, Brother Joseph, a “son of a bitch.” Thedisciplinarian was “naturally very angry to have an Indian boy use such an objectionable expression.” As a result, he used a rod that he was carrying to beat the boy. Cairns
noted, “In doing this the Disciplinarian was breaking the rules of the school. He
should have reported the matter to the principal.” The boy ran away from the schoolthat night and was never brought back. Duplanil denied there was any connection
between these events and that of the nine boys taking hemlock. According to Cairns,
Duplanil “admitted that the Disciplinarian did wrong in taking the matter into his own
hands.” He did not admit that the punishment was too severe, claiming it was a “serious offence.” Cairns did not think “any good purpose could be attained at this late dateby an investigation. It would not be an easy matter to get the parties face to face.”150 He
certainly had not tried to do that.
Among the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada has not located any direct and immediate report from the school to IndianAffairs that describes the death of Augustine Allan. Neither has the Commission beenable to locate any document to indicate that Indian agent Daunt fulfilled his instruction to investigate the death. The one investigation that was carried out was limited
to a conversation with the acting principal. No students or parents were questioned.
There was no report of the school’s taking action against Brother Joseph for violating
school regulations, and no indication of any effort on the government’s part to takeaction against the school for not enforcing government regulations. In fact, in all thegovernment correspondence on the issue, Augustine Allan’s name is never used: itappears only in his father’s request that his brother be discharged. Indeed, it appears
that the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa might never have been informed of this deathof a child in one of its residential schools if a First Nations father—the “Canoe Creek
Indian named Sam”—had not requested that his son be discharged from the school.
In addition, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not locatedany record of the government’s decision on either Sam’s or Paul Stanislaus’s heartfelt
request for the discharge of their sons.

Shackling students: Cardston and Brocket, 1920–1922
In 1920, the Anglican Church appointed S. H. Middleton, who had been principalof its school on the Blood Reserve near Cardston, Alberta, since 1911, to take over
responsibility for the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve near Brocket, Alberta. The
move was made in response to ongoing problems in relations with the First Nations in
the region. Canon S. Gould, the general secretary of the Anglican Missionary Society of
the Church of England in Canada, said that when he visited the Peigan school several

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 543

years earlier, he found that the previous church official in charge of the school had
chained “two of the older boys … together as a punishment for desertion.” He hopedthat Middleton would restore order.151 His expectations were not met. The following
spring, sixty members of the Peigan Reserve petitioned for another change in administration at the school. The Anglican Indian Residential School Commission investigated and concluded that parents were keeping their children out of the school due tothe “fear and dislike” of Middleton and his assistant principal generated by “the severity of methods they adopted in endeavouring to enforce what they called ‘discipline.’”
Although the local Indian agent and Mounted Police officers initially had returned
runaways to the school, they had stopped because that was not producing “lastingor satisfactory results.” The commission also discovered that bitter animosity existed
between Principal Middleton and the local Indian agent, the local police officer, andthe local Anglican missionary. The Anglican inquiry recommended that Middleton be
replaced.152 Middleton gave up the position at the Peigan school in 1922. However, heremained principal of the school on the Blood Reserve until 1949.153
A second controversy at the schools in southern Alberta in this period involved P. H.
Gentleman. When he was appointed principal of the Anglican school in Gleichen insouthern Alberta in 1919, an allegation emerged that when Gentleman had previously
worked at the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve, he had shackled a runaway student to a bed and beat him with a horse quirt until his back bled.154 Gentleman denied
that he had broken the boy’s skin. As to the allegations of using a whip and shackles,
he wrote, “The whip and shackle was the same as Mr. Giggle [a previous principal]
had left in the school and was I am told, often using, for far less serious offences than
this.” The boy was being punished for having run away with the wagon and horses
used for transporting water for the school from a local river, obliging the rest of thestudents to carry water. The offence, Gentleman felt, merited a severe punishment.155
Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham was upset that Gentleman, rather than being
dismissed, had been transferred to a different school and given “a more important
position.” In Graham’s mind, Gentleman was “the kind of man that will make trouble
wherever he goes.”156 No action was taken against him at the time, and Gentleman
retired from the Gleichen school in 1922.157

Chained to benches: Cluny, Alberta, 1921
In November 1921, Margaret Jean Ramage, a travelling nurse employed by IndianAffairs, visited the Cluny, Alberta, Roman Catholic school to investigate parents’ complaints about conditions in the school that had led their children to run away. In thedining room, she found: “Four boys were in chains and chained to the benches. Later
returned to the locked dining room to examine one of the girls who was reported

544 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

marked badly by a strap. Several marks were found on her right lower limb. Five girls
were in chains.”158
Alerted to the situation by Commissioner W. M. Graham,159 Duncan Campbell
Scott informed the principal that “the Department of Indian Affairs will not countenance such corrective measures as chaining pupils to benches and corporal punishment that leaves a boy or girl marked. Treatment that might be considered pitiless or
jail-like in character will not be permitted.” According to Scott, “The Indian children
are wards of this Department and we exercise our right to ensure proper treatment
whether they are resident in our schools or not.”160
In response, the principal said that students had been chained to their benches on
only one occasion, and, due to the disapproval of the Indian agent, the practice would
not be continued, even though “it had good result [sic] in bringing shame on the truants.” He also said he did not believe strapping fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys or girls
to be “pitiless treatment,” even if it left “the boy or the girl marked.”161 In a follow-up
letter, Scott wrote:
I wish to intimate that the Department approves of corporal punishment, but wedemand that it be of a certain type and within reason. In the near future a circular letter is being addressed to all principals, which will, I trust, clearly indicate
the Department’s position and wishes concerning disciplinary methods.162

In its review of the documents released to it, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada has not been able to locate a copy of the promised circular letter.

Principal armed with a gun: Kenora, 1921
The appointment of a new principal to the Roman Catholic school in Kenora,
Ontario, in 1921 led to a quick deterioration in relations among the school, the Indian
agent, and local parents. In the fall of 1922, parents informed the agent, Frank Edwards,
that Principal Hervé Kerbrat had frightened them when he visited their homes armed
with a gun. They also complained that he carried a knotted bootlace that he used to
strike children. When Edwards spoke to Kerbrat about the incident, the principal
said he had not taken the gun to frighten the parents and “did not often use the bootlace.”163 Kerbrat said the difficulties at the school were because the students were too
old when they began school, they were on summer holidays for too long, and they
had too much contact with their parents. Edwards said in his report that even though
the parents complained about discipline, he thought the thrashings at the school had
been limited but deserved. However, he told the principal to consult with him before
thrashing students in the future. Part of the problem, Edwards felt, lay in the fact thatthe principal and all but one of the staff spoke very poor English. Relations between

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 545

the school and the community were so poor that “the only way I can fill this school
is by force.” By contrast, he said, parents were willing to send their children to the
nearby Presbyterian school. The principal also refused Edwards’s invitation to meetwith a band member who had complained at his office about the school. According
to Edwards, Kerbrat “would not come with any Indian, he would not lower himself.”164
Despite this attitude towards the parents of the children he was teaching, Kerbrat
was allowed to remain in office. Two years later, Minakijikok, of the Sabaskong Band,wrote to Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott, claiming that Kerbrat was punishing children by whipping, tying their hands and feet together, and locking themin the cupboard “and outhouse and four of them put in the cellar and kept there for
4 hours.” The matter had been raised with Edwards, but he had not done anything
about it.165 According to Edwards, one student who “used to shut herself up in thedormitory toilet at night to vex the sister in charge” had been shut in the toilet for twohours with her hands and feet “loosely tied.” Kerbrat denied whipping children, but,because Edwards had recommended against corporal punishment, he had taken tolocking students in the cellar with their hands tied for up to two hours as punishment.
Edwards said he thought the principal, a war veteran who was suffering from “shell
shock,” was doing his best, but needed to be replaced.166 Kerbrat remained on the job
until February 1925.167 By then, the school was grappling with a murder-suicide: ahired man wounded a fellow hired worker, then shot and killed a priest, and finallykilled himself.168“Black from his neck to his buttocks”: The Pas, 1924–25
In 1924, Indian agent J. W. Waddy reported that he thought E. V. Bird, the principalof the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, was “too severe in punishing the children
at that place.” Waddy wrote that parents had brought their fifteen-year-old son into his
office to show the treatment he had received at the school. According to Waddy, “He
was black from his neck to his buttocks where he had been strapped.” The boy had
refused to work because his hands were blistered from handling a hay fork. For refusing, Waddy said, the boy was “trimmed.” He fought back and, for this, was strapped.
During the strapping, he said, the principal lost his temper.169 Indian Commissioner
W. M. Graham recommended to Deputy Minister Scott that the principal be discharged, since “he is not fit to have charge of Indian children.”170 The assistant superintendent general, J. D. McLean, wrote to T. B. R. Westgate of the Anglican Church
about the incident, saying he concurred with Graham’s recommendation.171 A frustrated Commissioner Graham wrote, “The Inspectors feel that where the churches areconcerned there is practically no use in sending an adverse report, as the Department

546 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

will listen to excuses from the incompetent Principals of the schools more readily than
to a report from our Inspectors based on facts as they find them.”172
In this case, Graham’s prediction was borne out by the facts. The church conducted
its own investigation and concluded that the boy had been defiant, and that the punishment was deserved, was not as severe as described by the Indian agent, and had led
to an improvement in the boy’s behaviour.173 The principal remained in his position,and McLean assured Waddy that the principal “will exercise care in maintaining discipline in the future.”174
For his part, Waddy stated that he stood by his report. He said, “Mr. Bird is all rightin other respects but when he gets an unruly pupil he seems to lose control of himself,
and if my report does nothing else than make him careful in the control of his temper
it will be enough.”175
It was not. The following year, Waddy was once more writing to Graham about
the same principal. This time, he said a man had informed him that a boy who ran
away from the school had been so badly beaten, he “was welted all around one leg,
black and blue.” Waddy’s informant said that if the government did not take action,
he would take up “the matter with the s.p.c.a. like he would if a dog was abused.” Healso warned, “One of these times a pupil will starve to death in the bush after runningaway from school.”176 The chief of The Pas Band, P. Constant, wrote to Graham about
the case. He said the boy ran away after being flogged. His parents returned him to
the school, where he was flogged once more and locked up. He escaped that night,“almost naked and bare footed. There are some white men and some Indians who
saw the boy in the state he was in after his flogging, in fact, we were afraid that hewould probably die some where as those who saw him say that he was nearly out of
his mind.”177
Graham once more recommended that Bird be fired.178 On behalf of the Anglican
Church, Westgate visited the school. Westgate questioned the veracity of the evidenceof the man who had originally found the boy, pointing out that he was “a Frenchman
and a member of the Roman Catholic Church.” On encountering the boy at the school,
he concluded that he was “so rugged and healthy that I did not consider any physicalexamination necessary.” After speaking to the principal and the staff, he concluded
that “the punishment administered was neither abusive nor unduly severe, but barely
what would be expected under the circumstances.”179 Graham continued to call for the
principal’s dismissal, pointing out that the church investigation had not consulted thepeople who found the boy and reported his condition.180 In late 1926, an unnamed boy
who ran away from the school died of exposure.181 The following year, Bird was serving
as the principal of a day school in Saskatchewan.182

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 547

Rapid blows to the face: Cardston, 1928 and 1934
On the morning of January 9, 1928, a long-simmering conflict between Edwin
Smith, the school gardener at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, andseventeen-year-old Albert Many Fingers erupted in violence. During the winters,
Smith assisted the boiler operator and the school disciplinarian. According to Smith,
he and Many Fingers initially came into conflict because the boy spent a considerable
amount of time flirting with the female students working in the kitchen, laundry, andbakery, all of which were located near the boiler room. Smith told Many Fingers tostop this behaviour. Instead, the boy was defiant, at times insulting Smith in such a
way that, according to Smith, “no white man would take from another; not speakingof an Indian.” According to Smith, Many Fingers also told a student of his intent tofight Smith. Smith took his complaints to the principal, E. Ruaux, who said it would
only increase the boy’s contempt for Smith if the principal strapped him on Smith’srequest. Having taken all he could stand, on January 9, Smith told Many Fingers tostay behind when the other students went to breakfast. In his own words, Smith told
Many Fingers that “since he thought himself a better man than I, the time has arrived
to show it. He was given the same chance that I had myself. I hit him a few times andthe result was a bleeding nose. When I saw that he was making no attempt at striking
back, I quit.”183
Many Fingers ran away and complained to his parents, who wanted to launch aprosecution. The local Indian agent, J. E. Pugh, first became aware of the incident
when the principal informed him that Many Fingers had run away. However, it was
not until Many Fingers’s father approached him about laying charges against Smith
that Pugh found out about the assault. When Pugh went to the school, Smith wasabsent on leave. The principal confirmed that Smith had challenged Many Fingers tofight and had bloodied his nose. Pugh wrote, “While dealing with the matter, I statedthat the Department, as far as I knew, would not countenance the striking of a boy byfists, and stated that I thought the proper method should be by the use of a regulation
strap.” In future cases, he expected that any school employee who struck a student
would be dismissed.184 Pugh informed Duncan Campbell Scott of the affair, saying hehoped to keep the matter out of the courts and noting that the family was still seeking a prosecution.185 Scott agreed it would be best to avoid any publicity, but recommended that Smith be fired.186
Principal Ruaux, however, chose to support his staff. He accused Pugh of taking
the family’s side because the school was Roman Catholic. He said the Indian agent
had no business involving himself in anything other than the physical operation of
the school.187 Scott supported Pugh, saying that in light of the “unwarranted assault”
on the student and the principal’s unwillingness to dismiss Smith, Pugh should nottake any steps to stop the family from having a charge laid.188 The Mounted Police

548 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

officer who conducted the investigation noted that Smith made a “futile attempt tojustify his activities by saying that this was the only way to enforce obedience, which is
obviously ridiculous.”189 The case went to trial on February 25, 1928, and, based on theevidence, including Smith’s testimony that he had challenged Many Fingers to a fight,
police magistrate J. W. Low convicted Smith of assault. In his decision, he said, “I thinkthat the accused stepped outside the bounds of his official position, when he invited
Albert Many Fingers to fight. This in my opinion was not discipline.” Smith was given
the choice of paying a $10 fine or spending ten days in jail.190
Instead, he successfully appealed the verdict. In overturning the conviction, Judge
A. M. MacDonald recast the key facts of the incident. Whereas all the evidence to thispoint, including a written statement from Smith, showed that Smith had challenged
Many Fingers to a fight, in MacDonald’s version of events, Smith told Many Fingers
that he had been disobedient in the past and was still disobedient—even though noneof the evidence reported from the original trial indicated that Many Fingers had beendisobedient on the morning of the fight—and he was going to be punished. “Other
words then passed between them and Many Fingers, seeing that he was about tobe punished, assumed a fighting attitude with closed fists. Upon his so doing Smith
struck him three rapid blows about the face and head with his fists, causing his noseto bleed.”
MacDonald transformed the whole affair back into a matter of discipline, addingthat Smith had the right to punish any pupil for violating school rules. In determining whether the force was reasonable or not, MacDonald quoted the testimony of theReverend William R. Hanes, whom he described as having “considerable experiencein the management of Indian Schools.” Hanes had testified that if a student had everattempted to fight with him, he would “knock him down and then take him to the principal.” In reaching this decision, the judge made no effort to determine if the school
had a discipline policy or whether Smith’s actions were consistent with the policy.191
On reading the decision, Deputy Minister Scott wrote to the head of the Oblate orderin Alberta, saying he was still opposed to the form of punishment that had been carried out and might still be requesting that Smith be dismissed.192
Relations between Ruaux, the principal, and Pugh, the Indian agent, remained
tense. Late in 1928, when a father returned his runaway son to the school, he asked
that he not be whipped. The principal told him he would do so unless the Indian
agent prohibited the punishment. Pugh complained to Ottawa that it was not fair forthe principal to burden him with the decision, adding he preferred to “deal with theIndians strictly according to the Act.”193
Six years later, complaints were raised once more about Father Ruaux’s treatmentof another boy at the school, Willie Big Head. In the principal’s opinion, Big Head wasa troublemaker whose inability to control his temper was bound to land him in trouble. One day in 1934, when the boys were leaving the school chapel, Ruaux noticed

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 549

that Big Head had his hands in his pockets. A letter from the Oblate headquarters in
Ottawa, defending Ruaux’s actions, gives the following account of what happened
next when the principal asked Willie to take his hands out of his pockets.
The boy answered in a mumbling way which the principal did not understand.
The Principal repeated the order. Same mumbling. The father left the chapel withthe boy and asked him four times: “Have you anything to say?” No answer. A fifth
question—the same—was asked. No answer but then the boy took the Principal
by the wrist. The Principal took hold of the boy’s hand and held his thumb. Scuffling followed. Kindly note that boys and girls had stopped and were watching
the scene. The principal seeing that it was time to act if he did not want to loseauthority and escape a black eye (his own words) put his hand in the hair of theboy (not pulling) who covered his face with his arms. The father then struck hisarms 3 or 4 times with his fist, not touching directly his face or head. Then he left
him, the boy being apparently subdued. But the father noticing that he was nose
bleeding [sic] sent him to wash his face and told him to behave in the future.
Then, through the advice of one of the chiefs’ (Edward Red Crow) adopted son(a bastard and a sneak father called him) Willie jumped from a window five feetfrom the floor (showing that after all his supposed injured arm was not too bad)and ran to his home.

Indian agent Pugh was informed of the event and had Big Head examined by adoctor. According to the principal’s unnamed Oblate defender, the doctor “could not
say that the nose was broken,” and, within a few days, the “black around the eyes had
disappeared.” A police investigation did not lead to charges being laid, but the principal believed that the Indian agent, acting on anti-Catholic bias, had met with the local
chiefs to agitate for the appointment of a new school principal. In complaining about
this action to his superiors, Ruaux asked, “What business do they [the chiefs] have in
the government of his school?”194 In his report on the matter, the Indian agent said thechief and council had come to him to request the principal’s dismissal, noting thatthe boy’s father was so angry that he did not trust himself to speak to the principal.195
In May, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Harold McGill instructed Pugh to inform thechief and council that “this matter had been taken up with the Church authorities, andI feel assured that a similar difficulty will not again occur at the Blood School.” He wenton, “As intimated in my letter of March 28th, last, I feel that it would be in the best interests of all parties concerned to allow the matter to drop.”196 The government had theauthority both to request and to enforce the dismissal of any staff member, and madeuse of this authority in other situations. In this case, it chose not to do so, even though
it was apparent to government officials that Ruaux engaged in, and encouraged, theexcessive disciplining of students.

550 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Dragged and strapped: Norway House, 1931
In 1931, Principal William Shoup at Norway House, Manitoba, was prosecutedfor common assault. According to the Mounted Police record of the case, Shoup wasalleged to have struck a student, who, he thought, was being impudent, in the headwith his fist. Two other students said the principal then knocked the student down,“kicked him and then dragged him across the floor to another room and strappedhim.” The principal stated that after chastising the boy for his impudence, he had“caught hold of this boy by the collar and threw him across the room where he fell.”He denied striking or kicking the boy, but acknowledged that when “the boy would
not get up he had dragged him to another room where he had administered a strapping.” The officer in charge of the Norway House detachment, D. C. Saul, wrote, “Theaccused took over as principal of the School last summer and different stories regarding his harshness to the pupils have been brought to my notice, this being the first one
that action was taken on.” The principal was acquitted of assault, but with a warning“to punish only with the strap.” Officer Saul concluded his report by noting, “Assumingthat the boy deserved a strapping for his impudence, I do not think that it warranted
the abuse he received.”197

Strappings and confinement: Blue Quills, 1932–1940
The punishment of three girls who ran away from the Blue Quills, Alberta, schoolin either late 1931 or early 1932 almost led to the dismissal of that school principal. In
his report for January 1932, Indian agent W. E. Gullion reported that there was a gooddeal of truancy at the school.198 A few weeks later, Blue Quills principal Joseph Anginreported that the father of one of the runaways had refused to return his daughterto the school and had been encouraged in this behaviour by the Saddle Lake chief.
Angin requested that Gullion depose the chief.199 In March 1932, Duncan Campbell
Scott wrote to the head of the Oblate Fathers Provincial House in Edmonton, informing Father U. Langlois that
I have learned, from a most reliable source, that the Reverend Joseph Angin,o.m.i., Principal of the Blue Quills Indian Residential School, has lost the confidence of a great number of the Indians in the vicinity, and I have information
which leads me to believe that he is certainly not the right type for our work. In
the interests of the Oblate Order, itself, and of the School, the Department does
not wish to go into the details or to have any formal investigation, but I write to
ask you to remove him at once and to appoint a suitable new principal in hisplace.

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If this was not done, he said, the government would have to consider closing
the school. He concluded by noting that the information on which the government
was basing this decision had come to light only a few weeks earlier.200 In a letter toLanglois, Russell Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Affairs, wrote, “There is nothing
against the moral character of Father Angin at all. His method of dealing with Indians
is clearly unfortunate, and, if given publicity by an investigation, might be undesirable
in his case, to say the least.”
One of the government’s concerns in these issues was that it not be seen to be yielding to First Nations criticism. However, since there had been “no recent difficulties,”
Ferrier did not “believe it would be subversive of discipline on the reserve if Father
Angin left quietly. The Indians could not feel that they have won any ‘Victory’, as they
have not recently sent in any formal complaints.”201
Langlois reasonably protested that he could not remove Angin without being
provided with the details of the complaints against him.202 Ferrier arranged to have
Mounted Police Constable English meet with Langlois in Edmonton to provide “personal information in connection with one incident in the old school last fall.”203 It was
eventually revealed that there were three complaints levelled against the principal.
The first was that two female students were punished with a rawhide quirt. For thepunishment, it was alleged, they had been forced to lie on their stomachs, with theirotherwise bare bottoms covered with a sheet. Supposedly, a police officer and twoother individuals, including the son of W. E. Gullion, the local Indian agent, werealso in the room. In the second incident, it was alleged that one of these girls andanother girl had been locked in an outside toilet as a punishment for running away.
It was claimed that they escaped through the toilet holes and made their way home.
Finally, it was charged that the girls had been “corrected by the Sisters when they
had menstruation.”
The school officials rejected the allegations. According to the school’s mother superior and the two school disciplinarians, the two girls—who were being punished after
their third attempt at running away from the school—were wearing their nightgowns
when the principal used the quirt to discipline them. They were standing up and had
freedom of movement. They also said that the punishment took place not only in thepresence of a local constable, but also of all the girls (but not Gullion’s son, who, theysaid, was outside in a car). They stated that although one girl wept, neither screamed,which, they said, “proves that the correction was not very hard.” In the second case,the nuns maintained that although the two girls did run away from the toilets, they
had not been locked in, and that they had escaped through windows. The nuns alsodenied punishing the girls for having their menstrual period.204
In the end, Indian Affairs backed down and Angin remained as principal. The incident resulted in strained relations between him and Indian agent Gullion.205 Problems
at the school continued. In the fall of 1933, T. H. Tuck, the school disciplinarian,552 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

complained he had “nearly all the biggest boys against me, owing to the fact that they
say I handle them too roughly.” Tuck acknowledged he was “very quick-tempered &have at different times got after them perhaps a little too severely.” He also said that, attimes, he had had trouble with the nuns “giving scandal in front of the children which
I know was a wrong thing to do.” He said that after the return to school that fall, there
had been two or more runaways every eight days. When eight boys left on one night,
Angin threatened to fire Tuck. In his defence, Tuck argued that, when hired, he had
been told the school was looking for “somebody who would discipline these boys.”206
Tuck’s temper was still creating problems in 1935, as evidenced by Langlois’scomment in a letter to the superior general of the Grey Nuns: “As far as Mr. Tuck isconcerned, he has been properly warned, and I hope these outbursts of anger he has
given in to will not recur.”207
In 1939, Chief Moses of the Saddle Lake Reserve complained to the school that
Tuck was “not fit for the position he holds. He has a bad temper and in fits of anger
he abuses the boys.”208 The school’s response was that although Tuck should not havestruck the boys, he had promised not to do so again, “provided the big boys do notraise their hands to threaten him.”209 In 1941, Tuck left the Blue Quills school to takea position at the Fraser Lake school in British Columbia.210 He apparently ran into
trouble there as well, and efforts were made to send him to the school at Mission. The
principal of that school turned down the offer: “Regarding Mr. Tuck I confess franklythat I know him well, having made my novitiate with him [having trained with him]and I do not think that he is the right man for the job here.”211

Thrashed on their bare backs: Shubenacadie, 1934
In the spring of 1934, $53.44 was stolen from a locked drawer in a cabinet in theoffice of the mother superior of the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school. Chocolateboxes taken from another locked drawer were scattered.212 The sister who discovered
the theft made some inquiries and located one boy who admitted to taking $2 from thedrawer. She took her findings to Principal J. P. Mackey.213 The principal called both theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) and the institute’s carpenter. Inquiries at village stores revealed that a number of boys had been purchasing cake, candy, tobacco,knives, and chewing gum. Some of these items turned up in a search of the beds andthe toilet room.214 Several boys were questioned: some admitted involvement in thetheft; some denied it. Eight of them, including some who denied involvement, were
punished that day. They were thrashed on their bare backs with a seven-thonged strapthat was specially made by the school carpenter.215 After a few more days of investigation, eleven more boys were thrashed and had their hair clipped. Most were put
on a bread-and-water diet for two days.216 Most of the strapping was done by Edward

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 553

McLeod, the carpenter, because Mackey was ill. McLeod later said that he gave mostof the boys five strokes of the strap, which, he said, was intended to sting but notbruise.217 The local rcmp official, L. Thurston, was present for the initial round of punishment, and said he did not see any blood.218
The story was reported in the local papers. When alarmed parents showed up at theschool, Mackey prevented them from seeing their children because he “did not think
it prudent they should see the children and talk the matter among them.”219 Sufficientpublic attention was devoted to the matter that the federal government appointed L.
A. Audette, a retired judge of the Exchequer Court of Canada, to conduct an inquiry
into the event. He held two days of hearings in June 1934, two and a half months after
the boys were thrashed.
On the first day of the hearing, Dr. Daniel McInnes examined ten of the boys. In thecase of one boy, he said he discovered “noticeable linear marks, of about the width of
a lead pencil, three or four inches long, on the right side of the abdomen. I think theskin would necessarily be broken to cause these marks and are liable to be permanentscars.” He said they could have been produced by the strap used to thrash the boys.
All but one of the other boys had marks. In two cases, he said it appeared that the skin
had been cut.220
All nineteen boys testified. Some admitted to stealing the money, and others
admitted to having been given money, or goods that had been purchased with money
they knew to be stolen. Some, including Leonard Tennass, Joseph Toney, Edward
Socobie, Ben Bernard, Jack Stephens, Peter Lafford, and Edward Poulette, said they
had been thrashed until they bled.221 In his testimony, Mackey said that the boys did
not complain at the time, although one of the younger boys, who received two strokesof the strap, cried. He said he was not aware of any blood on the strap. He also denied
rumours that the strap had been soaked in vinegar.222
In his report, Judge Audette wrote that “punishment must be measured according
to the gravity of the offence and not overlooking the complex intelligence of these boys
who have all been brought up in the life of Indians.”223 Since “all human governments
rest in the last resort upon physical paid [sic],” it was well for the students to “realize through experience this ineluctable fact.”224 The thrashing was, in short, not only
a punishment, but also a ‘benefit,’ an education into the foundations of civilization.
Audette pointed out that the Criminal Code allowed for the use of force in the correction of a child, “provided such force is reasonable under the circumstances.” To
him, the strap “or what it represents, is an absolute necessity in a school.”225
The judge suggested that being strapped was simply a rite of passage. He asked,“Where is the man who in his boyhood has gone to a school and managed to getthrough without having a taste of the strap? If he did he must have been a true saint ora clever hypocrite who has been able to deceive his teachers.”226 More significantly, hemade the point that the principal and school could not afford to look weak in the eyes

554 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof the students: “A weak punishment to these Indian pupils would have had no effect,would have been turned into derision and they would have laughed at it.”227
Judge Audette said that a firm, determined exercise of authority was required, since“Indians, in terms of civilization, are children, having human minds just emerging
from barbarism.” A few lines later, however, Audette argued, “If strap, cane and birch
are used in the white man’s schools, as a fair human expedient, why can it not beresorted to with the Indians?”228 As to the marks the strapping had left on the backs ofsome students, Audette wrote that “flesh differs. Some skin or flesh has more or lessresistance than others. Some skin will take imprints much easier than others. That iswell known. For instance, Toney and Tennass received the same number of strokes
and delivered by the same person, McLeod, yet one showed marks and the other didnot.” In short, if the boys were injured, the fault lay with them and their thin skin, notwith the person who was inflicting the punishment.229
Judge Audette provided the principal with a complete exoneration:
Far from finding fault with the Principal of the School for what he has done, heshould be commended and congratulated for carefully investigating the conductof his pupils and finding all the culprits and punishing them in a commensurate
manner. How could order, discipline and good behavior be maintained in the
School if he were to have acted otherwise than he did?230

No mention is made of the fact that there was good reason to believe that Mackey
punished the innocent with the guilty. In addition, Audette made no effort to determine if there were any rules to guide the principal in how students were to be disciplined or if those rules had been transgressed.
Audette’s report was not the end of the issue. According to former student Isabelle
Knockwood, in her memoir of life at Shubenacadie, in the fall of 1934, a secret bandcouncil meeting was convened at the request of her father, John Knockwood. The menat the meeting were so dissatisfied with Audette’s report that they agreed to assassinate Father Mackey. But, after further discussion, and weighing the potential impact
on the students at the school, the decision was abandoned.231

Thrashings: Kenora, 1936
In 1936, two boys ran away from the Presbyterian school in Kenora. Upon being
returned to the school by the Mounted Police, they claimed they ran away because
they had been thrashed by the principal for insolence. In their efforts to get home,they hopped a moving train and rode it for ninety-seven kilometres. The mother of oneof the boys asked that the boy be allowed to attend a local day school. The other boy
said he would prefer to attend “some other Indian school.”232 The events surrounding
the return of the boys sparked a protest from the school principal, E. B. Byers. He was

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 555

not at the school when Mounted Police Constable E. Stanley and Indian agent Frank
Edwards returned the boys, but staff members had informed him that these officials
had taken the boys’ side in the affair. According to Byers, “The policeman and also
the agent put various members of the staff on the carpet and in the presence of theboys and the mother began to question actions of the staff.” The police officer was
reported as saying “that when he was twelve years of age if he had been kept in as
one of these boys had been, he would have gone farther away than the boys did.” Theagent reportedly told the boys they would not be punished and they should write tohim if they wished to be transferred to another school. The whole process, he felt, left
the boys and their mother, who was present at the time, with the sense that the “boyswere quite justified and that if there were any blame that it could only be placed on
the staff.” Byers said, “Never at any time has any pupil been unduly strapped,” but feltthat corporal punishment was necessary at times. He said that after the Indian agent
left, the boys told the supervisor she could not punish them anymore. Byers said theagent and the police officer had effectively undermined discipline at the school, concluding that “Indian children must be dealt with firmly, and if they once conceive theidea that the staff has no authority over them, then the discipline will get out of handcompletely.”233
Indian Affairs inspector A. G. Hamilton was asked to investigate the principal’s complaints. By the time he arrived at the school, tempers had cooled and positive relations
had been restored between the principal and Constable Stanley. Byers and the Indian
agent, Edwards, remained at odds: in Hamilton’s opinion, both men were harbouring
grievances against one another “that should have been forgotten years ago.” Notably,
no inquiry was ever held into whether overly harsh discipline was responsible for theboys’ running away.234 Edwards was, however, instructed by his superiors at IndianAffairs, “The principal is in the best position to decide what disciplinary measures are
required.” The ability of Indian Affairs field staff to monitor school discipline was, once
more, effectively undermined by department officials.235

Flaying with a belt: Mohawk Institute, 1937
In 1937, a Toronto lawyer, H. H. Craig, wrote to Mohawk Institute principal H. A.
Snell on behalf of a parent who complained that a teacher, Cyril Lager, had taken her
son into a henhouse, where he proceeded to “flay him with a belt.” As a result, according to Craig, the boy was covered with bruises.236 In a letter to Indian Affairs, Snellsaid he had investigated the matter and concluded that the boy was struck on eachhand three times with a “light strap.” None of the boys “had any knowledge of how theboy had received the bruises that his aunt found on his arms.”237 In a letter to Craig,
however, he said the boy had been hit four times on each hand.238 Indian Affairs was556 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

concerned by the aggressive tone Snell adopted in his correspondence with Craig, andby the facts of the case. The Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training, R.
A. Hoey, wrote to Snell, asking if it was usual, as Snell had said in his letter to Craig,
that a number of boys had witnessed the strapping. He also asked for a statement from
Lager.239 In that statement, Lager wrote he had strapped the boy four times on eachhand for throwing stones at a five-year-old boy. Although, in his correspondence, theprincipal said the boy was not reliable, Lager said that, until this event, the boy “hasgiven little trouble.”240
In response to questions from Hoey, Snell said that although it was not common for
staff to punish students in the presence of other students, that did happen.241 Hoey’s
response is intriguing for what it reveals about the lack of policy governing disciplineat the school. Hoey wrote, “I am, personally, of the opinion that corporal punishment should only be administered by a member of the staff, in the presence of the
Principal.” This, he said, was the practice in the “larger schools in Western Canada.”
He said he had just learned that a “circular making provision for this was sent out tothe principals of all residential schools a few years ago. I am enclosing herewith a copyof this resolution for your information and guidance.” The letter concluded with thefollowing postscript: “I am unable, at the moment, to discover the circular to which
I refer, but I shall be glad to send it forward just as soon as it is recovered.”242 Given
the vagueness of Hoey’s statement, it is not possible to determine the specific yearthat such a circular was sent out. In its review of the documents released to it, theTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate any system-wide circular on discipline issued prior to 1940.
In his letter to the family’s lawyer, Hoey said he believed no serious injury could
have been inflicted by the light belt with which the boy had been strapped, and asked
if the reports of the boy’s injuries had been exaggerated. In any event, he had no intention of carrying out a special investigation into the case. Perhaps embarrassed by thelack of regulation regarding discipline, Hoey, who had begun to work for Indian Affairs
only the year before, added:
There are few laws or regulations governing the administration of Indian residential schools, for the simple reason that these schools, without exception,
are conducted in cooperation with the churches, with clergymen in charge. The
clergymen who undertake this work are missionaries in a very real sense and,
consequently, very much devoted to the care and guardianship of their pupils.

It is a weak rationale, applied after the fact, to mask the reality that the government had established and was funding a school system for which it refused to provide the appropriate level of policy direction. Hoey went on, “I have been assured thatthe complaint registered with you on behalf of this boy is the only complaint that hasreached the Department in the memory of the officials.”243

Discipline: 1867–1939 • 557

Strapping, confinement, hair clipping: Gordon’s Reserve, 1938
In 1938, Chief Ed Poor Man and Head Man Jim Worm asked for the discharge ofthree children from the Poor Man Reserve who were attending the Gordon’s Reserve
school in Saskatchewan. In their letter, the men complained that the “children are
running away twice from the School ever since they had holidays, and they are getting
bread and water for 2 weeks for punishment.” It was not, they said, “fair how thesekids are treated.”244 Principal R. W. Frayling gave a similar account of how he treatedthe runaways. “I strapped them once, put them on Bread and Water and had their haircut short, which is only done for truancy.” After that, he said, he confined them in theinfirmary.245 After reviewing the matter, Thomas Robertson, the inspector of Indianagencies for Saskatchewan, concluded that the punishment was not “unreasonable[sic] severe.”246 Indian Affairs departmental secretary T. R. L. MacInnes did advise theprincipal that “while it is doubtful” that cutting the girls’ hair “constitutes assault ina legal sense at the same time it is felt that you should adopt some other method of
enforcing discipline.”247 Once again, the department ignored the opportunity to provide a clear, system-wide directive on a disciplinary matter. The issue recurred thefollowing year at the Chapleau school. There, Principal A. J. Vale reported to IndianAffairs, “The three girls who got on the train have run away before and were punishedby having their hair clipped short. It does not appear to have been effective. They werealso severely strapped and will be again when they return.”248
The schools would continue to cut hair as a punishment, parents would complain,
and the government would continue not to take a clear stand.
In the period of time stretching from Confederation to the outbreak of the Second
World War, it would appear that when it came to discipline in residential schools,
Indian Affairs officials had learned nothing and—if R. A. Hoey’s letter of 1937 is to betaken seriously—they had remembered nothing. Policy statements were promised on
several occasions, but there is no evidence that such promises were kept. If the policies
actually were produced and circulated, they appear to have had little impact. In judging the residential school disciplinary regime to have been harsh and often abusive,
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is not applying the standardsof the present to the past. As early as 1913, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan
Campbell Scott had written that he did not believe in “striking Indian children,” andthat children who could not be controlled should be discharged. Government officials
could conceive of, and even endorse, a less punitive approach to discipline. But Scottand his successors never made these beliefs the foundation of government policy.249
As a result, the schools came to resemble reformatories, the staff member’s life was
the life of a jail keeper, and harsh discipline remained as an underlying cause of theschools’ ongoing problems with runaways and recruitment.

The laundry room at Mount Elgin in Muncey, Ontario.
United Church of Canada Archives, 90-162P1173N.

Girls ironing at the Coqualeetza Institute in British Columbia.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P418N.

The sewing room in the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.
Library and Archives Canada, a185527.

Girls sewing at the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school.
Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin.

Young boys at work at the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario.
United Church of Canada Archives, P75-103-S4-505

The carpenter’s shop at the Battleford, Saskatchewan, school, 1894.
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-B7.

Farming at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-455.

Working in the fields at the school in Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-732.

The kitchen of the Edmonton, Alberta, school.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P885N.

The Battleford, Saskatchewan, school cricket team in 1895.
Canada, Department of Indian Affairs, Library and Archives Canada, PA-182265.

The Red Deer, Alberta, hockey team.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P852N.

Girls’ exercise class at the Hay River, Northwest Territories, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7501-49.

The cast of the play Isle of Jewels at the Coqualeetza Institute, British Columbia.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P424N.

The Kuper Island, British Columbia, school’s marching band.
British Columbia Archives, D-05991.

The Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school’s brass band.
Canada, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Library and Archives Canada, PA-023091.

Girl Guides at the Dawson City hostel in the Yukon Territories.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S8-265.

Boy Scouts at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P1130N.

First Nations recruits, 191st Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, Fort Macleod, Alberta. Mike Mountain Horse is in the backrow on the right.
Glenbow Museum, NA-2164-1.

Dr. Peter Bryce, Indian Affairs’ chief medical officer,
recommended that Canada’s residential schools be turned
into sanatoria and placed under his administration.
Library and Archives Canada, Topley Studio, a042966.

Blackfoot leader White Pup told Indian agent Magnus Begg in
April 1895, “When children are taken sick at Industrial Schools,
they should be sent home so that their parents could lookafter them, and not be kept until they are ready to die.”Glenbow Museum, NA-1773-24.

A “sick room” at the Edmonton, Alberta, school.
United Church Archives, 93.049P870N.

The Anglican hospital on the Blackfoot Reserve in Alberta was the scene of ongoing conflict between Indian Affairs’ medical
officer Dr. James Lafferty and local residential school principal H. W. Gibbon Stocken.
Glenbow Museum, NA-3322-4.

Nineteen boys, aged seven to twelve, and the supervising nun died in the 1927 fire that destroyed the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school.
Deschâtelets Archives.

Fires could spread quickly through wood-frame buildings that had little in the way of fire protection. Pictured at the top is the 1913
fire that destroyed the Norway House, Manitoba, school. Below is the 1939 fire that destroyed the Fort Albany, Ontario; school.
Glenbow Museum; NA-2749-24; Deschâtelets Archive.

Cows at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school. In 1923, in his inspection report on the brand-new school at Fraser Lake, R. H.
Cairns noted, “There is really not enough milk for the children. This school should have more cows than it has at present.”
Deschâtelets Archives.

The Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school lunchroom. Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard wrote in 1891 that “the present ration
scale may be good for children but is not suitable for the majority of our pupils, one third of whom eat more than men andwomen and another third eat fully as much. I have seen them at the end of a meal come to complain that they had not enoughto eat and upon inquiry have found that it was never without good reason.”
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, SHSB 23107.

Boys at the Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538–229.

During his 1925 inspection of the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school, W. S. Murison commented that he had never seen “suchpatched and ragged looking clothing as worn by the boys.”
United Church of Canada Archives, 93–049P1162.

Girls at the Anglican school in Brocket, Alberta. It was common for schools to ensure that students had a good suit of clothing towear when they appeared in public.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538–1053.

Students at the Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, school. In 1938, the churches were asking the federal government to takeover responsibility for clothing students.
F. H. Kitto, Canada, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Library and Archives Canada, PA–101545.

A Potlatch at Alert Bay, British Columbia.
City of Vancouver Archives, A26462.

The Anglican school on the Blackfoot Reserve, Alberta.
Glenbow Museum, NC-5-1.

Grey Nuns, students, and Father Joseph Hugonnard, principal of the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school, centre.
Library and Archives Canada, C-033259.

Staff and students at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school.
Deschâtelets Archives.

H. W. Gibbon Stocken served as the principal of a number ofAnglican boarding schools in what is now Alberta in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Glenbow Museum, NA-1020-7.

Miss Cornelius, an Oneida woman, who taught at the Regina
industrial school in the early twentieth century.
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-B992.

Staff of the Crowstand School in Kamsack, Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-B1457.

CHAPTER 22

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939

F

rom the moment they arrived at residential school, students were taught thatdiscipline and obedience were the two most highly prized virtues they could
demonstrate. They were taught that they were to obey the people who held
authority over them, not only because those people were older and stronger, but also
because they were ‘godly.’ Students also were introduced to a new set of spiritual andcultural practices and values. This was a highly stressful and difficult experience formost students. The isolated nature of residential schools also left the children particularly vulnerable to sexual predators. Although no staff member was prosecuted orconvicted for abusing students at residential schools during this period (from 1867 to
1939), it is clear that such abuse took place.
The term child sexual abuse did not come into common use until the 1970s, but
it was discussed under a variety of euphemisms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Moral corruption,” “immorality,” “molestation,” and “outrage,” forexample, could all be terms for sexual abuse.1 There were provisions in the Canadian
Criminal Code of 1892 for the prosecution of those who sexually abused children. All
sexual relations and attempts to have sexual relations with individuals under fourteen
years of age were outlawed. (An exception was made in the case of spouses under theage of fourteen.) It was also a crime to seduce “any girl of previously chaste character”
who was under the age of sixteen, or to seduce “or have an illicit relationship” witha ward. The Criminal Code also provided for the prosecution of rape and indecent
assault (which was undefined in legislation, but generally prosecuted as non-consensual sexual contact). It was not possible to use consent as a defence in the caseof charges of indecent assault of individuals under the age of fourteen. The Criminal
Code also contained provisions outlawing acts of gross indecency between males.
Although the Criminal Code did not define “acts of gross indecency,” the law was used
to prosecute cases of same-sex rape and pedophilia, and consensual sexual relations
between men.2
The federal government, having criminalized these activities, obviously was aware
they could occur. It would also have been apparent that children in institutional

560 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

settings were vulnerable to abuse. Although the churches and charitable orders that
operated orphanages and industrial homes often were seen as being above criticism,
there were reported incidents of the abuse of children in these institutions. For example, the reformatory in Citeaux, France, which Roman Catholic Bishop Vital Grandin
thought could serve as a model for Canadian residential schools, was thrown into crisisin 1888, when a seventeen-year-old runaway accused the staff of brutality and sexual
abuse. In total, fifteen members of the religious order responsible for that institution
were charged with indecent assault against minors, indecent assault, and aggravatedassault.3 The scandal led to the closing of the institution in 1888.4
A review of the records makes it clear that sexual abuse of students occurred during
this period. When allegations of abuse were brought forward by students, parents,
staff, or former staff, government and church officials often did not report the matter to the police. Frequently, investigations amounted to little more than seeking out
and accepting the denials of the accused school official. Even when government andchurch officials concluded that the allegations were accurate, they were more likely tosimply fire the perpetrator than bring in the police. In some cases, individuals whose
predatory behaviour was recognized were allowed to remain at the schools, which
provided them with continued opportunities to abuse children.
Many of these troubling elements surfaced in the handling of the case of Jean
L’Heureux, who, in the 1880s, simultaneously worked as a translator for Indian Affairs
and as a recruiter for the Roman Catholic industrial school at High River in what is
now Alberta. By then, L’Heureux had a long and complicated history with the Oblate
order.5
In the 1860s, L’Heureux sought to work for the Oblates at a mission near present-day
Edmonton.6 According to one Oblate report, L’Heureux had been asked to leave the
Lac La Biche mission in the 1860s for making sexual overtures to young First Nations
boys.7 After being discovered in a sexual act that outraged the Oblates, L’Heureux wassent away from the mission with a group of Blackfoot people travelling to Montana.
He spent much of the following two decades in the West among the Blackfoot, often
falsely passing himself off as an Oblate or Jesuit. He served as a translator for theBlackfoot during the negotiation of Treaty 7 and also signed the Treaty as a witness.8
In his travels, he crossed paths with Oblate priest Albert Lacombe and is credited withhaving saved Lacombe’s life. He also served Lacombe as a translator.9
In 1881, he was hired by Indian Affairs to work as a translator.10 Three years later,
he began recruiting students for the High River school. Given his understanding of
Aboriginal languages and the length of time he had lived among First Nations people, he was the school’s most effective recruiter. He also began to take children into
his own home to prepare them for admission to the High River school. In 1891, theAnglican missionary at Blackfoot Crossing, John Tims, accused L’Heureux, who wasstill a government employee, of “getting Indian boys into his house for the purpose

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939 • 561

of practising immorality of a most beastly type.” Tims said the allegation was basedon information provided to him by Blackfoot Chief White Pup. In making this allegation to Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed, Tims wrote, “I daresay you will rememberthat I mentioned to you in 1886 that I thought something of the kind was going on.”11
Faced with the prospect of dismissal, L’Heureux resigned. Deputy Minister Lawrence
Vankoughnet informed Reed that the department was choosing to treat the matter asa resignation, adding, “Possibly it would not be necessary to state the cause which led
to the same.”12 The affair brought L’Heureux’s career as a school recruiter to an end,and he was forced to seek shelter with Father Lacombe, who let him serve as his cookat his retreat at Pincher Creek.13 From the records, it does not appear that the police
were ever asked to investigate whether laying criminal charges would be appropriate.
Despite their knowledge that L’Heureux had attempted in the past to sexually
abuse Aboriginal children in one of their own missions, the Oblates chose to put him
in charge of recruiting and transporting students to one of their schools. Their dependence on his skills as a recruiter led them to make decisions that placed children at
risk. The government appears not to have taken action on the first complaint, madein 1886. When the second complaint was lodged, the government did not undertakea criminal investigation. Instead, it simply forced L’Heureux’s resignation. In bothcases, it is clear that church and school officials placed the interests of their own organizations ahead of those of the students L’Heureux victimized.
In 1897, a former staff member made allegations of improper behaviour against
the principal of the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school. Ellen Applegarth described
Principal J. F. Fairlie’s conduct with the older girls at the school as “incredible.” She
was particularly concerned about four girls whom he “behaves with more like a man
void of all propriety.” She provided a detailed list of dates on which Fairlie had been
observed engaging in inappropriate behaviour with female students between the agesof fifteen and nineteen. In one case, she suggested that two of the girls had spent themorning in Fairlie’s office “receiving his caresses.” In other cases, the principal had
been seen in the school with his arm around the waist of one or another of the girls.
To her, this was “a most undignified sight.” Fairlie, she said, was also “in the habit ofgoing into the girls dormitories when they were undressing and preparing for bed andon several occasions remained so long that the girls were obliged to make their preparations for bed in his presence.”
When she had questioned him about this, his explanation was that he had gone
into the dormitory to turn down the heat and had merely stayed to ensure that theroom cooled down. On another occasion, he entered the dormitory without knocking
at a time when several of the girls were “with out clothing.” She also said he was in the
habit of kissing some of the girls good night. “It was,” she wrote, “the joke amongst the
girls that Mary Hall never went to sleep untill [sic] Mr. Fairlie had gone in and kissed
her when all the other girls were asleep.”14 Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget did

562 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

not contact Applegarth to discuss or verify her concerns. Instead, he sent a copy ofher allegations to Fairlie, who termed them “tissue of falsehood & untruths,” the product of Applegarth’s spite at being dismissed from the school two months earlier. He
said Applegarth had taken “acts & circumstances which are daily occurrences in every
family almost and while making no charge of improper conduct on them she endeavors by innuendo to suggest the idea that the conduct was improper.”15 Forget accepted
Fairlie’s version of the story, although, in a letter to Indian Affairs Minister Clifford
Sifton, he noted that a portion of Fairlie’s defence was in fact “a qualified admission ofcertain of the statements made by Miss Applegarth.” However, he concluded that theseacts, “however imprudent they might be, had been free of any criminal intention.”16
Apparently, Fairlie remained imprudent. Two years later, the St. Peter’s Band
Council submitted a petition complaining about Fairlie’s behaviour. A new Indian
commissioner, David Laird, held two days of closed hearings at the school, one in the
Indian commissioner’s office, and one in the town of Selkirk.17 Several of the girls,
including three of the girls Applegarth had named as Fairlie’s favourites, testified thatthe principal had been in the habit of coming into their dormitory at night and kissing
them. In his defence, Fairlie stated he did not do this every night. “I have not kissed
any one in particular more than twelve times on an average, and when I kissed them it
was in a sympathetic way and in order to quiet restless, or sleepless, or surly moods.”18This time, the defence did him little good, and he was dismissed.19
At the Presbyterian school at Shoal Lake in northwestern Ontario, girls complainedin 1911 to the assistant matron that the principal had them “put their hands under
his clothing and [play] with his breasts.” It was also stated that he was in the habit ofkissing some of the older female students. The convenor of the Presbyterian Church
Foreign Missions Committee, R. P. McKay, conducted an investigation. A former staff
member informed him that there were “things even more unpleasant” going on.20
However, the principal remained in office. The complaints and the investigation do
not appear to have been reported to Indian Affairs.
In 1916, former student Mary Sandoval wrote a letter to the editor of the Ottawa
Valley Journal, outlining the sexual abuse she said she had witnessed and experienced
while she was a student at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, five years
earlier. She said the problems arose when, due to the illness of the principal, a staff
member was given authority over the school. She said Fuller took to entering the girls’
dormitory at night and the kitchen in the early morning.
I find him with some girls in bad conditiones [sic], so I do my best to keep away,same is other girls that refuse to go.
One day I was in the Bath Room neckiet [sic] when [name redacted] come afterme, start to handle my body, but I ran and halloo till make him go away.

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939 • 563

When she turned thirteen, she said, the same man had raped her and then abducted
her, keeping her as if she were a prisoner. He let her go when her stepmother asked tosee her. She wrote that the treatment she received had destroyed her health.21 Rather
than publish the allegations, the newspaper forwarded them to Indian Affairs Deputy
Minister Duncan Campbell Scott. By then, the man in question was principal of theschool, and Scott asked him for a response.
He denied the allegations, saying they were motivated by Sandoval’s husband, who
was angry that the Shingwauk Home had refused to readmit Mary to the school. He
said that while she had been a student at the school, she had become pregnant. It wasfor this reason that she had been originally discharged.22
Scott informed the principal that he found his response to the charges “quite satisfactory.” He said his request for an explanation had been “actuated by a desire toprotect you.” With that, he pronounced the matter closed.23 As with the initial charges
against Fairlie, the investigation went no further than an inquiry to the principal—thevery person under suspicion of wrongdoing.
Principal W. McWhinney’s handling of the behaviour of the farm instructor at the
Presbyterian school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, precipitated a crisis in 1914. The
farmhand, H. Everett, confessed to McWhinney that he had been “having unlawfulintercourse with some of the girls in his room.” His confession was not sparked bybad conscience, but by the knowledge that a co-worker had discovered this. Everett’s
behaviour clearly merited a police investigation. However, instead of calling in thepolice, McWhinney told Everett to leave town on that night’s train. The principal chose
this course of action because he did not feel up to the strain of an investigation into
the affair. He viewed Everett as “a well meaning young man who had fallen in a time of
weakness and to prosecute him would only ruin his life and give publicity to a matterthat I hoped might otherwise be kept quiet.”24 It was not possible to keep the matter
quiet, however. Students complained to their parents, who in turn complained to theIndian agent. A warrant was issued for Everett’s arrest but, by then, he had fled thearea. According to Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham:
The Indians think that Mr. McWhinney had no right whatever to allow Mr.
Everett to escape punishment for the offences with which he is charged. They
think Mr. McWhinney should have been the first to see that he was punished,and say that if he had reported the matter to the Agent they believe he would nothave been allowed to go unpunished.

Graham could only agree with the parents’ assessment of the situation.25 In
September 1914, Duncan Campbell Scott recommended to the Presbyterian Churchthat it send McWhinney “at an early date to some other field of work,” since he hadlost the confidence of the First Nations people.26 The Kamsack school remained in

564 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

operation, with McWhinney as principal, until the end of November 1915, when it
was closed.27
This case underscores the important point that, by 1914, government and church
officials were well aware that notifying the police was a key element in an appropriate
response to allegations of a staff member sexually abusing a student at a residential
school. Despite this, no official policy was issued in relation to this question. In coming years, church and government officials would continue to dismiss staff rather thancall in the police.
In 1924 in Saskatchewan, an officer with the Yorkton Mounted Police detachment investigated why three children living on the Muscowequan (sometimes
Muskowekwan) Reserve had failed to return to the Lestock school after a vacation. The oldest of the children, a sixteen-year-old girl, told him she was reluctant
to return because “improper advances were made to her by Father Poulette.” Theinvestigating officer concluded that since the family was “half-breed” and not Treaty
Indians, he should “report these circumstances before taking any action.”28 IndianCommissioner W. M. Graham wrote to Scott about the matter, complaining that “youhave not dealt with the serious part of the Constable’s report: i.e.—the charges against
Father Poulette.”29 In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada has not been able to locate evidence of any further investigation into this matter. Principal J. Poulet (his name was misspelled in both the police
report and Graham’s letter) continued as school principal until 1932.30
In 1930, Birtle, Manitoba, school principal H. B. Currie was reported by officialsof the Presbyterian Church to have been “honourably acquitted at his recent trial.”31
It was the opinion of Presbyterian Church official H. R. Horne that the charges of“immoral conduct” against Currie were “absolutely groundless.” Three of the fourcharges were not sent to the jury. After acquitting Currie, the jury was reported to haverecommended “that an investigation should be made to see who was responsible forstarting such absolutely groundless charges.”32 Currie’s successor, J. F. Lockhart, wroteof the event in 1940, saying that two of Currie’s accusers were given prison terms anda third was relieved of her teacher’s certificate.33 In its review of documents, the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could locate no further information on
this case.
In some cases, it appears that the Roman Catholic Oblates had internal conflicts
over how members of the order who violated its moral codes—and possibly the law—ought to be treated. In at least one case, to the displeasure of some members, one ofthese individuals was provided with accommodation at a residential school. In 1930,
W. Byrne Grant reported to a fellow Oblate that “the police have been after [nameredacted] for his doings with the Chinese in Vancouver.”34 Later that month, Grant
sent a cable to church officials in Rome that read, “Pro honore Eaclesiae revoca [nameredacted]” (For the honour of the church recall [name redacted]). He also informed

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939 • 565

his colleague, “If we get an order to send Father [name redacted] to Europe he will
leave by the first train.”35 Rome, however, refused to recall the priest. As a result, he
was given “one more trial at Penticton.”36 In 1931, he was listed as one of the order’s“retired Rev. Fathers.”37 The Oblate order was prepared to allow him to live out his
retirement at a residential school. In 1932, Father G. Forbes, the principal of the schoolin Williams Lake, British Columbia, protested the appointment of this individual tohis school.
You know what happened to him in a French hotel, when only a speedy retreat
saved him from prison; you know about him in Vancouver; you know why Fr.
Maillard had him sent away from Mission. Perhaps you do not know that during
the retreat he indecently approached another Priest. Were you in my place you
would not want one who is a “pest among the children, and causes trouble andperhaps scandal.”In addition, Forbes said the man was a “genius at picking locks,” and, as a result,“our money and our wine would not be safe.” If he were sent to Williams Lake, Forbes
said he would immediately inform the Indian agent and the police of his character.38
This was decisive action on Forbes’s part, and apparently stopped the appointment toWilliams Lake.
In 1938, this individual was still in British Columbia and still a concern to Forbes.
In a letter to the Oblate leadership, Forbes reported he had heard that the man wasgoing to be sent to the school at Mission. This was the same school from which he had
been sent away several years earlier. He reminded the Oblates that in the past, Mission
principal Maillard had told the manthat if he spoke to the children he would kick his pants up to his shoulders. He
said it with such force that it worked. Father [name redacted] told me that he had
asked the Superior General to allow him to return to France and had been told towait a while. It would be better if he went. A person in the Indian Dept. told methat if it were brought to the attention that he was in an Indian School, the Dept.
would raise such objections that we would have to remove him.39

Despite these concerns, the man returned to Mission. At the end of the year, theMission school principal reported he had had “very little trouble with him so far.”40 He
died in 1940.41
Forbes’s comments make it clear that he believed the priest should not be allowed
to live at a residential school because he presented a threat to children. They also indicate that an Indian Affairs official believed that if his departmental superiors knewthat he was living at a school, they would demand that he leave. Despite this information, the Oblate order allowed him to live at the Mission school. In its review of documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was unable to locate any

566 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

record of either the Oblates’ or the unnamed Indian Affairs official’s informing senior
Indian Affairs officials that the priest was living at the school.
At the end of this period, the type of scandal that Forbes had fretted about overtook
the Roman Catholic school at Kuper Island, British Columbia. The ongoing sexual
abuse of students at the school came to public attention because of two interrelated
factors. The first was the decision of a group of students to run away from the school
to avoid further abuse. The second was the decision of the members of the British
Columbia Provincial Police, who had been assigned to return the students to theschool, to listen to the students and to take their complaints seriously.
On January 9, 1939, two British Columbia Provincial Police officers interviewed twoof six boys who had escaped by canoe from the Kuper Island school the day before.
Both boys said they did not want to go back to the school because of the way they weretreated. One of them said he “was afraid of Father [name redacted], as he has been trying unnatural acts with him, also other boys.” The second boy said he was afraid of oneof the fathers at the school. Corporal S. Service wrote, “I would suggest that an investigation be made by the Department of Indian Affairs re the conditions at this school,as I am convinced that things are not as the [sic] should be.” When Service contacted
the school, he told Principal J. Geurts (sometimes reported as Geurtz or Guertz) thattwo of the six boys did not wish to return to the school. When the principal told him
he must return the boys, the corporal said he would leave that decision to the Indian
agent.42 The parents of all six boys refused to allow their sons to return to the school.43
Over the next few days, Corporal Service interviewed several students and former
students. One of the boys who ran away gave the following account as to why he hadfled the school.
One day just before Christmas, it was December 23rd, 1938, Father [named
redacted] took me out in his boat, we went to the other side of Gabriola Island,
he told me to take my pants down in the boat, he anchored the boat and told
me to take my pants off as we were going to bed. It was day time, I took them off
because if I didn’t he told me he would throw me off the boat into the water, I lay
down on the bed, he got into bed beside me, he was playing with my thing, he
was trying to put his thing into me, he could not get it in so he asked me to playwith his thing. I played with his thing, he told me to pull it back and forward, I
had to do it because I could not get away from him, I then started to cry so he leftme alone and returned to the school, then we came to Chemainus then we left
Chemainus and went to Tent Island, he stopped the boat there again, anchoredher, he told me to fix his underwear on, and then he told me to take his cockout[sic], I took it out and he asked me to rub it back and forward again, somethingcame out of it, I then told him that I wanted to get back to the school, we went tothe school.44

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939 • 567

As the investigation continued, other boys came forward with similar stories about
this man, who, although he was not a staff member, lived at the school.45 Complaints
also were registered about other staff. One boy, who had been a student at the school
until 1934, told the police he had left the school after a “quarrel” with an Oblate staff
member. He said that the school bakercame after me and wanted me to take my pants off and he had a bottle of wine
and wanted to give me a drink before I took them off, I asked him why he wanted
to give me a drink, and he said that it would make me so that I wouldn’t bescared when I took my pants off, I then ran out and started to cry and told himthat I would tell the principal about it, he then started hitting me and kept on
trying to force me to take my pants off until [the school engineer] got there andasked what was the matter.

According to the boy, the engineer was fired for taking his side in the dispute. The
boy said said that, on another occasion, the baker had carried him from the dormitory to his own bedroom. Another former student said that another one of the school
employees had exposed himself to the female students and lifted their dresses against
their will. In his report, Corporal Service wrote that he would be interviewing otherstudents and former students, saying, “It appears to be common gossip amongst the
Indians about the existing conditions at this school.”46 A Sergeant R. Dunn took similarstatements from other former students and parents, one of whom had removed his
daughter from the school and was described as “very hostile as to the way his boys
had been treated.”47
When the police arrived at the home of two of the boys who had run away, they
were met by the boys’ father, who approached them carrying a sledgehammer, asking
what they wanted of his sons. The father let the police interview the boys, but made it
clear he was not letting the boys return to school until conditions changed. If the boys
had drowned while escaping the school, he said, he would have gone to Kuper Islandand shot every priest. In his report, the inspecting officer wrote, “I feel that had hisboys drowned he would have carried out his threat.”48
Indian Affairs officials were not pleased with the way the British Columbia
Provincial Police was handling the affair. The department’s expectation was thatthe police would simply return the runaways to the school. A meeting was arranged
between department officials and the deputy commissioner of the police force. Before
this meeting, Indian Affairs officials prepared a list that outlined what the department
viewed as police failings. In particular: “The Indian Commissioner feels that it was not
the duty of either Constable Service or Sergeant Dunne [elsewhere Dunn] to recommend that conditions at the Kuper Island School be investigated before returning thechildren.”49 Their clear intent going into the meeting was to discredit the police officers
and the students and former students. Indian Affairs had to abandon this approach
when the police officials presented them with a detailed and explosive report on the568 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

problems the officers had identified at the school. In the face of such evidence, theIndian Affairs officials were forced to back down. Indian Affairs school inspector G.
H. Barry wrote that the information presented at the meeting “throws a very different
light on the whole matter.”
Despite this belated recognition of the seriousness of the issue, Indian Affairs officials still mishandled the situation. Barry was instructed to travel to Kuper Island to
conduct an investigation. Prior to leaving, he spoke with Roman Catholic Bishop J. C.
Cody, who told him that “arrangements had been made to make a complete changeof the male staff at the Kuper Island School before any mention had been made of
an investigation into conditions there.”50 This suggests that the Oblates were aware of
their problems at the school and that they had refrained from informing Indian Affairs
about those problems.
Prior to his investigation, Barry wrote that although the allegations against Principal
Geurts were ‘slight,’ it was appropriate that he be removed as principal, since he hadlost the confidence of the parents. Barry suggested that, given the “grave charges madeby the children and ex-pupils agains [sic] various members of the school staff … hewould be well advised to request his Superior, the Rev. Father Lemmens to send him
to Mission Work outside British Columbia.” As for the priest who had taken boys out
in the boat, Inspector Barry wrote that it was best if he were
given Mission Work outside of b.c. He would appear to have acted in a rather
unwise manner apart from the actions suggested in the Police reports. He may
have indulged in excessive drinking, though I have no evidence of a positive kindthat this is so. Recruiting would not be aided by his presence in the Province.

Barry also recommended that the school employee alleged to have exposed himself should be fired immediately and given a month’s pay. After considering the police
reports, Barry wrote that he could not see “where there was any real evidence that
could be produced in a court. I believe that there may be indications of wrong doingby some at the Kuper Island School but I may say that I am just as certain that thestatements made to the bc Police are very highly exaggerated.”51
The school quickly acted on Barry’s recommendations. Lemmens and the priest
who had taken the boys out in the boat left British Columbia and the school employee
was fired. Without consulting with the police, Barry arranged for individuals who wereat the centre of a criminal investigation to leave the province.
The director of Indian Affairs, Harold McGill, found himself having to reprimandhis staff for their handling of the affair. His letter of January 27, 1939, to Major D. M.
MacKay, the Indian commissioner for British Columbia, said that while it was wise
to relieve from their duties those against whom serious charges had been made, he
did not “think that it was a wise course to suggest that any of them should leave theprovince.”52 McGill had reason for concern. On February 18, 1939, the deputy attorney

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939 • 569

general of British Columbia forwarded the student statements to the minister ofIndian Affairs, saying that the provincial government was giving active consideration
to the prosecution of the main suspects.53 By telling the suspects of this inquiry toleave the province, Indian Affairs had effectively foiled a police investigation intoabuse at the school.
Bishop J. C. Cody took the position that the scandal had nothing to do with theschool, even though he had previously indicated that it had been his intention toremove all the current male staff from the school. He informed Indian Affairs that
there was one priest, a convert to the church from protestantism, and not amember of the Kuper Staff whose conduct to me at any rate does look quite
blameworthy. What view, however, a sane jury would take knowing to what
lengths the mendacity Indians can go when pushed on by subversive elements,
is an entirely different matter.

He continued:
Though quite cognizant of certain lamentable breaches of morality inconnection with individual members of certain public institutions in thisprovince, I have always taken the quiet way in quest of amendment because I
fail to see any advantage in ruining an institution because of some individual’s
supposed or even real misdeeds.54

The reputations of the school and the church were viewed as being more important
than the investigation and prosecution of any wrongdoer. Bishop Cody was correct instating that the man in question was not a member of the school staff, but he certainly
was living at the school and had access to the students.
Indian Affairs Director McGill instructed British Columbia Indian Commissioner
D. M. MacKay to undertake a new inquiry. In his report, MacKay noted that since1931, the school had been inspected on an almost annual basis. The inspections were
described as “thorough” and had led to a number of improvements, particularly indiet. However, according to MacKay, the school inspector had never received any
complaints of any sort at any time from students or staff.
He also reported that it had been common practice for the priest whom the boys
who ran away had complained about to take an older boy with him on missionary
visits to nearby reserves. Usually, these were only day-long trips. However, in the summer, they were sometimes overnight trips. MacKay endorsed Barry’s decision to send
Geurts and the priest away, since their continued presence at the school would hurt
its ability to attract and retain students. He wrote:
My opinion is that most of the information obtained of alleged immoral
practices would be of very doubtful value as evidence, should the police decideto prosecute. I am prepared, however, to accept in the main the information
involving Rev. Father [name redacted] and Mr. [name redacted] as sufficient570 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

evidence of their misconduct, although in the case of the acts of the former, nodirect corroborative evidence could be obtained.

He also reported that Principal Geurts had “failed to take strong and effective
action in December, 1938, following information he received regarding Father [nameredacted] alleged immoral activities.”55
For their part, Indian Affairs officials prejudged the issue. The department refused
to recognize that truancy might be sparked by criminal behaviour on the part of thestaff. It further refused to recognize that the police had a legitimate role to play ininvestigating potential criminal activity at residential schools. Once the department
had been made aware that a serious situation existed at the school, its major concern was to protect the school’s (and, by association, the department’s) reputation.
Rather than co-operating with an ongoing criminal investigation, the department
undermined it. Indian Affairs officials were not qualified to determine whether there
was enough evidence to sustain a prosecution, and it was not their role to make sucha determination. Although senior Indian Affairs officials later disapproved of theseactions once they were made aware of them, it is clear from the broader history,
beyond this specific incident, that the long-term Indian Affairs policy generally had
been to attempt to suppress and contain information that was potentially damaging to
the schools. As for the church, it refused to accept any responsibility for the events thattook place at a church-run school. Instead, it preferred “the quiet way.” Indian Affairs
did not gain any new sensitivity to the views and concerns of Aboriginal parents: evenwhile MacKay was still carrying out his investigation into the school, the department
had threatened a father with prosecution under the Indian Act if he did not send his
daughter to the school.56
It is not possible to quantify the extent to which children were sexually abused at
residential schools during this period. It is clear, however, that such abuse did takeplace. The evidence indicates that when they were alerted to the existence of suchabuse, church and government officials rarely acted in an appropriate manner.
Investigations were limited, complaints by anyone other than school officials wereignored, and people who had been identified as potential risks were not removed
from the schools. Knowledge of the extent of abuse is limited, in part, because theofficials in charge of the schools did not want to hear about it, talk about it, or do anything about it.

CHAPTER 23

Student victimization of
students: 1867–1939

The children who attended the Canadian residential schools during this period
were victims of institutionalized neglect. They were subjected to harsh andoften abusive discipline and, in some cases, left as prey to sexual predators.
They were in school against their will and lived a life largely devoid of emotional support. Children could turn only to each other for support. Many strong friendships andallegiances developed in the schools. It was common, for example, for students fromone community or First Nation to support one another. Dorothy Day recalled how, in
the late 1920s, the Oneida girls at the Mount Elgin school all stuck together.
Mrs. Daniels used to say, “These Oneida girls are the instigators of all the trouble
in the school.” They had to have a reason to take us up and give us the strap but
you had to watch it. They caught us eating that bloody rhubarb one time and wethought we were going to get it, but they couldn’t prove who went over the fence
first—nobody would squeal on the other ones, so they punished us all.1

Children could also look for support from family members. Ruth Seneca, a student
at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, from this period, recalled how her sister
used to protect her from bullies. “They had to answer to her—she’d beat them up—sothey were kinda on the scared side. So if anyone would go after me I’d just run throughthe schoolrooms, playrooms, hollering for my sister and she’d come out where she
was and take over.”2
Of her time at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school, Millicent Stonechild stressed
the way that the children were sustained by friendships.
When we are getting discouraged and in need of healing, we must remember
those people who helped us. In particular, I think of my friend, Mabel Star. Therewas much laughter amongst the children, a sustaining factor. We also comforted
one another from the loneliness. In September, we took turns crying. In spite ofsome of the ‘bullying’ that went on, we established life long friendships.3

As her memories suggest, there were also bullies at the schools. The groups thestudents formed to protect themselves might turn on other smaller students, or on
students who did not fit in with them. In 1895, Charles Eagle complained in a letter572 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to Indian Affairs that other boys at the Brandon, Manitoba, residential school werecalling him names and threatening him. “I struck one boy last night because he wasteasing me down in the closets and tried to lock me in.”4 Principal John Semmens told
the boys in question to stop the practice. Semmens noted that one of the reasons why
Eagle was unhappy at the school was the fact that he was lonely and did not know how
to speak Cree.5
Administrators seemed to be unaware of the degree of the bullying. In 1897, aboy who was dying of tuberculosis at the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school wasallowed to go home to his parents. Before he died, he told his parents that a boy at theschool had “squeezed him” and “bit him.” The principal, who said he had not beenaware of any problem when the incident took place, discharged the accused boy,
whom he viewed as the “cause of much trouble at the school.”6
Even when they were aware of problems, school officials seem to have had little
ability to impose order. The Indian agent on the Blood Reserve said he was reluctant
to recruit students for the High River, Alberta, school in 1917 because the school was
dominated by a “tough class” of boys. “It appears to me as if the boys from this reserve
were receiving their education from these half-breeds rather than from the school
authorities.” As a result, he said, half the local students from the school in the previous
four years had “turned out to be bad men, sneak thieves, horse thieves, etc.”7
Former student Edward Groat recalled that one bully at the Mohawk Institute used
to be referred to as “Satan.” “He had a bunch of probably half-a-dozen smaller boys
who were his slaves. They had to do what he wanted to do all week, and then comeSaturday night he would go to the store and buy a little bit of candy and give them each
one candy, and that was their pay for the whole week.” Once, when he was beating oneof his slaves, another boy stepped in and, according to Groat, “beat up on old Satan,and Satan didn’t have his slaves anymore.”8
Membership in a group often came at a high price. Harrison Burning, who attended
the Mohawk Institute in the 1920s, recalled:
It was a place you could say made you a man before you was—whatever happened in that school you couldn’t tell—whatever happened, it was confidential
to the boys. If you got in a fight and got all black and blue and everything else,that was as far as it went—it couldn’t go any further, because the boys wouldn’t
let you.9

It was a world where toughness was valued above all else. Burning said, “If you
want to fight don’t fight with an Indian from the Mohawk school, because he’s goingto get you.” Burning felt the experience left him emotionally scarred: “I have no heart.
I might look like I got a heart, but I don’t.”10

Student victimization of students: 1867–1939 • 573

Hilda Hill’s memory of girls’ experiences at the Mohawk Institute during this period
was not as extreme. Although the older girls ordered the younger girls around, she feltthat did not amount to bullying.
When the younger girls come in, the older girls would have—we called ’em
slaves. “Fix my bed for me,” “Do this, do that for me,” but always gave ’em a cakethat night. “I’ll give you a cake”—you never worked for nothing. Maybe that’s
why I got along with them—they’d ask me to do things for them and they’d giveme their cake so it wasn’t a bully thing.11

Melvina McNabb recalled how, in the 1930s, she and friends defended themselves
against a group of bullies at the File Hills school.
They were these ladies who were mean to us. We had to do what they asked ofus or we would get punished. For instance, there was this one lady who was thesame age as I who set the fire or water hose on us in our beds. We were all soaking wet. We couldn’t tell on her because we would get pounded by her bigger
sisters. That was abuse in itself. As we got older, we made a plan all of us, fifteen
year olds. All right now, who’s going to do the fighting? As usual, I was chosen
to be the fighter. We made a big circle and we put this lady in the middle of thecircle. Boy! Did we ever lambaste her! She’s not going to boss us anymore. That’s
how that part stopped. She quit.12

Ivy Koochicum, who attended the File Hills school in the 1920s, said that decades
after she left, she still had nightmares about life in the school. “The part I would liketo forget about is how cruelly we were treated. We were treated cruelly not only by thestaff but by the pupils. There was name calling and fighting. There was one family thatwas very mean. There was nothing we could do. We just took it.”13
Young children were particularly vulnerable to bullying and abuse. At the Chapleau
school in Ontario, Principal A. J. Vale complained about the trouble caused by one
fourteen-year-old girl with a “very violent temper,” which made her “capable of doing
anything at such times.” She and some other girls had been abusing a six-year-old
student, striking her with a stick and, on one occasion, suspending her from a rope in
the washroom until she nearly lost consciousness.14
The residential schools had no resources to accommodate students with disabilities. Such students might find themselves subject to bullying and discriminatory
treatment from both staff and students. One such student attempted to kill himself at
the File Hills school in 1939. After interviewing him, the director of the Psychopathic
Department of the Regina General Hospital, Dr. O. E. Rothwell, reported, “He is
undoubtedly deaf and has considerable difficulty in the school classroom, and as aresult of this he claims that the teacher would get out of patience with him at times
and ‘Boxed his ears,’ I believe he said. He is quite emotional and cried when telling
about it.” Rothwell wrote that the boy was teased by the older boys because of his

574 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

disability, adding that they also would “impose upon him.” He recommended that theboy be sent to a different school.15 Dr. A. B. Simes, the medical superintendent of the
Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit, concluded that the boy was not intent on taking his
own life, but rather that “he wished to stir up dissatisfaction against the school andstaff, with the hope that he would be discharged.”16 In the end, the boy was returnedto the File Hills school.17
In at least one case, students were prosecuted for their treatment of a fellow student. In 1939, two girls were charged with assault after they beat a third girl at Mount
Elgin so badly that she had to be confined to her bed for a week. They pleaded guilty
and each received a two-year suspended sentence.18
Student abuse of other students was not limited to bullying and physical beatings.
There are reports from the 1890s onwards indicating that older students may have sexually abused younger students. For example, in 1893, Roman Catholic Bishop Paul
Durieu, in a letter complaining to Indian Affairs about the quality of construction of
the dormitories at the school in Kamloops, British Columbia, wrote:
I am in duty bound to repeat here what I have told you in [sic] many occasions,that these sleeping rooms have been a school of immorality. Better to have noschools amongst the Indians if we cannot preserve the young ones from receiving the habit of sodomy and of self-abuse from those pupils who are living at theschool with them.19

A missionary in Saskatchewan, W. S. Moore, told Presbyterian Church officials in1903 that he had received word that two girls had been “raped or ruined by two boys inthe basement of the Regina School.” According to Moore, the principal had threatened
to punish the girls and their assailants if they spoke to anyone else, including theirparents, about the assault.20
When Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Frank Pedley instructed Indian Commissioner
David Laird to inspect the Battleford school in 1904, he noted that he did not think “itwould be well to again take evidence of the questions of immorality at this school, but
you should make careful inquiry as to what steps the Principal adopted in the past andis now enforcing for the prevention of such acts.” Laird reported that “the ringleaderof the boys said to be guilty had been discharged or dismissed, that a new supervisorof experience had been secured, and that effort is being made (hereafter to be redoubled) by the Principal and his supervisor to stamp out the said practices.”21
In 1924 at Lytton, British Columbia, school principal A. R. Lett wrote that uponquestioning a recent runaway, he discovered that “the bigger boys were using him tocommit sodomy, hence his getaway.” He said the report confirmed his suspicions, butthat little could be done to eliminate the problem as long as the school lacked separate
dormitories for older and younger students. 22

Student victimization of students: 1867–1939 • 575

The evidence regarding student abuse of other students for this period is limited
and fragmentary. It underscores the fact that abuse did occur and that its occurrence
was a component of the emotional neglect that was a central element of the residential school system. Small, weak, disabled, or culturally isolated children were vulnerable to abuse. In the poorly staffed and poorly constructed schools, it was not possible
for the staff to ensure that students were not bullied or abused by their fellow students.
Those students who gained protection through admission into a group often paid fortheir membership through adherence to a rigid, internal code of behaviour: displaysof emotion or vulnerability were not allowed. In later years of the schools, evidence
indicates that students who were sexually abused in school were initiated into whatbecame a cycle of abuse in which they then victimized fellow students and family
members. At the institutional level, the schools created conditions in which students
were vulnerable to abuse; the schools then failed to protect them from such abuse.

CHAPTER 24

Truancy: 1867–1939

T

he residential schools established by Roman Catholic missionaries in New
France in the early seventeenth century failed, in large measure, because thestudents ran away. As Marie de l’Incarnation lamented, the students “go off
by whim or caprice, they climb our palisade like squirrels, which is as high as a stonewall, and go to run in the woods.”1 The same problem confronted the Methodist-run
schools of southern Ontario in the 1850s. Alnwick, Ontario, school principal Sylvester
Hurlburt reported in 1857 that although his school originally had an enrolment of fifty-one, there were only twenty students left. “Some of them,” he wrote, “went homewith permission to visit their friends, promising to return in four weeks. Others ran
away. Whether they will return or not is uncertain.”2
Given this background, it is not surprising to discover that truancy was a continuous issue for the Canadian residential schools. As noted in an earlier chapter, First
Nations parents refused to enrol their children in industrial schools in the numbers
needed to make the schools financially viable. Even after the government adopted
laws that compelled parents to send their children to residential schools, many parents resisted. Those parents who did enrol their children often refused to force themto return to school after vacation. The schools themselves also had problems retaining
children. Shingwauk Home principal E. F. Wilson, for example, devoted a chapter of
his memoirs to the topic of “Runaway Boys.” It included the story of three boys who
tried to make their way home by boat in the mid-1870s. They were found over ten days
later, stranded on an island in the north channel of Lake Huron.3
Students ran away for reasons that have been outlined in previous chapters: they
were lonely and missed their parents; they found the school strange and alienating;they were poorly fed, housed, and clothed; they were subject to harsh discipline; and,in some cases, they fell prey to abuse from both staff and fellow students.
After 1894, children who had been enrolled in a residential school (or had beenplaced there by government order because it was felt that they were not being properly cared for by their parents) but were refusing to show up at school were termed tobe “truant.” Under the Indian Act and its regulations, they could be returned to the578 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school against their will. Children who ran away from residential schools were also
considered to be truants. Parents who supported their children in their truancy were
liable to prosecution.
Section 12 of the regulations adopted under the 1894 amendments to the Indian
Act gave Indian agents and justices of the peace the authority to issue a warrant for
the return of truant residential school students. The warrants could be granted to “anypoliceman or constable, or to any truant officer appointed under these regulations,or to the Principal of any industrial or boarding school, or to any employee of the
Department of Indian Affairs.”4
In 1920, this authority was incorporated directly into the Indian Act. Amendments
gave truant officers the authority to “enter any place” where they believed there to
be a truant child. Truant officers were to investigate cases “when requested by the
Indian agent, a school teacher or the chief of a band.” A truant child could now be
arrested without a warrant and returned to school. Parents or guardians who did notcomply with the order of a truant officer faced fines of “not more than two dollars
and costs, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten days or both.”5 In 1927,
Duncan Campbell Scott announced that under the authority of the Indian Act, allRoyal Canadian Mounted Police officers and constables were appointed truant officers.6 This was formalized by an amendment to the Indian Act in 1933.7
Truancy was an ongoing problem for residential schools throughout their history.
Middlechurch, Manitoba, principal W. A. Burman’s 1893 report demonstrates thatrunning away could lead to permanent, not temporary, freedom from the school.
Burman said that of fifty-two students enrolled at the school, “six pupils who deserted
during the year have not yet returned, and two others allowed to go home for urgent
family reasons have failed to keep their promise to come back.” He said that many of
the runaways had been “troublesome, and had a bad influence, and their absence,
while in some respects regrettable, has led to a very marked improvement in the toneof the school.”8
In 1902, at the school at Williams Lake, British Columbia, the principal reported,“The attendance, I am sorry to say, was not very regular, especially last fall. The children ran away too frequently and too easily; they did not seem to find anything reprehensible in this so we were forced to set an example in having a few of them expelled.”9
Most runaway students headed for their home communities. Basil Johnston, who
was enrolled in the Spanish, Ontario, school in the 1930s, wrote, “Our sole aspiration
was to be rescued or released (it didn’t matter much which) from Spanish, and to berestored to our families and homes.”10 Students knew they were likely to be caught,
returned, and punished. Still, they felt a few hours of home and freedom were worth
it. In his memoirs, Johnston tells of two boys who tried to make their way by boat fromthe Spanish school to their home on Manitoulin Island, thirty-two kilometres away.
They were apprehended 14.5 kilometres from their goal, thrashed, and assigned toTruancy: 1867–1939 • 579

latrine duties. A third boy, who left at the same time but went in a different direction,
made it home for “just one glorious night with his parents, where he ate two goodmeals of potatoes, salt pork, fish and bannock.”11
In some cases, the schools were located quite close to First Nations communities.
For some students at Mount Elgin (in Muncey, Ontario) and at the Mohawk Institute(at Brantford, Ontario), their homes were just a short walk away. Kathleen Kennedy,
who attended Mount Elgin in the 1920s, recalled how she and her friend slipped outof the school.
There was three of us got together and we had these girls sit on our bed—we took
the sheets off our bed and tied ’em together and put ’em out the window!!! When
we got to the corner up there—at the railroad crossing—who should be standing
there but my Dad. I told these girls “Oh my gosh!” I said, “There’s my father
standing there. Come on, let’s get going.” So we just turned around and went
back. They wouldn’t have found out about us, but some girl snitched on us.12

Raymond Hill, who attended the Mohawk Institute in the 1930s, used to run away
because older students were bullying him. “I was punished a few times because I run
away. I was locked up in the dormitory after the Mounties brought me back. I climbed
down the wall and I was back on the reserve in 1½ hours. I ran away 6 or 7 times
because I was fed up, but they must have liked me—they took me back!”13
Some students who ran away were never obliged to return. In 1900, Tom Longboat,
perhaps Canada’s best-known long-distance runner, ran away from the Mohawk
Institute twice. After the second time, he never went back.14 Others completely disappeared. Sixteen-year-old Russell Mallett ran away from the Brandon, Manitoba, schoolin April 1939.15 The police received reports of his presence in southern Manitoba andconcluded he was heading for a reserve in North Dakota. United States customs officials were notified.16 The school had yet to hear from him by the middle of August
1939. The police concluded he might have succeeded in making his way into theUnited States, although there was no evidence to that effect. At that point, the police
closed the file.17
Rather than heading home, some runaways looked for employment. When fiveboys—at least four of whom were from distant reserves in northern Manitoba—ran
away from the Brandon school, the principal told the Mounted Police that the boys
were unlikely to go to local reserves. Instead, because four of them were eighteen years
old, he thought they were “likely to seek work on farms.”18 One of the boys, Thomas
Linklater, was found a month later in Westborough, Ontario, working for a local storekeeper.19 Some boys were able to stay ‘at large’ for a considerable period of time in thisway. On October 2, 1938, Leonard Beeswax and Abner Elliott ran away from the Mount
Elgin school. Abner Elliott was located on the Cape Croker Reserve on October 13 andreturned to the school. He said that he and Leonard Beeswax had parted company
near Woodstock, Ontario, on October 4.20 Beeswax was not located until early January

580 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof the following year. He had been working on a farm near Kenilworth, Ontario, sincerunning away from the school. He was also returned to the school.21
Runaway students used a variety of strategies to avoid capture. A police officer who
helped track down two boys who ran away from the Shubenacadie school in Nova
Scotia in 1939 observed, “The two boys that left were no amateurs in the woods andthey employed many tricks to throw off pursuit.”22 When Paul Bone was picked up on
the streets of Melville, Saskatchewan, by a Mounted Police officer who suspected hehad run away from a residential school, he gave his name as Edward Eagle. He said he
was on his way to Pelly, Saskatchewan. The officer was not convinced. He described
the boy as being in his early teens and “poorly dressed,” and took him into custody. Hesoon discovered the boy had run away from the Qu’Appelle school two days earlier.23
One boy who ran away from the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school initially claimed hehad been kidnapped by a man in a passing car and later abandoned by the roadside.24
Students were often unwilling participants in the search parties that principals
organized to look for runaways. Mount Elgin student Ruth Ninham recalled, “Weknew where they were but we’d go some place else just so we’d stay out longer!! We’dgo to the other end of the reserve to look for them.”25
In pursuing children to their parents’ homes, the actions of school employees
could be both invasive and disrespectful. In 1900, a Chilliwack, British Columbia,
school employee, Mr. Pearson, was sent to retrieve a student who had been absent
for a week from her parents’ home. The parents later complained that Pearson had
entered their home without warning and tried to run off with their daughter as if shewere “a dog.” In Pearson’s defence, Principal Joseph Hall provided this description ofwhat had happened:
Mr Pearson went to bring her back. He found her in her father’s house. Mr
Pearson does not remember whether he knocked at the door or not. Several
people were in the house, and no objection was made to his entering. He
explained his errand, stating that Mr Indian Agent Devlin had sent him forCharlotte. Mr Pearson told her to put on her things, meaning her hat, jacket&c. She did not attempt to get ready. He told her that if she did not put on her
things she must go as she was. He then took her by the hand and drew her arm
under his much as a gentleman and lady walk arm in arm, and told her to comealong. Her mother then interfered, placing her hands upon Mr Pearson by way of
preventing him going forward with Charlotte. He warned her that she should not
do that. Two American Indians who were present also stepped up and interferedto prevent Mr Pearson from taking Charlotte away. As Mr P. was alone hereleased his hold upon the girl and withdrew, returning next day with help. But
the girl has told me that Mr Pearson was not in the least harsh or rude, and that if
any one says that he was they say what is not true.

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 581

In defending Pearson’s actions, Hall also denied charges that discipline was toostrict at the school, saying that “corporal punishment is occasionally resorted to, but
always with reluctance, and when other means fail to bring the refractory into submission to the authority of the teacher.”26
At the request of the principal or Indian agent, a police officer could be dispatchedto return a child. In 1899, an Indian agent noted that at Mission, British Columbia, afather had “positively refused to compel his son to return to the school.” In order toforce his attendance, it would be necessary to have a constable arrest the boy andarrange his rail transport back to the school.27 While the officers might incorporate
this work into their usual patrols of First Nations reserves, in other cases, they madespecial trips, travelling by car, horse, train, and sometimes boat. In the Maritimes, on
at least one occasion during this period, a tracking dog was used to look for runaway
children.28 In the course of searching for a child, the officers could use their authority
under the Indian Act to enter and search homes. For example, in the town of Lebret,
Saskatchewan, “all the houses were checked” by the police as part of a search for two
runaways from the File Hills school in 1935.29

The prosecution of runaways
Running away was not in itself a crime. However, most students were wearing
school-issued clothing when they ran away. In 1894, the North-West Mounted Police
annual report stated, “In several cases pupils who have deserted have been charged
with the theft of their clothing, which is the property of the government. This has had asalutary effect in checking desertions from these institutions.”30 In coming years, principals occasionally sought to have runaways prosecuted for theft. Red Deer principal
C. E. Somerset had lost control of the school in 1896. He said there was, among the students, “a spirit of insubordination manifest and several desertions have taken place.”
To assert his authority, he identified one boy as “the ringleader,” and had the Mounted
Police arrest him and charge him with “leaving with clothing belonging to the Indian
Department.” The police held the boy for two nights and one day before returning him
to the school.31 That same year, the principal of the Mohawk Institute tried without
success to have boys prosecuted for the theft of the clothes they were wearing when
they ran away.32
One girl ran away from the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school on three different occasions in 1933. The third time, she took some school clothing with her: a dress, a hat,and a pair of pants. School principal O. Chagnon had her charged with “theft and truancy.” She was located by the Mounted Police and taken to court. Because the itemsof clothing were returned, Chagnon asked that no further action be taken. The case582 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

was adjourned indefinitely; as the police report noted, this meant that “in the event of
this girl giving further trouble, she could then be dealt with in this connection also.”33
Students who ran away numerous times also could be charged under the Juvenile
Delinquents Act. In such cases, they could be sentenced to a reformatory until theyturned twenty-one.34 In 1935, two years after she was charged with theft, the girl at
Sandy Bay was brought up on charges under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.35 Two boys
ran away from the Mount Elgin school in the fall of 1937. After searching for themon their home reserve, the Mounted Police located the boys walking along a railway
track, headed for Melbourne, Ontario. They were returned to the school.36 One of theboys, aged twelve, ran away in March 1939, only to be returned again by the Mounted
Police.37 Within days, he ran away again, taking some school clothing with him. He
was arrested and charged with being “incorrigible.” The arresting officer thought his
mother likely had been “encouraging the boy to truant.” He described the boy as coming from “a very poor and filthy type of Indian.”38 In court, the boy, due to his “lackof intelligence,” was not asked to plead. Because the boy promised to attend school
without giving “further trouble in future,” Mount Elgin principal Oliver Strapp asked
that the boy be given another opportunity.39 Further trouble ensued, and Strapp discharged the boy in the fall of 1939. On an application from his mother, he was declared“incorrigible” in 1940, and spent part of that summer in the Observation Home of the
London and Middlesex Juvenile Court. From there, the Mounted Police escorted him
to the Chapleau residential school in Ontario.40
For schools with limited budgets, retrieving a runaway student could be expensive.
In October 1899, Father Bedard, the principal of the Mission school, informed Ottawa
that three boys had run away. Efforts to retrieve them had failed, and the only option
open to him, he wrote, was to have a warrant issued for their return. But, he said, thiswould cause him extra expenses at a time when the $60 per capita the school received
from Ottawa did not cover a student’s board. As a result, he intended to simply let thematter drop.41
In 1914, Indian Affairs agreed to pay half the cost of returning a truant student to
the Mohawk Institute.42 One truant officer, John Lickers, attempted to charge $30.75 toreturn four children to the Mohawk Institute in 1922. That included “railway fare, bed,
breakfast, and dinner, stabling for his horse in Brantford, $1.50 for arresting each childand 55 miles of mileage.”43 Indian Affairs declined to pay the mileage or the charge
for arresting each child.44 When a group of First Nations men abandoned their duckhunt to successfully track down a boy who had run away from the Anglican schoolin The Pas, Manitoba, in 1925, the principal paid them a total of $35.45 In 1930, theMounted Police charged twenty-five cents for each mile travelled while searching forand returning runaways in Saskatchewan. The fee for bringing an eight-year-old boy
into the Qu’Appelle school from the Sioux Reserve was $7.50.46

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 583

In some cases, the students or their parents were obliged to pay the costs incurred inlocating and returning runaways. In 1906, Indian Affairs reimbursed the Mount Elginschool $13.50 in expenses incurred in returning a runaway to the school. However,the local Indian agent was instructed that the interest from the savings account into
which the boy’s annuity payments were being made should be directed to the department until “the amount of this account has been repaid.”47 Six years later, local Indian
superintendent Gordon Smith reported that Isaac Bradley had paid off the balance of
the “constable expenses in taking his children back to the Mt. Elgin Institute.”48
The rest of this chapter examines four themes related to truancy: the prosecutionof parents who assisted students in their truancy, the prosecution of students who ran
away, the prevalence of truancy throughout the system (often described as “epidemics” of runaways), and the failure to put in place policies to ensure proper searches
were conducted for children who ran away.

The prosecution of parents
The 1894 Indian Act amendments made parents who did not return truants toschool subject to prosecution. According to the 1894 Regulations Relating to the
Education of Indian Children that was issued under the authority of the Indian Act,
parents were given three days to return their child to school after being served witha notice.49 As noted in earlier chapters, government policy on the enforcement ofthese provisions wavered. However, from the 1920s onwards, enforcement became
increasingly aggressive, particularly after 1927, when all Mounted Police officers wereappointed as truant officers.
In 1930, for example, the parents of eight-year-old John Yuzicappi refused to send
him to the Qu’Appelle school, arguing that he was too ill to attend. Having obtained adifferent opinion from a local doctor, Indian agent R. S. Davis had the Mounted Police
locate the boy and escort him to school.50 Four years later, the boy ran away fromschool. On January 28, 1934, a Mounted Police office travelled to his home reserve andvisited his parents, but could find no trace of him, although he “believed the boy washiding somewhere in the neighbourhood.” He warned John’s parents “of the folly ofharbouring the lad by keeping him away from school.” He was informed on February
2 that the boy had returned to the school.51
The Blue Quills, Alberta, school journal entry for May 1, 1932, reads: “The savages
having received the order to bring their children to the school unless they want thepolice to get involved, some parents do obey the order today. But there are still those
who turn a deaf ear.”52 In 1935, James Gideon and his wife, of Missanabie, Ontario,
refused to return their twelve- and fifteen-year-old daughters to the Chapleau school
after the Christmas holidays. Mr. Gideon claimed that “he could give them better584 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

care at home than they would receive in school.” The local Indian agent dispatcheda Mounted Police officer to the Gideons’ home and the children were returned to theschool.53 In August of 1939 in Manitoba, Portage la Prairie principal Joseph Jones visited the home of a boy from the Roseau River Reserve who had not returned to schoolthat fall. The boy refused to go back and his father would not send him. Acting in thecapacity of a truant officer, a Mounted Police officer served the father with a noticethat if he did not send his son back to school in three days, he would be charged underthe Indian Act. Within two days, the boy had been sent to the school.54
Even if the warning had been ignored, the government might not have prosecuted
the boy’s father. In 1931, a Mounted Police officer who had helped return a truant boy
to the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school noted that, “owing to the father’s ignorance andpoverty, the Indian Agent did not wish me to enter a prosecution.”55
But, it was just as likely, if parents did resist, that prosecutions would be initiated.
In June 1936, Mounted Police constable R. D. Toews tracked Gilbert Beaulieu, a truant
from the Sandy Bay school, to the camp of a Métis man north of Langruth, Manitoba.
Toews reported that “on seeing the uniform,” Beaulieu “took to the bush and although
I chased him about a mile and a half east thru the bush I was unable to apprehendhim.” Toews then went to the camp of the boy’s father, who said “he would not assist
the police in getting his boy.” After discussing the matter with the local Indian agent,
it was decided not to look further for the boy until school reopened at the end of summer.56 On September 24, Toews discovered that young Beaulieu was being shelteredby Sandy Bay Chief Louis Prince. By the time he got to the chief’s house, Gilbert had
fled once more. Beaulieu’s father was there, however. This time, he told the constable, “You can go to hell. I’m boss here.” When Toews later tried to serve the boy’s
mother with a notification under the school attendance provisions of the Indian Act,she refused to accept it, on the advice of Chief Prince. Officer Toews placed it on the
ground in front of Beaulieu’s mother, only to have Chief Prince pick it up and throw itin the police car. The chief then told the constable he had no business on the reserve.57
On Toews’s recommendation, Chief Prince was charged with obstructing a police officer. Gilbert’s father was charged with failing to return a truant child to school. Gilbert
was finally taken into custody at his father’s camp on October 20. From there, he wassent to the distant Lestock, Saskatchewan, school.58 His father was fined $2, plus $5.75
in court costs. Either unable or unwilling to pay the fine, he spent ten days in jail.59

Epidemics of runaways
Problems with runaways often appeared to come in waves, which were often
referred to by Indian agents as “epidemics.” The agents viewed such epidemics as asign of underlying problems at a school. In 1928, Indian agent J. Waddy wrote that at

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 585

the Anglican school in The Pas, “hardly a day goes bye [sic] that one or more do nottake leave on their own account. The fault is hard to spot, but I think it is mostly from alot of those nearing the age of eighteen trying to get away before their time expires.”60
In 1928, the legal age of discharge was not eighteen, but fifteen, suggesting that there
was no legal authority to keep the boy in school after that age. That same year, theGordon’s Reserve school in Saskatchewan also had an ongoing problem with older
boys running away. The boys generally left by taking off a screen window and dropping about three metres to the fire-escape platform. Those who had been returnedto the school explained that they left to work in the harvest fields. They argued that if
they were going to be forced to work—as they were at the residential schools at thattime—they preferred to be paid.61
In 1935, ten pupils ran away from the Birtle, Manitoba, school. At the time, theIndian agent put the problem down to homesickness, since he felt the children
were well treated and well fed.62 The runaway problem continued into the next year.
Then, the school inspector, A. G. Hamilton, believed the problem was attributable
to the “spirit that pervades the school,” adding that he always thought it was a mistake to have the principal’s wife act as school matron.63 (It was a common practice inProtestant schools for the principal’s wife to serve as matron.) In 1937, five girls tied
sheets together and slid out the dormitory window. In reporting on the escape, Indian
agent A. G. Smith wrote, “To be candid I cannot blame the girls as the life they havebeen leading is enough to breed discontent.”64
The following four examples outline ongoing problems at schools in Alberta,
Manitoba, and the Maritimes. They demonstrate the level of parental opposition toschooling in some locations, the school’s dependence on coercion in maintaining
enrolment, the significant distances that the young truants were able to cover, theadministrative disdain and hostility towards students, and the government’s inability
to make the schools anything other than quasi-penal institutions.

The Blood Reserve: 1927–28
Both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches maintained schools on the Blood
Reserve in southern Alberta, near the town of Cardston. In 1927, the Indian agent on
the Blood Reserve, M. Christianson, reported that there were seventy-five school-aged
children on the reserve who had not either returned to school or enrolled in school.
When he visited their parents, he discovered that many of them had no intention ofsending their children to school. It took a letter from the police, plus a follow-up visit
from the agent, to fill the Anglican and Catholic schools on the reserve. The same year,
there was an ongoing runaway problem at the Roman Catholic school on the reserve.
Christianson wrote:586 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The man in charge of the boys at the r.c. School certainly could do a lot morethan he is doing to keep the boys from getting away. My own opinion is that heis lazy and would rather read a book than be around where the boys are playing.
The school authorities seem to be under the impression that if the children
run away, it is up to the police to bring them back. The Department can wellunderstand that the police soon get fed up when they are called upon to bring
the same boys back time after time.65

Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott suggested that the principal of the Catholic school should consider taking away certain privileges from thosestudents who ran away, going so far as to suggest the principal might want to consider
punishing the entire student body. That, he said, would minimize “any chance that the
culprit is made the object of hero worship or of sympathy.”66
In 1928, a school inspector wrote that academic progress at the Anglican school
near Cardston on the Blood Reserve “has been hampered by the irregular attendance.
This is particularly true among the older boys where long absences have occurred.”Of the Catholic school, he wrote, “The majority of the pupils who showed no progressover the last year on the tests given have been out of school for a considerable time.”67
Indian agent J. E. Pugh acknowledged that truancy “has been bad. In fact, at times
one could almost designate it a continual in and out.” Pugh thought the problems
stemmed from the half-day system, the lack of recreation, and the lack of “an environment of making the children in the schools feel happy and content as a whole.”68

Brandon: 1936
A seventeen-year-old boy from the Fisher River First Nation in Manitoba ran awayfrom the Brandon school in early March 1936. Principal J. A. Doyle believed that his
return was “essential for the sake of the boys and the discipline of the school.”69 The
boy had jumped a freight train and travelled to Winnipeg, where he was arrested
and charged with “breaking and trespass.” The juvenile court judge hearing the case
imposed no sentence other than a return to the school. Principal Doyle agreed to keep
him there until the end of the holidays. However, it was agreed that if he did not “givegood conduct,” his discharge would be delayed.70 On March 25, Chief Moses McKay
sent a letter to Indian Affairs about the boy’s case. His letter indicates he had previously
requested that he be returned to his home. According to McKay’s letter, it was believedthat the boy had run away after being punished for an undisclosed transgression.
He was disappear from school [sic]. He done something wrong and they got after
him and they found him alright. The understanding I got from the parents thatthese children at Brandon are not treat it [sic] right. And this boy Stanley his timesoon be up. The parents says this boy was not sent to do wrong or to get hungry,

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 587

and if that’s the case it is no use to keep that boy any longer. Also that School
Brandon should be investgate [sic] according to the complaints I heard. Its nouse for them children to get hungry when the Dept. Supilys [sic] it or look after
it.71

Fifteen-year-old Harry Royal ran away from the Brandon school twice in 1936,
making it to his home reserve in Saskatchewan on his second attempt. There, he andanother boy he had run away with said that their main complaint with the school was“they did not get enough food and it wasn’t properly cooked.”72 Shortly after Royalwas returned to the school, three other boys ran away. The three of them, Wallace
Hahawahi, Kenneth Thompson, and Peter Ryder, were located at the Sintaluta Reservein Saskatchewan.73 Hahawahi’s father was reported as being “very indignant aboutallowing his son to return to the school stating that he was over 16 years of age andthat he needed him at home.” While he agreed to let the boy return, he asked the farm
instructor to contact the Indian agent and attempt to seek his discharge. The attempt
was successful and the boy was allowed to remain on the reserve with his family.74
Another of the runaways, Kenneth Thompson, gave the police the following statement: “I am a Treaty Indian of Assiniboine Indian Reserve, I am 17 year of Age. I wish
to state the reason I ran away from school was because I have to work too hard in fact
I do not study at all. I am working around the school all the time. I consider if I have towork I may as well work at home for my father.”75
Ryder’s father told the police that “this boy was 17 years of age, that he was throughschool, and he wished to keep him home.” Despite this protest, both Thompson andRyder were returned to the school.76

Shubenacadie: 1937–1939
In the closing years of the 1930s, the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia experienced continual truancy problems. It was not uncommon for some students to makenumerous attempts to leave the school. When a boy ran away from the Shubenacadie
school infirmary in the spring of 1937, Principal J. P. Mackey immediately informed
Indian Affairs of his departure. According to Mackey, “This is the first boy to leave forat least from four to five years, so no matter how far he may roam, I want him broughtback here.”77 Mackey did not know it, but it was the beginning of an ongoing problem
with runaways at the school.
The boy, Steven Paul, proved to be quite elusive. He was questioned by an Indian
agent in Kentville, Nova Scotia, but released after he gave his name as Leo Francis.78
When he was eventually picked up on May 21, 1937, in Hantsport, Nova Scotia, he was“very sick and hardly able to walk.” The Mounted Police transported him to Kentville,
where he was left in the custody of Indian agent Clarence Spinney. Eight days later, he588 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

ran away from the Cambridge Reserve, where Spinney had placed him. On June 1, he
was found working on a farm near Grafton, Nova Scotia. This time, the police placed
him in the custody of the county jailer before returning him to the Shubenacadie
school.79 Even though Paul was supposed to be discharged on July 1 of that year,
Mackey decided that, as a punishment, he would be required to remain at the school
two days for every day that he had been truant.80 By doing this, Mackey revealed thedegree to which school administrators had come to acknowledge that the schools
were penal institutions.
Another boy also ran away that term from Shubenacadie. On the morning of July 7,
1937, Andrew Julian decided not to join the other boys assigned to milk the school’s
dairy herd. Instead, he headed for Truro, where he was reported as being sighted in
the rail yard. He was not located until the end of the month. By then, he had made it
to Nyanza in Cape Breton, which was, according to Mackey, a distance of 260 miles(418.4 kilometres).81
In the following school year, there were only three cases of truancy. Noel Julian ran
away on January 5, 1938. He was found in the town of Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, laterthat day.82 The following May, two boys ran away and were returned within a day.83
However, the 1938–39 school year was one of ongoing problems. Within two weeks
of his arrival at the school in the fall of 1938, Steven Labobe (also spelled LaBobe
in some documents), originally from Prince Edward Island, ran away with anotherboy.84 Two weeks later, news reached the school that the fifteen-year-old Labobe had
succeeded in getting back to his home reserve on the island. Rather than have him
returned, Mackey recommended that he remain on the reserve “under the guardianship” of the local Indian agent. The fact that he would have been discharged within
the year due to his age, coupled with the overcrowded condition of the Shubenacadie
school, worked in Labobe’s favour.85
Gregory Denny had left the school with Labobe in September 1938.86 He madeit back to his family’s reserve at Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia. Whenever the police
searched the reserve, his parents hid him “in the woods.” Eventually, the local Indian
agent, a church minister, apprehended the boy and returned him to the school.87 The
day after his return, he ran away again, managing to catch a ride on a train to Truro,
Nova Scotia. The Indian agent located him on the Pictou Reserve and again returned
him to school. Three days later, he ran away for a third time, this time accompanied by
fourteen-year-old Noel Julian.88 It would be another two weeks before the boys werelocated and returned to the school.89
It appears that Julian’s head was shaved as punishment, since, according to a
Mounted Police description issued after his escape again from the school on November
10, 1938, “julian’s head had been shaved.” This time, Julian had run away with a fellow student, fifteen-year-old Richard Poulette.90 The two boys hopped a train, jumping
off before it reached the Truro station. Poulette was apprehended in the Truro rail

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 589

yard the next day and held in the local jail until he could be returned to school.91 Julian
was found in Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, on November 16 and taken back to the school.92
He ran away the following month, ending up in hospital in Antigonish, suffering fromwhat was reported as “flat feet.”93
In mid-March 1939, Sam Augustine, originally from New Brunswick, ran away,along with Noel Julian’s older brother Joe. Noel Julian, whom Principal Mackey
described to an Indian agent as “an old offender,” and Peter Labobe, who was Steven
Labobe’s brother, also ran away.94 It was the fifth time Noel Julian had run away. Ina letter to the Indian agent in Antigonish, Mackey, who had caught a cold while out
looking for the runaways, wrote, “I feel that Saint Patrick’s Home is the only place forthat imbecile.”95 The St. Patrick’s Home was a Catholic-run reformatory in Halifax towhich boys could be sentenced under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.96
Peter Labobe was located living in a trackman’s shanty along the Canadian National
Railway line. He was “without food and with feet in bad condition.”97 Joe and Noel
Julian were picked up on April 12, 1939, at Antigonish. Mackey then arranged to havethe two boys placed in the St. Patrick’s Home.98
While the Julian boys were on the run, two other students, Wallace LeBillois and
Leo Toney, also ran away. In searching for them, the police brought in a tracking dog,a Doberman pinscher. Both boys were located and returned to the school beforenightfall.99

Chapleau: 1937–1939
Six children ran away from the Chapleau, Ontario, school in a three-day period in
1937. The Mounted Police brought back four of the boys, and two others were foundand returned by a group of older students. Since two of the boys had slipped out thefire-escape window, the principal arranged to have the window sealed (there was still
access to the escape through a door). He informed the local Indian agent that all six
boys would be given “a sound whipping.”100
In coming years, problems at the school mounted. By May 1939, Principal A. J. Valesought to discharge four fourteen-year-old girls he thought were too difficult to discipline. According to Vale, “They are spoiling the other girls. They are very rude andobstrepourous [sic] to the ladies of the staff and very hard to control.”101 The superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, R. A. Hoey, suggested that insteadof discharging them, the principal organize them into “a vocational group,” undertaking crochet work and weaving, with the understanding that the girls would be allowed
to keep some of the money made from the sale of their work. Hoey could not, as theprincipal suggested, commit the girls to a correctional home, since they were not“guilty of an offence that would justify such an action.”102

590 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The situation only deteriorated. Vale identified one fourteen-year-old girl as a particular problem. He said she had a bad temper, and, at one point, had threatened afemale staff member with a knife. She was “severely whipped” for this offence. On
another occasion, she encouraged ten other girls to attempt to run away with her, and“tried to get the girls to agree to fight if they were to be punished.”103 In the late springof 1939, a group of girls who were not allowed to go home for the summer ran away,
and had to be brought back to school by the police. As punishment, Vale clipped their
hair short.104

The failure to establish a truancy policy
It was well understood that students who ran away, particularly in winter, were atconsiderable risk. Earlier chapters, for example, described the death of Duncan Sticks,
a boy who froze to death after running away from the Williams Lake, British Columbia,
school in 1902, and the death of an unnamed boy who ran away from the Anglican
school in The Pas in late 1926. These were far from the only examples of truancy endingin tragedy. Emile William ran away from the Kuper Island school shortly after school
resumed in 1907. He could not be located and. the following spring, was reported tohave drowned.105 In 1918, William Cardinal, who had come down with influenza at the
Red Deer, Alberta, school, died after running away from the school.106 Three boys tried
to escape from the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school by boat in 1928. According to theprincipal’s report, “Three of our boys—two who had recently arrived from Bloodvein
and one who had been here for a while—deserted; they stole a boat and took off on
the lake so quickly that it was impossible to catch them, and they likely drowned thenext day.”107 That same year, Joseph Brachet, the principal of another Manitoba school,
Pine Creek, reported:
Eight boys left. We caught five of them. One returned home half dead. The othertwo have not been found for four days now, despite calling all around for help
from the police. Four girls ran away last night. They are being pursued, but their
whereabouts are unknown. These desertions are bothering me a lot, almost to
the point of making me sick. In my opinion, I would not keep the students onsuch a tight leash; the bow that is always bent will break. It is hard for children tostay silent for long or to sit still for a certain amount of time. However, I am notsaying anything because I do not think that my advice will be taken.108

In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada has not located any copies of reports from either the Fort Alexander school or
the Pine Creek school to Indian Affairs on these apparently fatal events. Neither has it
located an Indian Affairs response to these events.

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 591

Fifteen-year-old Agnes Ben left the Birtle school on March 11, 1930.109 According tonews reports:
Scores of Indians from the reserve and pupils from the Indian school havecombed the snow-covered countryside for many miles around under theleadership of officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The search has
continued unbroken, both day and night, the Indians scouring the prairies after
darkness fell with the aid of lanterns.110

The girl’s body was not located for six weeks, when it was discovered in a hollow
by a farmer looking for his stray horses. It was believed she had been trying to makeher way home to the Birdtail Reserve, but became lost in a blizzard and froze to deathfour kilometres from the reserve.111 According to the Presbyterian Church records, “Allpossible search [sic] was made, the Indian Agent was notified shortly after 10 p.m.,the same night [that she had disappeared] and no blame attached to the superintendent.”112 In 1931, the principal of the Mackay School in The Pas waited until Monday
evening to inform Indian agent W. G. Tweddell that a boy had run away the previous
Saturday morning. Eventually, the Mounted Police was alerted and the boy was found,alive, nine days after he had run away. Tweddell complained, “This caused unnecessary trouble and expense, and the school to my knowledge took no steps to find theboy.”113
Tweddell’s comments underline a serious policy failure. The Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has not located specific, system-wide instructions as to what measures Indian Affairs expected principals to take when students
ran away. In many cases, principals organized searches, informed local Indian Affairs
officials, and sought the assistance of the Mounted Police. But they did not do this in
all cases. This lack of policy direction contributed to the deaths of at least six students
at three schools in the late 1930s: Round Lake, Fraser Lake, and Gordon’s Reserve.
These cases highlight the lack of federal policy on this issue, the failure to introduce
policy, and the failure to hold churches and principals accountable for unacceptable behaviour.

Round Lake: 1935
Sometime between 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. on January 13, 1935, three boys, Percy
Ochapowace, Glen Gaddie, and Alec Wasacase, ran away from the Round Lake schoolin Saskatchewan. It was -32 degrees Celsius and, shortly after the boys left the school,a blizzard blew up. After walking a distance, they made a fire to warm themselves.
They then separated, with Wasacase and Gaddie heading west, while fifteen-year-old
Ochapowace went south, towards his home. According to Wasacase, he and Gaddie

592 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

travelled about one and one half miles and were cold and tired again, and built
another fire. We lay down for awhile [sic] and went to sleep. I woke up and could
not see Glen Gaddie. I found him covered up in snow. I got him on his feet and
we noticed a light. We walked towards the light and reached the home of Alex
Belanger. We found Mrs. Belanger home alone. We had something to eat andwent to sleep. We stayed there over night and the next morning went home.

According to Mrs. Belanger, it was about 8:00 p.m. when the boys arrived ather house.
On the night of January 16, three days after the boys had run away, Alex Belanger
encountered Percy Ochapowace’s brother Daniel, and asked if Percy had got homesafely. Daniel, under the impression that Percy was still in school, was taken by surprise. When he realized that his brother had run away and had not returned home, hewent from house to house, looking for him. At 10:00 p.m., he ran into the Ochapowace
Reserve farm instructor, Leander Carlson, and told him that Percy was missing.
Early the following morning (January 17), Carlson alerted the local Mounted Police
detachment that three boys had run away from the Round Lake school on January
13, and that one was still missing. The police informed the local Indian agent, J. P. B.
Ostrander, who was unaware that any boys had run away. Ostrander then contacted
the school principal, R. J. Ross, who could provide no additional information. The
investigating officer, H. S. Casswell, and Ostrander then went to the reserve, where
they interviewed Wasacase and Belanger and organized a search party of thirty-fiveFirst Nations men.
With the search party underway, Casswell and Ostrander went to the Round Lake
school, where they interviewed Ross. He stated he had not realized the boys were
missing until 5:00 p.m. on January 13, several hours after they had left:
I did not think it worth while sending after them, as they would have nearlyreached home by this time. It is not customary to follow boys, 12, 13, or 14 yearsof age after they get a 2 or 3 hour start on us, from the school. I did not get intouch with anyone outside of the school to let them know the boys had left,but I wrote a letter to Mr. Ostrander, on 16th Jan./35, informing him that thesethree boys had run away from the school. The letter was posted in Stockholm
on Jan. 17th, 1935. I did not know that the boy had not arrived home safely until I
received the telephone call from Mr. Ostrander this morning.

Casswell and Ostrander then rejoined the search party. Percy Ochapowace’s frozen body was discovered at 6:30 p.m., about two and a half kilometres from where
he had parted company with Gaddie and Wasacase. Wearing only a sweater, overalls,
socks, and rubber boots, he had crawled into a willow stand in search of shelter. The
following day, Dr. Allingham examined Percy’s body at the Ochapowace Reserve, andinterviewed the principal and Percy’s father, Walter Ochapowace. He concluded thatdeath was due to exposure and stated “no inquest was necessary.”114

Truancy: 1867–1939 • 593

In his report to Indian Affairs on the death, Ostrander wrote,
In view of the extremely cold weather and bad roads the Revd. Principal would
have been well advised to have an immediate search made as the boys [sic]tracks could have been followed in the snow but apparently as the boys ranged
from 13 to 15 years of age he thought they would reach their homes in safety.
… As would be expected the father of the deceased as well as other Indians who
have children in this school are considerably upset and are inclined to place theblame on the Revd. Principal for failing to have the boys immediately followed
when it was found that they were missing and also for not taking steps to informthem and myself more promptly. When I asked the Revd. Principal why he had
not acted more promptly he informed me that he did not anticipate any serious
consequences owing to the age of the boys as he thought they would have no
difficulty in reaching their homes.115

Indian Affairs departmental secretary A. F. Mackenzie informed Ostrander that
the Principal should have instituted an immediate search when it was discoveredthat the boys had left the school, more especially so in view of weather
conditions. He should have informed the parents and yourself and instituted asearch at once. The death of the boy, under the circumstances, is much regretted,
and I would request that you convey to the parents the Department’s sympathy
for their loss.116

There was no suggestion that any policies had been violated or that there was aneed to establish policies for searches for runaways. There was no suggestion that theUnited Church, which ran the school, be contacted regarding the lapse in judgmenton the part of the principal. There was no suggestion that a circular be sent to otherschools regarding the need to undertake searches in the case of runaways. There were
to be no consequences, or assigning of responsibility, or remedial action, for a decision that Indian Affairs clearly believed to be inappropriate.
Garnett Neff, a lawyer hired by the deceased boy’s father, Walter Ochapowace,
asked Dr. Allingham to reconsider his recommendation not to hold an inquest. Dr.
Allingham had been doing work for Indian Affairs in the region since 1914. He refused
to reconsider. Neff then called upon Indian Affairs Minister T. G. Murphy to hold “afull investigation into all the facts surrounding the death of the boy and to clear up
definitely whether there be any culpable or criminal negligence involved.”117 In a note,
Murphy stated that the death had been “thoroughly investigated by the Coroner,” and,as a result, “no further action is considered necessary.”118
In his frustrated response to Murphy, Neff pointed out, “The mere fact that it would
appear that the officials of the Round Lake school knew nothing about the deathof this boy until the Thursday following would indicate a laxity and culpability forwhich they should be held responsible.” He also announced his intention of writing

594 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to the provincial attorney general, to request a coroner’s inquiry.119 The Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate any record of sucha request. Neff did write to the federal minister of justice, Hugh Guthrie, requesting
the appointment of a commission of inquiry, under the Enquiries Act. He did not dispute that Percy’s death was caused by exposure, but said that Percy’s father and othermembers of the community believed “there must be extreme laxity and carelessness
either in the interpretation of such rules as there may be or in the rules themselvesthat it does seem to be inhuman that if it be true, no enquiry or search was made forthe boy for three or four days in extreme weather.” Neff thought such an inquiry should
examine both “the facts surrounding the death of this boy” and “the whole scheme ofcontrol of the children in this School.”120
The request was rebuffed. In closing off the correspondence, the minister of justicewrote to Neff that he did not believe “an inquiry under oath would elicit any information not already in the possession of the authorities.” Guthrie then attempted tosuggest that the schools were really not government responsibilities, saying it was his
understanding that “the school is an undertaking of the United Church of Canada,
and that it is built on reserve land and is in receipt of a grant from the Department,
and is subject to some measure of inspection by the Department, but is not in any way
under its management or control.” To the extent that the superintendent general ofIndian Affairs was “under any responsibility in the matter,” he was suggesting to himthat he investigate to see if “more care is exercised with regard to the custody and careof the children residing therein.”121

Fraser Lake: 1937
On January 2, 1937, four boys who had run away from the Fraser Lake, British
Columbia, school were found frozen to death on Fraser Lake. The older boy, Allen
Patrick, was nine; Andrew Paul and Justa Maurice were eight; and John Jack was seven.
The boys, who had been denied permission to visit their parents, were present for ameal at 4:00 p.m. Two hours later, it was noted that they had disappeared. The principal, Father McGrath, was not informed that they had run away until after 9:00 p.m.
He concluded that they had gone to the families of friends and that he would leavethem there overnight. It was not until the early afternoon of the following day that hevisited their families and discovered that the boys were not there. A search party wasorganized and the boys’ bodies were found at 5:00 p.m. They had tried to cross the lake
on an evening when the temperature had fallen to -29 degrees Celsius.122
At the inquest held into the deaths, Aboriginal witnesses said that harsh corporalpunishment led children to run away from residential schools. In his testimony, theprincipal challenged this, saying that “runaways occurred more frequently lately dueTruancy: 1867–1939 • 595

to the fact corporal punishment was being discouraged by higher authorities.”123 The
coroner’s jury concluded that the deaths were due to “exhaustion and consequent
freezing” and were “unavoidable.” The jury also stated that
more definite action by the school authorities might or should have been taken
the night upon which the disappearance took place.
Further it is our opinion that more co-operation between the authorities andthe parents of the children would in future help to lessen the danger of any
repetition of such an incident.

On the relationship between discipline and runaways, the jury recommended that“excessive corporal punishment, if practiced, should be limited.” The jurors also recommended that the school disciplinarians should be able to speak English.124
In investigating the deaths, the Indian agent, R. H. Moore, had discovered that,in the fall of 1936, Roman Catholic Bishop Bunoz had appointed two priests, recent
arrivals from France, as school disciplinarians. This was done against the wishes of
the acting principal, Father McGrath. Neither of the new disciplinarians spoke any
English. Moore believed the behaviour of the disciplinarians was responsible for an
increase in runaways from the school. He told McGrath to replace them or the truancy
problem would get out of hand. It was only at the inquest that Moore realized that the
principal had not made the change, since he did not believe he had the authority tocountermand the Bishop’s order.125
British Columbia Indian Commissioner D. M. McKay conducted his own investigation into the deaths in March of that year. Sylvester Patrick, the stepfather of Allen, said
that Allen had complained about the treatment he received at the school. Patrick also
stated that one of the teachers at the Fraser Lake school had previously taught at theFort St. James school when Patrick was a boy, and punishment at that school had been
“severe.” The father of a boy who had not run away, C. Charley, told McKay he thought“sometimes they whip them too hard.”126
Commissioner McKay concluded thatthe delay in informing Acting Principal McGrath of the absence without
permission of the children was a very serious and costly omission, quite
inexcusable and cannot be explained away by weak assumptions nor a shiftingof responsibility; this should not have occurred, nor would have occurred,
where administrative authority and responsibility were known, definitely fixed,
appreciated and recognized.

McKay said that McGrath was not aware of either his authority or the scope of his
responsibility. His control was weakened by the fact that the school’s two disciplinarians spoke no English, and McGrath spoke no French. McKay also believed that
if a search party had been organized when the boys were first reported missing, “thechildren would not have perished.” He thought the boys ran away not because of any

596 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

discipline, but simply “out of a natural desire for freedom and to be with their parents during the holidays.” He also thought that the government should “take steps tostrengthen its administrative control of our Indian Residential schools through the fulluse of the privileges which it reserves of approving the more important appointments
to the staffs of these schools.”127
Even though the coroner’s jury had pointed to the need for more “definite action”
when children ran away and for co-operation between authorities and parents, itappears that Indian Affairs did not issue any system-wide policy statements to principals in the wake of this tragedy. The residential school system, and those in charge ofit, appeared resolutely unwilling to learn from its errors.

Gordon’s Reserve: 1939
On Saturday, March 11, 1939, eleven-year-old Andrew Gordon ran away from theGordon’s Reserve school in Saskatchewan. He slipped away in the middle of the afternoon when the students were on a skating expedition.128 According to the boy’s supervisor, Linton Tooley, it was not until 5:15 p.m. that he noticed the boy was missing. He
reported the absence to Principal R. W. Frayling, who instructed him “not to allow
the boys, in the future, to go to the lake as it gave them a better chance of escape.”129
Frayling asked some First Nations men who were delivering wood to the school if theyknew where the boy had gone. They knew nothing, but agreed to return the boy to theschool if they encountered him. It was not until the following day that Frayling took
any additional action, dispatching Tooley to visit one of Andrew’s relatives. Tooley
could not find the relative, who, he was told, had gone to visit Andrew’s home. On
this rather flimsy basis, the school concluded that “the lad was home.” On Monday
morning, Frayling asked Tooley if he had any word of Andrew’s whereabouts. There
was a snowstorm that day and Frayling planned to return the boy to the school once
the roads had been cleared.130 Frayling reported to the local Indian agent that Andrew“had not been punished in any way, was well behaved and of a bright spirit and cheerful disposition.”131
Andrew had never reached home. On Monday evening, a visitor told his father,
David Gordon, “I believe your boy ran away from school.” On Tuesday morning,
the father set out for the school. On his way, he came across tracks that he believed
belonged to his son. He followed them, encountering five spots where the boy had
stopped to rest. At the sixth, he found his son, frozen to death. Gordon then contacted
the Mounted Police and Indian Affairs.132 It was the first time either agency had been
informed of the boy’s disappearance of three days earlier. In a letter to Indian Affairs,
Frayling asserted he and the school were blameless in the case. He said that in thepast, when children whose parents lived on the Gordon’s Reserve had run away, theTruancy: 1867–1939 • 597

parents had always brought them back. As a result, although he had notified the police
and the Indian agent when children from more distant reserves had run away, it had
not been policy to do so in the cases of children from Gordon’s Reserve.133
In his report on the death, Indian agent J. Waddy wrote:
My opinion is that in case a pupil runs away the first duty of the principal is tosee the parents are notified, especially in winter.
There have been so many desertions here it appears that the staff have lost
control of that part.
I recommend that the bishop be asked if he is satisfied that his staff did
everything possible to help in this case.134

According to Thomas Robertson, the inspector of Indian agencies, a coroner’s jury
ruled that death was due to exposure, “with no charges of negligence on the part ofanyone.” Robertson concluded, however, that “there has been negligence with regard
to this case, and that the death should never have occurred.” He thought the supervisor should have kept a closer check on the boys and that once Andrew was discovered
to be missing, a search should have been mounted. He was stunned that no serious
attempt was made to determine if the boy had reached home. “It is hard to understand that a boy of his age, under those weather conditions, should be lost without
any search being made.” Having reached these damning conclusions, he noted thathe thought of the school as being well run and that the principal would ensure that
nothing of this matter would ever happen again. “Unless the Indians or the people ofthe district start any agitation, any action on our part would not be in the best interestsof anyone.”135 A few months later, Waddy, the Indian agent, informed Robertson that
Frayling had lost the confidence of the First Nations people, and recommended thatthe principal be transferred. Anglican Archdeacon Irwin suggested he be given a reprimand and left in place, and Inspector Robertson suggested waiting.136
In the end, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs,
chose to keep Frayling on as principal. However, he did send him a letter outlining his
instructions for what was to be done when students escaped from the school:
1)

The information should be conveyed to the agent and to any police officialsthat may be available in the community;2)

A search should be instituted at once.137

In dealing with the issue, Indian Affairs had not been able to produce any documents indicating that principals had been instructed to follow such a course of actionin the past. By sending these simple direct instructions to only one principal, Hoey
passed up an opportunity to deliver a system-wide instruction on an issue that had
plagued that system in the past, and would continue to do so into the future. Fraylingremained on the job for another five years, until the end of 1944.138

598 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Beyond the lack of policy, there was also disregard for the policy that did exist. The
department did not follow its own internal policy for the review of student deaths. In
the event of a death, the Indian agent had specific responsibilities. He was supposed
to convene a board consisting of himself, the school principal, and the attending physician. Parents were to be asked to attend and make a statement or send a representative who could make a statement on their behalf.139 Instead, in this instance, Indian
agent Waddy mailed Frayling a copy of the forms to be filled out once the board hadcompleted its work, instructing him to complete it and return it to him.140 There isno evidence that the parents were ever contacted or given the opportunity to make areport. As Waddy admitted in his own report, “There was no board really as the principal made a written report.”141
The deaths of these children highlight many of the system’s failings. The poor living and working conditions that arose from the low level of funding, the harsh discipline used to maintain order under those conditions, and a determination to sever
the bonds between parent and child all combined to give students strong reason torun away. High student-to-staff ratios made it possible for students to slip away without being noticed. The government had developed regulations that compelled attendance at residential schools, but it didn’t exercise its right in this, as in other areas, tostipulate how children were to be cared for once they were in those schools. Instead,the school system went from tragedy to tragedy.

CHAPTER 25

Separating children fromparents: 1867–1939

Residential schools were intended to reshape Aboriginal children and detachthem from the influence of their parents. One of the most visible and memorable steps in this process took place at the time of their arrival at the school.
The process was outlined in the 1889 instructions that Deputy Minister Lawrence
Vankoughnet issued to British Columbia Bishop Paul Durieu prior to the opening of
the Roman Catholic school in Cranbrook, British Columbia. New pupils were to bebathed immediately. Their clothing, “if from its condition it is considered advisable,”
was to be taken from them and replaced with school clothing. The heads of new students were to be examined for vermin and, if necessary, “effectual means should at
once be taken to destroy them.”1
For many students, this process was shocking and distressful. Not only were students stripped of their home clothing, but their long hair, part of their cultural identity,
was usually cut off. Many children knew from their own beliefs that the cutting of hair
was part of a mourning tradition. When Daniel Kennedy had his braids clipped at the
Qu’Appelle school in the 1880s, he wondered if his mother had died, since his hair
had been cut so close to his scalp.2 Mike Mountain Horse was left in tears when hishair was cut off at the Anglican school on the Blood Reserve in what is now Alberta.3
Charlie Bigknife recalled his first day at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school:
First thing I knew, I was ushered into a room, which they called the playroom, I
didn’t know at the time. The farm instructor whose name was Mr. Redgrave andwho was an old sergeant from the First World War came in with a sheep’s shear
and cut my 4 braids off and threw them on the floor. After a while along came ayoung boy rolling a horse clippers into the room and that horse clippers bounced
over my head and gave me a bald head. After he got through, he said, “Now you
are no longer an Indian” and he gave me a slap on the head.4

Often, on their arrival, students were also given new names. At Alert Bay, Tlalis
became Charles Nowell.5 At Qu’Appelle, Ochankugahe became Daniel Kennedy.6 At
the Anglican school on the Blackfoot Reserve, Medicine Pipe Rider (itself a translation of a Siksika word) became Ben Calf Robe.7 In baptizing children, missionaries

600 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissioncommonly assigned them British or French names. In one case, a child on HerschelIsland in the Arctic Ocean was named David Copperfield, and in La Pierre’s House in
the Yukon, there was a Henry Venn, named for a leading figure in the British Church
Missionary Society.8 Newly arrived students were also assigned numbers. Margaret
Butcher, a member of the staff at the Kitamaat, British Columbia, school, recalled
the difficulty in getting newly arrived students who spoke no English “to understandeach her own number. First, pinning it on, then having it sewed on the clothes she
was wearing.”9 Butcher wrote, “I think it is very silly that all the Indians have English
names. It was Mr. Crosby’s plan to baptize with two names so we have English surnames as well. It spoils the individuality of the people in my opinion.”10
The first day of school was, in effect, an initiation into a continuing process of separation and loss. Aboriginal children were to be separated from their parents, theirfamily members, their language, and their culture and spiritual beliefs. This chapter
examines the ways that the schools sought to reduce and control contact between
parents and their children by severing the students’ links to their families and cultural traditions. The next two chapters examine school policy towards Aboriginal languages and spiritual beliefs. They are followed by a chapter that examines the ways inwhich the schools were involved in a government campaign to control and restructure
Aboriginal families through a process of arranged marriages.

Separating children from parents
One of the central goals of residential schooling was to break the bond between
child and parent. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney made this perfectly clear in1883 when, on the advent of the opening of the first three industrial schools, he wrote,using language borrowed from Nicholas Davin’s 1879 report:
Experience has taught that little can be done which will have a permanent
effect with the adult Indian, consequently, to create a lasting impression andelevate him above his brethren, we must take charge of the youth and keep him
constantly within the circle of civilization. I am confident that the Industrial
School now about to be established will be a principal feature in the civilizationof the Indian mind. The utility of Industrial Schools has long been acknowledgedby our neighbours across the line who have had much to do with the Indian.
In that country, as in this, it is found difficult to make day schools or [sic]reserves a success, because the influence of home associations is stronger thanthat of the school, and so long as such a state of things exists I fear that theinherited aversion to labour can never be successfully met. By the children being
separated from their parents and property and regularly instructed not only inthe rudiments of English language, but also in trades and agriculture, so that

Separating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 601

what is taught may not be readily forgotten, I can but assure myself that a greatend will be attained for the permanent and lasting benefit of the Indian.11

In a 1908 letter asking for an increase in the permitted enrolment at the Fort
Frances school in northwestern Ontario, Principal G. A. Poitras wrote that residential
schools were necessary to provide Aboriginal children with the sort of training theyneeded to survive economically. Day schools, he wrote, had been tried and failed.
“On account of the roaming habits of the Indians, it is impossible to get a large andregular attendance; besides, to civilize the Indian children you have to take them awayfrom their surroundings.”12 In a 1913 article in the Christian Guardian, S. R. McVitty,
the principal of the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, spoke of the pleasure
the staff experienced “as we watch evil tendencies fade away, and the nobler and better instincts spring forth and blossom, giving much promise of splendid fruit in theafter days.”13 Two years later, Kuper Island, British Columbia, principal W. Lemmens
wrote to the local Indian agent that the “only way of educating them is to bring themto an Industrial School, where they are completely under the control of their teachersand separated from the evil influences of most of their homes.”14 The view that homeinfluences were essentially “evil” was to shape government and church policy towards
parental visits, letter writing, and vacations during this period (from 1867 to 1939).
Not surprisingly, parents took every opportunity to visit their children. Whenschools were close by, they regularly tried to see them. This was one of the reasons why
Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed preferred the establishment of industrial schools“at a greater distance from their Reserves, than would be the case were they at theBoarding Schools.”15 Despite the distance, parents still visited the industrial schools.
At the High River school in what is now Alberta, Principal Albert Lacombe opposedparents camping outside the school grounds, since “their intercourse and bad influence demoralize the pupils very much. Of course this difficulty could very easily beremoved, by building a good high fence around the play-ground, so that the pupils
would be entirely separated from any obnoxious visitors.”16
At the Battleford and Qu’Appelle schools, principals Thomas Clarke and Joseph
Hugonnard were more welcoming than Lacombe was at High River. They believed
that, after visiting the schools, the parents would come away reassured that their children were being well treated. Many of the industrial schools had an “Indian receptionroom” set aside for such visits.17 Clarke wrote in 1888, “The Indians are beginning torealize the advantages to be derived from the school. The parents of the children are
allowed to visit them as frequently as they can get passes from their agents.”18
The passes he referred to were issued under the pass system that Hayter Reed had
instituted, without legislative authority, after the North-West Rebellion of 1885. The
system required First Nations people to obtain a pass from their Indian agent before
leaving the reserve. In 1889, Indian Affairs school inspector Alex McGibbon recommended, based on the large number of parents visiting the Qu’Appelle school, that602 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

it would be advisable “for the Principal to give no meals to any who have not passes
from the agents; and agents should be told not to give passes to any but those whohave children at the school and not oftener than once a month, or certainly not morethan twice a month.”19
Two years later, Reed discovered, to his displeasure, that Hugonnard had “thought
proper to fit up a place for the entertainment of Indian visitors, of whom I found anumber breakfasting the first morning I was at the school. A long table is provided forthem to take their meals at, and I found that a quantity of provisions were being given
to them.”20
That year, Dewdney, who was by then minister of Indian Affairs, warned Hugonnardthat “relations of the pupils are allowed to visit the school, to an extent which can
only be regarded as quite unnecessary and no doubt feeding such visitors accounts
to no small extent for the large consumption of supplies.” Dewdney said that at otherschools, “children can be obtained and kept” without allowing what Dewdney believed
to be excessive parental visiting. If Hugonnard could not limit visits, Dewdney said hewould be obliged to ask the “police to keep visitors off the precincts of the school.” Also,
children were not to be allowed to return home for visits, since “taking children in for
short terms and letting them go again is regarded as perhaps worse than useless.”21
In his defence, Hugonnard claimed that the regulations given to him when theschool opened stated that parents should not visit their children more than once
every two weeks. He said most parents visited only once a month, and he had “doneall that I reasonably could to lessen their visits.” This was counterproductive, he felt,
since “several times pupils were furtively taken away by their parents.”22
Reed was not convinced by Hugonnard’s arguments. He instructed Indian agentson the Prairies
to put into force regulations already issued, but so far disregarded. By these it isforbidden to allow Indians to visit the schools without a Pass; and when for goodreason, an occasional Pass may be issued, rations are to be given, and a noteof this made on the Pass, so that the Principal can have no excuse for receiving
Indians unprovided with Permits for their visits, or for giving licensed visitors
provisions.23

Parents were not always pleased by what they saw at the schools. An 1891 visit to
the Battleford school convinced parents from the Carlton and Duck Lake reserves
that the children were not being given enough to eat. In response, Indian agent P. J.
Williams wrote that he believed it was agreat mistake for to give [sic] Indians a pass for any extended period to visit theschool or to give passes to large Bands to go at once to visit children at the schoolas those Carlton and Duck Lake Indians made more discontent amongst theSeparating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 603

children at the school than anything that has come amongst them, as will beseen that some seven or eight deserted shortly after they left.

In conclusion, Williams proposed that rations not be issued to anyone who made“a nuisance out of their visits that these Carlton Indians did.”24
Many schools strictly controlled parental contact. In 1906, a woman from the Sarnia
Reserve was concerned about the lack of medical attention her foster son was receiving at the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario. When she went to visit the school,
she said, the principal not only refused to let her speak to her foster son, but also she
was not allowed to “come near the building.”25 The principal, T. T. George, explainedthat the woman, whom he described as the boy’s grandmother, had made attempts tovisit the boy in the school playground and when he was working.
This I refused to allow and informed her that any visitation would require to
be made in the office in the presence of an officer and all conversation carriedout in English. It is a rule of the Institute that persons other than parents or
guardians are allowed to visit pupils only when accompanied by an officer andthe conversation is carried out in English.

The rule also was applied to parents and guardians where there was “reason tobelieve that influence is being brought to bear upon the pupil to create discontent
and unrest leading to truancy or removal.”26 Visits, in short, were carried out under thesorts of conditions normally associated with a penal institute.
The belief that parents stirred up discontent continued into the twentieth century.
In 1917, Inspector Semmens noted that parents of children at the Cecilia Jeffrey school
in northwestern Ontario
visit the school frequently and remain for meals and talk a great deal with thechildre [sic]. More than this it is feared that they encourage their children in
disobedience and they resent every form of punishment. Complaints of thepupils are too readily believed by their guardians and the Principal finds that
their interference makes his work doubly hard.27

Sometimes, parents were denied access to their children. An E. Elliott wrote to
Indian Affairs in 1919 that when a father went to visit his son at the Kuper Island
school in British Columbia, he was not allowed to see him. According to the father,“The priest who was the principal would have nothing to do with me.” When the principal said the letter writer did not have a son enrolled at the school, Elliott explained
he was writing on behalf of a parent.28
In July 1928, Indian Affairs officials met with chiefs from the northwestern Ontario
region. Chief Gardner asked if there could be some land set aside so that parents could
stay in Kenora when visiting their children at the Cecilia Jeffrey school.29
When a mother in Manitoba complained, through a lawyer, about the lack ofaccommodations for parents visiting their children at the Birtle school in 1935, Indian604 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Affairs departmental secretary A. F. MacKenzie wrote that “the matter of visiting hours
and accommodation at Indian residential schools is left in the hands of the Principal
and staff of the schools.” This answer was far from accurate: from the outset of the residential school system, the government had instructed the principals to limit parental
visits. MacKenzie added, “Indian parents have the habit of visiting schools, indiscriminately, at any time and remaining for indefinite periods. While they have the right tosee their children, it must be at the time stated by the principal of the school.”30 In a
letter to the principal, MacKenzie advised, “Indians who come from a distance might
be permitted to remain over night but not for a longer period. The Indian parents fromthe nearby reserves should not be given meals and not be allowed to remain on thepremises over night.”31
Conflicts between parents and principals continued to the end of the 1930s. Ruben
Kesepapamotao filed a complaint in 1937 about the treatment he had received when
he attempted to visit his children at the St. Andrew’s school at Whitefish Lake, Alberta.
According to his statement:
I was talking to my children. I saw Mr. Cathcart come out of the school home,and he gave me a push off the platform. I went on the platform again and Mr.
Cathcart gave me another push for no apparent reason that I know of. Mr.
Reynolds the farm instructor, came and pushed me to the Indian room which isabout 50 yards again for no apparent reason. They acted as if they were angry.
Mr. Cathcart said: “See that fence, if I do not want anyone inside there, they do
not have to come in.” My wife and I waited in the Indian room till the children
were let out of the school. I have not gone back to the C. of E. [Church of Englandor Anglican] Mission. I do not want my children to go there again.32

Letter writing between parents and children also was strictly controlled. Deputy
Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet’s 1889 instructions for the new industrial school in
Cranbrook, British Columbia, specified that the principal was to require students towrite to their parents twice a year. He was also instructed to read “all letters sent andreceived.” Pupils were not to be allowed to post letters on their own, or to receive letters from the local post office.33 In 1901, parents of children attending the Mount Elginschool complained that their children were not responding to letters they had written
to them.34 The students were allowed to write their parents once every two weeks. The
principal, W. W. Shepherd, opened and read the letters the children sent and the ones
they received, and placed them under “close sensorship [sic].” At times, he intercepted
letters and found it necessary “to prevent letters written in Indian from going out.”35
Vacations presented an even greater challenge to the schools than parental visits or
letter writing. In addition to concerns that students on vacations would be exposed to
the “evil” influences of reserve life that residential schools were intended to eradicate,vacations were feared because they amounted to a form of authorized truancy. Once

Separating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 605

the children were out of the schools and back at home, it was often very difficult to getthem to return.
Initially, industrial schools and boarding schools had different vacation policies.
The boarding schools allowed students approximately forty-five days of holidays. It
was not uncommon for them to allow children to go home on the weekends, depending on their location and proximity to the reserves.36 The industrial school vacation
policy was a function of the per capita funding formula. For industrial schools to qualify for their full per capita grant, students were required to be in school for at least 340
days a year. In theory, this allowed for twenty-five days of vacation a year. But the process was complicated by the Indian Affairs policy of dividing the year into four quarters, and refusing to pay the full per capita rate if a student was not in attendance foreighty-five days of each ninety-one-day quarter. Schools could give students two setsof ten- to twelve-day vacations, if the vacations were provided at the end and beginning of consecutive quarters. But they could not give students twenty-five days off in a
row without a significant loss in revenue.37
The fact that industrial schools provided far fewer holidays (twenty-five) than theboarding schools (forty-five plus the weekends when some children returned home)
was one of the government rationales for the significant difference in funding between
the two types of schools.38 It was also one of the reasons why parents preferred boarding schools to industrial schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Many of the early boarding schools had developed their own vacation system. In the
1880s at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, two-thirds of the students
were given a summer holiday each year. Those who remained behind were required
to do chores around the school, for which they received pocket money. Parents wereto pay to transport their children home for the holidays. When parents enrolled theirchild at the school, they left a deposit of $10. The fee was to be forfeited if the child waswithdrawn from the school early or did not return from holiday (without a reasonablecause). Widows were obliged to pay only a $5 deposit.39
Many students attending industrial schools came from locations several days’ travel
away from the school. As the Anglican Committee on Indian Missions in Rupert’s Landobserved in 1891, given the short period allowed for holidays at industrial schools, it
was “impossible to give holidays to those coming from distant points.” The Anglicans
were in agreement with the government view that “holidays should be given as seldom as possible,” but felt that the existing policy was “tantamount to saying that no
holidays whatever are to be given.” Once parents became aware of this, it was difficult
to recruit students. The policy also put a considerable strain on staff members who
had to supervise students on a year-round basis. If the government were to continue
with the policy, the Anglicans thought, it should fully explain the policy to “leading
Indians on reserves.” The Anglican preference, however, was for the government to606 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

allow a vacation of three weeks a year for students who lived close to the schools, andsix weeks for those who lived at a distance.40
Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed opposed the Anglican proposal for a longer holiday, saying he was against “anything having a tendency to encourage the admissionof a greater number of pupils for shorter periods to such Institutions.” Neither was
he keen on making “known the existing regulations to leading Indians on reserves.”
As noted in an earlier chapter, he said he would make all school regulations known
to “Agents, Church authorities, and Teachers, but so far as Indians are concerned, I
think it will be best to deal with them, in so far as matters, such as the one now underconsideration, are concerned, individually, as each case presents itself.” First Nations
communities were not to be consulted about school policies.41
It appears that the school vacation policy actually tightened in the 1890s. In 1889,
both the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, and the Mount Elgin school allowed
regular vacations for the students, who, at that time, were all there voluntarily.42 Eight
years later, the Indian commissioner for the Prairies expressed his concern over thefact that students at the Duck Lake school, in what is now Saskatchewan, were being
granted annual holidays. “There is nothing on file here,” he wrote, “to show that any
boarding or Industrial school has been authorized to observe annual holidays.”43 In
1904, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson attempted to explain the vacation practiceat the Mohawk Institute—or the lack thereof—to his deputy minister.
Class-work is discontinued for six weeks during the months of July and Augustand very few of the pupils are allowed out of the school during this period. The
Principal assumes the responsibility of granting holidays in special cases. It is
not the practice to allow all the pupils to go from any of the Industrial schools.44

In 1908, R. N. Cairns, the principal of the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack,
British Columbia, wrote, “One source of annoyance and friction is the question of holidays. You never can be sure that they will come back voluntarily.” Cairns blamed theparents: “The pupils would come back if the parents would leave them alone.”45 In
the case of students who returned from vacation after the official start of the school
year, Indian Affairs refused to pay any per capita grant for the days they had missed.
In 1908, the principal of the Wikwemikong school on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Th.
Couture, protested this policy. He pointed out that the school had to pay all its fixed
costs even if the student was not present. Instead of punishing the school by denying
it a portion of the per capita grant, he suggested the government withhold the parents’
Treaty annuity.
Whilst as things are now, the parents, selfish and thoughtless as they are,set off [into the country] on the eve, nay sometimes on the very day of the
opening of the school, and bring their children with them. Some do it throughSeparating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 607

thoughtlessness perhaps, but some do it for the mere sake of setting us at
defiance and worrying us.46

Indian agent C. L. D. Sims advised him that the government could not withhold
Treaty annuities in such cases. Instead, he recommended that “leave of absence
should not be granted unless the school authorities are reasonably satisfied the childwill be returned.”47
According to the 1910 contract between the churches and the government, classes
at boarding schools were to be held five days a week, and “industrial exercises” were
to be held six days a week. There could be no more than one month of vacation, which
was to be taken between July 1 and October 1 each year. During that month, children
were allowed to visit their homes, but Indian Affairs would “not pay any part of thetransportation either going or returning.”48
In 1915, a report from Indian Affairs medical official Dr. O. Grain noted that students at the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school were “allowed the privilege of goinghome and remaining there more often than is inductive to their benefit.” The school
principal was reminded that students at that school were limited to “one months [sic]holiday each summer.”49
Government control and coordination of vacation policy, as in so many other matters, was sporadic at best. During the First World War, the Mount Elgin school began
giving students two months of holiday, and the school principal continued the practice into the post-war period.50 In 1922, Duncan Campbell Scott, by then deputy minister of Indian Affairs, wrote to the Mount Elgin principal, asking “if you would pleaserefresh my memory” as to the length of vacation time allowed at Mount Elgin. Whenhe did so, he pointed out that at other schools, the per capita grant was paid for only
one month of holiday.51
In May 1925, a new vacation policy was announced, one that applied equally to all
residential schools. Annual leave with grant would be allowed for any period up to forty-three days. These six weeks of holiday were to be taken consecutively at the principal’s discretion, during the summer quarter. But the extension of the summer holiday
came at a price. In announcing the policy, Superintendent of Indian Education Russell
T. Ferrier wrote that “giving pupils leave from Indian residential schools at Christmas
is considered unwise: and in future, grant will not be allowed if holidays at this season
are given without permission. At no school should week-end holidays be given.”
Before orphans and the children of destitute families could be granted summer
holidays, the principal had to ensure that satisfactory arrangements had been madefor their care. Summer holidays would not be granted to those who had not returned
from the previous holiday voluntarily. The principal could also refuse to grant holidays to those who had truancy records. Students who lived at a considerable distancefrom the school were not to be granted holidays “unless specific safeguards concerning their return can be taken.”52 In recommending the policy change to Scott, Ferrier

608 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

had noted that the measure would allow for longer staff holidays. It was also a case ofgovernment policy adapting to reality, since, according to Ferrier, “some principals
allow six weeks or more, without the permission of the Department and have been
doing it for many years.”53
Not all principals implemented this policy change. The Sandy Bay Band in
Manitoba had agreed to the construction of a boarding school on the reserve, providing the students who attended would be allowed to go home on Saturday morningand return Saturday evening.54 The school did not end the practice until 1932. On thefirst Friday after school resumed, one father, William Beaulieu, went to the school andtook his son Clifford home against the principal’s wishes, saying “he was lonesome.”
A Mounted Police agent went to the reserve and met with the father, who agreed to let
the constable take his son back to school. In his report, the officer wrote that “if somesteps had not been taken … other parents would go to the school and take their children away without the consent of the principal.”55
It was not until 1933, eight years after the official vacation policy change, that a
newly appointed principal of the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school ended a long-standing policy of allowing parents to visit the school on Sundays and take their children
home for a meal. Local Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander supported the move: “While
this procedure has been fairly satisfactory and has never led to a great deal of trouble I know it is not customary at most residential schools and I do not approve of it.”
Under Acting Principal P. Chatelain’s new rule, children would be allowed to visit theirhomes only under special circumstances. According to Ostrander, when the rule wasannounced, thirteen parents visited his office; three favoured the new policy, whileten opposed it.56
Some students, often those who were orphaned or whose families were in distress,
reported enjoying their summers at the schools. Lizzie Grosbeck, who attended Mount
Elgin for two and a half years in the 1920s, said, “I liked it so much I stayed there in
the holidays. It was a nice place—they took in a lot of children and helped people.”57
But the memory of Peter Smith, who attended the Mohawk Institute during the same
period, was much more typical. “When it came time to leave for the summer holidays and no-one came there. I used to look out the window and look out the window,
waiting for someone to come. But it never happened to me. I was very disappointed. I
never really blamed anyone.”58
In 1930, the principal of the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school, N. C. D. Dubois,
objected to the directive that principals “should not allow annual leaves to children
who have had to be brought in under escort upon the expiration of former vacations.”
He said:
To keep such a bunch of sad delinquents at school like prisoners during
vacations would necessitate special and continual watching from the part of thestaff because they would run away upon the very first occasion. Imagine what

Separating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 609

trouble it would be for the principal and teachers of having such a disagreeabletask to perform.

That fall at his school, nineteen students had not returned from vacation. He had
visited their reserves and spoken to their parents, only to discover it was “impossible
to convince them of the necessity and great advantages of having their children at theschool.” He certainly did not think it either “fair or practicable” to force those students
to stay at the school over the next summer if he was ever able to persuade them toreturn to school.59
In 1931, Ferrier sent a circular to all principals, stating that the department opposed
weekend holidays. There was a slight loosening of other restrictions, since there wasnow no objection to pupils going to their homes for Christmas Day, or on a Saturday
or a Sunday. In such cases, students were expected to return to the school beforenightfall.60
The cost of transporting children home for vacation was another ongoing issue. In
1933, the principal of the Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, requested
that Indian Affairs pay the $150 needed to send children home for the summer holiday“in the event of the children’s parents not being in the position to meet the same.”61 It
is not clear if that request was met, but in 1935, the government was providing $100 tosend children from that school home for the summer vacation.62
In many cases, due to travel costs or concerns about home life, children were notallowed vacation. In 1933, Indian agent A. A. Johnston was informed by the principalof the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school that no children from his agency “would
be granted vacation this summer.” If parents objected, they were to be reminded thatwhen they committed their children to the school, they had signed over “the care of
the children to the Superintendent, who has the authority to judge how long the children must be kept there, and under what conditions they may be granted vacations.”63
This was a reiteration of a point Deputy Minister Scott had made in 1913: parents
were not guardians of their own children, even during the summer vacation. According
to Scott, “The principal of a boarding school remains the guardian of a pupil while onvacation, and he may recall a pupil should he deem it necessary for good and sufficient cause.”64 As noted earlier, the admission form used from 1900 onwards stipulated
that parents were making application for admission “for such term as the Department
of Indian Affairs may deem proper.” The form also required parents to consent to a
provision that the “principal or head teacher of the institution for the time being shallbe the guardian of the said child.”65
By the early 1930s, the principals were pushing for a longer vacation period, consistent with what was already provided in Canadian public schools. In 1933, the principalof the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school called for a two-month summer holiday,
saying that, given the distances that children had to travel, “it is almost impossible toget the children back at the prescribed time.”66 Blue Quills, Alberta, school principal

610 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Joseph Angin lobbied Ottawa for a two-month holiday in 1934.67 The request was
rejected: no exceptions could be made to the rule that allowed for forty-three days ofholiday.68
It was not until 1937 that the vacation period was extended to two months. The holidays were to be granted in July and August. In announcing the new policy, R. A. Hoey,
the new superintendent of Welfare and Training, said the extension of the summer
holiday did away with the necessity for “week-end holidays or holidays at Christmas
time.”69 These holidays, which had been eliminated by the 1925 policy, were gradually reintroduced. Hoey thought that doing away with the Christmas holiday would
reduce student exposure to “epidemics that are usually prevalent at that season of theyear.” Christmas holidays brought with them additional travel expenses and createdtruancy problems if children refused to return to school—a problem the department
preferred to deal with only once a year.70 Other elements of the previous policy continued. Orphans and children of destitute families were to be granted holidays only ifarrangements were made for their care. According to Hoey, “This provision [to ensure
there was proper home supervision] has special application for girls from twelve tosixteen years of age. Extreme care should be exercised in the case of students whose
homes are distant from the school. Unless special safeguards concerning their returncan be taken, holidays should not be granted.”71
The files from the Shubenacadie school for the mid- to late 1930s provide an insight
into how the federal policies actually were implemented. Two months of vacation
may have been the rule, but transportation costs, limited funding, and concerns
about home conditions meant that many children spent the summer in the school.
In the mid-1930s, Charles Hudson, an Indian agent in New Brunswick, reported hewas being continually contacted by parents seeking to have their children returned tothem from Shubenacadie for the summer holiday. In some cases, the parents offeredto pay to transport the children to and from the school. 72 One of these parents, George
Paul of Red Bank, New Brunswick, wrote to Indian Affairs Minister Thomas Crerar in1937 that he and his wife would “like to have our children home for vacation. Theynever come home since they left home. Its [sic] about six yrs. since I have seen them.”
He offered to pay for the transportation to and from the school. “The children wrote
to us and they said that they were lonesome. They want to come home this coming
vacation.” He concluded that his wife was “a kind of one that worries about children
so please do your best.”73
Agent Hudson expressed reservations about the proposal, asking “can we dependon the parents providing their return expences [sic] and will they even let them goback without some trouble.”74 The acting superintendent of Indian Education, J. D.
Sutherland, took Hudson’s point. He doubted that parents would provide the return
fare, and, “as our funds are limited, the Department is not in a position to incur the
expenditure that would be required.” He added that it was probably in the students’Separating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 611

best interest to stay at school for the summer, since they would be “taken on picnics
and that other entertainment is provided for them.”75 In some cases, children wereallowed to go home if the Indian agent had either collected the return fare from theparents in advance, or required the parents to forward the funds to the Shubenacadie
school principal. In the case of Mr. Paul, Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan recommended that his children be sent home for vacation if he forwarded the transportation
money to the school in advance.76
In 1936, Mary Hammond, a Shubenacadie student, wrote to her sister in Chester
Basin, Nova Scotia, asking for her assistance in coming home for the summer.
I was glad to know that you want me this summer. I know you always wantme. Its [sic] too bad to tell you that you shouldn’t be expecting me home thissummer. Why don’t you write and tell him you want me this summer. Try hard
and I’ll pray that Government will let me go home. Because gee if you were me
you wont [sic] like to stay. If you knew how much I want to go home you would
jump over this roof. Every day I except [sic] some telegram or letter that you
got a letter from Government and saying that I’m to go home. Write a letter toGovernment and tell him you want me home. If you only get me home I’ll be so
grateful to you when I get home.77

Her sister, Mrs. Charles Toney, wrote a letter to the local Indian agent, asking if
her sister could spend the summer with her and her husband.78 Without giving any
reasons, the agent recommended that the request be turned down.79 Indian Affairs
official J. D. Sutherland responded that pupils would not be allowed to go home ifthey lived far from the school or if their home conditions were “reported unsatisfactory.” He added, “As it is understood from your letter that the home conditions of the
Toney children are unsatisfactory, the Principal of the Shubenacadie School will be
instructed to keep these children during the holiday period.”80
Shubenacadie principal J. P. Mackey was more than willing to provide guidance
as to whether children should be allowed to go home. In responding to a letter from
Indian agent John Langley, in Barra Head, Nova Scotia, on behalf of a First Nations
father, Mackey wrote that when the children of one family were allowed to returnhome a few years earlier, “the father went to the Agent for extra relief rations because
the children were home. If the home conditions are such that the parents cannot carefor the children without extra relief, we understand it to be the wish of the Dept., thatthe children should not go home.” He added that it was his understanding that in thecase that the Indian agent was proposing, “the father was having a woman of low reputation come to the house, and would be up half the night drinking.”81
Every fall, Mackey, like other principals, had to pursue students who had not
returned from their summer vacation. When, at the end of the summer of 1937,
twelve-year-old Louis Thomas did not return, Mackey informed the boy’s father that
he must either return him to the school or arrange to have an Indian agent discharge

612 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the boy from the school. A discharge could be arranged if the boy was going to attend
a local day school. Otherwise, Mackey said, he would report the matter to IndianAffairs. If that happened, he warned, “the r.c.m.p. will take Louis back to the schooland he will remain until sixteen years of age and have no further vacations.”82 Dr. H.
S. Everett, a physician from the New Brunswick community where the Thomas family
lived, intervened in the case. He wrote to Indian Affairs, saying that neither the boy
nor his father wanted him to return to the school, since Louis said “he gets beatings
at Shubenacadie.” Everett noted that it would be possible for Louis to attend a ruralschool that was across the road from his father’s house.83 Mackey dismissed the allegation of beatings as “the usual line of the Indian.” It was, he wrote,
the old story over again. The Indian does not want to do what he is told or follow
regulations but must have his own way. Personally it is a matter of indifference tome whether the boy comes back or not, but I think it should be impressed upon
the Indian that he cannot have his own way in matters concerning which the
Department has set regulations.84

In the end, Louis’s discharge was approved, but Indian Affairs refused to provide
any grant “for him at a white school,” thus casting him into an educational limbo.
Without such a grant, public schools would not accept a First Nations student, since
the cost of their education was viewed as a federal responsibility.85
Mackey’s frustration with Aboriginal people was never far below the surface. Whenpassing on the receipts for the 1937 vacation expenses, he wrote, “We do not know
why, but the Indians had the idea that because it was Coronation year, that all children were to go home for vacation. This is the first time that any number from New
Brunswick went home for vacation.” He said the majority of those who had gone home
had been at the school for between four and six years. He also noted that the only way
he expected to be able to pay for needed dental and tonsil work at the school was withmoney intended for vacation expenses.86 That seems to have been what happened. In
the following year, Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan concluded that five children
from one family should stay at the Shubenacadie school because “the Department’s
funds are not sufficient to permit us to allow all children from Residential schools togo home for the summer holidays.”87
When Nova Scotia Indian agent C. A. Spinney asked him about the Christmas holiday policy, Phelan wrote thatno valid reason has yet been given to us why holidays should be allowed atthat period of the year. There is no question that the children attending the
Shubenacadie Residential School receive every possible care and attention,and in addition at Christmas time there are always special festivities which thechildren enjoy.88

Separating children from parents: 1867–1939 • 613

Parents obviously felt differently. When the parents from the Cambridge Reservein Nova Scotia had asked Spinney to arrange to have their children returned home for
Christmas, he told them that this was “against the rules of the Dept.” To Spinney’s disgust, this did not stop the parents. “These people went so far as [sic] have a man go to
the school for their children. They did not get the children. Father Mackey would not
let them take the children.” Referring to a woman who had written to Indian Affairs in
Ottawa about the holiday issue, Spinney complained:
This Mrs. Nibley who you had the letter from thought by writing she would be
able to get her children home for Xmas.
These people think they can have their own way and would like to do so andwhen they find out they cannot they get mad.89

Parents’ desire to see their children at Christmas, or at any other time, was apparently viewed as being selfish and unreasonable. These official attitudes were not limited to the Maritimes. The mother of a child at the Kuper Island, British Columbia,
school was told in 1937 that her daughter could come home for the summer holidays only if she gave “a written guarantee that she will be returned to the school by
the opening date, after the holidays.”90 That year, two children from the same school
were kept there for the summer because their parents were not legally married.91 The
following year, the Indian agent on the Blood Reserve in Alberta noted that “somerestlessness appears among the parents in regard to the weekly holiday problem, andmany appeals are made to me for this privilege, which is of course denied.” When fiveparents showed up at his home to seek permission to take their children to the sports
events being held in Cardston on the Victoria Day long weekend, he was able to reportthat “all were denied.”92 A failure to enforce the rules was taken as a sign of weakness—
one that First Nations families would “exploit.” When, at the end of the 1939 summer
holiday, 115 students at the St. Paul’s school on the Blood Reserve refused to return tothe school, Indian agent J. E. Pugh attributed the problem to “lax parents” who choseto “take advantage” of the fact that the truancy section of the Indian Act had not been
enforced in that region since 1932.93
Principals such as Mackey, and Indian agents such as Spinney and Pugh, may haveentered into their work with well-meant intentions. But the broader colonial projectand mentality in which the residential schools were embedded served only to generate resistance on the part of parents and children who were not prepared to have every
aspect of their lives controlled and changed. This resistance left principals and agents
feeling angry, embittered, and unappreciated, and locked them into a cycle of conflict.
The effort to separate children from their parents was, of course, one part of thelarger campaign to remake Aboriginal people. Physical separation from their community was coupled with separation from both their language and their culture.

CHAPTER 26

Suppressing Aboriginal
languages: 1867–1939

O

ne of the few issues on which federal residential school policy was crystal
clear was that of language. First, students were to be taught to speak English(or, in certain, limited cases, French). Second, to ensure the rapid adoption ofEnglish, Aboriginal languages were to be suppressed. Although the use of Aboriginal
languages was not completely banned at all times and in all places, it is clear that it
was seen as a sign of progress if a principal could report that Aboriginal languages
were not spoken in the school, or, even better, that children had forgotten how to
speak them. Students often were punished for speaking their native language.
The school language policies created painful divisions within families, making it
difficult, if not impossible, for children to communicate with their parents, grandparents, and other family members. They also struck at Aboriginal societies’ ability
to transmit their cultural beliefs and practices—both intimately connected to language—from one generation to the next.

The policy: “Rigorously exclude the use of Indian dialects”
The government’s hostile approach to Aboriginal languages was reiterated in government directive after government directive. In his 1883 letter to Battleford school
principal Thomas Clarke, outlining his expectations for the country’s first government-funded industrial school, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney wrote that in
the classroom, great attention was to be given “towards imparting a knowledge of theart of reading, writing and speaking the English language rather than that of Cree.”1 In
1889, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Lawrence Vankoughnet informed Bishop Paul
Durieu that in the new Cranbrook, British Columbia, school, mealtime conversations
were to be “conducted exclusively in the English language.” The principal was also to
set a fixed time during which “Indian” could be spoken.2 After their visits to the Carlisle
school in Pennsylvania, both Indian Affairs school inspector A. J. Macrae and IndianCommissioner Hayter Reed stressed the importance of banning the use of Aboriginal
languages. Reed was impressed by the fact that at Carlisle, “so much importance is616 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

attached to the use of the English tongue alone, that all orders and explanations fromthe very first are given in English repeated again and again, if necessary, with patience.
No books in the Indian tongue explanatory of the subject matter of the school books
are allowed.” Although it was not yet Canadian policy to do so, he believed “that it willin the long run, be found best to rigorously exclude the use of Indian dialects.”3 After
his visit to Carlisle, Macrae recommended that English should be “the only allowedmeans of communication.”4 In 1890, when Reed was instructed to develop a draft setof school regulations, he proposed, “The vernacular is not to be taught in any schools.
At the most the native language is only to be used as a vehicle of teaching and should
be discontinued as such as soon as practicable.” English was to be the primary language of instruction, “even where French is taught.”5Reed’s recommendations were never incorporated into a formal regulation.
However, he was promoted to the position of deputy minister of Indian Affairs in
1893, and the following year, the department published its “Programme of Studies
for Indian Schools.” As noted in an earlier chapter, this document maintained, “Everyeffort must be made to induce pupils to speak English, and to teach them to understand it; unless they do the whole work of the teacher is likely to be wasted.”6
In 1895, Reed argued that a First Nations child “must be taught the English language. So long as he keeps his native tongue, so long will he remain a community
apart.” Without English, a student was, Reed wrote,permanently disabled, and from what Indians have said to me and from requests
made by them, it is evident that they are beginning to recognize the force of thisthemselves. With this end in view the children in all the industrial and boarding
schools are taught in the English language exclusively.7

In keeping with this policy approach, the 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches required that schools were
not to employ, except for a period not exceeding six months, any teacher or
instructor until evidence satisfactory to the Superintendent General has been
submitted to him that such teacher or instructor is able to converse with thepupils under his charge in English and is able to speak and write the English
language fluently and correctly and possess such other qualifications as in theopinion of the Superintendent General may be necessary.8

The policy remained unchanged into the 1930s, when the “Programme of Studies
for Indian Schools” advised teachers, “Every effort must be made to induce pupils to
speak English and to teach them to understand it. Insist on English even during thesupervised play. Failure in this means wasted efforts.” The only leeway granted was forsome schools in Québec, where classes could be conducted in French.9
Even before the federal policies were developed, some school principals had linked
the teaching of English with the suppression of Aboriginal languages. Principal E. F.

Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 617

Wilson of the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, wrote in 1884 that “itwas of course a great object to make the children talk English. Twice a week I had an
English class, and taught them to repeat English words and sentences, to point to theireyes, nose, ears, &c., and to bring me things I specified.” The speaking of Aboriginal
languages was limited to one hour every day. Each Saturday, he gave students buttons, each marked with a specific pattern. “If any of them heard a companion speak
Indian he was to demand a button, and on the following Saturday, the buttons were
exchanged for nuts.”10 Those who spoke Aboriginal languages were denied treats; those
who informed on students who spoke their own language were rewarded. Wilson
reported, “Not a word of Indian is heard from our Indian boys after six months in theinstitution. All their talk among themselves while at play, is in English. Even those who
knew not a word of the English tongue when they came to us last fall, now talk nothing else among themselves.” It appears that Wilson also moved on to a more punitive
approach than simply denying students nuts for speaking their own language. As he
described it, “We bring this about principally by great strictness—sometimes punishing heavily any old pupil, who presumes to break the rule. The boys feel the benefit of
it, and do not rebel.”11
In 1887, Principal E. Claude boasted that his thirty students at the High Riverschool, in what is now Alberta, “all understand English passably well and few areunable to express themselves in English. They talk English in recreation. I scarcely
need any coercive means to oblige them to do so.”12
At the Battleford school, Principal Thomas Clarke reported far less success. He
wrote in 1887 that
we have experienced a great difficulty in inducing the boys and girls to speak
English among themselves in every day life. For some time indeed, the apparent
results were discouraging. A change for the better, as I am gratified to say, is fastcoming about, as a result of every day teaching being carried on in English.

He also thought that the use of English was encouraged by the fact that there wereboth Cree and Assiniboine students at the school. In such cases, it was thought that inorder to communicate with one another, these students would have to learn English.13
The continued use of Aboriginal languages at the school made Clarke a target offederal criticism. In 1888, Indian Affairs inspector A. J. Macrae complained that at theBattleford school:
Teachers do not seem, in all cases, to understand the paramount importance of
instruction in English, and in the ideas of the citizen. Without a knowledge of ourlanguage, when the children now being introduced grow up, they will be unable
to mix with their white neighbors and cannot possibly become assimilated withthem.14

618 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Hayter Reed echoed this criticism in 1890. He said that on a recent visit to theBattleford school, there was not a proper regard “to making the children speak English.
During the whole time of my visit there appeared to be a marked lack of endeavor
upon the part of the officials to see that they used English in preference to the vernacular, and I did not observe that degree of tidiness which should exist in such an
institution.”15
In that year’s annual report, Battleford principal Clarke wrote:
Strenuous efforts are made to prevent the use of any Indian dialect in theinstitution. This is, of course, no easy task, especially with the boys received
newly from the reserves, who are very obstinate in adhering to the use of theirown tongue; but it will, with patience, not prove impossible to accomplish.16

In October 1884, Principal Joseph Hugonnard asked to be allowed to admit five
English-speaking boys to the Qu’Appelle school in what is now Saskatchewan. He said
that if this were done, the First Nations students would begin to speak English during
their recreation period: “I am sure that they will learn more English during recreation
hours than otherwise.”17 In 1886, Hugonnard once more sought to have an Englishspeaking boy admitted to the school, saying “it would be of the greatest service to ourefforts to induce the boys to practice speaking English.”18 These proposals met withinitial opposition from Indian Affairs. Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reedsaid he believed that instead of teaching English to the First Nations children, “thewhite boys would learn Indian and converse with the pupils in that language.”19 IndianCommissioner Dewdney opposed the measure because he thought the students
would learn “at the best, imperfect English” from the Métis boys Hugonnard wished toadmit.20 He changed his mind when Hugonnard sought admittance for a larger groupof boys. Dewdney concluded that the “white boys will cultivate amongst themselvesthat spirit of perseverance and independence that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon raceand in which the Indians are so lacking.” Ongoing exposure to the “white boys” would
supply the First Nations children “with a moral educational influence which may
prove to be of much service.”21 Hugonnard rejoiced in 1886 that he had been granted
permission “to take in a few English-speaking boys, although the condition of $60 per
annum for each pupil is heavy and even impossible for most of the farmers to pay.”22

The missionary practice
The insistence that the students learn English and that all lessons be in English
was not in keeping with the approach in which many of the early missionaries had
been trained. Catholic and Protestant missionaries were expected to learn the languages of the people they were going to convert, and to carry out their work in thoselanguages. Father Hugonnard, for example, had been born and raised in France, andSuppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 619

came to St. Boniface in 1874. Once in the Canadian West, he learned Cree, Saulteaux,and English.23 At the Qu’Appelle school, he taught a daily catechism class in Cree. He
encouraged the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns), some of whom had learned Cree,to teach the students in Cree first, then in English.24 He also prepared a Cree-English
primer, and arranged to have the federal government pay for the printing of 2,000
copies.25 The English-born John Horden, the founder of the Anglican school at Moose
Factory, was fluent in Cree and could speak Ojibway, Inuktitut, and Chipewyan. He
also translated many Christian writings into Cree syllabics.26 In 1911, eighteen years
after Horden’s death, his influence was still clearly apparent at the school. Acting
Principal D. D. Renison noted that although the children coming to the school did
not know how to speak English, “many can read and write in the Indian syllabic character.”27 One of the two religious services the students were required to attend each
Sunday was conducted in Cree.28
Measures taken by provincial and federal governments to suppress the French language in the Canadian West and in the residential schools may have given the Catholicteachers and principals, many of whose first language was French, a greater sensitivity
to the issue of language loss. In Alberta, the Blue Quill school’s Moccasin Telegraph, astudent publication, had articles by students written in syllabics in the 1930s.29
Although the early missionaries learned Aboriginal languages, in later years, many
school staff members were discouraged from developing an understanding of thelanguages the children grew up speaking. On her arrival at the Methodist boarding
school at Kitamaat, British Columbia, in 1916, teacher Margaret Butcher was told thatthe local First Nations people spoke “a language of their own which is understood
nowhere else.” Consequently, it was not seen as being “worth learning.” The students,
she wrote, “are forbidden to speak it in the Home so I shall not learn Kit a maat.”30
The degree to which the government policy came to override the missionary practice is perhaps best expressed in the report of Oblate Superior General Théodore
Labouré. After an extensive inspection of Oblate missions and schools in 1935, Labouré
expressed concern over the number of Oblates who could not speak Aboriginal languages, and the strictness with which prohibitions against speaking Aboriginal languages were enforced. He wrote:
The ban on children speaking Indian, even during recreation, was so strict insome of our schools that any failure would be severely punished—to the pointthat children were led to consider the speaking of their native tongue to be aserious offense, and when they returned home they were ashamed to speak itwith their parents.31

In what may have been a response to Labouré’s criticism, in 1939, the Oblate
Fathers’ Committee on Indian Missions adopted a resolution that First Nations people be taught “to read in their own language and in syllabic characters or Roman

620 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

characters,” and that nuns and religious teachers “learn to read and understand thelanguages of those who are in their charge.”32

The government policy in practice: “Manyof them never make use of the Cree”
Three themes emerge from the reports of principals and inspectors in relation tolanguage instruction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is
the great difficulty that schools and students faced when the children came to school
not speaking the language in which all instruction was to be given. The second is that
inspectors criticized principals if they heard children speaking Aboriginal languages,
and praised them if it appeared that English was the only language being used at theschool. The third is that it was seen as a great accomplishment if it could be reported
that children had forgotten how to speak their native tongue. The loss of Aboriginal
languages was used as an informal measure of the success of government policy.
The fact that few students spoke the language in which the schools were supposed
to be conducted presented an almost irresolvable problem. In 1889, Metlakatla,
British Columbia, principal John Scott noted, “The principal hindrance to progressarises from so very few of the children understanding, I may say, any English, andfrom an unwillingness on the part of the few to make use of the little they know.”33
When the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school opened in 1891, none of the students spoke English. As a result, Principal J. M. J. Lejacq felt he “could not proscribe
the use of the native language always and everywhere. This taken into consideration,
we may say that the progress made by most of the boys in the English language is very
creditable.”34 In 1894, Lejacq reported,
Amongst the boys, the Indian language is a thing of the past: English is the orderof the day, but I must confess that their pronunciation is not yet perfect, although
improving slowly all the time. Amongst the girls the English language does nottake as well as amongst the boys. The girls take no pride in being able to speak
English.35

In 1896, he was still voicing the same complaint, reporting that while the boys werespeaking English, “the girls do not show so much willingness to comply with the ruleprohibiting the use of the Indian Language.”36
Kuper Island, British Columbia, principal George Donckele wrote in 1891, “Ourgreatest difficulty at present consists in making the children speak English. Although
they understand a good deal of it, they are always inclined to speak the Indian dialect
amongst themselves.”37
When the Red Deer school opened in 1894, Principal John Nelson noted that

Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 621

in the use of English all has not been accomplished that could be desired,doubtless partially attributable to several of the staff being conversant with theIndian language, therefore the more convenient means of communication. To
facilitate the use of the English tongue, every evening each pupil is required to
speak at least one English sentence of their own composition.

The Reverend R. B. Steinhauer worked as a residential school teacher, and was fluent in Aboriginal languages. He was a son of Henry Steinhauer, an Ojibway man who
had been converted to Methodism in Ontario in the early nineteenth century andwent on to work as a missionary in the Canadian Northwest.38
As documented above, the loss of Aboriginal language skills was reported as a signof progress. In 1893, school inspector T. P. Wadsworth wrote that, according to theprincipal of the File Hills school in what is now Saskatchewan, the children spoke only
English, even at play, and that “one little fellow has forgotten almost entirely his native
dialect.” In addition, none of the students had wished to attend “the sun dance heldon the reserve near the school.”39 Battleford school principal E. Matheson wrote in
the 1898 Indian Affairs annual report, “The pupils are steadily and surely acquiring
the English language and the practice of speaking out distinctly. Many of them nevermake use of the Cree at all now, although it is their mother tongue.”40
The process began anew each year. In 1896, Kamloops principal A. M.
Carion reported:
Nearly all the children have made satisfactory progress, though perhaps a little
slow, owing to the fact that twenty-five new pupils were admitted at the sametime; a great deal of the time of the teacher is necessarily employed in training
these pupils, who do not understand a single word of English, to the routineof the school work. For two months after their admission, the new pupils wereallowed to speak their mother tongue, but after that time, they were obliged touse English at all times like the older pupils.41

In 1894, Cranbrook, British Columbia, school principal Nicolas Coccola wrote,“English alone is spoken among the pupils. Those admitted at school when young
easily get the correct pronunciation, which is so difficult to acquire for older ones.”42
That same year, Kuper Island principal Donckele reported, “I am happy to state that
English is now the common language of the school: the Indian language is indeed
seldom heard at the institution.”43 High River principal A. Naessens reported in 1897,“The use of the English language is enforced throughout the day except after supper,
when the pupils are allowed to converse in their own.”44
At the Regina school in 1893, Principal A. J. McLeod reported that “English is now
the common language of the school.” There, as at the Shingwauk Home, students wereencouraged to report on classmates who spoke their native language. McLeod said
that “nine of the most trustworthy pupils were appointed monitors, at the regular evening roll call report any pupil who has transgressed the rule that the use of any Indian622 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

words, except when addressed directly to their friends who are on a visit to the school
is not allowed.”45 The following year, he reported, “Only an occasional word of Indianis heard around the institution. Some of the smaller children seem to have entirely
forgotten the Indian language.”46
Little attention or concern was given to the disruptive impact that this policy would
have on Aboriginal families and communities. The principal of the Roman Catholicschool in Onion Lake in what is now Saskatchewan, W. Comiré, reported in 1897, “TheCree language is not heard in the school, not a word is spoken among the pupils; they
seem to prefer English now. The little ones even speak English to their parents, who do
not understand what they say.”47 The language policy not only disrupted the long-termtransmission of Aboriginal culture, but it also could have an immediate and destructive impact on the bonds of family.
Proximity to First Nations communities made language rules difficult to enforce.
In 1897, J. Hinchliffe, the principal of the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve,
reported, “One great drawback in this respect is that the school is situated where
Indians can reach it too easily. Our children are in no way isolated from their people, and though almost all our children understand a fair amount of English, they areashamed to speak much.”48
In 1898, the Kamloops school reported that “English is the only language used at
all times by the pupils,”49 and from the Mission, British Columbia, school, the principal wrote, “English is the common language of the school, the Indian language isindeed seldom heard in the institution, except with the newly arrived pupils.”50 The
1898 report from the principal of the Anglican school at Onion Lake indicated thatthe school was one of the few exceptions. There, the children were taught to “read andwrite both Cree and English.”51
Into the early twentieth century, principals reported on their success in suppressing Aboriginal languages. In 1903, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, principal W. A. Hendry
reported, “As nearly all of the children are under twelve years of age, they are not inadvanced standards, but they have made good progress. They speak English entirely,
and during the last six months I have not heard a word of Sioux.”52 Two years later,
Squamish, British Columbia, school principal Sister Mary Amy reported that “theIndian language has been eradicated, and English is spoken by all the children in theschool.”53 Similarly, inspectors still viewed the continued use of Aboriginal languages
by the students as a sign of failure. The principal of the Red Deer school was taken totask in 1903 by an inspector who felt that a “serious drawback to school work, as well as
an evidence of bad discipline, was the use of the Cree language, which was quite prevalent.”54 A decade later, Inspector Semmens reported that at the Presbyterian school
in northwestern Ontario, the “Indian language is still used by pupils to an undesirable
extent.”55

Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 623

School inspectors also noted the difficulty students experienced in learning
English. A 1922 inspection of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school concluded that “thechildren are very diffident in speaking and should be given more practice in oral composition. Actual drill in articulating English pronunciation should be given.”56 A reporton the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school the following year observed, “The big problem
is to get the Indian child to express himself before strangers. This problem becomes
greater as the child becomes older I fancy.”57 After a 1929 inspection of the Sandy Bay
school, provincial inspector Rogers suggested that “more effort be put forth to induce
the pupils to express themselves in English and that practice be given in following
written and oral instruction in English.”58 A 1924 inspection report on the Cranbrookschool reported that not only did all the teachers speak English, but also those who
presided over classrooms could “speak good English.” Despite this, he felt that the“standard of education is low. The pronunciation of words is not clear and distinct by
the pupils. The teacher of the senior pupils is not familiar with the textbooks.”59
There can be no doubt that on a system-wide basis, the schools were committed
to ensuring that the students learned to speak English (or, in very limited cases in thisperiod, French). It was also believed that the suppression of the use of Aboriginal languages would contribute to the use of English in the schools.

The student perspective: “I lost it all”
Interviews with students who attended residential schools during this period(from 1867 to 1939) often make reference to students being punished for speaking an
Aboriginal language. Mary Angus, who attended the Battleford school in the late nineteenth century, said that a common punishment was to give students a close haircut:“They lose all their hair, cut up like men’s cut, always straight up (on the head). That’s
what they did with you—bald head like. All the hair cut to be as a man, that what theydo, for us not to talk. We were afraid of that, to have our hair cut.”60
Another Battleford student from that era, Sarah Soonias, recalled students being
strapped and having their hair cut short for speaking Cree.61 Nellie Stonefish, who
attended the Mount Elgin school at Muncey, Ontario, in the 1920s, recalled that if
children spoke their own language, “they’d get a strapping. And those strappings
were pretty healthy too. Our arms used to be black and blue from the elbow down.”62
Melvina McNabb was seven years old when she was enrolled in the File Hills school,and “I couldn’t talk a word of English. I talked Cree and I was abused for that, hit,and made to try to talk English. I would listen to the other little girls and that’s how I
picked up English. It was very hard for me because I didn’t know why these staff were
hitting me.”63 Raymond Hill, who was a student at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford,

624 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Ontario, said, “I lost my language. They threatened us with a strapping if we spoke it,
and within a year I lost all of it. They said they thought we were talking about them.”64
Language use often continued in secret. Mary Englund recalled that while
Aboriginal languages were banned at the Mission, British Columbia, school in theearly twentieth century, children would still speak it to one another.
When we were alone in some corner we did, you know, talk our own language
and if the sisters caught us it was, “You talk English. You’re in school, you talkEnglish.”So we had to talk English and that’s where a lot of the girls, you know, kind offorgot their language. If you’re there, stayed there a certain length of time you
forget certain words in Indian. And you didn’t, you couldn’t explain yourself too
much in Indian so you would in English, you see.65

Clyde Peters said he stopped speaking his Aboriginal language at the Mount Elginschool after he found out the school punished students for doing so. “I never got thestrap for it but I was warned enough that I didn’t do it.” Even after that, he and his
friends would speak to each other when they thought no one else could hear them.
“When we’d go up in the dormitories in the evening I had a friend from Sarnia who I
could talk with.”66
Learning English under these conditions was stressful. Peter Smith, who went to
the Mohawk Institute in the 1920s, recalled:
The small boys would come into the school—we weren’t allowed to talk Indianat all, we couldn’t say a word in Indian, just speak English, and these children
would come in and maybe have no English at all and they would get in groups
like cattle, trying to understand English because they would give them alicking—or they’d give you a scolding or something like that for not being able
to say it in English, and they just wiped out the entire Indian language. It’s justthe one thing I felt sorry about—because you’d see a group of ten or twelve smallboys standing in a group and trying to learn a little English.67

Allen Sapp was born in 1928 on the Red Pheasant Reserve in Saskatchewan. He
spent several years at the Anglican boarding school at Onion Lake. He described it asa lonely and unhappy experience.
No one ever abused me physically or sexually but the way we were disciplined
was not like home. We were forbidden to speak Cree—the teachers and everyone
connected to the school spoke English—but Cree was the only language I knew.
If we were caught speaking Cree to one another we would be punished. One
particular day I was caught speaking Cree to one of my classmates and told that I
would have to go up and remain in my room. That afternoon there was a cowboy
movie showing in town and I so wanted to go to that movie. I sat in my room andcried.68

Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 625

Teaching in French
Language policy in the residential schools was further complicated by the fact thatin many of the Roman Catholic schools, staff spoke French, not English, as their first
language. The early Catholic missionaries in the Canadian West had hoped not only
to convert Aboriginal people to Catholicism, but also to support the development ofa large, French-speaking, non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal community in the West. To
this end, they were involved in campaigns to establish separate religious schools andto defend the right to education in French.69 In keeping with this approach, French
could be the initial language of instruction in Roman Catholic boarding schools in the
Canadian West.70 The emphasis the Catholic missionaries placed on the importanceof the use and spread of French among Catholics on the Canadian Prairies—and theefforts that various governments took to limit the use of French—underscores the factthat both church and government officials were of the view that there was a close linkamong language, culture, and spiritual belief.
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church opposed the provision in the 1910
contract between the government and the churches that required teachers and instructors to be able to speak and write fluent English. This, they said, was a “hard and fast
provision, compliance with which is practically impossible.” They took the position
that since the contract called for the teaching of gardening, farming, care of livestock,cooking, laundry, needlework, housekeeping, and dairying, it would also require thatthe individuals who taught those disciplines had to be able to speak and write English
fluently and correctly. If such a provision were enforced, many Catholic schools might
have had to replace those members of religious orders whose English was rudimentary. The Catholics unsuccessfully proposed that the contract be amended to simply
require that schools “provide for the pupils being taught to speak, read and write theEnglish language to the same extent that pupils are so taught in the ordinary schoolsof the country.”71
It was not just the trades instructors who did not necessarily speak fluent English
in Catholic schools. Cornelius Kelleher, a half-Irish, half-Nooksack boy who attended
the Mission, British Columbia, school in the nineteenth century, recalled, “We had
mostly French teachers trying to teach us English.”72 There were recurring reports thatclasses were being taught in French. In 1894 at the St. Albert school in what is now
Alberta, some subjects were taught in English and others were taught in French.73
The government had concerns that the teacher at the Roman Catholic school on the
Peigan Reserve in what is now Alberta “was not sufficiently qualified to teach English
and especially to give the true and exact pronunciation.” In response, Bishop Emile
Legal—who felt the criticisms were not well-founded—agreed to secure “the servicesof an English lady teacher” in 1899.74 In her memoirs of attending the Qu’Appelleschool in the early twentieth century, Louise Moine recalled “a little French nun who

626 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

couldn’t speak a work [sic] of English. As she was very kind and patient with us, we all
liked her.”75
In 1912, Bishop Charlebois, Vicar Apostolic of Keewatin, sought permission from
Indian Affairs to have classes conducted in French at the Beauval school in northern
Saskatchewan. He stated that at the Île-à-la-Crosse school, which was the predecessor to the Beauval school, classes had been taught in French only and, as a result, hesaid, “many of the Indians of the district understand and speak French, while very few
have a knowledge of English.” Charlebois said the parents had indicated they would
withdraw their children from the school if classes were not taught in French. After
reviewing the matter, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson concluded that the school
was already being conducted in French, since “all the staff with the exception of one
Sister have no knowledge of the English language and she is not proficient.” Benson
argued that the school should be required to live up to its commitments under the1910 contract. Although French might be “more generally spoken in the school thanEnglish,” he thought the students needed to learn English, which would require thatthe school staff be able to speak and teach in the language.76
In this debate, a First Nations leader, described as the Montagnan of Île-à-laCrosse, wrote a letter in Cree to ”the Great Master in charge of schools” asking, “Whyshould it be desired to teach the children English, that would not help them with thepeople surrounding us.” If the government persisted in banning education in French,he said that “it will be very difficult for us to send our children to the school.”77 In 1915,
Indian Affairs complained to the school principal that, according to a recent reportby an Indian Affairs official, “little or no English is taught in the [Beauval] school andpractically all the education the children receive is given in French.”78
Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott had reservations about the
Roman Catholic Church’s proposed nominee for the position of Qu’Appelle principal
in 1917, on the grounds that he did not “speak English well enough for this special
position.”79 Five years later, a report on the Qu’Appelle school noted that the teacher incharge of the intermediate girls’ classroom “has very poor English.”80
In 1921, Russell T. Ferrier, the superintendent of Indian Education, instructed
Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham to investigate an allegation that French was beingtaught at the Cluny, Alberta, school. Ferrier pointed out that “the agreement with theschools in the Prairie Provinces calls for English as the sole language of instruction.”81
Graham reported that although the students were not being taught French, “all themembers of the staff are French and some of them do not speak English very well,which in my opinion is not as it should be.” He said that “on several occasions wehave objected to teachers in our schools who cannot speak English properly and havea decided accent.”82 On the same topic, Indian agent G. H. Gooderham reported in
December 1921 that the Cluny principal had promised “an English speaking teacher
for the boys some months ago, but to date no change has been made.” Instead, heSuppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939 • 627

reported that “the more I visit this place, the more I am impressed with the Frenchatmosphere which exudes from every corner.”83
The Oblates, who depended on the female religious orders such as the Sisters ofCharity for much of their staff, appear to have had considerable control over who actually taught in the schools. When J. L. Levern, the principal of the Catholic school at
Brocket, Alberta, was taken to task by Indian Affairs for the unsatisfactory classroom
methods of one of his teachers in 1923, he asked if the department would put somepressure on the Sisters of Charity to send him better-qualified teachers. Levern asked
if Duncan Campbell Scott would write to Bishop J. Brunault, who was the ecclesiastical superior of the Sisters of Charity, to complain about the poor quality of teachers
the order was providing to the schools. Levern felt that Brunault did “not seem to realize the urgent necessity of preparing better teachers for our schools.”84
Later that year, Ferrier drew Levern’s attention to an inspector’s report on a different teacher at the Catholic school at Brocket, whom the inspector described as
being “handicapped by the fact that she has had no professional training and also by
speaking the English language with a decidedly French accent.” Ferrier stated that “aproperly qualified teacher is required for this school.”85 On the same day, he wrote to
the principal of the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve to register the same
complaint about a teacher at that school.86
Complaints persisted into the 1930s. In 1938, Qu’Appelle principal de Bretagne
wrote to the St. Boniface mother provincial of the Sisters of Charity, expressing his
surprise and disappointment to discover that the two sisters recently assigned to his
schooldo not speak English. You certainly know how much the thorough knowledge ofthat language is necessary to perform any duty amongst our Children and theDepartment is becoming more exacting about that. We already have some Sisters
who know very little English in our Community and it is very disagreeable tohear justified remarks concerning that lack.87

Residential schools undermined Aboriginal languages by separating children fromtheir parents, by ridiculing and suppressing the use of Aboriginal languages, and by
giving English and, to a lesser degree, French a preferred status in the school system. Government officials believed the Aboriginal languages had no future and nocultural value. Missionaries, particularly in the nineteenth century, had a more tolerant attitude toward Aboriginal languages, and, well into the twentieth century, many
missionaries conducted religious training in Aboriginal languages. This missionary
tolerance for Aboriginal languages did not extend to the subject of the following chapter: Aboriginal culture. Government and missionary organizations made common
cause to suppress Aboriginal cultural practices.

CHAPTER 27

Separating children from theirtraditions: 1867–1939

The observance and transmission of cultural and spiritual practice are intrinsic
to a people’s identity. The federal government’s assimilationist policy deliberately stressed the suppression of traditional practices and sought to prevent children from being raised within those traditions. Conversion to Christianity
was a specific element of that policy. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney argued
in 1884 that the “importance of denominational Schools for the Indians is obvious.”
Dewdney recognized that the government’s goal of assimilation involved the destruction of Aboriginal spirituality. Since “Indians certainly have their own ideas of rightand wrong,” he thought it would be a mistake “to deprive them of their own mythology
without providing a better one in which there exists no question (so far as the Indian isconcerned) as to its perfect correctness....” This task could, he believed, be carried out
only by the churches. He also believed that allowing more than one Christian denomination to provide religious training in any particular school would lead to “indifference to both.”1 By turning day-to-day operation of the residential schools over tocompeting Christian denominations, the federal government created circumstancesthat ensured that Aboriginal people would be ensnared in an ongoing and highly divisive religious conflict between and among Catholic and Protestant churches.
Active support for church efforts to convert children at residential schools was
only one element of the government’s assault on Aboriginal culture and spirituality.
On a parallel track, from the 1880s onwards, the government also actively sought tosuppress and criminalize Aboriginal peoples’ own spiritual ceremonies. Residential
school officials demonstrated by their own actions that they were strong supporters ofthese government measures to suppress Aboriginal culture.

The race to baptize
The government also wanted the churches to run the schools for reasons of economy, since they believed missionaries would willingly work for less money. These savings came at a price—among them, the ongoing conflict between denominations for630 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

students. To limit conflict, Dewdney sought to implement a policy under which “nochild is taken into the School except with the consent of parents and guardians andnot until matters have been thoroughly explained to them—and they are perfectly freein the choice of faith.”2
Dewdney was not really offering parents a full choice. There was never any thoughtof establishing schools that respected and passed on their own Aboriginal spiritual
practices and beliefs. Meaningful choice was available only to those parents who had
already converted or had their children baptized. Also, Dewdney was well aware thatmissionaries were not above rebaptizing children who had already been baptized byanother, competing, denomination. Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed,writing at the same time, reported, “In many instances Priests of the Roman Catholic
faith are prone to claim children as belonging to their faith merely on baptism taking place even after the same rite has been performed by representatives of anotherfaith.”3 To an Indian Affairs official, the prospect of allowing children to switch schools
because they had been baptized a second time conjured up a future of endless wrangles. The contemplation of such a future led Dewdney to ask, if baptism were to be“considered by any denomination sufficient to lay claim to any child as belonging totheir faith where would the end be found?”4
During this period, there was, indeed, no end to the problem. In an effort to forestall conflict, Indian Affairs issued the following policy guidelines in 1891.
1)That where the parents of children whom it is desirable to have entered at aboarding or industrial school are pagans, the children may be taken to thoseschools, provided always that the parents consent thereto.

2)

In cases where parents are not baptized, altho’ claimed as adherents of a
Church, before children are taken the parents should be required to state
whether they are or are not adherents, as claimed, to the Church: and thechildren should be dealt with accordingly.

3)

Where parents have been baptized but do not attend Church or their children are not attending a school, if the parents have not relinquished theiradherence to the Church in which they were baptized, their children shouldbe treated as belonging to that Church; but the parents should be required tomake a statement in writing that they have not relinquished their adherence
to the Church.

4)

Where parents have been baptized but are desirous of sending their children to a school of a denomination other than that to which the Missionary
belongs (it is assumed the Missionary referred to or some other of the samedenomination baptized the parents) the parents’ wish in writing to the children being taken to the Industrial or Boarding School, as the case may be,should be obtained, and it should be complied with; but great care should beSeparating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 631

taken that the parents understand thoroughly in any case the written document before they sign it, and that the same is signed by them in the presenceof at least one reliable witness as having been fully explained to and understood by them.5
The policy spoke the language of parental choice. However, in 1891, the majorityof Aboriginal parents in western Canada were not Christian. The only avenue open
to them involved sending their child to a school that openly opposed their spiritual values.
The education regulations adopted under 1894 amendments to the Indian Act simply ignored the existence of non-Christian parents. The regulations stated that “noProtestant child shall be placed in a Roman Catholic school, or in a school conductedunder Roman Catholic auspices; and no Roman Catholic child shall be placed in a
Protestant school, or in a school conducted under Protestant auspices.” The languageof supposed parental choice had given way to a policy under which children were, orwere to become, either Protestant or Catholic. Left unresolved was the question of
who would determine a child’s denomination—and who could alter that denomination.6 This policy was incorporated directly into the Indian Act in 1920.7
By the 1920s, Indian Affairs had called on the federal Department of Justice officials to provide a definition for Protestant and Catholic children. According to theofficials, a Protestant child was “one born of Protestant parents or one whose father
or widowed mother has decided to have him or her educated in a Protestant schoolor a school conducted under Protestant auspices.” Catholic parents were similarly
defined. From 1922 onwards, the Indian Affairs policy was that it would not place thechild of a Catholic father in a Protestant school without an affidavit from the father,and neither would it place the child of a Protestant father in a Catholic school.8
No matter what the definition, conflict was continual. In 1896, for example, aCatholic missionary complained that Thomas Clarke, the principal of the Anglican
school in Battleford, Saskatchewan, had, along with others from the school, “gone,several times, among our catholics [sic] for the purpose of inducing them to give up
their children for the Industrial School, Battleford, and they have yielded to theirimportunities.” For this reason, the Catholics were seeking a Roman Catholic boarding school for the Battleford Reserve.9 Red Deer, Alberta, principal Arthur Barner said
that the Methodist and Roman Catholic missionaries were engaged in a “race for baptism.” Because of competition from the Catholics, the Methodists, “in order to save a
new born babe to the Methodist Church … had to make a special drive to the homeof the confinement days before etiquette would permit a visit to a White home undersuch circumstances, for fear that the priest would be there ahead of them.” Barneralso claimed that the Catholics operated an “inter-marriage system,” under whichmatches were arranged between Protestant boys and Catholics girls.10 The principal of
the Regina industrial school, R. B. Heron, acknowledged the existence of the race for632 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

baptism when, in 1905, he recommended an increase in the number of Presbyterian
missionaries on the reserves from which the school hoped to recruit students. “As the
Catholic School is much nearer, the priest sees the people oftener than it is possible
for us to see them and it is very often the case of the first come gets the children.”11
Indian Affairs officials grew frustrated with the churches. In 1912, the chief inspectorof Indian agencies in Winnipeg, Glen Campbell, called for the end of denominational
schooling on reserves, which he termed “a curse to the Department and the Indians.”12
In some cases, church officials did not bother asking for Indian Affairs assistancein resolving conflicts. In her memoirs of growing up as the child of the principal of the
Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, in the early twentieth century, Ruth
Buck recounted an instance when her father, John Matheson, went directly to the
Catholic mission in search of a young girl. Once there, he forced the newly appointed
priest to surrender the girl into his custody.13
It was also common for denominations to claim that Indian Affairs officials werefavouring either the Catholic or the Protestant schools. In a 1922 letter defending
his decision to admit two students, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in
Grayson, Saskatchewan, wrote that it seemed “very easy for our Protestant Schools to
obtain [sic] from the Department to have our Catholic Children from Catholic Parents
discharged from our Schools and transferred to Protestant Schools.”14 In 1931, Roman
Catholic Bishop Guy of Grouard complained that the Anglicans “have practically nochildren in their schools which rightly belong to them. If you were investigating you
would find the majority to be Catholic or of Catholic origin.”15
For their part, the Anglicans believed that the Catholics used church-run hospitals
as recruiting grounds. The principal of the Anglican school on the Blood Reserve, S. H.
Middleton, reported in 1931 that Helen Chief Mountain, a student from the Anglican
school, had been accepted into the Roman Catholic Church “whilst lying on a bed ofsickness” at the Roman Catholic hospital. After her death, she was buried in the Roman
Catholic school cemetery. He named several other Anglicans who had been converted
at the hospital, all “without my knowledge.”16 When the Indian and Eskimo Commissionof the Missionary Society of the Church in Canada met with the Indian Affairs minister in 1938, two of the issues they wanted resolved were the presence of twenty-nine
Anglican children in the Roman Catholic school at Fort George, Québec, and that ofeleven Anglican children at the Roman Catholic school at Grouard, Alberta.17
For parents, a more serious consideration was not the religious affiliation of aschool, but its location. In 1931, Billie Whitehat, with the assistance of a Melville,
Saskatchewan, lawyer, sought permission from Indian Affairs to have his ten-yearold son attend the Roman Catholic Cowessess school at Grayson, which was eight
kilometres from his residence. The local Indian agent, J. P. B. Ostrander, opposed themove. He believed the boy should go to the United Church school at Round Lake.
According to Ostrander, the Whitehats, whom he described as “pagans,” had given him

Separating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 633

considerable trouble over this issue in the past, when he had insisted their daughter goto the Round Lake school rather than the Cowessess school. While he acknowledgedthat the Round Lake school was twenty-four kilometres from the Whitehats’ home, hesaid he did “not consider the difference in the distances is of any account when theschools are residential.” The parents, he concluded, were stubborn and troublesome,and their request should be denied.18 Understandably, distance was of considerable
account to parents. Eight years later, a father wrote to Indian Affairs, “begging thefavour from the Indian Department to have my two daughters Rosa and Alice of 11
and 9 years old respectively to be transferred from Round Lake to Cowessess School,
and I wish at the same time to have my son Clifford 7 years to be admitted with them.
I am a pagan and my wife catholic.” The letter was signed by David Poniki and Maggie
Smoker.19 According to the Cowessess principal, the chief reason for the request was
the distance between the parents’ home and the Round Lake school.20 In denying therequest, Philip Phelan noted there was no room in the school.21
Parents were not allowed to transfer their children in hopes of getting them into
what they viewed as a better school. In 1934, the Belangers, former Catholics who said
they had joined the United Church, sought to have their children attend the RoundLake school, which was then being operated by the United Church. Indian agent
Ostrander wrote of the case, saying that to allow the children to be shifted from theCowessess school would
establish a dangerous precedent as there will be other Indians with the sameview as Alec Belanger who may come to the conclusion that if they join the
United Church and engage the services of a lawyer they will be able to place
their children in Round Lake School which at the present time is a more popular
school than the Cowessess Roman Catholic School.22

The decision to send children to denominational schools had, in short, made parents pawns in the ongoing conflict between Christian denominations. They were
subject to regular lobbying from missionaries to switch from one denomination toanother. By 1935, Harold McGill, the deputy minister of Indian Affairs, was ready tothrow up his hands. The number of conflicts between the churches over children wasincreasing and it was “at times impossible to decide, from the evidence produced byboth parties as to the religion of either the parents or their children.” In many cases,
he said, parents signed an affidavit transferring their children to one school, only totransfer them to a different school a few years later. A frustrated McGill suggested
that in cases when the evidence did not allow the department to form a judgment, it
should simply refuse to authorize admission to either school until the churches settled
the matter among themselves.23 The government’s response to the ongoing conflicts
in which Aboriginal parents found themselves entangled—and to parents’ efforts to634 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

exercise the small amount of choice they were granted under the Indian Act—was toabdicate its responsibility.

The suppression of Aboriginal culture
Converting people to Christianity was coupled with a direct attack on Aboriginal
spiritual practices. Residential school principals played a leadership role in early
campaigns to suppress those practices and sought to have them outlawed. Once bans
were adopted, they reported violations to officials and they criticized the government
for not enforcing the bans more vigorously. Since some principals were also justicesof the peace, they also passed judgment on individuals accused of participating inceremonies. On at least one occasion, people convicted of participating in spiritual
ceremonies were held in a residential school while awaiting transportation to jail.
Little effort was made to understand Aboriginal cultural practices. For example, in
1904, Charles Angus Cooke recommended the establishment of an Indian national
library. Cooke was one of the first Aboriginal people hired to work for Indian Affairs.
As late as the First World War, he was the only Aboriginal man working in the department’s head office in Ottawa. It was his vision that Indian Affairs staff from across thecountry would be able to draw on the library, which would collect documents published by Aboriginal people. Duncan Campbell Scott, then the departmental accountant, cut the library’s budget, recommended against collecting documents produced
by Aboriginal people, and proposed that it be a reference rather than a circulating
library. Most of the works it collected were government studies from the United States.
As late as 1938, it remained a disorganized collection of books that was largely unavailable to most staff members.24
Like religious conversion, the suppression of Aboriginal spiritual practices wasgovernment policy. The 1899 Indian Affairs annual report observed:
In the first stage, before instruction or education can be commenced, a great
deal has to be done in the way of eradication of superstition and prejudice, andin overcoming fear not unnaturally entertained by the parents that education
will not only destroy sympathy between them and their offspring in this life, but
through the inculcation of religion separate them in a future state of existence.25

Nine years later, the department reported:
The attitude of Indian parents towards education or perhaps more properly
speaking, instruction for their children, continues to be very much regulated by
the advantage they can perceive as being likely to accrue to them in contact withthe dominant race, and those superstitious objections, based upon the fear of
separation hereafter, as a consequence of education in different creeds, are fastdisappearing.26

Separating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 635

The government attempted to keep track of how quickly those creeds were disappearing. Indian agents gave regular reports on the success missionaries had inconverting Aboriginal people to Christianity. Such conversion was seen as a sign ofprogress. In 1898, an Alberta Indian agent wrote:
With a single dubious exception, these Indians are pagan and bid fair to remain
so for at least another generation. They are, or until lately were, intensely
religious in their own way and seem to have failed to perceive any attraction in
Christianity, in spite of the fact that it has been expounded to them incessantly
for about twenty years.27

In the same year, it was observed that on Piapot’s Reserve, “These Indians takevery little interest in religion, and with a few exceptions are pagans,” and, at theMuscowpetung Reserve, “The majority of these Indians are pagans; very little interestis taken in religion by the members of the band.”28 There were other reports, such as
the assessment that the James Roberts’s Band was thoroughly Christianized,29 that the
Kit-wan-gah Band “have now adopted the Christian faith, there being one hundred
and thirty-four Anglicans, and seventeen pagans,”30 or that almost the entire Kis-piox
Band “has been converted by the Methodist Church.”31 The accuracy of these assessments, which were made by Indian agents often on the basis of limited evidence, isopen to question. However, they make it clear that the government viewed conversion
to Christianity as a sign that its Indian policy was effective.

The campaign against the Potlatch and the Sun Dance
In 1884, the federal drive to suppress Aboriginal spirituality took an aggressive turnwhen the Potlatch ceremonies of the First Nations of the Pacific coast were banned.
These ceremonies served to redistribute surplus, demonstrate status, cement andrenew alliances, mark important events such as marriages or the assumption of position, and strengthen the relationship with spiritual forces.32
Thomas Crosby, a Methodist missionary who eventually established a boarding
school in Port Simpson, was a strong opponent of the Potlatch ceremony, as was the
Anglican missionary William Duncan in nearby Metlakatla.33 Like other missionaries, they recruited the converts they had made among Aboriginal people to the missionary war against Aboriginal culture. In 1883, Christian First Nations people from
British Columbia’s north coast submitted a petition calling on the federal government
to ban the Potlatch. The petition had been drafted with the assistance of Crosby andanother Methodist missionary, A. E. Green, a future Indian Affairs official. The following year, Roman Catholic missionary and future Kuper Island school principal George
Donckele and Methodist missionary Cornelius Bryant both supported Cowichanarea Indian agent William Lomas’s recommendation that the Potlatch be suppressed.

636 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Donckele said that parents who participated in the Potlatches were left impoverished,and had to withdraw their children from day schools in the winter to accompany themin a search for food. Bryant said, “The Church and school cannot flourish where the‘Potlatching’ holds sway.” Shortly thereafter, the government introduced an amendment to the Indian Act that made participation in a Potlatch or Tamanawas dance(another west coast First Nations ceremony) a misdemeanour, punishable by two to
six months in jail.34 The amendment simply named the ceremonies and provided nofurther description as to what they constituted.
As a result of this vagueness, early efforts to enforce the law foundered. British
Columbia Chief Justice Sir Mathew Begbie not only overturned the first conviction
obtained under the law, but also ruled that because the law did not adequately define
what a Potlatch was, it was essentially unenforceable.35
On the Prairies, the missionaries who established residential schools in the latenineteenth century were also strong opponents of Aboriginal spiritual ceremonies
such as the Thirst Dance (often referred to by officials as the “Sun Dance”). Austin
McKitrick, who taught at the Methodist school in Morley in what is now Alberta, wasappalled when he realized that students from his school were re-enacting Sun Dancesin their play. Not only did they pierce their breasts with sewing pins, they also insisted“the sun dance was the right and good way to worship the Great Spirit.”36 Albert
Lacombe, the founding principal of the Roman Catholic school at High River in what
is now Alberta, called on the minister of Indian Affairs to end the Sun Dance, which hedescribed as an “ugly feast” and “barbarian show.”37
Not all government officials favoured the banning of ceremonies. IndianCommissioner Edgar Dewdney wrote in 1884 that he believed the Sun Dance would“gradually die out; and it will be better to allow it to do so, without using strong measures to prevent its celebration as many of the old Indians, who generally inaugurate the dance, attach great importance to it.”38 Hayter Reed took a more aggressive
approach. He believed that the ceremonies tended “to create a spirit of insubordination among the young men of the bands.” When he was an Indian agent in the 1880s, heattempted to prevent them from taking place.39 Reed was appointed deputy ministerof Indian Affairs in 1893. Two years later, the Indian Act was amended to make it easier
to convict people who participated in the Potlatch. The amended Act included a more
extensive definition of the types of dances and ceremonies that were to be outlawed.
These included ceremonies that involved the giving or gifting of money and goods, orthe wounding or mutilation of humans or animals.40 These amendments allowed theIndian Act to be used to suppress not only the Potlatch in British Columbia, but also
a variety of ceremonies that were observed on the Prairies, including Thirst Dances.41
In enforcing the law, Indian agents were encouraged to persuade First Nations people to abandon their traditional ceremonies, using prosecution as a last resort. The
British Columbia Indian superintendent, A. W. Vowell, informed his staff that the law

Separating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 637

should be enforced carefully—and not too strictly.42 As a result, in that province, itappears that there was only one conviction for a Potlatch in the decade following the1895 amendment.43 Much of the pressure that Vowell came under to enforce the law
more aggressively came from school officials. When Kuper Island principal Donckele
reported in 1897 that a “tamanawas dance” had been held, Vowell concluded that theceremony “was of a most orderly nature” and no prosecution would be authorized.44
Six years later, Vowell threatened to clamp down on dancing in the Kuper Island area
unless parents sent their children to school.45 At Cape Mudge, a Methodist missionary
who believed that dances were keeping children out of school nearly precipitated aviolent confrontation when he sought to have two men arrested under the Potlatch
laws. The prosecution, which Vowell had not approved of, failed for lack of evidence.46
On the Prairies, Indian agents also were instructed to use prosecution as a lastresort. Despite this, the 1895 amendments ushered in an era of prosecution andrepression. In some cases, persuasion was little more than a veiled threat: Indian
agent A. McNeill in what is now Saskatchewan recognized that it was the presence ofthe Mounted Police, and not his arguments, that dissuaded the File Hills Cree fromconducting a ceremony in 1896.47 In addition, the pass system, which had been implemented without legislative authority, was used to prevent First Nations people fromtravelling to ceremonies being held at other reserves.48
Qu’Appelle school principal Joseph Hugonnard felt the dances were “adverse
to Christianity and civilization.” In 1896, he applauded the government for its 1895
amendments, and reported that there had been no Sun Dances in the previous year.
He said, “Great credit is due the agents for their firmness in the suppression of these
performances.”49
Aboriginal people associated the schools with the attacks on their culture. In 1902,
the principal of the File Hills school, Mr. Sinclair, was informed by a First Nations manthat “the Indians on the File Hill reserves were going to attack and destroy the Indian
school, in revenge for the Agent having pulled down a building they used as a dancehouse.” An Indian Affairs official could discover no foundation to the threat, but he
did note in a report to the Mounted Police that Chief Piapot had just “served a term in
the goal [sic] here, for resisting the Police in the execution of their duty.” He suspected
Piapot—who was in his mid-eighties—of continuing to be a troublemaker, adding hethought the “Indians” resented the radical changes the Indian agent had made on
local reserves.50
Aboriginal resistance to the ban took several forms. In some communities, particularly those distant from any Indian Affairs officials, the ceremonies continued to beheld openly. In other cases, they were held in secret. In others, they were celebrated
under new names, often as a sports day. And, in other cases, they were modified inan effort to fall within the limits of the law. First Nations people also lobbied politicians about the inherent unfairness of a law that suppressed their religious freedom.

638 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Emerging Aboriginal political organizations generally did not support the efforts toresist the Potlatch laws, since much of their leadership was made up of people who
had gone to residential schools and converted to Christianity.51
Incomplete records make it difficult to determine how many people were arrestedon the Prairies after the 1895 amendment. In 1897, five people were arrested at theThunderchild Reserve for holding a “give-away dance.” Three were sentenced to twomonths in jail. The local Mounted Police officer thought the jail terms too harsh andworked with Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget to secure early releases for the men,
who were all elderly.52 Records show only two prosecutions in 1900, but thirty-six for
1902 and ten for the following year. In addition, chiefs were deposed by Indian Affairs
for their involvement in dances, and men in their eighties and nineties were given jailsentences.53 In 1903, the organizer of a dance on the Muscowpetung Reserve received
a three-month sentence. The following year, the organizer of a dance at Fishing Lakes
received a two-month sentence. The man convicted was more than ninety years old.54
In some cases, Indian agents resorted to extra-legal measures to enforce the law. In
1900, the Indian agent on the Blood Reserve cut off a man’s food rations for participating in a Sun Dance. The man, Wolf Tail, slaughtered one of his herd of cattle to makeup for the loss. The agent escalated the conflict by seizing the rest of the herd, but had
to return it after Wolf Tail took legal action.55
In 1903, alarmed by a recent acquittal of a First Nations man charged with participating in a dance, Qu’Appelle principal Hugonnard believed that government efforts
needed to be intensified.56 He called for “the total suppression of these dances andpagan practices.” Hugonnard stressed that the purpose of the schools was to transform the students from “savages to civilized individuals.” Unfortunately, many graduates were, he felt, returning to their “pagan habits.” Hugonnard took the position that
Aboriginal people were being expected to attain, in one generation, a state of civilization that was practised by “the most favoured white nations after centuries of gradual evolution from their original savage condition.” How, he asked, could the young
generation overcome the “pagan habits, customs, and superstitions and mode of life”
that still held sway on the reserve? These habits, he wrote, “must be eradicated, or atleast suppressed.” He challenged those who might think this harsh to visit a dance“where graduates of these schools were present and see them nearly nude, painted
and decked out in feathers and beads, dancing like demented individuals and indulging in all kinds of debauchery.” In his opinion, Indian Affairs needed to adopt a strong
uniform policy, “totally prohibiting dancing and its attendant pow-wows.”57 IndianCommissioner David Laird shared the letter with three Protestant missionaries in
Winnipeg, who fully endorsed Hugonnard’s request.58
When Duncan Campbell Scott became deputy minister of Indian Affairs in 1913,
he initiated an intensified enforcement of the laws suppressing First Nations ceremonies.59 In the case of the Potlatch, he believed the government should suppress “thisSeparating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 639

wasteful aboriginal custom.”60 In October 1913, Scott instructed Indian agents to “inevery way possible discourage gatherings which tend to destroy the civilizing influence of the education imparted to Indian children at schools, and which work against
the proper influence of agents and farming instructors.” He also reminded them thatdances involving “the giving away features and the wounding or mutilation of bodies”
were illegal.61 Much of the impetus to renew the enforcement of the anti-Potlatch legislation came from A. E. Green, a former Methodist missionary, who was the IndianAffairs schools inspector in British Columbia. In 1913, British Columbia Indian agent
W. M. Halliday laid charges against Alert Bay men for their participation in a Potlatch.
Their initial hearing of the case was presided over by A. W. Corker, who was not only
the local justice of the peace, but also principal of the Alert Bay industrial school. Twomen convicted of violating the anti-Potlatch law were given suspended sentences.62
Prosecutions in 1915 also resulted in suspended sentences and acquittals. The lightsentences led to an increase in Potlatch activity in the Alert Bay area.63
School principals continued to play a role in the suppression of Potlatches and
Sun Dances. In 1914, Billy August complained about the role that the Ahousaht principal and missionary John Ross had played in the jailing of four people, including
August’s wife, for their participation in a Potlatch. According to the letter, “Mr. Ross
to do so, put them into Jail, those four Ahousat Indians. Mr. Ross is not good teaching for the Children he is a Policeman all over the west coast Indians they know he
is a Policeman.” August requested that Ross be replaced, noting that he felt the local
Catholic missionary was superior to the Presbyterian missionary.64 In responding to
the criticisms, Ross said:
For some time I have taken an active part in the suppression of intertribal
potlatching. I was the first on the West Coast to lay information before theauthorities of a breach of the Indian Act in regard to the custom. In spite ofwarning from the Indian Agent Cox and myself, the Ahousaht Tribe gave a
potlatch to the Keleomaht Tribe Nov. 20th. As it was the first offense four Indians
paid the cost, $7.25 and were let out with a warning that if they were found guilty
on a second offense they would be sent to jail.65

Indian agent Charles Cox came to Ross’s defence, saying that while four people had
been arrested and taken to Clayoquot for trial, they were never jailed. The complaints
from August were, in his words, “foolish and meaningless.” Cox added that he was“somewhat in sympathy with the Indians,” but when it came to the prohibition of the
Potlatch, he intended to continue to enforce the law. He concluded, “The more one
does for these people, the more abuse one gets from them.”66 The inspector of Indianagencies, W. E. Ditchburn, also examined the case for the department and reachedconclusions similar to Cox’s, noting that another cause of complaint was Ross’s refusal
to allow local boys to play baseball on the school field on Sunday, since it would “desecrate the Sabbath,” a refusal that, in Ditchburn’s view, was “perfectly justified.”67

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The government school officials also believed that the cultural practices interferedin the effectiveness of the schools. In 1917, school inspector Markle was concernedthat students at the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve in Alberta were “toomuch engrossed in the society doings on the reserve to give attention to their studies.”68 The problem was common, he said, at schools located on reserves and “where
Indians have inherited the dance craze. The Superior of the Cluny, Alberta, school
made a like complaint to me last Monday. She stated that the big boys apparently
though [sic] of little else and were constantly running away from the school to attend
these dances, of which there has been two or three weekly.”69
Indian Affairs officials believed the courts had been too lenient in the way they
had handled these cases. In response, in 1918, the federal government amended theIndian Act: breaking the law by participating in banned ceremonies became a summary, rather than an indictable, offence. Now, instead of the cases being tried by local
magistrates, who tended to take a broader approach to the interpretation of the Act,the charges would be laid by Indian agents, who would then, acting in their capacity
as justices of the peace, pass judgment on them.70 In the following year, Indian agent
Halliday, acting as a justice of the peace, sentenced two men to two months in jail, theminimum jail term allowed under the Act. The case against four other men that year
was adjourned when they, and over seventy other Kwakiutl people, promised not toparticipate in future Potlatches.71 The practice continued, however, and in 1920, eight
men were sentenced to two months in prison.72 Charles Nowell was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for his involvement in a Potlatch in 1921.73 The following year,
twenty-two people were sentenced to between two and six months in jail for their
participation in a Potlatch. While they awaited transportation to Oakalla prison near
Vancouver, they were held in the Alert Bay residential school.74
In the schools, students attempted to recreate their traditions, but they had few
resources upon which to draw. When Eleanor Brass attended the File Hills schoolin the early part of the twentieth century, students held their own improvised powwows in secret. Brass said that Gracie Squatepew, the group’s leader, often struggled
to impose the proper sense of decorum at these events.
One time Gracie said to us, “Remember now, this is a sacred dance and we must
not giggle or laugh.” Fanny Walker, our comic, started to beat the drum while
Gracie started singing in a real high note. Fannie and I looked at each other andquietly started to giggle, getting louder and louder till Gracie said, “All right girls,
I’m not going to sing anymore if you don’t stop laughing. I told you we must be
quiet for this song.”75

By the 1930s, many Aboriginal people were growing up without access or exposure
to spiritual practices. For example, Bernard Pinay, who attended the File Hills schoolin the 1930s, said, “I never had a culture before I went to school. I didn’t have any forthem to take away.”76 At the school, there was no tolerance for attempts to discover orSeparating children from their traditions: 1867–1939 • 641

revive cultural practices. “When we were in boarding school we never tried to do anyof the Old Indian Ways because the staff and the school were really dead against it.
There was nothing we could do about it; some tried but they always got hell. So I can’t
really name what the ceremonies were because we really never had any.”77 It was only
after he left the school that he was exposed to, and participated in, Aboriginal spiritual
practices.78
Dances were not the only Aboriginal practice that school principals sought government support in suppressing. In 1898, the principal of the Alberni Girls’ Home urged
the federal government to support local efforts “to have the Indian doctors done awaywith.”79 Indian Affairs officials took a dim view of traditional healers. However, it was
not illegal to practise medicine without a licence in Canada, providing the patient was
not harmed and the service was provided for free. A reciprocal exchange of goods waspart of the healing ceremony, but these ceremonies were generally held in private,making prosecution nearly impossible.80 As part of their schooling, residential school
students were told to spurn traditional healers. The fact that members of her family
had sought the help of a traditional Carrier First Nation healer in the summer of 1927
filled Fraser Lake, British Columbia, student Mary John with dread: “I could imagine
Sister Superior with the willow switch, standing me up in front of the whole school
and thrashing me because my relatives believed they could be healed in the Carrierway.”81 It was not until after she left the Fraser Lake school that she attended her first
Potlatch ceremony, one held to commemorate the placing of a tombstone over a family member’s grave.82
Time did little to soften church opposition to Aboriginal culture. In 1924, a conference of Roman Catholic residential school principals noted that although several
people had urged that the ban be lifted on First Nations dances, “their habits, being
the result of a free and easy mode of living, cannot conform to the intense struggle forlife which our social conditions require.” Taking aim at those in the Euro-Canadian
community who might be critical of missionary work, the Oblates stated that “pagan
superstitions could not,— what-soever certain philanthropists might think,—suffice
to make the Indians practice the virtues of our civilization and avoid its attendant
vices.” The principals actually wished to ensure that the work that had been done in
suppressing Aboriginal culture “might be better known.”
With this in view, we beg to suggest the establishment of a museum or
historical and scientific exposition where, close to articles pertaining to
morals, religion, industries, works of primitive tribes—the memory of which issoon lost—could also be seen the work accomplished by civilization, and theresults obtained both on the reserves from Agents’ activities and in the schoolsof any denomination. It would appear that this would encourage and perpetuate
one of the best works in the Dominion of Canada.83

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The purpose of such a museum, in their minds, would not be to commemorate that
culture, but to demonstrate its “primitiveness,” and to celebrate the work of the missionaries and government in suppressing that culture.
By the 1930s, there was a growing, if very limited, recognition of the importance ofAboriginal culture in the lives of the students. In this view, culture, however, was restricted
largely to arts and crafts. In 1935, a United Church report on First Nations schooling in
Canada included a separate section on “Indian Arts and Handicrafts,” which lamented“the almost entire lack of wholesome interests” on reserves. The authors thought “arevival of handicrafts or home industries would provide daily interests outside the normal routines of living.” They also noted that “the younger Indians are not as expert as
their grandfathers and grandmothers” in basket weaving, beadwork, silver work, or
carving. They recognized that the work of the Elders was of high quality and amounted
to “a purely Canadian contribution to the world of art.” They also acknowledged that it
was a contribution “likely to disappear except as a historic record,” unless something
was done. This was particularly unfortunate because, it was thought, Aboriginal artsand crafts could generate “considerable revenue for individual families and communities.” But, they reported, teachers found it difficult “to get Indian children even mildly
interested in their own art and craftsmanship.” They recommended the establishmentof a Canadian Indian Handicrafts Guild, which would coordinate training at residential schools, development and patenting of designs, and inspection and marketing ofcraftwork. The work that Principal George Raley had undertaken at the Coqualeetza
Institute in British Columbia was seen as a model.84 There was no acknowledgement of
the role that the churches or residential schools might have played in the developmentof what was described as an “inferiority complex” in terms of students’ attitudes towards
Aboriginal art, or in breaking the transmission of cultural skills from one generation to
the next. There was no recognition that many Aboriginal cultural artifacts had been produced either for direct personal use or for use in spiritual ceremonies, and not as commodities to be sold in an impersonal market.85
By 1938, the Anglican position on First Nations culture had shifted. The secretaryof the Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential School Commission, T. B. R. Westgate,
was prepared to acknowledge that
nothing in indigenous culture should be destroyed or condemned, unless it canbe proved that it does in fact obstruct the progress of culture. In so far as thepreservation, or even the revival of Indian culture and customs contribute to awholesome coordination of their life with the national life of which they must
become a part, such preservation and revival should be promoted.

At the same time, Westgate cautioned that “to encourage the Indians to believe thatthe old way of Indian life is adequate to their needs in these modern times is neither
honest nor helpful.”86

CHAPTER 28

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages,
establishing colonies: 1867–1939

T

hrough residential schools, the Canadian government and the churchessought to control and transform Aboriginal people and their families. The
three previous chapters have described the assaults the schools launched on
Aboriginal families, language, and cultural and spiritual practices. This chapter looks
at the ways in which the schools were also instruments in a broader campaign to control Aboriginal families.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Canadian government andthe Canadian churches attempted to regulate, with the goal of eventually eliminating,traditional Aboriginal marriage practices.1 These practices, through which Aboriginal
family structures were established and maintained, varied among cultures andchanged over time.2 The conventions under which men and women joined together—and had the opportunity to separate—were part of a larger, complex set of kinshiprelationships. These relationships established both rights and obligations, ensuringsocial stability.3 Marriages often were arranged by family and community leaders, but,in many societies, individuals could reject a proposed marriage, and the option of
separation without stigma was also commonly available.4 In some cases, a husband
might have more than one wife. However, these plural marriages, which missionaries
found particularly scandalous, were not the general practice.5 To take an additional
wife, a man usually would need the approval of both his existing wife or wives and the
new bride’s family. He also would be required to have the resources to support theenlarged family.6
Missionaries were strong opponents of Aboriginal marriage practices and sought tohave the government ban them.7 The federal government chose not to do that. Sir John
A. Macdonald, writing as minister of Indian Affairs, concluded that the solution lay inthe gradual civilization of the First Nations. Until then, the government would recognize Aboriginal marriage, but not Aboriginal divorce.8 As part of the civilization process, it was expected that the schools would produce young people who would reject
Aboriginal marriage and would choose instead to be married by the church according
to Canadian marriage laws. As noted previously, the whole purpose of admitting girls

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to the schools was to train them to be Christian wives and mothers. To ensure this goal
was achieved, school principals and Indian Affairs officials took it upon themselves
to both prohibit and arrange marriages. In one case, the government went so far as toestablish a colony for former students, to make sure that they did not return to theirreserves and fall back under the influence of their parents.
While it was the intention that residential school students should marry one
another, schools put considerable effort into keeping male and female students separate while they were enrolled. This separation of the sexes reflected both the generalsocial attitudes of the day and the stereotype of Aboriginal people as being sexuallypromiscuous. The schools had removed children from their families and home communities—the traditional agents of social control. By seeking to impose a rule of complete gender segregation, the schools were all but inviting student disobedience. And
they got it. Throughout this period, male and female students attempted, and succeeded, in seeking out each other’s company. Parents were displeased by this turnof events and often complained about it to the schools and the government. School
responses were harsh and dangerous. Enhanced measures intended to limit contact
between male and female students, for example, often reduced the effectiveness ofschool emergency exits, which were sometimes locked to prevent students from visiting each other. In addition, the courts were used in an effort to police the sexual activity of students—even in cases of what appear to have been consensual relationships.
This chapter begins by examining the growth of female enrolment. It then describes
school efforts to separate male from female students, outlines the measures the government took to arrange marriages, and concludes with an examination of government measures to influence the lives of students once they had left the schools.

Enrolling girls: “To civilize the intended wives”
From the outset, the Protestant-run boarding schools established prior to the earlynineteenth century were co-educational. As early as 1834, the Mohawk Institute in
Brantford, Ontario, recruited both boys and girls.9 The Alnwick and Mount Elginschools operated by the Methodists in southern Ontario also enrolled female andmale students.10 At Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island in the 1870s, the Jesuits
established two boarding schools, one for girls and one for boys.11 At Sault Ste. Marie,
Anglican missionary E. F. Wilson opened the Shingwauk Home for boys in 1873 andthe Wawanosh Home for girls in 1879.12 A similar approach was taken in the West,
where Oblate missionaries opened a boys’ school in 1863 and a girls’ school in 1868 at
Mission, British Columbia.13 At the Catholic school in St. Albert, in what is now Alberta,
girls were educated in a convent and boys in what was termed an “industrial school.”14

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 645

Despite this practice, the first three industrial schools the government built in
the North-West Territories in 1883 and 1884 were intended solely for male students.
Liberal opposition leader Edward Blake, using language that reflected commonly
held assumptions, questioned the policy in 1883, asking Conservative Public Works
Minister Hector Langevin:If the hon. gentleman is going to leave the young Indian girl who is to mature
into a squaw to have the uncivilized habits of the tribe, the Indian, when hemarries such a squaw, will likely be pulled into Indian savagery by her. If thisscheme is going to succeed at all, you will, unless those Indian bucks are to beveritable bachelors all their lives, have to civilize the intended wives as well ashusbands.

Langevin responded, “No doubt the Government will have to provide for the education of the girls as well as the boys.”15 In January 1884, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister
Lawrence Vankoughnet informed Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard that if theschool employed members of the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns), “a few female
students should be taken into the institution.”16 However, Vankoughnet neglected
to provide Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney with a copy of his instructions to
Hugonnard. As a result, Dewdney ordered Hugonnard to send the first female recruits
back to their homes.17 Hugonnard persisted in his quest to have girls admitted, and,by the end of 1885, the school had nine female students. He lobbied to be allowed toincrease their numbers, arguing that their presence wasabsolutely necessary to effect the civilization of the next generation of Indians.
If the women were educated it would almost be a guarantee that their children
would be educated also and brought up christians, with no danger of theirfollowing the awful existence that many of them ignorantly live now. It will benearly futile to educate the boys and leave the girls uneducated.18

By 1887, the Qu’Appelle school’s enrolment was made up of fifty-five boys andthirty-nine girls. Since no provision had been made for them in the original building
design, the girls were living, working, and studying in the school attic.19 That same
year, the Battleford school began to enrol female students. Principal Thomas Clarke
reported that they were “much quicker in apprehension than the boys, and too great
importance cannot be attached to their training. Those already in the school havemade such wonderful progress, as to warrant increased accommodation at an earlydate.”20
Qu’Appelle principal Hugonnard initially claimed that the girls could not becounted upon to work without supervision. He observed, “The inconsistency of the
Indian character is remarkable in them, especially in the elder ones.”21 By the 1890s,
however, the girls had become essential to the operation of the school, having become
responsible for making almost all student clothing. According to Hugonnard, the girls

646 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

did “not have as much school as the boys owing to the large amount of housework,
sewing, knitting, mending, washing, etc., that has to be done.”22This sort of discrimination—which was consistent with discriminatory practices inbroader Canadian society—was also to be found at the Sault Ste. Marie school where,in 1884, girls had the option of doing “laundry work, sewing, knitting, &c., in theplace of history and grammar.”23 Similarly, in 1899, girls at the Wikwemikong school
attended classes full time, except for those “detained by turn to help in the generalhousework.”24
Many schools found it difficult to recruit girls. In 1894, Regina school principal A.
J. McLeod reported that there were twice as many boys as girls at the school.25 The
High River school in what is now Alberta had sixty boys and twenty-five girls in 1894.26
The principal of the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school wrote in 1889, “We still find it
almost impossible to persuade heathen parents to leave their daughters in our home.
Those we have are orphans or the children of Christian parents. There is no difficultyin getting the boys, but the heathen value their girls at a high figure and they are earlygiven away in marriage.”27
In 1895, Mohawk Institute principal Robert Ashton wanted to increase the numberof girls in attendance at the school because, he believed, “the man may be the breadwinner but the woman is the civilizer.” He thought that a male student who married awoman who had not attended the school would revert “to the Indian language, habits
and customs and his children are Indians pure and simple.”28 To the degree to whichthese policies were reflective of broader Euro-Canadian attitudes towards the roles ofmen and women, they are also evidence of the way in which assimilation was central
to the work of the schools.
As shown in Table 28.1, the number of male students exceeded the number offemales until the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. However, from thenon, there was a slight majority of girls in the schools. One of the reasons for this slightly
larger female enrolment was that girls tended to stay in school longer; the governmentand churches preferred to keep female students until they were engaged to be married.
In the ways that the schools attempted to handle relations between female andmale students and to control Aboriginal family structures, residential schools bothreflected and intensified broader patterns in Canadian society. During this period(1867 to 1939), most Canadian women gained the right to vote and saw their educational opportunities expand. These reforms did not challenge—and, in some cases,
were based upon—the idea that men and women operated in different social sphereswith differing responsibilities. Granting women the vote, for example, was seen as anopportunity to improve the moral tone of society, since women were believed to be anatural force for purity and stability.29 But, it was feared that if Aboriginal women were
not subjected to a process of ‘civilization,’ they would present a threat to social norms:
at times, they were viewed as temptresses who would lead men astray; at other times,

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 647

Table 28.1. Comparison of male to female enrolment in Canadian residential schools,
1894 to 1939. (Percentages may not add up to 100, due to rounding.)
Boys
Year

Girls

Total
enrolment

Enrolment% ofenrolment

Enrolment% ofenrolment

1894

1,162

53.3

1,017

46.7

2,179

1899

1,633

52.8

1,458

47.2

3,091

1904

1,875

53.2

1,651

46.8

3,526

1909

1,969

49.9

1,979

50.1

3,948

1914

2,027

49.8

2,046

50.2

4,073

1919

2,237

48.2

2,403

51.8

4,640

1924

2,720

47.9

2,953

52.0

5,673

1929

3,329

47.1

3,746

52.9

7,075

1934

4,102

47.7

4,494

52.3

8,596

1939

4,354

47.4

4,825

52.6

9,179

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 250–270. Calculation based on thefollowing schools: Mohawk Institute, Mount Elgin Industrial Institute, Shingwauk Home, Wawanosh Home,
Wikwemikong Industrial, Alert Industrial, Coqualeetza Institute, Kamloops Industrial, Kootenay Industrial,
Kuper Island Industrial, Metlakatla Industrial, Port Simpson Girls’ Home, St. Mary’s Mission Industrial, St.
Joseph’s (Williams Lake) Industrial, Yale (All Hallows), Portage la Prairie Boarding (Sioux Mission), St. Boniface
Industrial, St. Paul’s Industrial (Rupert’s Land), Washakada Home (Elkhorn Industrial), Water Hen Boarding,Battleford Industrial, Birtle Boarding, Blackfoot Boarding, Blackfoot (Old Sun’s), Blood Boarding (St. Paul’s),
Crowstand Boarding, Emmanuel College, File Hills Boarding, Gordon Boarding, Lac La Biche Boarding, Lake’s
End Boarding, Muscowequan’s Semi-Boarding, McDougall Orphanage, Onion Lake, Piegan Boarding, Qu’Appelle
Industrial, Regina Industrial, Red Deer Industrial, Round Lake Boarding, Sarcee Boarding, Stony Plains Boarding,
St. Albert Industrial, St. Joseph Industrial, Vermillion (Irene Training School), Fort Chipewyan, Fort Resolution,
Île-à-la-Crosse, Lesser Slave Lake, Moose Fort. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899,
444–449; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 2:50–57; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 2:18–23; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1914, 152–153; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 92–93; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1924, 94; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1929,
104; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1934, 77; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1939, 266.

they were viewed as being too weak-willed to resist temptation. No attempt was madeto discover, let alone accommodate, the actual roles that Aboriginal women played intheir communities—roles that varied over time and from location to location.
As described more fully in other parts of this report, the boys and girls received
very different training. The girls were to be Christian homemakers and mothers; theboys, trades workers and farmers. While the early industrial schools differed from theboarding schools in that they offered—or attempted to offer—a wide range of trades
training to boys, there was very little difference in the training offered to girls at either
the boarding schools or the industrial schools. Boys were also provided with greater
recreational opportunities and more liberty than were the girls.

648 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Keeping the students separate:“A note easily changes hands”
While they might be attending the same schools, male and female students werestrictly separated from one another. The separation of the sexes divided brothers fromsisters and was a cause of significant distress to many residential school students. It
was a central element in church and government efforts to control the social lives ofAboriginal people, while they were students and even after they left the schools. The
practice of separating female and male students was not out of keeping with educational practice of the day, where separate school entrances, hallways, playgrounds,
and classrooms for girls were common.30 However, maintaining such strict separation was considered especially important in the case of Aboriginal children, since they
were seen as being particularly vulnerable to temptation. In 1896, Mission, British
Columbia, principal E. C. Chirouse wrote, “After many years of labour amongst our
Indians I am convinced that the system of keeping the boys and girls apart is by far
the best as far as morals are concerned, and this is likewise the opinion of my brothermissionaries, some of whom have spent over forty years with these people.”31
Louise Moine recalled that at the Qu’Appelle school, “the teachers were very strict
about segregation. So the boys kept to their side and we to ours. I can’t speak for the
teenagers but, we, the younger members, were quite satisfied with these regulations.”32
The Catholics were not the only ones to educate the sexes separately. At the Anglican
Metlakatla school in British Columbia, the boys’ and girls’ classrooms were in separate buildings.33 An inspector noted that at the Middlechurch school in Manitoba in
1893, “there is the greatest circumspection exercised regarding the association of theboys and girls.”34 It was common for each school to have a separate girls’ and boys’
playground.35 At the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British Columbia, there were“play-rooms for boys and girls in their respective quarters and recreation grounds foreach side.”36
Margaret Butcher, a teacher at the Kitamaat, British Columbia, school, took a somewhat philosophical view of the difficulties involved in keeping the boys from the girls.
“Sometimes notes are passed when we are out. It is as easy as pie. The pathway is narrow. The Boys brush by the line of girls & a note easily changes hands. Yes, it is all natural to their years. One sympathizes with them & would like to laugh but ‘Discipline
must be maintained.’”37
Government and missionaries remained hostile to Aboriginal marriage traditions.
They sought to control the sexuality of young Aboriginal people while they were in
the schools, and to arrange Christian, as opposed to traditional, marriages after they
graduated.38
Closely related to the issue of marriage was the control of the sexual activity of older
students in the schools. In Aboriginal communities, such activity fit into the broader

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 649

set of long-standing relations. However, the schools destroyed the traditional norms
and controls. At the same time, the understaffed schools created the conditions forsexual relations that offended the morals of the churches and were beyond the oversight of the broader Aboriginal community. The schools also served as a setting for thesexual abuse of students by both staff and other students. Kamsack, Saskatchewan,
Presbyterian school principal W. McWhinney’s 1907 comment to a church official isrepresentative of church attitudes: “The Indian boy or girl you may know, yields easily to any impulse or desire and from twelve upwards their passions are peculiarlystrong.”39
Not only were sexual relations regarded by the churches as sinful, but also almost
anything to do with sex was seen as shameful.40 As a result, there was little in the wayof sex education in the schools. There was, of course, little sex education in Canadianpublic schools at this time, either. However, the residential schools severed the students’ links with their traditional source of knowledge and guidance on sexual information and practices: their families and their community. Hilda Hill recalled withaffection one teacher at the Mohawk Institute and her discreet efforts at sex education. She told the senior girls that when they left the school, “‘I want yous [sic] to beable to be your husband-to-be’s—your first kiss, let it be your husband’s.’ I think she
meant more than kissing. I think she meant sex, but sex wasn’t mentioned then.”41
One nun at the Qu’Appelle school noticed that Louise Moine often stared at a young
male student and asked her if she liked the boy. When Louise said that she did, “Sister
Cloutier, in her understanding way, proceeded to give me a few pointers on the factsof life. I felt affection for the first time in that school. I shall always remember her.”42
Parents often blamed the schools if children became sexually active at a young age.
When it was discovered in 1891 that male students, along with men from the local
reserve, had been visiting the girls’ dormitory of the Presbyterian school at Kamsack
at night, Indian Affairs school inspector A. J. Macrae wrote:
It is not to be wondered that the Indians regard the school with the gravest
disfavor when it is remembered that the pupils concerned in these immoral
occurrences were entrusted to the guardianship of the school authorities whenof most tender years, and as one of them said to me, “they have been allowed to
grow up in wickedness which their mothers might have protected them from.”43

The principal of the Ermineskin school at Hobbema, Alberta, sought Indian Affairs’
permission in 1938 to keep two eighteen-year-old female students at the school until
they were married. According to Principal Pratt, the parents of one of the students
insisted “that the girl comes back and be here until she gets married. One of theirdaughters had an accident and they want to avoid this with Lena.”44
School officials could be reluctant to provide their superiors with reports on
problems with sexual activity. It was only after the matter had already come to the650 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

attention of the local Indian agent that Kamsack school principal W. McWhinney told
Presbyterian Church officials of how a group of young men, all former students of theschool, had been caught with a bottle of whiskey in the girls’ dormitory in the summerof 1907.45 McWhinney wrote that he had refrained from reporting the matter earlier
because of his “distaste for putting the disgraceful affair on paper.” In his letter, he
explained that the problem was not new to the school. Prior to his being appointed
principal in 1903, he said, a number of girls had been sneaking out of the school tomeet with young men. These included former students of the Kamsack and Regina
Presbyterian schools, one of whom was working as the school’s farm instructor. Afterhe became principal, McWhinney discovered that, several times, the boys and girls
had been visiting each other’s dormitories at night. Students were punished and the“windows were blocked so that they could only rise a short distance, while the stops
were securely nailed on. The doors also were kept locked.”46 The problem recurredat the school in 1911 and 1914.47 In 1914, McWhinney argued that sexual relations
between students were ongoing problems at all residential schools. “In our case these
are always reported while in other schools the Agents there take the view that no goodcan come of reporting them.” He also returned to his argument that “Indian boys
and girls have strong sexual passions.” He felt the “best remedy” would be “separate
schools for boys and girls.”48
Not all nighttime visitors were welcomed in the girls’ dormitories. A group of boys
from the local reserve broke into the girls’ quarters at the Kamloops, British Columbia,
school in 1892. Two girls drove them off with broom handles. Six boys were arrested
and charged with burglary. The incident came to the attention of Indian Affairs only
when the parents of the girls at the school complained to the Indian agent.49
The school administrators viewed the problem as being one of uncontrolled
Aboriginal sexuality, but, from the parents’ perspective, the problem was simpler:
their children did not have enough supervision. For example, in 1909, female students
at the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack took advantage of the fact that one groupof nuns had been exchanged for less experienced staff, and on several occasions, theyslipped out of the school at night to meet with local boys in the nearby woods. To
prevent such occurrences in the future, the male principal began sleeping in the mainbuilding, which housed the girls’ dormitory.50
In 1915, the chief of the Keeseekoowenin Reserve complained to Indian Affairs
about the behaviour of the students at the Birtle, Manitoba, school. After a meeting withband leaders, one Indian Affairs official wrote that “the breaking of the seventh commandment seems to be the chief diversion” of the pupils (in reference to the Biblicalcommandment prohibiting adultery). The official recommended separate schools
for boys and girls, noting that this was a common problem in industrial schools all
across the country.51 According to the school principal, the allegations arose from thefact that two students had become pregnant and had “laid the blame on the school.”Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 651

His solution to future problems was to enclose the girls’ playground “with a strong
fence.”52 An Indian Affairs investigation into conditions at the school revealed that the
principal lived in town and was not on-site in the evenings. The report concluded that,“as the boys are not locked up at night there is nothing to prevent their getting out, if
they wish to do so.”53
In 1922, Andrew Paull, the corresponding secretary of the Allied Tribes of British
Columbia, wrote to W. E. Ditchburn, the chief inspector of Indian agencies in British
Columbia, asking for the removal of H. B. Currie, the principal of the Alberni Industrial
School. After speaking to former students and the leadership of the four tribes of thearea, Paull had concluded that it was “in the interest of Christianity, morality and goodcharacters of the Indians” to remove Currie. Paull’s chief complaint was that several
girls had become pregnant while attending the school. This, he said, brought disgraceon the parents, “who rely on the Government to prevent anything of the kind.” Hepointed out that the “children are compelled to remain in school until they reach theage of 18 years. If they were let out at the age of 15 or 16 years, such events would
be perhaps less frequent.”54 In his defence, Currie argued that only two students had
become pregnant while they were at the school, and that they and the students who
had fathered the children had all been discharged. Currie reported that, in one case,two boys had been caught in bed with girls in the girls’ dormitory. To get in there, they
hadto break one and a half inch wooden bars to get into the little boys dormitory,
then tear the wire out of the screen window, travel about thirty feet on theoutside front wall, about 25 feet from the ground, hang onto the window sills,
then again tearing wire from screen windows getting into the girl’s wash room,
and again break … wooden bars to gain entrance to the girl’s dormitory.

Currie said that the students were locked in their room for the night and expected
to remain there until morning.55 All these solutions were in violation of Indian Affairs
instructions regarding fire escapes. Not only did they increase the difficulty that students might face should the school catch fire, but these measures also increasingly
transformed the schools into correctional facilities.
When the schools were unable to control the students, the police were called. A
male student was arrested and charged after being caught in the girls’ dormitory at theCoqualeetza Institute in 1895.56 In 1912, students at the Kuper Island school committed what an Indian Affairs official termed a “serious misdemeanor”: meeting up in thebarn after sneaking out of their dormitory windows at night. Two boys were expelled
and charged with “seduction” before a local judge. (It was a crime to seduce “any girlof previously chaste character” who was under the age of sixteen, or to seduce “or havean illicit relationship” with a ward.)57 The local Indian Affairs official took this action
because expulsion alone “would not have been considered by them as a punishment652 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

for the offence, but more in the nature of a reward.” It was recommended that two girls
be expelled and the rest were “severely reprimanded and punished.”58
In June 1919, a group of older boys, believed to be former students of the Qu’Appelleand Round Lake schools in Saskatchewan, were caught going into the girls’ dormitoryof the Round Lake school. According to the Mounted Police officer called in to investigate the incidents, “From what I can see the girls are trying to protect these boys,
and it is a hard job to get much information from them.”59 In response, the school
principal, H. McKay, “secured the windows and fanlights by nailing on lumber, had
padlocks put on the doors and other things that I thought would make the sleeping
rooms secure.” There was not enough evidence to prosecute the boys, but they continued to remain in the vicinity of the school. McKay thought of having one of themprosecuted but refrained because “he is one of my boys, and so much about him that
I admire, his music, his song, his free-hand drawing, his affable and seeming kinddisposition, I feel surely there is some other way beside having him placed behind thebars.”60 Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham was not impressed with McKay’s leniency, saying it demonstrated that the “supervision of the school is not what it shouldbe.” He requested that the Mounted Police issue warnings to the boys suspected ofbreaking into the school.61
The principal of the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve in Alberta had four boys
brought up on charges for entering the girls’ dormitory at night in 1924. The Indian
agent, C. A. Arthur, had the charges reduced to “causing a disturbance” (although therecord does not make clear what the original charges were), and the boys were sentenced to six weeks at the provincial police barracks. Arthur believed that the principal should be replaced for his inability to supervise the thirty students properlywith a staff of six. In making the recommendation, he also forwarded the principal’s
request for “iron-bound four inch mesh wire to place over the windows.” Arthur recommended against the purchase, saying it would “practically turn the school into a
prison.”62 The Anglicans responded by suggesting the problem on the Peigan Reserve
stemmed from the Indian agent’s ongoing bias in favour of the local Roman Catholicboarding school. According to the Anglican principal, Mr. Roe, agent Arthur “had little use for our school and that his sympathies were entirely with the r.c. School on
this Reserve. All the virtues were centred in the r.c.s and the vices contained in our
school.”63
Although the records are fragmentary, it appears that a student at the Brandon,
Manitoba, school was prosecuted for a sex-related crime in 1926. The Mounted Police
official who originally investigated the case recommended that the student be prosecuted for “carnal knowledge.”64 No further details were provided.
In a memorandum to his supervising officer, Mounted Police officer R. H. Nicholson
wrote that Principal Ferrier was “desirous of keeping the matter as quiet as possible.”65
Prior to the trial, Ferrier met with both Nicholson and the magistrate who was to hearSeparating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 653

the case. According to Ferrier, “The magistrate is of the opinion that the charge should
be for house breaking.” (Although the rationale is not given, presumably the boy
would be prosecuted for breaking into the dormitory, rather than for attempting tohave sexual relations with a student.) If the Manitoba government’s Industrial Schoolfor Boys in Portage la Prairie would accept the boy, the magistrate said, he would send
the boy to that institute (a provincial government-run correctional facility and not afederal residential school). Otherwise, he would be sentenced to two years in Stony
Mountain federal penitentiary in Manitoba. Ferrier wrote, “If it were only a case of thisboy, I would discharge him and send him home.” But he feared if he did that, otherboys who wished to be dismissed would follow his example.66 The seventeen-year-old
boy pleaded guilty to housebreaking and was committed to the Industrial School forBoys for a period of one year, “with the understanding that if his behavior was good hebe allowed out on parole.”67
In 1933, the principal of the Hobbema school complained that “several young
men were coming around the school, trying to have relations with our girl pupils.”
When three students ran away with three men, the men were arrested, convicted of anunspecified crime, and given a one-year suspended sentence. Despite this, one of themen continued to come around the school, and one of them had written at least one
letter to a female student. The principal sought to have him prosecuted, but the local
judge informed him that there was not “matter enough for a conviction.”68
The prospect of students becoming pregnant was an ongoing concern for schoolstaff. At the Kitamaat school, Margaret Butcher kept a record of every girl’s menstrual
period, monitoring their laundry to check her records.69 Sometimes, students who
became pregnant were discharged. When, in 1913, a female student at the Alert Bay
school became pregnant, the principal sought to place her “in some home here until
the child is born.” The principal expressed a concern that the student had been pregnant when she was admitted to the school. Indian Affairs inspector W. E. Ditchburnthought that if that were the case, her condition should have been detected by the
medical examination. The issue of whether she was pregnant at the time of admission was of concern to both the principal and Indian Affairs, since it would determine
which organization was to pay for her transportation away from the school. In writing
about the issue, Ditchburn noted to an Indian Affairs colleague, “It is hardly necessary
for me to point out to you the desirability of this matter being kept as quiet as possible
in order that the Department’s educational policy may not be affected.”70 In December
1939, the Indian Affairs medical superintendent recommended that a pregnant student at the Mount Elgin school be “discharged in care of her father.”71
That same year, Indian Affairs conducted an investigation into the charges ofimmorality, largely involving students over sixteen years of age, at the Presbyterianschool in Kenora, Ontario. The boys had used a five-cent skeleton key to gain accessto one of the girls’ dormitories; in another case, they had gained access to the girls’654 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

dormitory by climbing a rope the girls had dropped from a window to the fire escape
below. Much of the activity took place while the principal, E. W. Byers, and his wife
were on holiday. Inspector A. G. Hamilton concluded that the principal did not spend
enough time at the school to ensure it was well managed, and recommended thatthe students involved be discharged from the school.72 Under prodding from IndianAffairs, the Presbyterian Church dismissed Byers.73

Arranging marriages:“They sever themselves from their tribes”
Indian Affairs officials believed that because the department had spent money educating students, it had gained the right to determine whom they married. Government
officials feared that if students married someone who had not also been educated at
a residential school, they would revert to traditional ‘uncivilized’ ways. In 1888, Prime
Minister Sir John A. Macdonald told the Parliament of Canada, “The young men whentrained can get their homesteads, and if they can get white women or educated Indian
women as wives, they sever themselves from their tribes.”74 Clearly, the control of marriage was part of the ongoing policy of forced assimilation.
In 1890, Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed took Qu’Appelle principal Joseph
Hugonnard to task for marrying female students from the Qu’Appelle school to boys
who had not gone to school, without first getting Indian Affairs approval. In his letterto Hugonnard, Reed made it clear how little concern or respect the government hadfor parental wishes.
The contention that the parents have the sole right to decide such matters
cannot for one moment be admitted. The parents themselves are to a certain
extent wards of the Government who interfere in many directions to prevent
actions which the ignorance of these people blinds them to the detrimental
consequences of.

The regulation of marriage was in keeping with the Indian Affairs belief that
Aboriginal parents were not able to instill in children the appropriate social values.
According to Reed, Indian Affairs “has most assuredly acquired still further right inreturn for the expenditure involved in educating them in Industrial Institutions.”75
Principals regularly reported and celebrated student marriages. In 1894, the principal of the Middlechurch school reported, “One boy and girl who were among the firstto enter this institution, and since married, have applied to be employed here.”76 Thatsame year, Hugonnard at Qu’Appelle reported that five school pupils were recently
married. In one case, a female student married a male student, and in the others, three
young women married young men from the local reserves. The former male student

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 655

was described as “an excellent carpenter.” On the occasion of his marriage, he was
supplied with “a set of tools.” His wife was described as a first-class housekeeper who
had “been in service for some time and bears an excellent character.”77
In 1896, Martha Thompson married Peter Smith, a former student of the Coqualeetza
Institute. According to Coqualeetza principal Joseph Hall, Thompson “was one of afew pupils received eight years ago into the mission house for purposes of training,and out of which our present institute has grown.” Hall described the married couple’s
home as “a model of neatness and taste, and furnishes in itself and its occupants astriking illustration of the good work which is being done for those in the school; sucha work as can only be accomplished after years of faithful training and instruction.”78
Six years later, Hall reported, “Our most competent pupil, Agnes Murphy, was married from the institute to our most advanced ex-pupil, George Matheson, on February
12, in the presence of the advisory board of the institute.”79
In 1905, Port Simpson, British Columbia, principal Hannah M. Paul wrote:
This year we have had the highest average attendance in the history of theinstitution. Three girls were discharged last summer and fall. Two of them are
now married and the third expects to be married in August, to one of the best
young Indians in the village. All have behaved themselves well and we haveheard good accounts of them.
On May 1 another girl was discharged who seems to be doing well, and anotherwas married from the school on June 9. She keeps her house neat and clean
and we think she will put in practice the lessons learned in the school. Nearly
all these girls have comfortable homes, and many of them will be in moredanger from the vices introduced by bad white people than from the old Indiancustoms.80

The Reverend P. Claessen, principal of the Kuper Island school, reported in 1909
that he had succeeded in “engaging one of our leaving girls with one of our best oldboys.”81 In 1909, Kamloops principal A. M. Carion reported, “It is gratifying to noteagain that since my last report, two more couples of ex-pupils have been united in
the bonds of holy wedlock. The ex-pupils who marry other ex-pupils are better able
to retain the habits of civilized life, which they acquired at the school.”82 The following
year, he reported:
Most of the boys prefer to marry girls trained in the same institution; quite anumber of marriages have taken place between ex-pupils, to the satisfaction of
all concerned. The circumstances of the Indians in this district are such that it isnext to impossible to form the ex-pupils into separate colonies, or settlements.83

Efforts were also made to block marriages deemed to be unsuitable. In 1894, J. W.
Tims of the Anglican mission on the Blackfoot Reserve in what is now Alberta said
there “is extreme difficulty in obtaining girls from the fact that they are allowed to656 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

marry from 10 years of age upwards and to become the second or third wife of grown
up and middle aged Indians, a custom which I think it is time the Department shouldtake steps to discourage.”84 Indian agent Magnus Begg supported Tims. In August ofthat year, Begg reported that “one large girl who had left the boarding school for theholidays wished to be married.” Instead of allowing her to proceed with the marriage,
Begg had her returned to the school. He also wrote, “Everything is done to prevent
girls under sixteen years of age getting married.”85 The following year, Begg told members of the Blackfoot Reserve that they could have only one wife, that they could notmarry anyone under the age of eighteen, and that “no young man could marry a girlfrom an Industrial or board [sic] School without having prepared a house with tworooms, and owning cows, with the necessary stabling, &c.” The Blackfoot at the meeting told him that if the government attempted to prohibit the marriage of girls under
the age of eighteen, he “might expect blood.”86
In 1895, Indian Affairs instructed principals and Indian agents to seek the permission of Indian Affairs officials in Ottawa prior to allowing students to marry. Later thatyear, Indian Commissioner Amédée Forget was disturbed to discover that a student
who was discharged from the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school, ostensibly to care for her
sick mother, had recently married. He said the Indian agent should not have allowed
the marriage without government approval. Even though the marriage had alreadytaken place, Forget demanded to be supplied with information on the “prospects generally of the newly married couple being able to maintain themselves and the probability of their carrying out in their home the lessons they have learned at school.”87
The government not only encouraged marriage between students, but it also began
to make marriage part of the process of getting out of residential school. In his annual
report for 1896, Deputy Minister Hayter Reed wrote, “It is considered advisable, where
pupils are advanced in years and considered capable of providing for themselves, tobring about a matrimonial alliance, either at the time of being discharged from theschool or as soon after as possible.”88
The degree to which the Methodist school at Port Simpson had managed to takecontrol over the lives of its residents was demonstrated in 1898 when a father asked
that his daughter, Nellie Atanasse, be returned to him. School officials opposed themeasure, describing the father, who was not Aboriginal, as “a Catholic and a worthlessman.” In court, the judge asked the girl, who was over the age of sixteen, to choose
her own guardian. She chose to return to the school; her marriage was arranged for
November of that year.89
School administrators remained involved in the lives of the students long after theyleft the school and married. In 1898, Betsy, a former student of the Qu’Appelle school,sought to remarry after the death of her first husband. Since her new husband was
already married, Qu’Appelle principal Hugonnard and Indian agent W. M. Graham
travelled to her reserve in an effort “to stop this illegal marriage.” They arrived only

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 657

to discover that the couple had left for the husband’s reserve.90 The Mounted Police
tracked the couple down and forced the man to send Betsy back to her home reserve.
Hugonnard announced he had arranged for her to “be married to a Pasquah Indian, awidower of one of our girls.”91
In 1900, the Indian agent at Muscowpetung, in what is now Saskatchewan, sought
permission to block recognition of the traditional marriages of two young men fromthe reserve. Both of them were former residential school students but, according to
the Indian agent, their “conduct during the past has not been at all satisfactory.” He
had tried to get one of them to take up farming and marry “a respectable girl fromthe Regina school.” Instead, the two men had visited a nearby reserve and returned
with young women with whom they intended to live. The agent believed the women
were “very undesirable companions for young men who have received a good common education and a Christian training and of whom we have a right to expect better things.” The agent stated his intention to refuse to recognize these relationships
as legitimate marriages “in keeping with hereditory [sic] customs of the tribe.”92 His
superiors informed him that, according to band records, one of the men was alreadymarried, but, in the other case, it was still department policy to accept “the Indian
form of marriage.”93
In 1902, Indian agent A. J. McNeill informed Sarcee Reserve school principal J. W.
Tims that a student who had planned to be married “next Wednesday or Thursday”
would have to delay her wedding until the government could process the principal’s
application for her discharge.94 Seven years later, Indian Affairs was still seeking to
exercise influence over whom students married. In a circular issued that year, Deputy
Minister of Indian Affairs Frank Pedley instructed Indian agents and principals:
Most careful thought should be given to the future of female pupils; the specialdifficulties of their position should be recognized and they should be protected
as far as possible from temptations to which they are often exposed. They will be
assisted in any effort to become self-supporting, or helpful to their parents, or at
the time of their marriage.

Marriage between pupils should be encouraged, and when a marriage takes place,the Department will give assistance to the young wife in some form to be afterwards
decided upon.95
At the Kitamaat school in the early twentieth century, the staff members did notalways attempt to block marriages of which they did not approve. In explaining why
she was not opposing the marriage of a girl she believed to be too young, Margaret
Butcher said, “The Indians are a primitive people and their moral caliber very different from ours. It is better that they should be married as they wished lest their desires
got beyond control.”96

658 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The churches sought to have the government strengthen its control over Aboriginal
marriage. In 1922, the head of the Presbyterian Church’s Winnipeg Committee on
Indian Work urged the government to make it “unlawfull [sic] for a pupil or ex-pupilof the School to marry or be married without the permission of the Indian Agent.”
The Presbyterians proposed that the children of such marriages be denied Treaty
annuities until they reached the age of twenty-one and be prohibited from attending
school.97 Indian Affairs officials viewed the proposals as being overly restrictive andpunitive, and did not implement them.98
Indian Affairs did, however, continue to use its control over discharge from school
to control student marriage. In 1927, three girls aged fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen
ran away from the Blue Quills school in Alberta to spend the night with three young
Aboriginal men. Indian agent W. E. Gullion opposed a recommendation that the oldest girl be discharged so that she could marry the boy with whom she had spent thenight. Gullion feared that if she were discharged, “some of the older girls would be
inclined to follow her example.”99 Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham supported
this position.100 Two years later, it was reported that two students at the Sacred Heartschool on the Peigan Reserve, who were “over 17 years of age,” were to be married to
two former students as soon as their discharge was granted.101
Principals continued to arrange marriages into the 1930s. In 1936, the principal of
the Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake prepared a list of students who had turned
sixteen who, he believed, should not be discharged. He insisted on keeping the students, since he would “always try to marry them as soon as they leave the school.” Of
one eighteen-year-old girl, he wrote, “She will be exposed if she is turned loose.” Hewanted to keep her until the fall threshing was complete. Then, she would be married
to a former pupil. He wanted to keep another eighteen-year-old until “she gets married during the year.” Several of the girls he hoped to keep in the school until he hadarranged their marriages were orphans.102
The churches continued to urge government to further extend its control over the
personal lives of First Nations people. In June 1936, the United Church’s Conferenceof Indian Workers adopted—as part of its Indian residential school policy—a resolution calling on the federal government to make it an offence “for any person to havecarnal knowledge of an unenfranchised Indian woman outside the legal relationship.”
It also asked that the Indian Act be amended to make it an offence “for any person
or Indian to have carnal knowledge of an unenfranchised Indian woman not legally
his wife.” Similarly, they asked that the Act be amended to make it an offence for “anunenfranchised woman to have carnal knowledge of any person or Indian not legally
her husband.”103 Even though it was clear to the church that the policies of the past
had failed, it could see no alternative other than to urge the government to adopt evenmore coercive and paternalistic approaches.

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 659

The File Hills colony
In response to reports that students were being ‘unfitted’ for life in their homecommunities, Indian Affairs sought to continue its control over students’ lives after
they left the schools. In 1909, Deputy Minister Frank Pedley instructed Indian agents“wherever possible to give some assistance to discharged pupils to enable them to
immediately put to practical use the instructions which they have received. You should
therefore give special attention to pupils whose term of residence is nearly completed
and consider each individual case according to its needs.” The agents were supposed
to work with the principals to plan each student’s discharge from the schools. Agentswere to “select the most favourable location for ex-pupils, and should also consider
the advisability of forming them into separate colonies or settlements removed tosome extent from the older Indians.”
Agents were to provide male pupils who intended to take up farming with “somedegree of assistance outright, or where any assurance can be given that a loan will be
repaid, a certain advance will be made to purchase stock, building material, implements and tools.”104 Female students might be provided with a sewing machine andkitchen supplies. A student had to agree to return the machine “if at any time my behavior or personal conduct is not satisfactory to the officers of the Indian Department.”105
Pedley’s 1909 directive referred to the possibility of establishing colonies for former
students. One such colony had already been established in southeastern Saskatchewan
in 1902. The File Hills Colony was an initiative of the local inspector of Indian agencies(and future Indian commissioner), W. M. Graham. The colony was situated on land on
the Peepeekisis Reserve in the File Hills. But the colony residents did not come fromthe Peepeekisis Reserve: most of them came from the nearby File Hills and Qu’Appelle
residential schools. Those who moved to the colony were provided with stock, equipment, seed, building supplies, and credit. No couple could live together unless they
were married according to provincial law, as opposed to Aboriginal custom.106
The first student to move to the colony was Fred Dieter. In 1907, Graham boasted of
the success the young man had achieved, describing him as
an independent, self-respecting citizen. This man has a large house of five rooms
and a basement cellar, a large barn and two frame granaries (at the time of myvisit, a few days ago, these were full of grain). The grounds surrounding thehouse are set out with trees three or four years old. The cellar is well stocked withvegetables. They have three cows milking this season, a dozen pigs and a lot ofhens in the yard.

Dieter had a full line of farm machinery that was all paid for, and employed a “whiteman” as a farm labourer. Graham was at pains to stress the distance he felt Dieter
had come.

660 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

What makes this case the more interesting is the fact that this boy was taken toschool from a home which is today one of the worst hovels on the reserve andwhere his people are purely Indian in all their habits and do no farming, andif this boy had returned to his home, he would have fallen into line with them,without doubt. These people have nothing to do with this young man, and theirinfluence over him amounts to nothing.107

Graham boasted:
Although this colony has only been in existence six years, the results obtained
have been phenomenal, to my mind. I shall instance cases of young men leaving
school seven years ago, at the age of 18, who are to-day settled in comfortable
homes, married and have children, who are brought up as white children are,not even knowing the Indian tongue.108

Fred Dieter’s daughter, Eleanor Brass, was one of those children brought up speaking only English. Her parents, one of whom was Cree and the other Saulteaux, spoke
only English at home, in part because they were fearful their children would be heldback in school if they did not have a good command of English. Brass wrote in her
memoirs that by government order at the colony, “fiddle dances, pow-wows, andtribal ceremonies were forbidden. Mr. Graham considered them a hindrance to progress. But I can remember as a child accompanying my parents to some secret fiddle
dances held in private homes.”109
By 1915, thirty-one families were living in the File Hills Colony. It was divided into
Catholic and Protestant sections, each with its own church. In addition, there was asmall hospital with a resident nurse. Colony members had also proven themselves tobe patriotic, donating $540 to the war effort within weeks of the outbreak of the FirstWorld War.110 Although the colonists were selected because they had done well at residential school, they did not wish to see their own children attend residential school.
They managed to win government support for the establishment of a non-religious
day school on the colony, but objection from Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard
led to the federal government’s abandoning the initiative.111
The students who came to the colony did receive far more financial support thanother First Nations people who were attempting to farm in the Canadian West. As aresult, they were more successful than many other former students. The federal government could not abandon its paternalistic approach. According to Brass, one of the
Indian agents responsible for the File Hills Colony “handled all the finances of thereserve and we couldn’t sell a bushel of grain, a cow or a horse without getting a permit first.”112 At one point, the Indian agent threatened to put Brass’s husband in jail for
trading a horse without his permission.113 Brass believed that the residential schools
undermined the colony’s development: “As soon as their children became of schoolage, they were taken away and the parents were deprived of their rightful responsibility for their upbringing. Along with the Indian agent administrating their affairs, theSeparating the sexes, arranging marriages, establishing colonies: 1867–1939 • 661

graduates had little opportunity to exercise initiative and ability.” Given these restrictions, she and her husband eventually left the colony.114
Edward Ahenakew described the File Hills Colony as a tribute to W. M. Graham,
but also as a continuance of the residential school model of telling First Nations people what to do.115 While the government often pointed with pride to the achievementof the students at the File Hills Colony, no attempts were made to replicate it in otherlocations.116 By the 1930s, the government had ceased to refer to the colony in its publications. In 1936, Oblate missionary Guy de Bretagne wrote federal officials to alert
them to the colony’s decline. He said only six of eighteen Catholic colonists were still
farming.117
Although the File Hills Colony was the government’s showcase, overall support toformer students was minimal. In 1914, Indian Affairs provided a total of $6,934.23 toforty-three male and twenty-three female ex-students (an average of $105 a recipient). In reporting on Indian Affairs’ program of support for former students, Deputy
Minister Duncan Campbell Scott wrote that “although in some cases the results havenot been all that could be desired, it must be considered that these graduates have
many difficulties to contend with owing to the environment of the reserve life and the
prejudices of the older Indians.”118 Seven years later, the number of former students
receiving support had declined to thirty-five (eleven males and twenty-four females).
That year, they received a total of $2,933.84 (an average of $84 a recipient).119 In 1925,
in referring to what he called the “graduate problem,” Scott wrote, “Many older Indian
pupils of promise are being given an academic or vocational training in public schools
and business colleges in competition with white children.” He did not, however, indicate how many were receiving support.120 The levels of support remained low into the
1930s. In 1936, the government provided $4,000 in assistance, which was 57% of what
it had provided two decades earlier, in 1914.121 Not all former students received support. In 1931, a former student of the St. Albert school was denied funds to purchase asewing machine at the time of her marriage because she was defined as “non-Treaty”
and had married a non-Treaty man.122
In 1932, Russell Ferrier, the Indian Affairs superintendent of education, announced
a new follow-up program of support. Under this program, when a student approached
the age at which she or he would be eligible for discharge, the principal was expected
to contact the Indian agent from the student’s home reserve. The agent was to provide
a report on home conditions, and the principal was to give the agent an assessment of
the student’s capabilities. Once the student returned home, it was the agent’s role to“guide the graduate into worthwhile activity.” The principals were to encourage local
missionaries to assist in providing this guidance. The program’s work was very poorly
defined, there were no resources provided, and expectations were minimal.123 Fiveyears later, Ferrier’s successor as the head of Indian Affairs education programs, R. A.
Hoey, announced the establishment of another follow-up program. It amounted to a662 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

re-announcement of the 1932 program, under which agents and missionaries were
urged to oversee and direct the lives of former students. No additional funds were
provided to actually assist the students in establishing themselves.124
As this chapter and the three preceding chapters make clear, the residential schools
were more than simple educational facilities. They were an integral part of a joint
government and church campaign to disrupt Aboriginal families and Aboriginal culture. A great deal of attention has been paid to the obvious and destructive role theschools played in separating children from their parents and suppressing Aboriginal
languages. Through their missionary work, the schools, and the men and women who
organized them, also devoted considerable effort to demeaning and undermining
Aboriginal cultural and spiritual practices and beliefs, and to disrupting patterns of
Aboriginal family formation.

CHAPTER 29

The Lytton school: 1902–1939

T

he St. George’s Anglican school at Lytton, British Columbia, opened in the
1902–03 school year. From its opening until the end of the 1930s, the school
was in a constant state of crisis. Almost every one of the problematic issues
previously described in this volume was manifested at this school. For the entire forty-year period, relations between the school and the First Nations people were coolat best, and, as a result, the school had difficulty in recruiting students. Inspectors,
students, and parents all raised issues about the quality of education, overwork, poor
health, inadequate diet, sanitation, building maintenance, fire safety, discipline, truancy, sexual impropriety, and conflicts between staff members. While not unique, theproblems of this school serve as an example of the inevitable outcomes of a poorly
managed, underfunded, and misdirected system in action.
Like the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, St. George’s was an initiative of
the British-based New England Company (nec). The school’s founding principal was
George Ditcham, an Anglican clergyman by training.1 From the outset of its establishment, the Lytton school had recruiting problems. In 1903, the school, which could
accommodate forty boys, had only twelve students.2 Three years later, enrolment had
increased to twenty-nine.3 It was only by 1908 that Principal Ditcham could boast ofa full enrolment, but this was achieved in part by revising the school’s capacity downward to thirty-five.4 Part of the problem might have come from Ditcham’s own attitude
towards Aboriginal people. In one annual report, he wrote, “There has been no serious trouble with the morality of the school and the conduct has been excellent when
one considers the natural deformities of these Indians.”5 Six years later, he wrote,“Some improvement is noticeable in truthfulness and honesty, and the boys are fairly
well-behaved and obedient, though they need constant supervision.”6
Parental discontent mounted through the decade. In 1910, fifty parents and band
representatives met with Indian Affairs inspector W. E. Ditchburn to express theirfrustration with conditions at the Lytton school. According to Ditchburn, the parents
felt the students were worked too hard, did not get enough class time, were subject

664 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to beatings by a principal who could not control his temper, and were not receiving
proper medical attention.
Inspector Ditchburn concluded that Principal Ditcham was “not the proper person
to act as Principal of an institution for the education and moral training of Indians.”
The inspector assembled the following list of Ditcham’s failings as principal:
1)

He has evidently neglected the health of some of his pupils by keeping themat the school too long before sending them to the hospital.

2)

That he has admitted that as the pupils under his tuition become older they
become vicious in habits and have no respect for him. This undoubtedly
demonstrates a lack of ability on his part to conceive of a proper method of
training Indian children.

3)

That he evidently has not the sympathy of the Indians at heart, and believes
more in the lash than moral suasion.

4)

That he has a hasty temper which he is unable to control at times when punishing his pupils, and it is a well known fact amongst those who have a gooddeal to do with Indians that as soon as a person loses his temper with them sodoes he lose their respect and confidence.

So great was the hostility towards the school that there were only ten pupils in residence, all “small boys ranging in age from 9 to 13 years.” The principal of the nearby
girls’ Anglican residential school at Yale said that Lytton’s bad reputation was making
it difficult for her to recruit students. Ditcham had gone through five teachers in eight
years, leading parents to ask, “If Mr. Ditcham cannot keep teachers there, how does heexpect to retain pupils.” In light of all these issues, Inspector Ditchburn recommended
that the New England Company be asked to replace Ditcham.7 A month later, the nec
announced that Ditcham would be replaced.8 In his final annual report to IndianAffairs, Principal Ditcham wrote, “There are only five small boys at school—some finished and others absconded, some from the school, some from Lytton hospital—one
followed the other like cattle, and as the expense was too great for constables to bringthem back and hold them at school, they are still away.”9
Ditcham’s successor, Leonard Dawson, was later described as a “strict disciplinarian.” In a scathing assessment of Dawson, Indian Affairs education official Martin
Benson wrote in 1916:
The desertions from the Lytton Industrial School are of frequent occurrence, as
many as eight or ten boys being absent at one time. This shows an unsatisfactory
state of affairs, which could be prevented if proper discipline were maintained.
A case occurred last January were [sic] the constable found a boy at the railway
station waiting to steal a ride to Kamloops. He took him in charge and he wasreturned to the school. It appears that this boy was given permission to go

The Lytton school: 1902–1939 • 665

to Kamloops for the purpose of enlisting for overseas service. He was under
military age and physically unfit and should not have been allowed to leave theschool, especially as he would have had to beat his way on the train. This boy was
insufficiently clad and would have most likely frozen to death if he had boarded
the freight train and proceeded on his journey.10

Louis Laronde, who was appointed principal in 1920, described Dawson’s administration as one of “repression, with such paraphernalia as hand-cuffs, leg-irons, stocks,
convicts’ haircuts and prison cells.”11 Although Laronde’s tenure may have ended thisera of “repression,” the memories of the system remained. In 1942, a former student
told the school’s new principal about the use of shackles during the Dawson era. Over
twenty years later, he had a vivid memory of how two runaway girls had been “chained
together and driven home in front of the Principal. They used the shackles to chain
runnaways [sic] to the bed. They also had stocks in the playgrounds. And they wereused.”12Laronde’s period in office was short-lived. In the spring of 1921, he fled the school
after several female students accused him of indecent conduct. An Anglican Church
official investigated the charges and noted, “Some filthy literature which I threw in thefire in disgust should not be in any decent man’s possession.”13
Laronde’s replacement was Rev. A. R. Lett. At the time of Lett’s appointment, IndianAffairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott wrote, “He has had practical experience in farming. He is just now in charge of a rural parish. As far as one can judge fromall the facts and recommendations, he seems to fill all the needs of the case.”14
He was mistaken.
In 1927, the district health inspector, Dr. P. M. Wilson, passed a harsh judgment on
the Lytton school. The dormitories were overcrowded, inadequately ventilated, andpoorly lit. The water supply was so poor that the plumbing regularly became plugged.
The heating system did not meet requirements during the colder months. “The laundry, I do not consider fit for any person to work in.” The floor was collapsing, and thewind blew through the walls and windows. “The children working in the building
are cold, while breathing in damp, steamy air.” Wilson attributed the developmentof seven cases of tuberculosis to the faulty conditions in the school, and threatened
to condemn the building “if some move is not made to better conditions before thebeginning of the next term.”
Wilson added, “The Principal is doing the very best he can under existing circumstances, and it is only, I think, the fact that he has hesitated in adding expense to the
Department that he has carried on to this period. Furthermore he has intimated his
resignation if conditions are not changed.”15
That same year, the Canadian government purchased the school from the New
England Company. Under the agreement of sale, the nec was to continue to provide
funding to the school, which would operate as an Anglican institution. As Scott later666 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

explained the arrangement, “The Department does not dictate concerning engagements or dismissals. However, if an employee on the staff was found incompetent, theDepartment would insist on his removal.”16 One of the provisions of the agreement
was that the school principal would “be a clergyman of the Church of England.”17
A new school building was opened in 1928,18 but problems soon reappeared. In
February 1934, Principal Lett announced his intention of resigning.19 He felt that his
position in the school and community had been undermined by S. E. Higgs, a fellow
Anglican missionary. According to Lett, Higgs initially had attempted to take over the
direction of the school. Lett reprimanded him for this and then asked Higgs to conduct missionary work with former students. Lett said Higgs seized the opportunity to
blacken Lett’s reputation with the First Nations people, going so far “as to publish an
article purporting to have come from the old boys of the school but which was written
by himself.” Lett, who had suffered a breakdown in the spring of 1933, said he was “living on nerve pills.”20 Lett also believed the local Indian agent was not sufficiently supportive. In a letter to Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Harold McGill, he wrote that, inthe past two years, he had recruited twenty-two students, while the Indian agent had
recruited only two. As a result, the school was short seventeen students, even though
there were school-aged children on the reserves who were not enrolled in school.
When the Anglican hierarchy backed Lett in his conflict with Higgs, Lett withdrew his
resignation.21 The Indian agent, A. Strang, attributed the recruiting problem to conditions at the school. Truancy, he said, was high and often unreported. In 1934, he
informed the departmental secretary that “the children had been continually runningaway.” He added that he had recently “located and brought back three truants from
the Merritt Agency although their absence had not been reported.22
Indian Affairs inspector G. H. Barry reported that same year that “there has beena great falling off in school morale.”23 In October, the boys’ matron and the woman incharge of the laundry had had a dispute in front of the students. The matron resigned.24
Far more serious was the punishment that the boys’ supervisor, Alfred Batcheler, had
administered to a runaway boy, Peter Martin. According to Martin, the supervisor:
Blindfolded me and told me to open my mouth as he wanted to give me achocolate. Instead of a chocolate he poured a spoonful of mustard into mymouth. He then grabbed me by the legs and held me [sic] head down in a pail ofwater (ice cold) and poured a cup of cold water down my back, and then he putme on a stretcher and held me up in the air and told me to jump.

The matter was investigated by acting Indian agent Robert Howe, who discoveredthat the “facts were not denied at the School,” although Batcheler admitted “it was avery foolish thing to have done.” Howe thought that parents would use it “as an excuse
for not sending their children to the school.”25 Not surprisingly, Indian Affairs now
considered requesting Lett’s resignation.

The Lytton school: 1902–1939 • 667

Many parents felt that the students were poorly clothed, poorly fed, and poorly
treated. Inspector Barry said he believed that the first two allegations about food andclothing were not true, but that he still had to complete his investigation into the treatment of the students. But, despite his concerns about student treatment, Barry recommended that, in the face of this resistance, “all available Indian children should beforced to attend” the school. He recognized, however, that “in a few cases it may benecessary to secure convictions which would result in the sending of certain boys” toschool.26
At the end of October 1934, three staff members were dismissed: Marjorie Bird, theintermediate teacher; Helen Dalgleish, the laundry matron; and Alfred Batcheler, theboys’ supervisor. In a letter to Indian Affairs, Bird complained that she was being let
go without cause, adding, “Because the Indians are agitating to get rid of Mr. Lett hetries to pacify them by telling them all that he is dismissing the old staff and making
a clean sweep of the school. It will do no good if we are all dismissed, as long as heremains.”27 Deputy Minister McGill backed Lett’s decision, describing him as “a very
capable administrator.”28
Health conditions at the school were disastrous in the winter of 1936–37. In thatyear, 152 students were sick with a combination of measles and whooping cough. Thiswas followed by an influenza attack that affected 170 students, 11 staff members, and4 emergency nurses.29 Thirteen children died.30 In a letter to the parents of the children
who died, Lett wrote, “Your children are just gone before and are patiently waiting for
you and as their arms were flung around your neck and shoulders here, so they will
greet you in your last and everlasting home. Do not fail them. Remember their joys
and smiles and ask God to give you grace to go to them.”31
According to school inspector Barry, the high death rate left the school with a “verybad name among the Indians.”32 In 1938, Barry recommended that Lett be dismissed
because of his inability to control the students or regain the respect of the parents.33
However, Indian Commissioner D. M. MacKay concluded that Lett had made sufficient improvement to justify his being allowed to continue in office.34 It was anothermistaken decision.
In January 1941, Barry prepared a summary of his reports on the Lytton school
since 1937. He had called the washrooms “filthy” (twice in 1937) and had described
them as “swimming in water” (1938), had found the floors “very dirty” (1938), and had
recommended “more attention be paid to the daily cleaning of the school” (1940). The
door from the “intermediate boys’ dormitory to the fire escape was locked,” and thekey kept in a place “where smoke and possibly flames might be expected to be with theshaft involved” (1940). The heating of two of the primary classrooms was so poor, hethought it would be “the cause of illness” (1937) and remained “very unsatisfactory”(1938). In 1937, Barry concluded that Principal Lett viewed the local Indian agent as
being “perfectly useless,” and the agent, Mr. Strang, held a similar view of Lett. In that668 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

year, Barry also commented that the principal did not spend enough time recruiting
students for the school, although he noted that he was “not popular with the Indians.”
Barry also thought the Indian agent did not visit the school frequently enough, andthe principal felt that the agent was neglecting to enrol at least twenty children at theschool. The conflicts went unresolved for years.
Some of Barry’s harshest criticisms were reserved for Lett’s treatment of the staff. In
1938, he wrote, the principal
engages the most unsuitable persons as supervisors, particularly on the girls’
side of the school. Sooner or later there is a row of some sort and the girl leaves
and later seeks an interview with either the Indian Commissioner or myself. It is
impossible to get discontented ex-members of the staff of the St. George’s school
to put their complaints in writing. If they would only do this we could deal withthe matters complained of at the school.

Barry believed that older students were not getting enough class work, and thatrunaways were not always reported to the local Indian agent. He also said the boys
were out of control, the principal was too often absent, and the boys’ supervisor might
have been making “too great a use of corporal punishment.” It was, he added, “mostdifficult to regulate the punishment of children in a school where the Principal fails in
the general administration and control of his own staff.”
Not surprisingly, from 1937 onward, Barry called for a change of principal. In lightof some improvement in 1940, he relented and said he was not prepared to insist ona change “at the present time.” But, conditions soon deteriorated further. Barry ended
his 1941 report with the note that “Mr. Lett is not professionally qualified to supervise
the actual subject matter taught to the children.”35 Lett was not replaced until 1942.
The newly appointed principal, C. F. Hives, wrote to Ottawa about the challenges hefaced, warning, “After years and years of mal-administration, please don’t look fordefinite results too quickly from St. George’s.”36
The fact that the federal government was prepared to accept four decades of“mal-administration” of the Lytton school is emblematic of the residential school system’s failings during this period. The Lytton school, it should be emphasized, was nota remote, hastily constructed mission school that operated without scrutiny. It was
built in the early twentieth century, and a new school was constructed in the 1920s.
Senior Indian Affairs officials received regular reports on the problems with the operation of the school, which the department owned after 1928. Throughout this period,
parents, with very good reason, were unwilling to send their children to this school.
The government used coercion to get the children into the school—and then failed
to protect them from neglect, disease, overwork, and abuse. This was the residential
school system in operation.

CHAPTER 30

Parents respond and resist: 1867–1939

An earlier chapter in this part of the history described the way in which parental opposition to industrial schools contributed to the failure of the industrial school initiative. It is important to recognize that Aboriginal parents andcommunities never ceased to speak out and act on behalf of their children. This resistance took numerous forms. Parents might refuse to enrol students, refuse to return
runaways, or they might refuse to return students to school at the end of the summer
holidays. They also called on the government to increase school funding, establish
day schools, and improve the quality of education, food, and clothing. In taking thesemeasures, they often put themselves at risk of legal reprisals. Various acts of opposition have been chronicled in chapters on such topics as discipline, food, work, truancy, and abuse.
Almost invariably, the system declined to accept parental and student criticisms
as being valid. Parental influences were judged to be negative and retrograde, if notsimply “evil,” to use the missionaries’ word. Once parents came to be viewed as the‘enemy,’ their criticisms, no matter what their validity, could be discounted. This colonialist attitude made it impossible for the schools to generate the sort of parental support and involvement any education system needs to succeed.
Principals often claimed that parents were too quick to believe their children’s
complaints about life in the school. For example, in 1889, Qu’Appelle principal Joseph
Hugonnard reported, “Several of the boys ran away but they all came back except two.
The excuse they make to their parents for doing this is, that they have too much work
to do and not enough school, and the parents are generally ready to believe it.”1
Less than two months after receiving a report that conditions at the Elkhorn,
Manitoba, school were good, the Indian Affairs office received a message from thelocal Indian agent that the majority of parents would not be returning their children
to school at the end of the summer of 1926. According to the parents, the children
were not well fed, the older boys compelled the younger boys to steal, and all werepoorly clothed. The agent said that a physician had examined eleven children on theirreturn to their home community and informed him that seven were in poor health670 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and should be under the doctor’s care.”2 In response, departmental secretary J. D.
McLean said he thought the parents’ complaints were baseless. “As you are aware,”he wrote, “it is quite common for Indian parents, who do not wish their children toremain at residential school to do everything possible to delay their return after the
expiration of the holiday period.” The parents were to be told that “their children must
be returned” to the school.3
Parents often had a very clear understanding of the failings of the schools, and proposed realistic and effective solutions to those problems. In 1905, parents of children
attending the Roman Catholic boarding school in Squamish, British Columbia, petitioned to have the school converted into an industrial school. Such a change would
have led to a significant increase in the school’s per capita grant. According to British
Columbia Superintendent of Indian Affairs A. W. Vowell, the parents realized that the“amount paid for the support of their children at the boarding school is not sufficientto admit of anything but the bare necessities in the line of food and clothing being
furnished by the Management.”4
In the same vein, in 1907, Indian Commissioner David Laird wrote that he hadreceived
complaints from parents in regard to the lack of proficiency attained by theirchildren in class work, and believe that in some few cases they were justified.
It is quite natural that the schools should profit by the outside work of theboys, the older ones at least, as well as the various occupations of the girls athousekeeping, butter-making, clothes-mending, &c.; but this may be overdone
in certain quarters.5

When their complaints went unaddressed, parents often simply removed theirchildren from the schools. Roman Catholic Bishop Vital Grandin asked the Indian
commissioner in 1897 to help him stop parents from taking their children out of the
Lac La Biche school in what is now Alberta.
Would it be too much to ask the Department to instruct their Agent to use his
influence with his Indians in order to bring the parents to leave their children atschool until we are satisfied that they know enough to be benefitted by their staywith us. This is our greatest difficulty just now. After three or four years, and evensome times after only two years in the School, parents must take their children
away, to have their help in their work. Good advice from the Agent or [farm]
Instructor at such time would induce some of the parents, if not all, to leave theirchildren with us and it would be a great help to us.6

In 1904, a husband and wife attempted to remove their daughter from the Kuper
Island, British Columbia, school. When Principal G. Donckele informed them thatwhen they signed the admission form, they had given the government the right todetermine when their daughter would be discharged, the father said, “I am the father

Parents respond and resist: 1867–1939 • 671

of this child and I do not care for what you and the government have to say aboutit.” After being told that he could be prosecuted, the father left, accompanied by his
daughter.7
Even when both government and church officials recognized the validity of parental complaints, they could not bring themselves to tell parents that they agreed withthem. This reluctance was underscored by the handling of problems at the Presbyterianschool in Shoal Lake, Ontario, in 1917. That year, Inspector John Semmens reported
that the conditions at the school were, from the government’s point of view, farfrom satisfactory.
The Indian language is still used by pupils to an undesirable extent. The Indian
parents visit the school frequently and remain for meals and talk a grat [sic] deal
with the children. Worse than this it is feared that they encourage their children
in disobedience and they resent every form of punishment. Complaints of thepupils are too readily believed by their guardians and the Principal finds that
their interference makes his work doubly hard.8

The Chiefs of the Shoal Lake Bands had gone so far as to demand the dismissal of
Principal F. T. Dodds in the spring of 1917, arguing that he was “incapable” of running the school.9 Indian Affairs had reached a similar conclusion: a few days after thepetition was written, departmental secretary J. D. McLean wrote to the Presbyterian
Church with a recommendation that Dodds be replaced.10 Instead, the church
appointed a younger man to serve as Dodds’s assistant.11 Indian Affairs recommended
that Dodds discourage “too frequent” parental visits and stop feeding parents who
visited the school.
Dodds carried out these instructions, along with an additional recommendationthat he “deal firmly with those who transgress the rules.”12 The policies backfired. In
1917, three boys, who had been strapped for secretly meeting with girls at a location
away from the school, ran away. They reached their homes, and the principal, having“learned that they suffered no ill effects from their journey,” simply struck them off theschool list. Another “clever boy, who was a favourite with the teachers,” began acting
up and was strapped. When he ran away, no effort was made to bring him back. On
another occasion, eleven girls, who had previously “shown no spirit of insubordination,” ran away. 13 At the end of August 1917, parents refused to return their children toschool.14 Dodds resigned in February, but his departure was delayed until the end of
the school year. The Presbyterians believed that Dodds’s immediate removal “would
be construed by the Indians as the direct result of their appeal to the Department anda victory on their part.”15 Once again, the government and the churches went out of
their way to downplay the legitimacy of First Nations’ complaints.
Chief Napahkesit of the Pine Creek Band in Manitoba told the local Indian agent
in 1917 that he was sorry he had ever supported the construction of the Pine Creek
school. According to the agent, the chief felt “the children know less when they come

672 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionout than they did when they went in.” When they left the school, the boys were all“liars, thieves and do nothing but run after the girls, when the girls get out they are
all liars, thieves, and do nothing but run after the boys.” Whenever he wanted a letter
written or read for him, “none of the children that come out of the school can read or
write for him.” What was needed, the chief said, was a day school.16
Indian Affairs explicitly excluded parents from the operation of the schools. Chief
William Mann of the Fort Alexander Band in Manitoba, along with two band councilors, wrote to the federal government in 1923, inquiring if the “Band of this Reserve has
any rights to see if the schools are well conducted by the Teachers or the Principal.”17
The response from department secretary J. D. McLean was categorical: “as theseschools are conducted under the auspices of the Roman Catholic and Anglican
Churches, respectively, in co-operation with this Department, you have no authority
in directing the policy in regard to the educational work being carried on.” If they had
complaints, they should take them to the Indian agent. They were reminded, “It is theduty of yourself and the councilors to assist the principal and the teachers in any way
you can in encouraging the Indian parents to send their children to school.”18
Some parents felt it was their duty to their children to withdraw them from residential school. In January 1922, Andrew Saunders, a Cree man from Missanabie, Ontario,
completed a statutory declaration saying he wanted to withdraw his two children fromthe Chapleau, Ontario, school and place them in a day school, because “they are notbeing properly taught and have too much work.” He said that when they came home
for the holidays, they were “both lousy and dirty.”19
Mohawk writer Pauline Johnson’s sister, Evelyn, drew attention to the failings of thesystem in 1923. In a letter in the Toronto Sunday World, Johnson asked why the government did not “turn the Mohawk Institution into a first-class educational school,teaching trades, farming and domestic science by qualified teachers of these subjects,
turning out boys and girls fitted to make their way in the life even if they do not wish or
cannot afford to take up higher education?”20
Evelyn’s father, George Johnson, born in 1816, had been a member of the Six
Nations. He attended the Mohawk Institute, where his facility with language and hisstrong Anglican belief led to his becoming an assistant to the missionaries who ran
the school. He went on to become an interpreter for the Anglican Church and, later,
for the superintendent general of Indian affairs. He was, in effect, the senior government official on the Six Nations Reserve.21 Evelyn’s brother, Allen, also attended the
Mohawk Institute, and once ran away from the school. Evelyn and Pauline were educated by governesses, and later attended private boarding schools.22 Two weeks before
Johnson’s letter was published, a provincial inspector provided the department with ahighly critical assessment of the school, which upheld Johnson’s criticisms. According
to the inspector, the school had no “provision for systematic instruction in the principles, either of household science, manual training or agriculture. It would, I think,Parents respond and resist: 1867–1939 • 673

be most desirable in a school of this kind if the heads of the various industrial departments were also qualified to teach the principles of these subjects.” He added that inthe “junior division teachers have changed too frequently to admit steady progress.”23
Chief Kejick of the Shoal Lake Band told Indian Affairs officials in 1928 that the students from his reserve “did not know how to make a living when they left school andwould like trades taught.”24 Eight years later, Charlie Shingoose of the Waywayseecappo
Band sought to have his fifteen-year-old son, Charlie Junior, discharged from the Birtle,
Manitoba, school. His reasoning was straightforward: the boy was making no progress
at school, and if he were at home, his father thought, he could “teach him how to work,
trap, etc.” After ten years in the Birtle school, Charlie Junior was still in Grade Three.
The principal agreed that while he was “fairly industrious,” the boy’s “classroom work
was poor.” Indian agent A. G. Smith observed, “I think that the Father is right in somerespects, and that he would teach the boy how to earn a living in the Indian way, which
would benefit this boy more than the school training.”
However, he thought it would be unfair to the school to discharge a student midway
through the school year, presumably because of the revenue that the school would
lose. Even though he recognized that the boy would “not learn much which will beof practical value to him,” he recommended he be kept in the school until summer.25
Philip Phelan, the chief of the training division, disagreed, and allowed him to leavealmost immediately.26
In the first year of the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school’s operation, Chief Dan
Francis wrote the following letter to Indian Affairs [spelling in original]:
I am writing you a few lines to tell you about that Indian Shool at Shubenacadie.
I thought that School was build for Indian Childrens to Learn Read and write
not for Slave and Prisoner like jail also get worse [illegible word] now one Indian
boy of this Reserve so beated by Father Mackie he was laid up for 7 Days also
young girls do scrubing the floor on Sunday for one young girl give me reportwich there had to Sent her Back here got Sick no wonder she get Sick for thoseyoung Indian girl never don any hard work So now when Indian agent comeover told there Parents there children will not See hard time only shooling also
cloths them and feed them and there Boy there do not have enough eat so I thinkthat shool not for childrens to work like Country home that shool was build for
Bording School now you see all while Children go Bording Shool don have towork and I understood those childrens at this Reserve should be all Sent Backand there can go shool here and they can help there parents also learn how tomake baskets for there Living for these childrens are not orphans they got fathers
and mothers and they would like to see there children be use [illegible word] andI do not Blame them for every one love their children I had childrens and got
Learning with-out that kind of shool so hoping to hear from you soon.27

674 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

When Indian Affairs investigated, Chief Francis told the Indian agent of one girlwho had been sent home from the school due to illness and who complained that
she had not been well fed while at school. Another student was homesick; a parent
wished to have her child returned to her; and parents had visited their children at
the school and found them poorly cared-for and overworked. There were reports thatparents visiting the school found “children’s heads lousy.”28 Departmental secretary A.
F. MacKenzie dismissed these complaints, saying the children were well treated andhe did not believe the school staff would “permit any uncleanliness or vermin on thechildren under their charge.”29
Residential schools also came under criticism from early First Nations organizations. Former Mohawk Institute student F. O. Loft founded the League of Indians ofCanada. The creation of the league was one of the first attempts in the twentieth century to create a national political organization for Aboriginal peoples. The league met
with considerable opposition from the federal government, and unsuccessful efforts
were made to discredit Loft.30 At its meeting in Saddle Lake, Alberta, in 1931, which
attracted over 1,300 delegates, a resolution was approved that called for the construction of more day schools to augment residential schools.31 The league became known
as the League of Indians of Western Canada. Among its early leaders were Edward
Ahenakew and John Tootoosis. By 1932, Tootoosis, who was the league’s Saskatchewanpresident, was calling for the closure of boarding schools.32 In 1932, the organization
asked that only qualified teachers be hired to work at residential schools, that medical
examinations be given to students before they were sent to the schools, and that thehalf-day system be reduced to allow for greater class time.33
Despite their position as a colonized people, afflicted with serious health andeconomic issues, Aboriginal people in this period expressed their opposition to residential schooling both collectively and individually. Their views were generally discounted, and their right to play a role in the education of their children was dismissed.
The churches and the government officials all continued to believe that they knew
better than parents.

CHAPTER 31

The staff experience: 1867–1939

Nicholas Flood Davin’s 1879 report to the federal government on the futureof residential schooling in Canada recommended the creation of a systemof church-run schools. He described the existing church-operated schools
as “monuments of religious zeal and heroic self-sacrifice.” He believed that because
the religious schools were staffed mostly by missionaries, the government would
gain access to a low-cost and highly effective labour force. In his mind, each school
employee would be “an enthusiastic person, with, therefore, a motive power beyond
anything pecuniary remuneration could supply.”1
The government accepted his advice. As a result, the story of the people who
worked in the residential schools from 1867 to 1939 cannot be separated from thatof the religious organizations for which they worked. At one point during this period,
four distinct churches operated schools in Canada. These schools were administeredby a variety of missionary organizations, and, in the case of the Roman Catholics, theschools were staffed by the members of several, different, Catholic religious orders.
Each school was a miniature society, often with more than twenty employees. In
addition to teachers, there were cooks, seamstresses, housekeepers, matrons, disciplinarians, farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, engineers (to operate the heating andelectrical generators), shoemakers, and even bandmasters. In 1930, there were eighty
schools in operation. Although many of the school staff stayed for decades, complaintsof high staff turnover were common. It is clear that thousands of people worked at residential schools during this period. They came for a variety of reasons, many staying
for only a short time, while others lived the rest of their lives in the schools. Given allthese variations, it is possible to present only a sketch of the staff of these schools.
This chapter opens with a description of the various motivations that drew people
to work in residential schools, and is followed by a discussion of the Protestant andRoman Catholic missionary organizations that recruited and supported the residential school staff. The chapter pays particular attention to the role that women played in
the history of these organizations, and attempts to give some sense of the experienceof working in a residential school. Life in close quarters both generated tensions and676 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

served as the basis for long-lasting relationships, not only among different membersof the staff, but also between staff members and students. The chapter also profiles
some of the Aboriginal people who worked in the schools, and concludes with a survey of the critiques of residential schooling that were developed by some of the people
who were involved in operating the system.

Motivations
A discussion of residential school staff has to begin with an understanding of theschools’ religious mission. At any given time during this period, almost all the schools
were run under the auspices of one of four Canadian churches. While the government
had the right to approve or reject the appointment of school principals, the churches
had the right to nominate the principals. The churches also usually had responsibility
for hiring all additional staff (this was not necessarily the case in the early industrial
schools). Each church sought to employ only members of its own faith. For example, at
the Anglican schools, every staff member was expected, “so far as circumstances will
admit,” to be a member of the Church of England and to attend daily prayer services.2
It is not surprising, then, that most of the early school staff members believed they
were participating in a moral crusade. In her history of the McDougall Orphanage, thepredecessor of the Morley school in Alberta, Mrs. J. McDougall recalled that during
the twelve years her husband managed the institution, he was often “greatly worried
and the financial burden upon him was heavy and we as a family underwent manytimes great sacrifice.” She described the work of the mission and orphanage as “goingout after the wild and ignorant and bringing them into a Christian home and blessing
the body, culturing the mind and trying to raise spiritual vision.” She felt the work justified the sacrifice. It was, she felt, “good work and surely it must be blest.”3 Given thehealth conditions that prevailed in many communities and schools, the missionaries
assured themselves that even if they could not save lives, they could save souls. Writingof her time as a matron at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, Louise Topping
recalled how “many a night she stayed up to watch a child with feverish hands andhead as they clung to her and she counted the last dieing [sic] breaths. Even in death
they were wonderful Christians and would say Jesus was waiting for them and say they
were glad to go to him.”4
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was a common belief among
Protestant leaders that the Canadian nation could serve as the basis for God’s kingdom on earth. This nation was ideally white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. They also
believed that the character of this nation was under threat from French-speaking
Catholics in Québec, and from European immigrants. If Canada were to achieve
its mission, these people, along with Aboriginal people, had to accept the benefitsThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 677

of Protestant civilization and become assimilated.5 For such Protestant men andwomen, devoting oneself to residential school work was a way of helping Canada fulfill a divinely ordained mission.
Some believed it would be possible to evangelize the world in a generation.6 The
completion of this task of conversion would be the prelude, they expected, to the dayof final judgment. Victoria Roman Catholic Bishop Charles John Seghers believed theInuit of Alaska were the last people on earth who had not heard the Christian message.
He expected that their conversion to Christianity would usher in the second comingof Christ. In order to bring about this conversion, Seghers undertook a poorly plannedand poorly provisioned expedition to Alaska. It did not result in the second coming,but rather in his own tragic death.7
Most missionaries had more mundane motives. Alarmed by deteriorating healthconditions in many Aboriginal communities in the late nineteenth century, they
believed that without their assistance, Aboriginal peoples could not survive the disease, poverty, and dislocation that followed upon their contact with European societies. As W. H. Withrow, the editor of the Canadian Methodist Magazine, wrote in 1875,
although the supplanting of a weaker race by a stronger one was “a step towards ahigher and nobler human development,” the incoming Europeans had assumed new
responsibilities, having become “wardens to those weak and dying races.”8
Although these views may have been based on ‘good intentions,’ those intentions
were forged in Europe and implemented without any consultation with Aboriginal
people. Such a strong belief in the rightness of their intentions and the divine natureof their mission suggests that the missionaries—and, by extension, the people who
founded and operated residential schools—were convinced of their own cultural and,often, racial superiority.
As a young man, T. B. R. Westgate had worked as a missionary in both Paraguay
and German East Africa.9 Of his experiences in Africa, Westgate wrote that “the vanity
and impudence of the educated nigger … passes comprehension. There is no more
contemptible or despicable production under the sun.”10 Westgate went on to play aleading role in the operation of the Anglican residential schools in Canada from 1920
to the 1940s.
One finds echoes of these racially laced thoughts in the writings of prominentschool officials well into the early twentieth century. Brandon, Manitoba, principal
T. Ferrier in 1903; Mount Elgin, Ontario, principal S. R. McVitty in 1913; and Kuper
Island, British Columbia, principal W. Lemmens in 1915—all used the word “evil” indescribing tendencies in Aboriginal culture.11 Aboriginal people were also seen as
being essentially lazy. In 1877, the superintendent of the Wawanosh Home near Sault
Ste. Marie, Ontario, a Miss Capelle, complained:
They are in general very lazy, even more so than the negroes, who have a great
heat as their excuse; but the Indians living in the most healthy climate of the678 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

world, in a bracing air, have only neglected their mental as well as their bodily
powers, and a good discipline is wanted to change them in a lapse of time toreally useful working people.12

Margaret Butcher wrote of the First Nations people she encountered at Kitamaat,
British Columbia, in 1917:
They are a slow, indolent, dirty people bound very strongly by custom andsuperstition. Matron says the young folk who have been educated in this school
and at Coqualeetza will have more chance when some half dozen of the oldfolks of the Village, who still hold fast to their ancient customs are dead and one
hopes that it is so. In all our bunch of 37 children there are only two who appear
cunning and they are half-breeds.13

In another letter, she wrote, “These people have no history—or written language—
no arts or handicrafts.”14
When teacher Maggie Nicoll was accused of mistreating children at the Presbyterianschool in northwestern Ontario in 1902, she asked if Aboriginal people had any rightto comment on staff behaviour.
Do you think an Indian—whose children simply run wild—one day having
a feast, and at another time having perhaps only one article of food, and notenough of that—with clothing half in rags, and even in the middle of winter,sometimes having neither shoes nor moccasins—is capable of judging what isproper treatment for a child? And still further mention may be made of this fact,that until an Indian has that sort of respect, which savors somewhat of awe orfear perhaps, for the person who has to deal with him in school managementnothing can be done.15

When faced with a former student’s complaints about his treatment at the
Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, Principal J. P. Mackey depicted the student as
shiftless: “To play a game of baseball was work for Tom; he would rather sit in thesun and pester a bumblebee or a fly, by pulling off one wing and one leg at a time.
To make an Indian work is the unpardonable sin among them.” Mackey portrayed
all Aboriginal people as natural liars. “For myself, I never hope to catch up with theIndian and his lies, and in fact I am not going to try.”16
Residential school staff members were representatives of colonial authority.
Whether they were proclaiming the Anglican school at Aklavik to be the “most northerly residential school in the British Empire,” or using the cadet corps to instill in boys
at the Roman Catholic school at Williams Lake, British Columbia, “some feeling of
pride in belonging to the British Empire,” many of the staff were proud of the schools’
connection to the British Empire.17 It was not uncommon for missionaries to assume
that by mitigating the harsher impacts of colonialism, they were, in effect, upholding the honour of the empire. Selina Bompas, the wife of Anglican Bishop William

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 679

Bompas, spent much of her life in the Yukon. In a speech to the Dawson Anglican
women’s auxiliary, she reminded members:
The poor Indians are nearly swamped by the white man. You have invaded theirterritory, cut down their forests, thereby driving away their moose and caribou,
and depriving them of their very means of subsistence. Yet the evil is notunmixed with good. The banner of the Cross is now, thank God, unfurled among
you, and now sick Indians are welcomed and lovingly tended in your hospitals.
The children are taught freely in your school.18

In an effort to uphold the honour of the imperial project, missionaries and principals often acted as advocates on behalf of Aboriginal people. Hugh McKay, the superintendent of Presbyterian work among Aboriginal people, concluded that Aboriginal
people were “a people that is becoming extinct, a poor people suffering for want of
the necessaries of life and dying without any sure hope for the life to come.”19 McKay
criticized the federal government for failing to implement its Treaty promises and for
failing to alleviate the hunger crisis on the Prairies.20 Similarly, William Duncan, theAnglican missionary at Metlakatla, British Columbia, advised the Tsimshian on how toadvance arguments in favour of Aboriginal title. The Oblates assisted First Nations inmaking claims to land by circulating petitions and attempting to enforce their rights.
Nicolas Coccola, who was principal of the Cranbrook and Williams Lake schools, travelled to Ottawa to argue on behalf of First Nations fishers whose traditional fishingpractices had been criminalized by federal laws.21
Not all missionaries or residential school officials felt the same strong degree of loyalty to the British Empire. Many of the early Oblates came from France and Belgium.
The women who were recruited to the female orders often came from Québec
or Ireland. Their world views were shaped by their deep commitment to Roman
Catholicism and by their generally French or French-Canadian background. Whilethey were an integral part of the colonial process and shared many of the racial attitudes of other settlers, they stood apart from—and, at times, were in opposition to—
the British Protestant colonial movement.22
Many of the staff members were motivated by a spirit of adventure as well as a religious commitment. As a young seminary student in Corsica, a French island in the
Mediterranean, Nicolas Coccola concluded that he wanted more than a life as a priest.
In his memoir, he wrote, “The desire of foreign missions with the hope of martyrdom
appeared to me as a higher calling.”23 It was his desire to work in China.24 When he
was undergoing his training as an Oblate, the French government adopted laws thatplaced the Oblates’ lands and communities in that country in jeopardy. In keepingwith his adventurous nature, Coccola said to his superiors, “Give us guns, and protection will be assured.” Instead of arming him, the Oblates sent him to Canada.25
Others were less bellicose, but still inspired by a sense of adventure. As a small
boy in England in the middle of the nineteenth century, Gibbon Stocken read with

680 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

enthusiasm the missionary literature sent to him by an aunt. When he turned seventeen, he volunteered his services to the Anglican Church Missionary Society (cms). He
hoped to be sent to India. Instead, after a brief period of training at the cms’s Islington
training school, he was offered a position on the Blackfoot Reserve in what is now
southern Alberta.26 It was only after coming to Canada that Stocken was ordained as
an Anglican minister.27 In 1887, once he was settled, he married the daughter of an
English clergyman and brought her over to Canada. She died two years later.28 To help
him in his work on the Prairies, Stocken was joined by his two younger brothers.29
British-born nurse and midwife Margaret Butcher managed to get to India, where
she worked for a British family. From there, she made her way to British Columbia,
where she worked with a Methodist mission to Japanese immigrants.30 In 1916, she wason her way to a job at the Methodist residential school in Kitamaat, British Columbia.
She wrote to friends, “Here is Maggie, on the Ocean at the North of Vancouver Island,
200 miles away from her nearest relatives or acquaintances, with about £5 in her
pocket, going to unknown shores. Isn’t it lovely!”31
Elizabeth Scott, who worked for many years at the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
school, was raised in rural Manitoba. After a brief time as a rural schoolteacher, shewent on to study medicine. She interrupted her studies in 1889 to travel to India towork with the Presbyterian missions there. Illness forced her to return in two years’
time.32
A similar thirst for experience motivated the four young people who set off from
Toronto to establish an Anglican residential school for Inuit children at Shingle Pointon the Arctic Ocean in 1929. The party included Anglican minister Sherman Shepherd,
his sister Priscilla, who had training as a nurse, and two young teachers, Bessie Quirt
and Florence Hirst. Quirt had just finished a year of training as a deaconess and had
several years of experience in teaching school, and Hirst, according to Quirt, “hadcome from England a year before seeking adventure in a new land.” In a memoir,
Quirt recalled:
There were no conveniences of any kind—water had to be brought from a fresh
water stream some distance away, fuel was driftwood, fresh food was fish, light
was from kerosene and gasoline lamps. In one’s wildest imagination it wasdifficult to see how we could survive a winter let alone operate a school.33

Two stories, one from southern Alberta in 1899 and the other from the Yukon in
1929, provide insight into the range of people who worked in a residential school andinto the often improvised nature of school hiring.
On August 16, 1899, Maud Waldbrooke arrived at the Red Deer industrial school totake her place as matron. Initially, she seemed in good spirits, but within a few daysof her arrival, she had lapsed into a depression. She told co-workers “she was quite
prepared to die, and that her life was a burden to her, and if anybody would give her

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 681

25¢ worth of anything, she would take it.” On the evening of August 27, she said she
was ill and took a large drink of alcohol from the school’s medicine cupboard. She
disappeared from the school that evening. When her absence was noted the following
morning, the principal had the school building searched and then notified the police.
It was not until two days later that the principal, under pressure from the staff, conducted a fruitless search of the brush around the school. In the opinion of a police officer who conducted a later investigation, the principal’s efforts were too little, too late.
Six days after the matron had gone missing, an unknown man approached theschool. When the school farmer, Mr. Owens, asked the man for his name, he turned
and ran. Owens, believing the man was connected to Waldbrooke’s disappearance,
got a revolver from the school and fired a shot at the man, reportedly aiming over
his head. According to Owens, the man turned, returned fire, and fled into the bush.
Three months later, an unknown person broke into the principal’s home but, despite
the opportunity, did not steal any valuables. Shortly thereafter, a man was seen lurking around the school stable one morning. Owens chased him off. However, as heescaped, the man fired three gunshots at the farmer. In mid-December, evidence wasfound that suggested someone had been peering in the dormitory and staff-room
windows. The mysterious events culminated with the destruction by fire of the pig
barn. A police investigation concluded, however, that the fire was not arson. A police
investigator also doubted there was any connection among the various events that
followed Waldbrooke’s disappearance.34
Waldbrooke’s family came to help look for her, but she was never found. The family
members believed that the father of a student she had reprimanded had killed her,but police officials believed the disappearance was, in all likelihood, suicide.35 The
mystery of what became of her was never resolved.
In 1929, the staff of the Dawson Hostel for Aboriginal students in the Yukon
included a so-called mystery woman. According to director C. F. Johnson, she was“a Polish peasant woman who walked all the way from Telegraph Creek to Dawson
arriving here just as winter was setting in.” The hostel took her in after she had lost several other jobs. Johnson said she was “uncouth, proud and ignorant and of uncertain
temper and there is very little she can do. However she irons and sews after a fashionso that she earns her board. Every little bit that she does is a real help and relieves theothers just that much.”36 However, by spring, “the girls got on her nerves and she ‘ran
amuck’ amongst them,” so Johnson let her go.37

The missionary societies
In recruiting staff, there was a major distinction between the Roman Catholic andProtestant missionary organizations. The Roman Catholic schools during this period

682 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

could draw staff from a number of Catholic religious orders, most of whose members
had made explicit vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. In the spirit of those vows,
they would be obliged to go where they were sent, would not expect payment, andwould have no families to support. The vast majority of Protestant principals weremale clergy. They too often were assigned their posting by missionary societies. Unlike
the Roman Catholic principals, however, the Protestant principals often were married men with families to support. Protestant school staff members were not violatingsacred vows if they accumulated personal savings, refused postings, or resigned. The
Catholics and Protestants also differed in that each Protestant church developed a single national entity to oversee its Aboriginal missionary work in Canada. Typically, thisagency had responsibility for residential schools. Within the Roman Catholic Church,
responsibility was more diffused. The order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate was
responsible for the majority of the residential schools, but the order was slow in developing a national body that would represent it in its dealings with Ottawa. Furthermore,
the Oblates could not claim to speak or act for the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.
Although the Roman Catholics operated most of the residential schools, thechurch, often with good reason, viewed itself as an embattled minority in Canada. In
1871, Roman Catholics accounted for 40% of the Canadian population; Methodists,
16%; Presbyterians, 15%; Anglicans, 13%; and Baptists, 7%. In 1921, the share wasvirtually the same.38 In 1941, at the end of the period under review in this chapter,
Roman Catholics accounted for 43% of the population; the United Church (formerly
Methodist and some Presbyterians), 19%; Presbyterians, 7%; and Anglicans, 15%.
Yet, while the Catholic Church may have been the largest Christian denomination in
Canada, 60% of their adherents lived in one province: Québec.39 Table 31.1 shows the
distribution of residential schools by religious denomination in the 1930–31 school
year. That year, there were eighty schools, the highest number to operate at one time
during this period (from 1867 to 1939).
Table 31.1. Residential schools by religious denomination, 1930–31.
ChurchNumber of schools% of total number of schools

Roman Catholic

44

55

Church of England

21

26.25

United Church

13

16.25

Presbyterian22.5

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 13.

From these figures and the chart above, it is clear that the number of schools allotted to each church was not a reflection of that denomination’s share of the general
population. Rather, the number of schools was the product of each church’s history of
missionary work. Roman Catholic and Anglican dominance was the outcome of theThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 683

work that Roman Catholic Oblate missionaries and the Anglican Church Missionary
Society missionaries carried out in the Canadian Northwest in the nineteenth century.
Although staff life in Protestant and Catholic residential boarding schools had muchin common, it should be recognized that there also were significant differences, arising from the central role that male and female religious orders played in the Roman
Catholic schools. (That role is discussed in more detail below.)

The Anglican missionary societies
For most of the nineteenth century, Anglican missionary work in British North
America was funded and directed by the British-based Church Missionary Society(cms). (The history and work of this society are outlined earlier in this volume.) This
began to change in the 1880s with the establishment of the Domestic and Foreign
Missionary Society of the Province of Canada of the Church of England (dfms).
Because the more evangelical Anglicans viewed the dfms as being too bureaucratic
and ineffective, they established a second, competing, organization in 1894: theCanadian Church Missionary Association. The two organizations merged in 1902 tocreate the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (mscc).40 The new
body’s founding principles held that “it is the first duty of the church to evangelize theworld.”41 In 1903, the British cms announced it was going to gradually withdraw fromwork among Canadian Aboriginal people. By 1920, all aid was to cease.42 The prospectof the loss of funding from Britain, coupled with reports on ill health at residential
schools, led prominent Anglican evangelical Samuel Blake to mount his campaign toreduce Anglican involvement in residential schooling. That campaign failed. Instead,the Canadian mscc took over responsibility for most of the Anglican residential schools
in Canada, which quickly became the society’s largest expenditure. The exceptions inthis period were the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario; the St. George’s school in
Lytton, British Columbia (which had been founded by the British-based New England
Company); and the Gordon’s Reserve school near Punnichy, Saskatchewan. The mscc
was not directly responsible for these three schools.43
In 1920, the mscc formally assumed responsibility for “Indian and Eskimo workin the Dominion of Canada.”44 By the following year, it had established an Indianand Eskimo Commission to direct its Aboriginal residential schools.45 Sidney Gould
became the general secretary of the mscc in 1910. Born in England, he and his family
immigrated to Canada in 1883 when he was fifteen. Gould attended Wycliffe Collegein Toronto, where he pledged, “It is my purpose, God permitting, to become a foreign missionary.” After receiving his medical degree, he carried out missionary workin Palestine before returning to Canada. As head of the mscc, he played a central
role in transferring responsibility for Anglican work with Aboriginal people from the684 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

British Church Missionary Society to the mscc.46 He continued in his position with themscc until his death in 1938.47 From its creation in the 1920s until the mid-1940s, theIndian and Eskimo Commission’s field secretary was T. B. R. Westgate of Winnipeg.48
Westgate had joined the Church Missionary Society in German East Africa in 1902. He
was imprisoned by the Germans during the First World War and returned to Canada
after his release. He also conducted missionary work in Paraguay.49

The Methodist missionary societies
From the late 1870s onward, the Methodist missionary work in Canada was carriedout by the Methodist Church’s Board of Missions under the direction of Alexander
Sutherland. In 1906, the Board of Missions was split into two organizations: one withresponsibility for missionary work in Canada; and one with responsibility for foreign work, which also had responsibility for work with Aboriginal people. Sutherland
became the head of the Foreign Missions Board. He was succeeded in this by Egerton
Shore and, later, James Endicott.50 James Woodsworth was the director of western missions for the Methodist Church from 1886 to 1915.51 One of his sons, J. F. Woodsworth,served as principal of both the Red Deer and Edmonton residential schools. (James
Woodsworth was also the father of J. S. Woodsworth, the founder of the Co-operative
Commonwealth Federation, a forerunner of today’s New Democratic Party.)52
At the time of the creation of the United Church of Canada in 1925, the Methodist
Church of Canada operated three residential schools in British Columbia (Chilliwack,Kitamaat, and Port Simpson), two in Alberta (Edmonton and Morley, which was operated as a semi-residential school until 1926, when a new residential facility was built),
two in Manitoba (Brandon and Norway House), and one in Ontario (Mount Elgin at
Muncey). After amalgamation, the United Church assumed responsibility for all theseschools.53

The Presbyterian missionary organization
While most of the Presbyterian Church’s missionary efforts were devoted to overseas missions, the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Committee (fmc) was responsible
for all Presbyterian Church work with Aboriginal, Jewish, and Chinese peoples in
Canada until 1912.54 The fmc’s full-time secretary, R. P. MacKay, played a central rolein determining and implementing Presbyterian Church missionary policy from 1892
to 1925.55 The Home Mission Committee (Western Section) handled all other mission
work in Canada west of the Maritimes. In 1912, the commission was renamed theBoard of Home Missions (Western Section). This body took on responsibility for work

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 685

with Aboriginal and Jewish peoples, while the Foreign Mission Committee retained
responsibility for work with Chinese people in Canada. James Robertson, the superintendent of missions for the West, oversaw much of the Presbyterian missionary
work in western Canada until his death in 1902.56 The Presbyterians were relatively
late in establishing residential schools. They established two in British Columbia(at Ahousaht and Alberni), four in Saskatchewan (Kamsack, File Hills, Regina, andRound Lake), two in Manitoba (Birtle and Portage la Prairie), and one in northwestern
Ontario (originally near Shoal Lake, later in Kenora). After the creation of the United
Church in 1925, the Presbyterian Church in Canada retained responsibility for justtwo schools: Birtle and the school in northwestern Ontario. The rest of the schools thatwere still open were transferred to the United Church.57 (The Regina school had closed
in 1910; the Kamsack school, in 1915.)58

The United Church missionary organization
After the church union in 1925, the United Church created its Board of Home
Missions,59 with C. E. Manning and J. H. Edmison as the board’s joint secretaries.60
Along with responsibility for work with French Canadians and with immigrants, theBoard of Home Missions had responsibility for residential schools.61 In 1927, theUnited Church operated thirteen schools with 1,227 students. The total cost of operating the schools was $215,727. Of this amount, $181,000 came from the federal government, and $34,727 came from the United Church, of which the United Church
Women’s Missionary Society (wms) raised $21,157.62 The fact that such a large portionof the church contribution came from the wms underscores the significant role thatwomen played in funding, organizing, and staffing residential schools.
There was a measure of co-operation among the Protestant missionary organizations. They had an informal agreement by which they would not compete for converts within the same geographic region.63 As a result, for example, there were no
Presbyterian schools in Alberta, or any Methodist schools in Saskatchewan. The foreign mission boards of the Anglican, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterianchurches co-operated in 1921 to establish a Canadian School of Missions in Toronto.64

The Protestant women’s organization
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, women began to have a more significant presence in public life in Europe, the United States, and Canada. This was linked
to the growth of a feminist consciousness and the teaching of the Social Gospel,
which argued that there were specific female values that women could contribute to686 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

campaigns for social reform. While many restrictions still applied to their participation in church life, women did come to play an important role in supporting, directing,and carrying out church missionary work.65
Austin McKitrick, the principal of the Presbyterian school at Shoal Lake in northwestern Ontario, acknowledged this when he wrote in 1901, “I think if we men wereto put ourselves in the places of some overworked, tired-out women, we would perhaps not stand it so patiently as they often do.”66 Presbyterian school principal W. W.
McLaren worried that female staff members often were worked to exhaustion. In 1912,
he wrote of the need to require
a medical examination for the lady workers in particular and a means ofsuperannuation of ladyworkers [sic] whose strength is no longer equal to thestrain and who are yet dependent upon their salaries for maintenance. None
but strong active sound [illegible, possibly “nerved”] women are suitable for thiswork. Many of the difficulties and misunderstandings that arise are due almost
entirely to the neurotic condition of some of the workers.67

One missionary wrote that, knowing what he did about what was expected offemale missionaries, he would discourage any daughter of his from working for the
Methodist Women’s Missionary Society.68
Protestant women’s organizations raised funds and sponsored school operations.
These organizations also recruited, trained, and supported female school workers.69
Many women who felt a call to do missionary work married missionaries, and foundthemselves taking on a central—and sometimes unpaid—position in running residential schools.70
One of the first organizations founded by Christian lay women to promote missionary work was the United Baptist Missionary Union, established in the Maritimes in
the 1870s. It was followed in 1876 by the Women’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Societyof Eastern Ontario and Québec.71 The Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in Canada was established in 1876.72 The merger of the Methodist
Episcopal Church and the Methodist Church in Canada in 1881 led to the creation of
the Canadian Methodist Women’s Missionary Society (mwms).73 The society operated
until 1925, when the United Church was created. During its forty-four-year history,
the mwms employed more than 300 women at missions in Japan, China, and Canada.
Many of them came from small towns in Ontario and the Maritimes. They were often
daughters of ministers, merchants, and professionals. Many had training as teachers,
nurses, or doctors; they were usually sent overseas. The less-qualified missionaries
were placed in home missions, working with recent immigrants and Aboriginal peoples. Some women spent their working lives in the missionary field; two-thirds ofthem, however, left after two or three years.74
Initially, the society was intended to raise money to support specific elements of the
Methodist Church’s general missionary society.75 The Methodist Women’s Missionary

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 687

Society was particularly charged with funding Thomas Crosby’s work with Aboriginal
people in Port Simpson, British Columbia. In its first year of operation, the society raised$200 to support Crosby’s work.76 The mwms also supported the McDougall Orphanage
for Aboriginal children in Morleyville in what is now Alberta, and helped fund work
among Roman Catholics in Montréal, as well as a female missionary in Japan.77 The
society contributed funds to support the establishment of the Coqualeetza Institute in
Chilliwack, British Columbia, in 1885. It recruited four women who served as matrons
at the school during its first fifteen years of operation. From 1889 on, the society also
supported a girls’ home in Kitamaat, British Columbia.78 Over a four-decade history,
the mwms raised $6.5 million.79
In recruiting missionaries, the mwms sought to set a high standard. A candidate formission work was to “believe herself divinely called to the work” and to have experienced “salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ our Lord.”80 Successful candidates were expected to make a five-year commitment and to remain single during that
period. Those who did not live up to those commitments were expected to pay backall or a portion of the cost of transporting them to the mission and establishing them
there.81
One of the first Methodist female missionaries sent to work with Aboriginal people
was Kezia Hendrie, a dressmaker from Brantford. She was hired in 1882 to work as thematron of the Port Simpson girls’ school. Although she underwent what she described
as a “spiritual salvation” at the school, she found the supervision of the girls to be difficult. After three years on the job, she resigned to marry another Methodist missionary,
Edward Nicholas.82 Her replacement, Agnes Knight, was proud of the regimentation
she imposed on the school, and recorded, “We have bed-room, dining-room, kitchen
and washroom rules, also general rules, or a timetable giving the hour for everything,from the rising-bell to bed-time.”83
With the coming of the creation of the United Church, the mwms ceased to exist. It
was replaced by the United Church Women’s Missionary Society, with a million-dollar
budget that supported 400 mission workers.84
In 1885, Anglican women organized a women’s auxiliary. One of the organization’s early tasks was to collect and send clothes to missions.85 In 1912, the Anglican
Women’s Auxiliary (wa) and the Anglican Missionary Society of the Church in England
reached an agreement: the wa was to do “all the work among women and children in
the Foreign Fields of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in the Dominionof Canada.”86 While women were to remain on the fringes of Anglican Church government, the Women’s Auxiliary constituted a parallel operation. By 1923, it was raising 43% of the Canadian church’s missionary budget (for both Canadian and foreign
missions).87 The Women’s Auxiliary was the source of many of the nurses in Anglican
residential schools. In 1920, the auxiliary put out a call for women “preferably but
not necessarily between 30 and 40 years of age possessing sound health, adaptability

688 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to unusual conditions, capacity for co-operating harmoniously with fellow workers
and ability to live contentedly in a small community with little opportunity for social
pleasures.”88
The Presbyterian Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (pwfms) was formed in 1876.
Among its early leading figures were Marjory McLaren, the wife of the convenor of thechurch’s Foreign Missionary Society, and Catherine Ewart, a sister-in-law of Ontario
premier Oliver Mowat.89 Initially, it supported the work of women working in India,
and it was not until 1885 that it began working in Canada.90 The move into Canadianwork was, in part, a response to reports of the success of Roman Catholic missionaries
working among Aboriginal people.91 All its work focused on the conversion of womenand children.92 By 1902, the pwfms was funding all the Presbyterian work among
Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia, and providing half the budget for work in
Manitoba and what is now Saskatchewan and Alberta.93 In explaining why a “foreign”
mission society was doing so much work in Canada, pwmfs official Elizabeth Harvie
wrote that work with Aboriginal people was “work among the heathen.”94 In 1914, thePresbyterians merged their women’s foreign missionary organization with the women’s domestic missionary organization to create the Women’s Missionary Society.95 A
Presbyterian society in Scotland also sponsored the higher education of graduates of
the Presbyterian residential schools.96
In some cases, local women’s committees led the way in establishing residential
schools. Presbyterian women in Portage la Prairie were distressed by conditions ina nearby First Nations community in 1886. When local church leaders turned down
their request for support, the women established their own missionary society andopened a day school for First Nations children, and provided the students with a dailylunch. The school was eventually turned over to the pwfms, which converted it into aboarding school.97
Although the Protestant churches did not have female religious orders, they did
have deaconesses. These were women who had undergone religious and practicaltraining with the intent of a career of church service. The deaconess movement firstemerged in Germany in the 1830s.98 Starting in the 1860s, institutions were established in England to provide training for female Protestant missionaries. Deaconesstraining included religious studies, cooking, nursing, and accounting. Although a deaconess had a title and specific training, the position of a deaconess was not formallydefined until well into the twentieth century. Like the Roman Catholic nun, the deaconess was expected to provide assistance to the male missionary. But, while it was asubservient position, it did allow women an opportunity to step outside the domestic
sphere to which society sought to limit them in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies.99
Several training programs developed in Canada for deaconesses. The Anglicans
opened a deaconess training school in Toronto in 1892. A Methodist facility was

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 689

established in Toronto in 1894.100 The two-year training program was divided into
nursing and non-nursing sections, and the school was an important training groundfor female missionaries.101 The Presbyterian Women’s Foreign Missionary Society
established the Ewart Training Home in Toronto in 1897. In 1908, the Presbyterians
established a formal order of deaconesses, leading to the creation of the Presbyterian
Deaconess and Missionary Training Home.102 Although the Ewart Training Home initially provided a six-month training course that included both religious and practicaltraining, by 1908, the training period had been extended to two years.103 After church
union, the United Church established its own United Church Training School.104 The
Presbyterian Church continued to operate Ewart College.105

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate
The Oblates of Mary Immaculate (omi) was the dominant Roman Catholic organization involved in the operation of residential schools. The omi was not the only
male Roman Catholic order in charge of residential schools in Canada. For example,
priests from the local Catholic diocese founded the school at Kuper Island, which
was later taken over by the Montfort Fathers.106 Similarly, the Christie school on thewest side of Vancouver Island was founded by a chapter of the Order of St. Benedictin 1899.107 The Jesuits operated the residential school at Wikwemikong, Ontario, thatwas later transferred to Spanish, Ontario.108 However, the vast majority of the Roman
Catholic schools were operated by Oblates, in large measure as a result of the work
they had undertaken among Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian Northwest in thenineteenth century.
The general administrative headquarters for the Oblates was in France until 1905,
when it relocated to Rome. The Oblate order was divided into geographical jurisdictions called “provinces” and missionary vicariates.109 An “apostolic vicariate” was aterritory under evangelization by missionaries. The expectation was that, over time,
it would be transformed into a regular church diocese.110 In western Canada, the omi
was designated as a vicariate of missions until 1926. As such, it was under the direct
authority of the order’s superior general in either France or Rome.111 Several Oblates
became bishops, and successfully used their position to lobby the federal government
for support for their residential school policy. However, the Oblates, who tended toview the federal government as a hostile, Protestant-dominated institution, wereslow to develop a national body to co-ordinate activities with the federal government.
Father Joseph Guy was appointed as an informal representative of the order in Ottawa
in 1920.112 In 1924, the Oblate school principals began to hold regular meetings.113
An Oblate province of St. Peter’s was created in 1926. It extended from the Québec
border west to the Pacific Ocean, with headquarters in Ottawa. In January 1936, the690 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

first meeting of the Commission Oblate des Ouevres Indiennes was held in Lebret,
Saskatchewan.114 Oblate Omer Plourde became the new association’s representativein Ottawa in 1930 (even though he lived and worked in Winnipeg until 1942).115 While
this served to co-ordinate Oblate activities, it did not co-ordinate all Roman Catholic
activities: the Jesuits in charge of the school in Spanish were unaware of Plourde’s role
until 1943. They also discovered that the federal government had thought, mistakenly,that the Oblates had been representing the Jesuits at annual meetings between government and church officials.116

The centrality of female labour in the
Roman Catholic schools
The Roman Catholics relied heavily on female religious orders to staff and operate the residential schools, orders such as the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns),
the Sisters of Providence, the Sisters of Saint Ann, the Missionary Oblate Sisters, theSisters of Assumption, the Benedictine Sisters, the Daughters of the Immaculate Heartof Mary, and the Sisters of Notre Dame in Québec.117 These orders not only suppliedmuch of the workforce for the schools, but they also provided it at an extraordinarily
low cost. Access to such a low-cost labour supply was one of the main reasons why the
Roman Catholic Church was able to operate so many schools.
To take just one example from the 1890s, although the Oblate order was formallycharged with the operation of the school at St. Boniface, Manitoba, all staff in 1894
were members of the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns) except for the chaplain, carpenter,shoemaker, blacksmith, and farmer.118 An Indian Affairs survey from the 1920s indicates that at five Roman Catholic schools in the West, members of female religious
orders accounted for 56% of the school staff.119
Reports from the 1930s make it clear that members of female orders made up alarge portion of the workforce at Roman Catholic schools, and also that they werepoorly paid in comparison with other school employees. According to an IndianAffairs audit, in 1934, the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school employed one principal,
fourteen sisters, one teacher, and one farmer. The principal was paid $1,200 a year;
the sisters, $200 a year each; the teacher, $90; and the farmer, $720.120 In the following
year at the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school, the male principal, assistant principal,
and engineer were all in religious orders. The principal was paid $1,800, the assistantprincipal was paid $1,200, and the engineer was paid $900. The school also employed
five laymen: a night watchman, two farmers, and two labourers. Each of these employees was paid $240 a year. The rest of the work was done by ten Oblate Sisters, whowere paid $120 each per year.121 A similar situation prevailed at the school at Lestock,
Saskatchewan. There, the principal, vice-principal, shoemaker, and gardener were

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 691

all members of male religious orders. They were paid annual salaries of $900, $480,$240, and $240, respectively. The school farmer and engineer were both laymen andwere paid $720 a year, and the assistant farmer was paid $360 a year. There were also
eleven sisters, each of whom was paid $120 a year.122 In 1936, the Kamloops school
had eighteen employees. The salaries for the principal, the assistant principal, theboys’ attendant, and the gardener, all members of male religious orders, were $2,100,$1,200, $900, and $900, respectively. The eight members of the Sisters of Saint Ann at
the school were paid $300 a year each.123
The discussion of wages at Roman Catholic residential schools is complicated by
the fact that, in most cases, these wages were not paid to the individual member ofthe religious order who worked for a specific school. Instead, they were paid to theorder to which the priest, nun, or brother belonged. Indian Affairs was aware of thispractice, but it was not understood by all federal government employees. In 1929, H.
B. Rayner, a federal government auditor, noted that the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school
was making quarterly payments to the Winnipeg-based treasurer of the Oblate order.
When asked about this by Rayner, the school principal said that the payments were“an assessment or tax made by the order.” The funds were to be applied to deficits forschools in the Oblates’ jurisdiction. Rayner estimated that the tax worked out to 14%of the school’s annual grant.124 The following year, Rayner noted that cheques equal to
the salary amounts of the Oblates working at the school were being sent to the Oblates
in Winnipeg, and the salaries for the sisters were sent to the Sisters of Notre Damein Québec.125 Indian Affairs officials told the auditor that the department was awareof the policy of some religious orders of paying a portion of the staff’s salary to theirorder. The superintendent of Indian Education, Russell T. Ferrier, said that paying thesalaries directly to the workers would be a mistake, since “deficits would then occur
more frequently than in the past.”126
Similarly, the Jesuit school at Spanish sent money from the government’s per capita grant to the Jesuit Province as compensation for each priest and brother at theschool. The principal, Paul Méry, wrote in 1935 to Jesuit Provincial Henry Keane that“every year a large amount, sometimes very large, was sent to the province” (in thiscase, province refers to the Jesuit Province, not the Ontario government). The principal congratulated himself on the fact that, unlike many Catholic-run schools, theSpanish school was not “bleeding the children to feed the mother house,” but he said
that, given the recent cuts in the per capita grant, it would no longer be possible to
pay the requested levy.127 Méry’s charge that other schools—which were almost all
Oblate-run—were “bleeding the children to feed the mother house” is very serious.
He did not, however, provide any supporting evidence for the allegation. Althoughsome Catholics may have used money from the per capita grant to fund other missionary activities, it is also the case that they provided staff at well below market rates.

692 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Some observers, such as Indian Commissioner David Laird, believed the Oblate
policies allowed the order to provide students with more supervision than wasavailable at the Protestant schools. In 1907, he wrote that, since members of Roman
Catholic religious orders received very little in exchange for their services, the Catholicschools could
afford to have a much larger staff than where ordinary salaries are paid, andthere is consequently less work for each to do, without interfering with thequality of the work done. In the case of these schools the teachers have generally
no technical qualifications, but this is compensated for by their having a longexperience subsequent to the usual convent or college training.128

The history of the Sisters of Charity and the role it played in Catholic evangelization in the Northwest in the nineteenth century has already been outlined. Two otherfemale orders also played a significant role in the residential schools: the Sisters ofSaint Ann and the Oblate Sisters of Mary Immaculate.

The Sisters of Saint Ann
In the 1840s, a Montréal woman, Esther Blondin, drew together a group of womento teach in a rural parish west of Montréal. By 1850, she had gained the approvalof Québec Bishop Ignace Bourget to establish a religious community, the Sisters ofSaint Anne. Blondin became Mother Marie-Anne, the order’s first leader. The order
opened its first boarding school for rural youth in 1853 in Vaudreuil, Québec. Most of
the sisters were from rural francophone backgrounds, although there were also someIrish-Canadian sisters. Those who joined the order had to undergo a two-year training
period. They were given new names, and undertook vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and instruction. Eight years after its founding, the order sent nuns to assist
Catholic missionaries working in British Columbia. There, the order was known as the“Sisters of Saint Ann” (spelling Ann without an ‘e’).129 Eventually, the Sisters of SaintAnn worked at the Mission, Williams Lake, Kamloops, and Kuper Island residential
schools in British Columbia.130

The Oblate Sisters of Mary Immaculate
The Oblates of the Sacred Heart and Mary Immaculate (more commonly known as
the “Oblate Sisters”) was founded in 1904 as a teaching order. It was created in the Westat the instigation of St. Boniface Bishop Louis-Philippe Langevin, as a response to the
Laurier-Greenway compromise of 1896. Under that agreement, between Manitoba
Premier William Greenway and federal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, the Manitoba

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 693

government loosened its ban on teaching in French. Bishop Langevin established the
Oblate Sisters to provide a supply of French-speaking Catholic teachers.131
Although the Missionary Oblate Sisters were based in western Canada, more thanhalf of the sisters recruited between 1904 and 1915 came from Québec. The worldthese young women entered was governed by rules and the need for obedience. New
members had to give up their names, their clothing, and their personal belongings (asone sister recalled, even a little thimble given to her as a present had to be sacrificed).
They were discouraged from developing close friendships (which could be divisive
within a small organization) or discussing religious issues with other sisters (since
they were supposed to take their religious direction from priests). Visits from family
members were not encouraged, and the directoress read all incoming and outgoing
letters. Meal servings were small, and asking for more food was frowned upon, but, atthe same time, one was expected to eat everything put on one’s plate. Any fresh fruit,
always a rare commodity, received as a gift was to be shared with other members of
the community.132 After they completed their training, they took vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty.133 The sisters had little privacy. Most sisters slept in dormitories
that were kept locked during the day.134
The Oblate Sisters’ 1931 constitution made it clear that their role was to assist
the Oblate Fathers. Great emphasis was laid on the vow of chastity, which required
constant vigilance, since the human body was said to have “instincts of wild beasts.”
Because of this, any form of entertainment was to be viewed with suspicion.135 Someof the Oblate Sisters came to the order as qualified teachers, but many had completed
only a few years of high school. Given the demand for teachers and the order’s lack offunds, sisters often had to postpone their own education and, instead, teach for considerable lengths of time before they finally received their normal school certificates.136
The Oblate Sisters worked in four Manitoba residential schools (Cross Lake,
Norway House, Fort Alexander, and Pine Creek), one in Ontario (McIntosh), and one
in Saskatchewan (Kamsack). The Oblates dictated the terms of their service. At Cross
Lake, for example, four sisters were expected to teach, take care of the church andsacristy, keep house, and cook and care for the students.137
It was through these organizations that the Canadian churches—both Protestantand Roman Catholic—recruited and mobilized a workforce that was dispatched toresidential schools across northern Canada. It is common to speak of the schools as
being “remote,” although many were located close to Aboriginal communities. They
were, however, generally very far from the home communities of the staff. In fact, manyof the memoirs and collections of letters of former staff members devote considerable
detail to the lengthy journey undertaken to reach the school.138 Once there, staff members were submerged in a world for which most of them were not prepared.139

694 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The work and the workers
Residential schools were intended to be economically self-sufficient. Many resembled miniature societies, employing workers in a wide range of capacities. Therewas generally more work than there were workers, meaning workloads were heavy.
Because the pay was often low and the working and living conditions were difficult,turnover was high. Poor housing and stressful working conditions could combine toundermine a staff member’s health. Those who stayed on the job often hung on until
they were well into their old age, since, due to low pay, their savings were also low andpensions were minimal. Although schools had difficulty attracting qualified teachers,
many skilled individuals did seek employment in the schools. As with many aspectsof residential school life, there is still a great deal to be learned about the people who
worked there and how they lived.
In 1887, the staff at the Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, included an
assistant superintendent, a schoolmaster, a matron, a servant, a carpenter, a farmer,
and a boot maker. The affiliated Wawanosh Home for girls had a superintendent, a gardener, a matron, and a laundress.140 Tables 31.2 and 31.3 list the staff at the Qu’Appelleschool, in what is now Saskatchewan, in 1893 and 1918. In 1893, the school had twenty
full-time staff (Dr. Seymour was not a school employee). Nine staff members were
women of the Sisters of Charity (the Grey Nuns). By 1918, there were twenty-threestaff members, twelve of whom were Sisters of Charity.
Table 31.2. Staff, Qu’Appelle Industrial School, 1893.
Name

DutiesRev. Father Hugonnard

Principal

Rev. Father Dorais

Assistant Principal

Mr. E. D. Sworder

Clerk

Mr. H. F. Denehy

1st Teacher

Mr. J. A. Joyce

2nd Teacher

T. RedmondFarming Instructor

R. Meehan

Carpenter

D. McDonald

Blacksmith

C. MilesNight Watchman, Stone Mason and Gardener

A. Goyer

Shoemaker Instructor

E. G. F. Werer

Baker

Rev. Sister Goulet

MatronRev. Sister Bergeron

Cook

Rev. Sister St. Alfred

1st Teacher

Rev. Sister Vincent

2nd Teacher

Rev. Sister Elizabeth

Assistant Cook and Laundress

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 695
Name

DutiesRev. Sister St. Thomas

SeamstressRev. Sister Lamothe

In charge of boys’ infirmary, boys’ clothing and laundry.

Rev. Sister St. Adèle

In charge of girls’ infirmary, dormitory, clothing and laundry.

Rev. Sister St. Armand

Supervises the housemaids, their work in the dining-rooms, andthe ironing of all linen.

Doctor Seymour

Medical Superintendent

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 172.

Table 31.3. Staff, Qu’Appelle Industrial School, 1918.
Name

Duties

Hours Required

Rev. A. J. A. Dugas

Principal

Not limited

Rev. Kalmes

In charge of boys

Not limited

Rev. M. Mercure

Farm instructor

Not limited

Rev. E. GauthierEngineer & Plumber

Not limited

Geo. J. Harrison

Accountant & Band Instructor

Office 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

H. Town

Senior Teacher

9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

A. McLennan

Junior Teacher

9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

J. Z. Lafleur

Baker & Butcher

Until work complete

M. Salamon

Shoemaker

7 A.M. to 6 P.M.

James Condon

Assistant Shoemaker

7 A.M. to 6 P.M.

Baptiste Blondeau

Assistant Farmer

7 A.M. to 6 P.M.

Reverend Sister Baulne

MatronNot limited

Reverend Sister Cloutier

Senior Teacher

9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

Reverend Sister St. Alfred

2 Division

9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

Reverend Sister Gregoire

3rd Division

9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

ndReverend Sister Dauost

Infirmarian

Not limited

Reverend Sister Lamontagne

In charge of senior girls

Not limited

Reverend Sister Delormier

In charge of junior girls

Not limited

Reverend Sister Sauve

In charge of junior girls

Not limited

Reverend Sister Holy Name

In charge of kitchen

Not limited

Reverend Sister Ledwin

In charge of dining room

Not limited

Reverend Sister St. Amour

Charge of boy’s sewing room

Not limited

Reverend Sister Champagne

Assistant boy’s sewing room

Not limited

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, “Industrial School
Qu’Appelle, List of Staff and Duties Assigned.” 1918. [PLD-007504-0001]

In addition to teachers and administrators, the Qu’Appelle school had farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, matrons, laundresses, cooks, seamstresses,

696 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

engineers, and band instructors. Table 31.3, which gives the names and duties of thestaff members, also outlines their required hours of work. Teachers appear to have had
the shortest working day, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but they would also be obliged
to spend additional time making preparations for the next day. The tradesmen were
expected to work eleven hours a day, and the butcher, who doubled as the baker, wasto work “until work complete.” Work-shift limits applied only to those who were notmembers of religious orders. For those who were, with the exception of the members
who taught, there was no limit to the length of the working day.
Heavy workloads were common in Protestant schools, as well. In 1889, John Ashby,
the assistant principal at the Battleford school, wrote to complain about his wife’s situation. He gave the following description of her summer routine at the school:
To be in charge of girls every alternate week from 6:00 to 6:45 when they aretransferred to the officer in charge of the dining room.
7:15 prayers.
To be in charge of the girls doing housework such as from 8:30 to 9:45 a.m. andto inspect the work done by the girls between 7:30 and 8:30 under the charge of amonitor for the above supervision to be responsible.
From 9:45 to 12:15 to prepare girls for school and take classes and transfer themin proper order to the officer in charge of the dining room.
From 12:15 to 1:45 off duty.
From 1:45 to 2:00, preparation for school, and 2:00 to 4:00 to take classes.
From 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in charge of girls recreation.
From 5:00 to 5:15 to prepare girls for tea and hand them over to the dining room
officer.
From 5:15 to 5:45 to supervise girls laying table in Principal’s dining room.
From 5:45 to 6:30 off duty.
From 6:30 p.m. to 7:00. In charge of recreation.
From 7:00 to 8:00. To take class during study excepting on Fridays. Each alternate
Friday to take charge of girls whilst bathing. [illegible] this duty does not fall to
the teacher, she is to be off duty. Alternate weeks to take girls after prayers until
after retiring.141

Four years after Ashby registered this complaint, the Indian Affairs annual
report printed the following summaries of the workloads of two teachers at the
Middlechurch school.
Mr. Williams, first teacher, besides teaching in the regular school hours, hasthese duties: Every morning he rises with the boys [at 6 a.m.] and goes to their

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 697

dormitories; he sees that they wash and dress themselves properly, calls theroll, (reads prayers when the principal is not present). After school he has ageneral oversight of the boys, conducts evening prayers [at 8:15]. Saturday night
he has a collect class [a “collect” is a form of prayer]; he has a half holiday every
Wednesday and Saturday. On Thursday he attends the boys’ bathing; in summer
time he teaches the boys cricket and other out-of-door sports.142
Miss Willith, teacher of the junior classes, rises with the children, attends the
dressing of the girls, calls the roll, attends with them at prayers and marches
them into breakfast. Her school closes at 3 p.m., then she has the girls for sewing,
darning, mending, knitting, etc., until 4 o’clock; she then takes them for a walktill five, marches them into tea 5.45, after tea has a ‘King’s Daughters’ Class’ twicea week, takes them into prayers and attends the junior girls in their preparationand getting into bed. She takes alternate Sundays with Mrs. Burman [in] chargeof the girls for the whole day. On Saturday she has general charge of all the girls
and bathing of the junior girls.143

Winnipeg physician George Orton noted the impact that caring for a school of sickchildren could have on staff. In 1895, many students at the Middlechurch school suffered from pneumonia, bronchitis, and typhoid fever. By then, John Ashby was principal of the Middlechurch school, and his wife was the matron. In Orton’s opinion, theAshbys were overworked: “Mrs. Ashby, as well as Mr. Ashby, was indefatigable in her
efforts, as also the staff, in attention to nursing and caring for the sick. Poor Mrs. Ashby
was terribly run down in health, as a consequence, and should even yet be given a
short leave of absence to recruit her health before the winter.”144
The seven-day week was the norm for many employees. The policy at the Anglican
schools into the 1920s was to allow “one full day off duty each month.”145
Indian Affairs did not produce detailed job descriptions for the various job positions at the schools. However, over time, the churches developed their own list of
expectations and responsibilities.
In the Anglican schools, the school matron was “responsible for the managementof all the domestic affairs of the Institution.” In this position, she was expected to:• Take charge of all the food supplies.
• See that the school menu was adhered to.
• Take charge of the children’s clothing, and all linens at the school.
• Record the date of receipt of all clothing and food supplies as well as the date of
their distribution.
• Provide the principal with copies of the records and a list of items that needed
to be ordered.
• Supervise all the female staff and female students, seeing that “the work assigned
to each is performed in accordance with instructions given.”698 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• “Report to the principal any inefficiency on the part of any member of the staff,
or any disobedience or misconduct on the part of any of the pupils.”• Assist the principal in selecting students to be given special instruction in different school departments.
• Arrange for the care of sick children in the absence of a nurse.
• Take on the duties of sick or absent staff or arrange to have other staff take onthese duties.146
The Anglican farm instructor had responsibility for “all the outside work of theInstitution, including the buildings, land, fences, live stock, machinery implements,
vehicles, etc.” With the assistance of the students, he was expected to:• Operate the farm “upon a paying basis.”• Maintain a full list of needed supplies.
• Raise “a plentiful supply of vegetables” for the staff, students, and livestock.
• Sell surplus produce on the open market.
• Transport all needed provisions to the school.
• Secure a sufficient supply of hay, preferably from the school land.
• Maintain the grounds.
• Instruct students in the best methods of horticulture, agriculture, and the careof livestock.
• Maintain the water, heating, and lighting systems.
• Provide the principal with regular reports, including reports on sickness andmisconduct.147
The cooks at the Anglican schools were expected to:• Prepare all meals for the pupils and the staff.
• Give instructions in cooking, making bread, making butter, etc.
• Ensure the cleanliness of the kitchen, pantry, dining room, and cupboards.
• Bake all bread required.
• Be responsible for all milk brought in from the farm.
• “Exercise careful and judicious economy in the use of food.”• Oversee students assigned to the kitchen.
• Insist that students under her charge speak English.
• Report any disobedience to the principal.
• Engage in the moral and spiritual education of the students.148
The list of teacher responsibilities the Anglican Church developed during the 1920s
set out the following:• Be punctual in attendance.
• Keep “an accurate record of the names of the pupils and the time spent by eachunder instruction.”

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 699• Follow the Indian Affairs course of instruction along with “any additional subjects which may be suggested by the [Anglican] Indian and Eskimo Commission.”• Pay “strict attention to the instruction of the pupils, in Biblical knowledge,
Church History and Doctrine, devoting not less than fifteen minutes to this purpose daily, and using such Text-books as may be sanctioned by the Indian andEskimo Commission.”• Report cases of “gross misconduct” to the principal.
• Supervise the children’s play.
• Supervise the sweeping, ventilating, and cleaning of the classroom.
• Inform the principal of any equipment that had been destroyed or was lacking.
In keeping with the school’s religious mission, the overall direction was to ensurethat the children
should be made to feel that the Schools do not exist so much for the purpose ofteaching them how to make the most money, or how to get the most pleasure outof life, as to how they may be able to render the greatest assistance as spiritualand educational forces in the uplifting of their own race.149

As previously noted, one of the main reasons for the federal government’s decision to enter into partnership with church organizations to run the residential schools
was the expectation that the churches would provide a low-cost labour force. IndianCommissioner Hayter Reed embraced the idea, writing in 1895 thatas the work is of a denominational, and therefore necessarily of a missionary or
philanthropic character, and the churches have facilities for obtaining throughvarious societies men and women to whom remuneration for such work is aminor consideration, it seems only reasonable that a lower, rather than a higher
rate, as compared with other service, should obtain.150

In fact, as early as 1889, the federal government had ordered the church-managed
industrial schools to cut staff wages. Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard
described those salary reductions as arbitrary and “odious.” He said that many of thestaff had been at the school for several years and had legitimately expected a salary
increase.151 When his salary was cut in 1889, Battleford school assistant principal John
B. Ashby wrote to Hayter Reed to express his “disappointment that my services havebeen so little appreciated by the department.” After two years of “faithful and hard service,” he thought, his value to the department should be increased, not decreased.152
Alexander Sutherland of the Methodist Church was particularly outspoken about
the link between low wages and the difficulties the schools had in recruiting staff. In
1887, he wrote to the minister of Indian Affairs about the “difficulty of obtaining efficient and properly qualified teachers, on account of the meagre salaries paid.”153 Six
years later, he described the salaries as “insulting.” Those who accepted them would
be deemed as “inferior or incompetent men.”154

700 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In a strange boast made in 1894, Mount Elgin principal W. W. Shepherd argued thatthe fact that three former pupils, all of whom had teachers’ certificates, were working
as farm labourers was a demonstration of the school’s success “in making the farmboys competent workmen.” In reality, the young men were all working as farm labourers because that work paid better than teaching in Indian schools.155
In 1903, Red Deer principal C. E. Somerset noted:
One of the great difficulties in connection with schools of this class is to obtainthe services of persons whose interest is greater than the wage they receive; thisdifficulty increases as the years go. The nature of the duties is very trying and thebetter class of assistants cannot be obtained. This institute has suffered in thepast very greatly because trained assistants were not to be obtained.156

Pay was not only low, but, in some cases, it was also uncertain. In his 1904 report,
Metlakatla principal John Scott noted that Miss Davies, who was in charge of the girls’
division, had “given her services for more than two years without any salary or otherreward.”157 In 1921, the staff at the Lytton school had not been paid for six months.158
There was a considerable difference in salaries from one industrial school to thenext. Table 31.4 sets out the staff positions and monthly salaries at four prairie industrial schools in 1894. The federal government imposed the salaries at these schools.
The Elkhorn school was operated by the Anglican Church, the Regina school was
operated by the Presbyterian Church, and the Qu’Appelle and High River schools wereoperated by the Roman Catholic Church.159
Table 31.4. Annual salaries for the Elkhorn, Regina, Qu’Appelle, and High River industrial
schools, 1894.
Position
Superintendent/Principal

Elkhorn

ReginaQu’AppelleHigh River

900

1,000

1,200

1,000

300

242

480

Assistant Principal
Clerk
Matron

480
150

300

300

Assistant Matron

144

Superintendent Boys’ Home

252

Superintendent Girls’ Home

144

Governess
First Teacher/Lady Teacher

300

216
240

400

420

Second Teacher

300

Additional Teacher (3 at Qu’Appelle)

144

Cook

204

192

Laundress

216

168

Seamstress

120

168

360
144
216
144

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 701
Position

Elkhorn

ReginaQu’AppelleHigh River

Tailoress (2 at Qu’Appelle)

120

Printer

480

Carpenter

624*

420

480

480

Shoemaker/Boot maker

804*

420

420

480

480

420

Farmer120

360Blacksmith

420

Furnaceman

300

Baker
Bandmaster

240
180

Source: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121/607, “List of Officers at following Industrial
Schools showing salaries as proposed to be reduced by the Department.” [PLD-008587] (In the original table,
the wages were presented as monthly figures.)* No food rations were provided to the boot maker or the carpenter at the Elkhorn school.

The table shows considerable variation in the wages for certain jobs. For example,
the matrons at the Regina, Qu’Appelle, and High River schools were all paid twice asmuch as the Elkhorn matron. Teachers’ wages could range from $144 to $420. Skilled
trades workers generally were paid more than teachers. At only one school was thefarmer paid less than the teacher, and the carpenters, printers, shoemakers, andblacksmiths always were paid at least as much as the teachers and, in most cases,
considerably more than the teachers were paid. Cooks, seamstresses, tailoresses, andlaundresses—positions held by women—were paid less than teachers. In general, thematron, who was charged with managing the domestic operations of the schools, waspaid less than teachers, as were the staff members who supervised children when they
were not in class.160 These general patterns were in keeping with those in the larger,
general Canadian economy.161
Table 31.5 shows staff salaries at the Brandon school in 1935, and at the Kuper
Island, Kamloops, and Edmonton schools in 1936. The Kuper Island and Kamloops
schools were operated by the Roman Catholic Church; the Brandon and Edmonton
schools were operated by the United Church. (It is not possible to prepare a directcomparison with the figures in Table 31.5 because, by 1936, the Regina and High Riverschools were closed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been
unable to locate audited statements for the Elkhorn and Qu’Appelle schools fromthis period.)

702 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 31.5. Staff salaries at schools at Brandon, Manitoba (1935); and at Kuper Island,
British Columbia; Kamloops, British Columbia; and Edmonton, Alberta (1936).
Position

Brandon
1935

Kuper Island
1936

Kamloops
1936

Edmonton
1936

Principal

1,200

1,200

2,100

1,500

600

1,200

Vice-Principal/Assistant Principal
Disciplinarian
Senior Teacher

680

Junior Teacher

600

Teacher

700

300

600
500
550–585

Reverend Sisters*

300

Steno and Teacher

450

Matron680

Boys’ Matron

450

300

594

Boys’ Monitor

420

Boys’ Attendant and First Aid

900

Boys’ Supervisor

360

Girls’ Supervisor

360

Cook/Kitchen

450

360

Assistant Cook

300

Engineer/Mechanic

540

720

Farmer/Farm Manager**

700

480

Assistant Farmer

330

900
600

990

600

702

Gardener

900

Bandmaster and Coach

600

Manual Training Instructor

720

600

Seamstress

450

300

432

Domestic Service/Laundry

450

300

432

Handyman

480

Nurse and Housework

300

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8845, file 961/16-2, part 1, Kuper Island
Residential School, Roman Catholic, Kuper Island, Cost of Operations August 1, 1935 to July 31, 1936; [KUP003365-0004] RG10, volume 8845, file 963/16-2, part 1, July 3, 1936, Re: Kamloops Residential School, Roman
Catholic; [KAM-002000] RG10, volume 8840, file 511/16-2-015, Statement No. 2, Re: Brandon Residential School,
Cost of Operations and Salaries, 1936; [BRS-001427-0003] RG10, volume 8843, file 709/16-2-001, part 1, Re:
Edmonton Residential School, (United) Alberta (cover page torn) 20 March 1936. [EDM-000358]*The Kamloops school had eight Sisters of Saint Ann on staff for a total cost of $2,400 a year.
** At Kamloops, the position is called “Farm Ass’t. & Boiler Eng’r.”

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 703

In comparing wages paid in the mid-1930s with those paid in the mid-1890s, it
is apparent that the salaries paid to principals remained relatively static during thisperiod. The one exception is the Kamloops principal, who was paid nearly double thewage of other principals. This may be explained by the fact that Kamloops was thelargest school in the system. By the 1930s, teachers’ wages ranged between $300 and$700, with a higher rate prevailing at the Protestant schools. The only trades instructor
left was the farmer: by the 1930s, none of these schools employed people to teachprinting, carpentry, or boot- and shoemaking. Where, in the 1890s, the wage paid tothe farm instructor ranged between $360 and $480, in the 1930s, it ranged from $480
to $990, again with the higher rates prevailing in the Protestant schools (although thelone gardener employed by the Catholic school in Kamloops was paid $900). At threeschools, the farmer was paid more than the highest-paid teacher, while at Kamloops,
the farmer received the same wage as the highest-paid teacher. At each school, thematron’s wage was equivalent to a teacher’s wage. The cooks and the staff charged
with caring for the students were still at the bottom of the pay structure.162
Pay rates during this period varied considerably. In 1932, the boarding school atMorley, Alberta, employed eight people: a principal, a matron, two teachers, a seamstress, a laundress, a cook, and a farmer. The principal’s annual pay was $1,500; thematron’s was $550; the two teachers were paid a combined total of $1,250; the seamstress and laundress were each paid $500; the cook was paid $540; and the farmer
was paid $480.163 A 1935 report from the small Crosby Girls’ Home in Port Simpson,
British Columbia, showed a staff of only three. The principal was paid $850 a year,
while the two teachers were each paid $743.75.164 In 1935, the Squamish school in
British Columbia had eight employees: a principal, a vice-principal, a senior teacher,a junior teacher, a beginners’ teacher, a matron, a cook, and a gardener. Each of them
was paid $360 a year, except for the gardener, whose annual salary was $340.165 Again,
the wage rates at the two United Church schools (Morley and Port Simpson) weregenerally higher than those at the Roman Catholic school at Squamish.
Table 31.6 presents comparative information on salaries in public and religious
schools in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, thefive provinces that operated residential schools extensively throughout this period.
These figures, provided by Statistics Canada, are averages, except for Manitoba. The
Manitoba figures are the median, which means that 50% of the salaries were belowthat level. The Northwest Territories and Yukon did not have a public school system
during this period, so salary comparisons with religious schools there cannot be made.

704 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 31.6. Average annual salaries of schoolteachers, by provinces, 1926, 1930, 1935.
(Figures for Manitoba represent the median; all others represent the average.)
1926

1930

1935

Public (elementary) schools

1,248

1,270

1,128

Separate (elementary) schools

763

771

810

1,008

1,012

685

879

877

484

Urban elementary

1,287

1,316

914

Rural elementary

1,055

1,076

465

Ontario

Manitoba
All schools (median)One-room schools (median)
Saskatchewan

Alberta
All teachers

1,204

1,242

971

First class teachers

1,386

1,439

1,072

Second class teachers

1,118

1,138

855

British Columbia
All schools

1,430

1,528

1,300

Elementary schools

1,242

1,393

1,140

Source: Statistics Canada, Average annual salaries of school teachers, by provinces, 1926, 1930, 1935, or latest
year reported, http://www65.statcan.gc.ca/acyb02/1937/acyb02_19370965005-eng.htm.

This table shows the impact of the Great Depression on the Canadian Prairies, whenwages fell dramatically, particularly in rural schools in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The public school wage range in 1935 for elementary teachers was from the median of$465 in rural Saskatchewan to an average salary of $1,300 in British Columbia. In her
memoir of teaching in Manitoba schools, Sybil Shack wrote about when, in 1932, shetravelled “to a little schoolhouse about thirty miles from my home to interview a board.
There were about a dozen of us applying for scrubby jobs which paid a munificent salary of 450.00 per year.”166 In addition to these wages, rural teachers in public schools
often were provided with accommodation, either in a teacherage (which might be aconverted granary or barn) or with a local family. In some cases, they were passed
around from one family to another on a monthly basis. There was little privacy, andconditions often were cramped. It might have been unusual, but one rural Canadianteacher ended up sharing her bed with her landlady and the landlady’s baby.167
The highest teacher salary at the Brandon residential school in 1935 was $700,
which was $15 more than the median salary for teachers in Manitoba public schools in1935 ($685). The discrepancy between residential and public school salaries appears
to increase as one goes farther west. The highest teacher salary at the Edmonton

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 705

residential school in 1936 ($680) was considerably below the average Alberta publicschool salary for that year ($971). The average public school salary in British Columbia($1,300) was more than double the highest salary paid at the Kamloops residential
school ($600). Brandon, Edmonton, and Kamloops were all large, well-establishedschools, where wages would have been at the high end of the residential school scale.
Other, smaller, schools would have had an even wider salary gap.
Initially, room and board at the Hay River school in the Northwest Territories wasdeducted from staff salaries, but, from 1935 onwards, it was provided free.168 It is very
difficult to calculate the value of the housing that was provided. The quality of housing
was, in fact, a matter of ongoing complaint. In 1903, the Indian Affairs annual reportstated that at the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, there were “some very inadequate and unsuitable rooms, occupied by the principal and his family.”169 In 1904,
the principal of the Calgary school reported he was living in a building that had been
intended as a laundry. It was, he wrote, “very inconvenient, and naturally in many
ways uncomfortable.”170 By comparison, at Regina in 1905, the principal lived in a
two-storey brick residence.171 The principal of the Lytton school, A. R. Lett, wrote in1924 that, since coming to the school, he and his wife had “no home life.”
Mrs. Lett, baby and myself, occupy one bedroom, not even having a spare roomfor visitors. The livingroom [sic] and the dining room are so public that we dareto talk over business affairs, and repair to our bedroom, but then must confine
ourselves to whispers. The main corridor running through our part, and the staff(three members) living upstairs, sharing our toilet and bath, gives no privacy,
which is so much needed under strenuous conditions of work.172

Finding accommodation for married staff was an ongoing problem. In 1926, theengineer at the Anglican school at Onion Lake resigned because the school could notprovide accommodation for himself, his wife, and their four children.173 Three years
later, E. Ruaux, the principal of the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve inAlberta, faced the loss of a teacher who was getting married. Indian Affairs turned
down Ruaux’s request for the construction of a teachers’ residence, suggesting that,instead, he offer the teacher two of the staff rooms.174 Ruaux went ahead and built
the residence. The next year, the Oblates sought to have the government reimburse
the costs incurred.175 Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott refused, saying, “TheDepartment can hardly be expected to provide funds for buildings at these schools
when we have no control over their erection.”176
Privacy was also a rare commodity within the schools. Margaret Butcher commented in a 1918 letter from Kitamaat:
I am trying to write whilst ‘on duty.’ Six children are leaning over the tablecounting the lines written and commenting on the speed of my pen. Several boys
are playing ‘Touch last’ round & round the room, incidentally banging my chair.

706 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Two organs are ‘going’ one in the room, the other in the Hall just outside thedoor. The whole is a hubbub that would drive a sane person crazy but seeing that
I am crazy already it has a soothing effect and I begin to wonder how people canlive in a house without a crowd of children.177

The United Church Board of Home Missions associate secretary, Kenneth Beaton,
was concerned by the need to construct a separate residence for Portage la Prairie
principal W. A. Hendry and his wife, who was serving as school matron. If this were
not done, he feared they would quit. Beaton noted that the Hendrys had “borne theirfull share of the burden for us and the Department by their willingness to reside in theschool with all the noise and confusion for so many years.”178
Indeed they had. Hendry started his career as a teacher at the Round Lake schoolin what is now Saskatchewan in 1900.179 By 1902, he was principal of the Portage la
Prairie school in Manitoba. At that time, his sister was the matron and his fiancée,Miss Finnie, was the assistant matron.180 With the exception of a few months when heserved as the principal of the Alberni, British Columbia, school, Hendry remained in
office at Portage la Prairie until August 1931. His resignation came after nearly thirty
years of service at the school, and seven months after Beaton had worried he would
quit if he were not provided with a private residence.181
Conversely, in the mid-1930s, the Oblates had to deal with serious internal criticism that the quality of housing provided to its members at residential schools was not
spartan enough. From June 1935 to July 1936, the Oblates’ European-based superior
general, Théodore Labouré, visited the order’s western and northern Canadian missions.182 He disapproved of the degree of contact that existed between Oblate fathers
and members of female religious orders, and the “extravagance” in which, he felt,
the Oblates were living at the schools. He wrote, “Some parlours resemble the livingrooms of the rich with their massive and expensive armchairs and couches; and theoffices of some Principals could rival those of a bank manager or high-ranking government official.” He ordered that all Oblates remove from their rooms “all these trinkets, knick-knacks, lace curtains or drapes, pictures, photos (with the exception of our
Oblate photos), the thousand little nothings that transform a religious cell into the denof a worldly man, or even an artist’s studio.”183
In the early years, vacations were uncommon. An 1896 report on the Mount Elginschool noted, “No holidays are given or allowed to the staff; all days or parts of days
lost time are deducted from their wages.”184 In February 1911, the Presbyterian Foreign
Mission Committee granted Crowstand school principal W. McWhinney permission
to take a three-month leave. According to the committee’s minutes, McWhinney had
been working “without any furlough for seven or eight years.”185 By the 1920s, theAnglican policy was to provide four weeks of vacation. Since the full staff would be
required to take care of children on statutory holidays, the Anglicans instructed staff
that “no member should ask, or expect, to be relieved of duty on these occasions.”186

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 707

For staff at remote schools, holidays were too short and transportation was too costly
to allow them to visit their families. Louise Topping, who worked at the Anglican
school in Fort George, Québec, wrote in 1932, “It was impossible for the staff to go out
on holiday each year so a small building called the shack about a mile and a half fromthe school served the purpose and all the staff took turns there enjoying two weeks
rest and fishing, swimming and berrying.”187
Journalist Agnes Dean Cameron painted this portrait of life in the Roman Catholicschool at Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta in 1908:
In the long winter evenings these good step-mothers of savages do all theirreading and sewing before six o’clock. The mid-winter sun sinks at four, and twohours of candle-light is all that the frugal exchequer can afford. “What in theworld do you do after six?” I venture; for well we know those busy fingers are
not content to rest in idle laps. “Oh! We knit, opening the stove-doors to give us
light.”188

By 1936, they had lanterns at the Shingle Point school in the Yukon. However, thewindows and walls were so poorly insulated that a strong wind could extinguish theflame in a lantern. Staff member Adelaide Butler confided in a letter home:
Who would live all their life with oil lamps? I am looking forward to using electric
lights again, after poking about in semi-darkness, but I am also afraid that these
dim religious lights have done my eyes no good, and that I shall have to haveglasses when I go south. Another expense! They rob one right and left for teeth
and eyes, out here!189

The residential school staff had greater immunity than their students to many ofthe diseases that plagued residential schools, and, as previously described, their diets
were generally superior to those provided to the students. Despite this, the living
conditions that prevailed in many schools took a toll on staff. In 1896, Indian Affairs
Deputy Minister Hayter Reed described Miss Fetherston, the teacher at the White Fish
Lake school in what is now Alberta, as “a cripple and a chronic invalid,” adding that theschool “has often to be closed on account of her ill health.” The principal, Mr. Glass,
objected strenuously, stating that although Fetherston had been lame when she was
hired, she was able to get about without the aid of a cane or crutch. The change in her
health was, in the principal’s opinion, the result of having to work in a poorly heatedand poorly insulated schoolhouse in which the “cold wind whistled up through thefloor.” Glass said that “the Department which charges itself with building, repairingand furnishing school houses, should also charge itself with neglect and the suffering
endured by the teacher from that neglect.”190
The first five Sisters of Charity to serve at the Fort Providence school in what is now
the Northwest Territories spent two and a half months travelling from St. Boniface
to Fort Providence in 1867.191 In her record of the journey, the sister superior, Sister708 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Lapointe, wrote, “We were ashore, in a strange, though longed-for, land in our new
country, our home, our tomb.”192 In adjusting to a change in diet, the staff experienced
many of the same difficulties as the students. Sister Lapointe later wrote that although
she and the other members of the order did not regret coming north in 1867, “there
are in truth many sacrifices to be made.” In particular, she said, they found it “rather
hard to get used to the coarse food which is always the same. We never taste bread.”193
Some school staff members lived their entire working lives at residential schools. At
least twelve principals died in office during this period: Regina principal A. J. McLeod(1900); Muncey, Ontario, principal W. W. Shepherd (died after a horse-drawn cart
accident in 1903); Regina principal J. A. Sinclair (1905); Mission, British Columbia,
principal Charles Marchal (diphtheria, 1906); Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, Anglican
school principal John Matheson (1916); Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, principal Joseph
Hugonnard (1917); Shoal Lake, Ontario, school principal Mr. Mathews (influenza,1918); High River, Alberta, principal George Nordmann (influenza, 1918); Gordon’s,
Saskatchewan, principal H. W. Atwater (1925); Beauval, Saskatchewan, principal
Mederic Adam (typhoid, 1930); Grayson, Saskatchewan, principal J. Carriere (1933);
and Kamsack, Saskatchewan, principal C. Brouillet (1935).194 Kuper Island, British
Columbia, principal George Donckele resigned in January 1907; by June of that year,
he was dead.195
It is more difficult to say how many staff members died during this period. Elizabeth
Long, the first matron of the school at Kitamaat, British Columbia, died from illness in1907. The school was renamed the Elizabeth Long Memorial Home in her honour.196
Staff members also lost children: Emma Crosby, who helped found the Crosby Girls’
Home in Port Simpson in the late 1870s, buried four of her children at Port Simpson.
Two of them had succumbed to diphtheria.197 Elizabeth Matheson, the wife of theOnion Lake principal, lost a daughter to whooping cough and a son to meningeal
croup in the early years of the twentieth century.198
Those who worked in isolated schools had little access to medical care. In 1935,
Miss Tomalin, the nurse at Shingle Point, came down with typhoid. According to her
co-worker, Adelaide Butler:
Miss Harvey, the Kitchen Matron, who has had hospital training in England,
undertook to nurse her. We had a terrible time with her, as she was delirious
most of the time, and became so weak that we thought she would die of collapse.
It was the very worst time of the year that she could have got ill, as there was
too much ice about for a boat to venture out to sea, and the water would havefrozen the engine anyway. There was not enough ice and snow for the dog teams
to travel in safety, and though we would have given anything to have her go tohospital at Aklavik, where she begged us to send her, she might have got in theice in the boat, or fallen through it with the dog teams, so she had to stay here
and be nursed, and in consequence, upset the whole routine of the school.199

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 709

Louise Topping, who worked at schools in what is now Alberta, British Columbia,
Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and northern Québec, wrote a lightly fictionalized
memoir of her years at the schools, entitled “Hope.” The protagonist, a young woman
named Hope, worked in the same locations in which Topping worked. The events inthe story follow closely on the events of Topping’s own life. In the early 1920s, Hopeworked briefly at an Anglican school in southern Alberta. Rapidly promoted to school
matron, she was overwhelmed by the work. Eventually, she collapsed.
She had worked too hard and her own health suffered. She was sent for amonth’s rest to Gleichen [in Alberta] where it was thought the work might proveeasier, however her health had suffered too much, and after a few month’s [sic]gland trouble developed, her tonsils were removed and she was given six months
away from so much tb and infection.200

She recovered, took three years of training as a deaconess in Toronto, and then wasdispatched to the Anglican school at Alert Bay in British Columbia. From there, shewent to the school at Carcross in the Yukon, where, once more, she worked as matron.
Her health broke down one more time and she returned to Toronto for surgery. Afterher recovery, she went to the Northwest Territories to work at the Anglican hospital in
Aklavik and then transferred to the school at Hay River.201
The isolation, coupled with the pressures that accumulated in a small, restrictedsociety, was often stressful. According to her daughter Ruth, Elizabeth Matheson,
whose husband was the principal of the Anglican school in Onion Lake, drove “herself until she was alarmingly thin and tired; quite unable to cope patiently with any
problem.” During her fourth pregnancy, Elizabeth Matheson was so depressed that
she considered suicide.202
An Indian agent, F. J. C. Ball, gave the following summary of the workload of one
employee at the Lytton school in 1922:
There is a man of sixty-three, Mr. Hooper, acting as teacher, minister, janitor
and general handy man around the School. He also has charge of the boys [sic]dormitory at night. This man is certainly overworked and is conscientiously
trying to do more than his strength will stand and his work should be divided,
which I expect the new Principal, when appointed, will attend to. I watchedthis man rather closely and am inclined to think he is heading for a nervous
breakdown.203

From letters and reports, it appears that physical strength and the ability to dominate a class were considered necessary qualifications for teachers. In 1915, Birtle
school principal Rev. David Iverach wrote that he intended to dismiss a female teacher,saying he had “never been satisfied with the results of her teaching larger pupils.” His
preference for a replacement was “a good male teacher,” and he noted that if “that was
not possible a good strong woman would do.”204 A 1924 inspection report described

710 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the need for “a male principal to handle the larger boys” at the Kootenay school.205 In
1928, Indian agent J. Waddy wrote of the Anglican school in The Pas:
The Indian people here in the north respect size in a person much more thanthey do knowledge contained in a smaller person. Four of the staff at this school
are very small and very young for this work, though they are well equiped [sic]for the work otherwise. The Children really do not respect them at all. I would
not suggest replacing them with matrons from a jail or rough people of any sort,
but in future it would be well to supply good husky ladies for this school, a lightweight one is out of place there.206

A show of weakness could devastate a teacher’s career. At the Anglican school in
The Pas, a female in the junior class refused to be disciplined in 1933. According to
Inspector A. G. Hamilton, the result was that the teacher suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned.207
People often had little control over when their careers ended. Duncan Campbell
Scott recommended that Shingwauk Home matron Lulu Botterell be retired in 1931.
She had “given splendid service for many years,” but, since she was now blind, “herusefulness at an Indian residential school is largely ended.”208 Alice Davies, one of theteachers at the school, came to Botterell’s defence, pointing out that her sight had notdiminished in quality over the past eight years. She thought the principal, Benjamin
Fuller, had deceived the department as to the quality of service that Botterell could
still offer. In a passage that highlights the sorts of passions that could develop in theinsular environment of a residential school, Davies described Fuller as “a self-deluded
warped man with the most unreasonable jealous, unfair mind at times, and cunning
enough to appear one thing and act another.”209 In response, Indian Affairs allowed
Botterell to continue in her position as matron.210 Her sight continued to deteriorate
and she eventually retired, then died in 1938. In noting her death, the Anglican Indianand Eskimo Residential School Commission commented that, in all her work, “shewas governed solely by considerations of Christian duty.”211 When the seventy-threeyear-old matron of the Ahousaht school in British Columbia retired in 1929, the principal, W. M. Woods, recommended that she be given an honorarium of a month’ssalary as appreciation for her years of service. Woods noted that she was “retiring withvery limited means.”212
In the early 1930s, Indian agent W. G. Tweddell had concluded that at the Anglican
school in The Pas, there were “two (aged) ladies who I consider should be superannuated.” He also thought the school engineer should be retired.213 In the case of the twoelderly staff members, Anglican official T. B. R. Westgate wrote that the church was
not convinced that these ladies are unable to control the girls, and to dismissthem at short notice, at a time like this when there is so much unemployment
throughout this country, and they would be both obliged to return to England,

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 711

would be to inflict a great hardship upon them, and one which existing
conditions do not appear to justify.

Westgate said the women could be kept on until the middle of the following
summer.214
Low pay rates, difficult working conditions, and limited benefits made it difficult
for schools to recruit qualified staff. According to one study, only two of the fifty-four
women the Methodists employed in the Aboriginal missions had university training.
One of them had been sent originally to Japan, but found that posting too difficult.
Only seven had experience as teachers, and only five of the fifty-four had gone to a
Methodist training school.215
Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there were many qualified and experienced people working in the schools. Bessie Quirt, who taught in Shingle Point,
was a graduate of normal school and had taught public school for four years. Louise
Topping, who worked throughout the North, had trained as both a teacher and anurse. Adelaide Butler had taught for nine years in England before going to work innorthern Canada. Mabel Jones, who also taught in the North, had a degree in theology, and Margaret Peck, who worked in Aklavik in the Northwest Territories, had adegree from Oxford—a distinction that she preferred to keep private.216 Miss Asson,
the matron at the Kitamaat school in 1930, was a graduate of the Ensworth Deaconess
Hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. She had also trained as a deaconess in Toronto, andworked in China from 1909 to 1927. Ill health obliged her to return to Canada.217 The
matron at the Anglican Wabasca, Alberta, school in 1933 was a nurse.218
Among the staff at the Norway House school in the early twentieth century were
the sisters Charlotte Amelia and Lilian Yeomans. Charlotte had trained as a nurse,and Lilian was one of the first women in Canada to qualify as a doctor. Because no
Canadian medical school accepted women at the time, she had taken her training
in the United States and then opened a practice in Winnipeg in the 1880s.219 During
the course of her practice, she became addicted to morphine.220 She claimed to haveovercome her addiction in 1898 with the assistance of a Chicago faith healer, John
Alexander Dowie, and returned to Canada with the intention of giving up medical
practice and working as a missionary.221 In 1900, Charlotte Amelia took a position as
the matron of the Norway House residential school.222 Lilian joined her the following
year, working as a teacher.223 Despite her desire not to resume her medical practice, as
the only doctor for hundreds of kilometres, she was pressed into service.224 Both sisters
apparently adopted children when they were working at Norway House.225 Charlotte
moved to Calgary in 1904, and Lilian joined her there two years later.226 Lilian later
moved to the United States and became an associate of the evangelist Aimee Semple
McPherson.227
In the circumstances of the low pay and poor working and living conditions, highturnover rates were not uncommon. From 1882 to 1894, there was what amounted

712 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to an annual turnover of teachers at the Fort Simpson (later Port Simpson) school.
At one point, all the teaching was being done by local Methodist missionary Thomas
Crosby, his wife, Emma, and the school matron.228 Twenty-three of the fifty-four
women whom the Methodists assigned to work in the Aboriginal missions prior tochurch union in 1925 resigned in less than three years, and only seventeen served formore than five years. The frequent changes in staff meant there was little camaraderie;meanwhile, the work wore them out. Lavinia Clarke, who had said there was no placein the missions for idlers, was so overcome with work that she resigned from her position at Port Simpson in 1902 and died two years later. Her death was attributed to thelong years of work she had devoted to the Women’s Missionary Society.229
In 1907, the Metlakatla principal in British Columbia reported that both the matronand her replacement had resigned. As a result, the teacher was taking on the roles ofmatron and teacher. Furthermore, the cook had resigned and could not be replaced“on account of the great increase asked in wages.”230 A 1929 report on the Carcrossschool in the Yukon noted:
The Staff appear to be unsettled, the Principal and the teacher have bothtendered their resignations to the Indian and Eskimo School Commission, up
to date neither of these resignations have been accepted. Miss Ostergarde, r.n.
recently arrived to fill the position of head matron and girl’s [sic] supervisor
has resigned and will be married in August to the Missionary at Carmacks.
Miss Bertram, the kitchen matron is compelled to resign through a complete
breakdown in health.231

The Presbyterian school in Kamsack underwent a period of constant staff turmoil
in the early twentieth century. Two days into her first week of teaching at the school
in 1901, the new teacher, Miss Downing, informed Principal Neil Gilmour that, “onaccount of the children not being very healthy, the atmosphere of the class-roomwill not be such that she can stand it.”232 A week later, the matron, Miss Wright, also
resigned. Gilmour strongly recommended that Wright’s resignation be accepted, since“she is certainly not the right person for the work.”233 Gilmour hoped to replace herwith his cousin, a Miss Gilmour, who, in the past, had worked at both the Kamsack andRegina schools. However, Miss Gilmour initially turned the job down, saying she wasglad to be rid of the “endless task of telling the same thing over and over again until myhead used to get dizzy, and I would think, how much easier to do the work myself.”234
Gilmour was dismayed to learn that a former matron at the Regina industrial school,a Miss Nicoll, had been appointed as the new matron. He wrote that at Regina, “theyhave a cook, a baker, a laundress, a seamstress, and an assistant matron.” Therefore,
the duties of a matron at Regina were those of a manager. At Kamsack, Nicoll not only
would have to “understand how to make bread, but that she must do a larger share of
the kneading of dough for 72 loaves of bread.” Does she know, he wrote, that “this isThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 713

not merely an issuing of orders regarding the meals but doing the cooking herself andso with all the work?”235
It appears that Gilmour succeeded in discouraging Nicoll from taking the position. He also managed to convince his cousin to reconsider her initial rejection of theposition, and she became matron at the end of 1901.236 It was Principal Gilmour who
resigned by the end of 1902. Miss Gilmour, however, stayed.237 By 1911, she was acting
principal. She appears to have been viewed as having made a positive contribution
to an often-troubled school. In 1914, after she had retired, Indian agent W. G. Blewett
wrote of the Presbyterian school in Kamsack, “Dormitories fair, play rooms dirty, waterclosets dirty. Many pupils dirty and poorly clad. Miss Gilmour’s retirement seems tohave started it on the down grade.”238 Whether or not this was an accurate assessment,
it is clear that a school’s success or failure was regularly laid at the principal’s door.

The principal: “Responsible to the Church and theDepartment for every phase of the activity”
In 1933, the Anglican Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada
offered Reverend K. L. Sandercock $80 a month, plus room and board for him andhis wife, if he would take on the position of acting principal of the Wabasca, Alberta,
school. The church also agreed to pay half their transportation costs from their current residence in Saskatchewan to the end of the rail line, plus all their transportation costs from there to the school. This money would have to be refunded if he did
not stay in the position for five years. At the end of that period, he would be allowed
a paid leave of six months. In its offer, the church made it clear that it assumed no
responsibility for “any medical treatment which may be required” while he was in its
employ. If he accepted the offer, Sandercock would be supplied with a furnished log
house, 183 metres from the school. The house was “lined with beaver board, has two
bed rooms, and a living room upstairs, with office, dining-room, kitchen, etc. below.”
He would remain as the acting principal until his appointment was confirmed by thefederal government, and, he was warned, it was government policy to “never advance
any appointee to the Principalship until some years of service have been given.” In
addition, he was to serve as the Anglican missionary in the district, and was expected
to “visit surrounding Indian settlements, to baptize the children of Anglican Indian
parents, and recruit pupils for the school.” He could expect “keenest competitionand opposition” from the Roman Catholic boarding school, which was located ten
kilometres from the Anglican school. Effective recruiting was essential to the school’s
survival—it had a pupilage of thirty, but, even with full enrolment, “the revenue does
not balance the operating cost.”239 Sandercock accepted the offer and remained at theschool for five years.240

714 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The terms and conditions of Sandercock’s employment were fairly standard for theProtestant-run schools. Trevor Jones was attending the Anglican Wycliffe College in1932 when he was recruited to become the founding principal of the Anglican school
at Fort George, Québec. His fellow students tried to discourage him from taking thejob, warning him, “If I went to Fort George, I would probably find myself working
with native peoples for the rest of my life. Obviously, this was seen as a fate worse
than death.”
Jones agreed to work for five years for $60 a month plus travel and room and board.
Before heading north, he married Hilda Lewis, his fiancée of three years. The two ofthem were then sent to two different residential schools, where they underwent a few
weeks of training. It was only after he was hired that Jones discovered that the church
had reduced all salaries by 7% to help cover the impact of church-investment losses
at the outset of the Great Depression.241 He fulfilled his five years and then went on to
become head of the Anglican mission at Aklavik.242
The principal’s job was all-encompassing and poorly defined. In 1926, newly
appointed Gordon’s school principal J. K. Irwin discovered upon taking office that hecould not find any “laid down regulations as to the duties and powers of a Principalof an Indian Boarding School.” He asked Indian Affairs for a copy of such regulations, since he wanted to know “exactly what I am to do and what powers I have.”243
Departmental secretary J. D. McLean informed him that “there are no printed regulations concerning the duties and powers of the principal of an Indian residential
school.” Irwin was told he was “responsible to the Church and the Department forevery phase of the activity” at the school. If he had any specific questions, he shouldrefer them to Indian Affairs.244
Since he was an Anglican, Irwin could, at least, turn to a pamphlet produced by theMissionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, which provided an overview
of a principal’s duties. These included the following:• Supervise “every department of the work, paying particular attention to the welfare of the children, the efficient discharge of their respective duties by membersof the staff, and the proper conduct of the School as a whole.”• Draw up timetables and menus for the operation of the school, allocate students
to the proper departments, and ensure that “each pupil is under instruction in
the class-room at least half the full time set apart for this purpose daily.”• Ensure that each pupil had daily religious instruction.
• Maintain “as economical an administration of all departments of the work as
may be compatible with safety and efficiency.”• Correspond with the Anglican Church and forward budget estimates in atimely fashion.
• Prepare annual estimates of the amount of clothing needed at the school.
• Provide itemized lists of the contents of the bales of clothing received.

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 715• Provide quarterly returns to Indian Affairs.
• Maintain accounts and forward copies of accounts to the Anglican Church.
• Report “any inefficiency or improper conduct which may come to his notice.”• Co-operate fully with Indian Affairs.245
In addition to these tasks, many of the principals were missionaries as well as school
administrators. File Hills school principal Kate Gillespie preached every Sunday inthe neighbouring reserves.246 Norway House principal Joseph Lousley was also a missionary to the general community. In his memoir, he noted how he depended on theschool carpenter to take care of the school “while I was away visiting camps and otherreserves, and into Winnipeg to buy supplies.”247
Principals also had to spend much of their summer and fall recruiting students.
John Semmens, principal at the Brandon school, used to take “one or two trips every
summer looking for more pupils going as far north as Gods Lake [Manitoba] andbringing the children as far south as Norway House in canoe and then by open boator steamer to Selkirk and by cpr to Brandon.”248 On the trip back to the school, he had
to care for up to thirty-five children. Of one steamer trip, he wrote, “I was up fromten to twenty times every night with sickness restlessness fear and thirst. A lamp was
kept burning. The small children were troublesome & I was father mother physician
and nurse cook servant companion and master.”249 Semmens believed the students
could suffer in the absence of the principal, noting that, at Brandon, “the officers left
in charge were not always wise or kind in their dealings with the children so that disagreements and misunderstandings arose which had serious consequences of a wide
reaching character.”250
The principals were usually churchmen, but some, like Onion Lake principal John
Matheson, had a rough-and-ready background. Matheson was born in Red River, andgrew up with knowledge of Cree and Gaelic, as well as English and French. After abrief time as schoolteacher, he headed west at the age of twenty, finding work as a
mail carrier, freighter, and trader.251 He had a strong sympathy for the Métis and was
reputed to have lent Métis military leader Gabriel Dumont a rifle in 1885.252 Whenhe was in his forties, he underwent a religious conversion. After a time as a revival
preacher in Vancouver, he agreed to take over the Anglican mission at Onion Lakein 1892. The appointment was somewhat unusual, since Matheson had been raised
as a Presbyterian and had been recently seeking a mission appointment from the
Methodists.253 At Onion Lake, Matheson not only served as missionary and principal,
but he also ranched, farmed, and traded, often using income from his business enterprises to support the school.254
As the Anglican missionary and principal at Fort George, Trevor Jones found that
he also had to become a trader, since any labourers the school hired wished to be paidin supplies. He “had to spend three or four hours daily during the busy season weighing out small quantities of flour, beef tallow, baking powder, tea and sugar to as many

716 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

as twenty-five men.”255 Other principals also felt obliged to take on extra work. In addition to the $750 a year that A. J. Vale made as a principal of the Hay River school in the
Northwest Territories, he was paid $200 a year as a weather observer.256 On occasion,some principals tried to exploit their position. In 1929, Duncan Campbell Scott asked
for the resignation of B. Rogers, the principal of the Mohawk Institute. That summer,
Rogers, without informing Indian Affairs, had purchased a farm next to the schoolwith the intention of opening a riding school. According to Scott, Rogers had used“the labour of pupils of the Institute and the staff on the farm.”257
Although staff turnover in the schools was high, many principals put in decades ofservice. The members of Roman Catholic orders were expected to accept the assignments they were given. Oblate Father Paul Bousquet, for example, had a lengthy andvaried career within the Roman Catholic schools of western Canada. In 1903, he wasprincipal of the Pine Creek school in Manitoba,258 and, by 1906, he was principal of
the Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario.259 He was appointed principal of the Sandy
Bay, Manitoba, school in 1912.260 He was put in charge of the Fort Alexander school in
1914.261 There, he became discouraged by the number of runaways. He attempted toresign his position in both 1919 and 1921, saying he no longer wished to work in First
Nations education.262 However, the Oblates did not accept the resignation, and heremained in office until he became seriously ill and had to be replaced in 1927.263 By
1933, he was principal of the Fort Frances, Ontario, school.264 Three years later, he wasback to where he began, as principal of the Pine Creek school in Manitoba.265 He leftthat school in 1937.266 In all, he had worked for at least thirty-four years at five different schools. Sherman Shepherd, who travelled from Toronto to Shingle Point on the
Arctic Ocean in 1929, eventually served at the Anglican schools in Aklavik (Northwest
Territories), Fort George (Québec), and Moose Factory (Ontario), resigning in 1954
after twenty-five years of service in northern Canada.267
Sometimes, a career could end on a bitter note. John Semmens, the founding principal of the Brandon school, felt he was forced out of his position because he refused
to agree to a planned spending cut of five cents per day per student.
I had filled the school with pupils, had put the farm in good shape, had increased
the stock from one cow to thirty head of cattle and horses, had gathered one
crop of wheat and planted another one over a larger area, had constructed anumber of buildings, had provided sufficient farm machinery, had erected
three windmills, one for pumping water, one for clearing the sewage and one
for chopping feed. After all this it seemed a small thing that the Church should
quarrel with me over five cents of difference on each pupil’s cost per day.268

Women also served as school principals. The 1906 Indian Affairs annual reportlisted eleven female principals. All worked at boarding schools, as opposed to industrial schools. Seven of them were Roman Catholic, two were Anglican, one was
Methodist, and one was Presbyterian.269 One of these principals was Kate Gillespie.

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 717

Born in Ontario in 1866, she moved to the Qu’Appelle Valley along with her parents
in 1889. She worked as a rural schoolteacher, and her contact with some Aboriginal
students led her to volunteer for missionary work in Canada. After teaching at day
schools on reserves near Kamsack and Prince Albert, she was appointed principal of
the File Hills school in 1901, a position she held until her marriage in 1908. Her sister
Janet came to work at the school as matron, and her father became the farm instructor.270 Between 1901 and 1904, Kate and Janet Gillespie together contributed a thirdof their combined income to the school.271 Principal Gillespie was highly regarded.
In 1911, when her successor resigned, Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham wrotethat the school in recent years “had fallen away very much.” When Gillespie had been
principal, “the pupils who were turned out had a thorough training in all lines of farmwork.” Graham pointed out that the last farm instructor (who had been “sent up from
Toronto”) “had no discipline or authority and besides was sickly and complained
about the hours.”272
The principals faced an almost impossible task. Underfunding forced them to rely
increasingly on the school farms and student labour. Once parents concluded that
their children were being underfed and overworked, they might stop sending them toschool. When this happened, the deficit increased and the principal was pronounced
a failure. The next principal might institute a more lenient regime, but, in the end, theimpact of underfunding was unavoidable. This cycle played itself out at the Red Deer
school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One after another of theschool’s first four principals was forced out of office. The first, John Nelson, was judged
to be too arbitrary in his treatment of staff and students.273 The second, C. E. Somerset,
was dismissed after it was concluded that, due to his leniency, he had lost control overthe school.274 Somerset believed he had not been fairly treated and claimed that theinvestigation into his operation of the school had not given him a proper hearing.275
His successor, James Rice, imposed stricter discipline and, in an effort to make theschool financially self-sustaining, dramatically increased the size of the school’s farmoperation. Parents objected to the harsh discipline and hard labour, and soon theyrefused to send their children to the school.276 His successor, Arthur Barner, abolishedcorporal punishment, placed a greater focus on education, instituted holidays, raised
staff pay, and improved health conditions at the school.277 The school’s finances werestill heavily dependent on the farm operation. When crops failed four years in a row,
the school had a $5,000 deficit in 1913. Indian Affairs concluded that Barner had failed
to exercise proper control of the school budget. In the face of this negative assessment,
Barner resigned.278 While each man undoubtedly had his limitations, one likely conclusion from a review of the careers of these four men (which spans the twenty-year
period from 1893 to 1913) is that success was impossible: successive principals weredismissed for exerting too much discipline or too little discipline, for focusing too

718 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

much attention on the school farm and financial initiatives, or for being too attentive
to student and parent concerns.
Some staff members believed that principals were too dictatorial. In 1903, teacher
Wasley Harris complained that Regina school principal J. A. Sinclair would not let staff
visit town, would not serve them vegetables, and had hit him on the neck.279 In othercases, principals had difficulty exerting their authority. In investigating complaints
against Red Deer principal John Nelson in 1895, Alex Sutherland of the Methodist
Missionary Society acknowledged that Nelson may “have been too arbitrary alike withthe pupils and the employees.” But, he also said, some of the employees, particularly
the carpenter (who was the brother of Senator James Lougheed), had acted as if they
were “virtually independent of the Principal.”280 When the Brandon school openedin 1895, Indian Affairs appointed all the staff except the principal. The incoming
principal, John Semmens, who was appointed by the Methodist Church, said, “Thisarrangement was not altogether satisfactory because they owed no distinct loyalty tome or to the Church which I represented. They felt secure because they were politically assigned to their positions and the power of dismissal for any cause did not restwith me.”281
In 1913, the Birtle school had a problem with frequent runaways. Indian agent G.
H. Wheatley believed the problem would be solved by the appointment of a new principal “who had the authority to discharge any member of the staff, who failed to faithfully fulfill their duties.”282
Given these conditions, many principals found the work very stressful. Rev. E. F.
Wilson, founding principal of the Shingwauk Home, had to close the school temporarily when he suffered “nervous affection of the heart and extreme exhaustion” in
1880.283 Four years later, he considered giving up his career:
It is a question also whether if I were to give up this work, I am particularly wellfitted for any other. Whether I could get employment elsewhere suited to mynature, tastes, and capabilities and at any better remuneration than I at present
receive. I think if I did this, the oversight of some school or schools somewherewould perhaps suit me best but I would like to have less responsibility as I
think it is this perhaps more than anything else that is wearing me out. I don’t
think anyone knows what a constant strain it is upon me. I have really no time
to myself, no time for reading, hardly any time for reading the newspaper.
Everything from the least to the greatest connected with these Homes falls on
myself.284

In 1891, when he was attempting to open a new school in Elkhorn, Manitoba, anda day school in Medicine Hat, in what is now Alberta, Wilson once more felt overwhelmed: “I have devoted my life entirely to this Indian work &, while I have life andstrength, hope if God will to continue in it. But at present I feel, with such insufficient

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 719

and uncertain help, the strain is too great upon me and the burden of responsibility
too heavy.”285 He retired in 1893.286
In 1939, the Kamloops principal, Father T. Kennedy, asked to be relieved of his
position due to “his exceedingly high strung nervous condition.” He was replaced by
Father O’Grady as principal.287
In other cases, principals did not feel supported by their superiors. The principalof the Roman Catholic school at Mission, A. M. D. Gillen, felt that the Oblates saddled
him with those members of the order who were not working out elsewhere. It was acomplaint that led to his eventual resignation. In 1936, he wrote that the only good
man who had been sent to him in recent years had been recalled almost immediately.
Of the rest, he thought that two of them might turn out to be helpful. However:
The others were sent here because they were thorns in someone else’s side or
were problems that had to be given to someone for safekeeping. I have madesuggestions for the good of the community and of the missions; no accountseems to have been taken of them. More than once I have asked for men
by name who were shortly to be available,—men of the type needed on our
missions; never have my appeals been responded to. More than once promises
have been given but they have not been implemented. Men have been sent tome who on arrival told me they were not sent here to work; others have specified
the kind and amount of work which they would do. Time hung on the hands ofthese, nothing pleased them; disgruntled and bored they took to destructive
criticism and to correspondence.288

One of these unhappy Oblates was Thomas Girard. In the type of correspondence
that Principal Gillen objected to, Girard complained to a fellow Oblate of his workload
at the Mission school. He was in charge of the school barn, a job that required him
to start his day at 5:00 a.m. and end it at 8:00 p.m. When he raised objections about
his workload with Gillen, the principal had told him that “more important than mypresence in the chapel in the morning for prayers & meditation is my presence in thebarn.” Girard felt it was “not much of a religious life.”289 Given these frustrations withstaff, it is not surprising that Gillen resigned by the end of the year.290
Maintaining positive relations with federal officials could be challenging. Uneasy
and sometimes distrustful relationships existed between government officials andprincipals in some locations. Kamsack principal W. McWhinney feared that the 1910
contract, by which the federal government increased funding to the schools while setting a variety of conditions that the schools had to meet, had opened the schools up to
excessive government control.
We would then have to submit to a great deal of petty tyranny from officials of the
Department. Many of those at Ottawa know very little of a practical nature about
the work and they would presume to make no end of regulations for our control.

720 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

There is one prominent official out here that has won very much more fame thanis his due and who would like to be in a position to dictate to everyone.291

Although McWhinney did not mention anyone by name, long-serving Indian agent
W. M. Graham, who became the Prairies’ Indian commissioner in 1920, was a critic ofmany principals, including McWhinney.292 In 1919, Graham opposed the appointment
of Father Leonard as the principal of the Lebret school in Saskatchewan. He thought
Leonard was “not big enough for the post.” Graham suspected that the appointment
was not discussed with him “for fear of my objection for Father Leonard.”293 After ameeting with Leonard, Graham changed his position and approved the appointment.294
Perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing all principals was the difficulty ofmanaging the personality conflicts that could arise when a small group of people
were obliged to live and work together in relative isolation under stressful conditions.
Because of the differences in the way the Roman Catholic and Protestant schools werestaffed and operated, the various conflicts that arose among staff members are discussed below in separate sections. The conflicts in Protestant schools centre largely
on problems that arose between the principal and the staff (particularly when theprincipal was married to the school matron). The Catholic staff conflicts relate moreto the relations between the male and female religious orders.

Life in close quarters: The Protestant experience
Joseph Lousley, principal of the Norway House school from 1902 to 1916, wrote in
his memoir thatfor the long seasons of fall, winter and spring, the staff found themselves almost
entirely shut up to each other’s company, as there were very few other white
people in the neighbourhood and often the other people were not congenialcompany, having such different outlook on life and different purposes for being
in that place.295

Frances M. Walbridge, who taught at the Round Lake school in Saskatchewan in
1939, recalled, “Although there is a bit of feeling between the farm teachers and theclassroom teachers we are all on a very friendly basis.”296 In the Catholic schools, staff
had signed on for life; in the Protestant schools, the expected term of employment was
five years. Life was lived in close quarters: if conflicts could not be contained, social
relations might prove unbearable. The situation could become particularly intolerable
if staff members formed cliques that left other staff members feeling excluded or isolated. To the best of their abilities, staff members were to keep their conflicts to themselves. The Anglicans warned staff members, “Should differences of opinion exist or
friction of any sort unhappily arise between members of the staff, no discussion of theThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 721

same should ever be allowed to take place in the presence, or within hearing of thepupils.”297
Maintaining life on the “friendly basis” that Frances Walbridge described could be
difficult, and there is a great deal of evidence that this was not always possible. IndianAffairs inspector M. Christianson concluded in 1932 that “considerable friction exists
between members of the staff and the principal” at the Anglican school in The Pas.
Christianson said the principal, Mr. Fraser, had made a number of positive changes atthe school. However, he concluded thatwith the present staff the school will never function properly. In the first placesome of the members of the staff have been at the school too long and I do notthink they are even loyal to Mr. Fraser. The members referred to are the Matron,
Miss Warner and Miss Northwood. They have been in the Indian work for a great
number of years, and may be splendid women, but they are getting too old tolook after the work at this school, and from my observations, have absolutely no
authority over the children. Mr. Turner the engineer does not appear to be very
helpful to the Principal. As you will recall Mr. Turner was in charge of the schoolfor a couple of years and I do not think there was much discipline during thattime.298

In a small community, loyalty was a prerequisite. A Miss McRae was dismissedfrom the File Hills school in 1914 because, according to the inspector of Indian agencies, she had turned out to be “a mischief maker” who was “disloyal to the Church andGovernment authorities.”299
Personal disputes could reach such intensity that they were beyond resolution. In
such cases, the only option appeared to be resignation. When three members of theRegina school staff resigned in April 1905, the acting principal, R. B. Heron, said they
were all good employees, but he could have prevented the resignations only if he hadtaken sides in what he considered to be a personal matter.300 Sometimes, an individual
was made to feel isolated and excluded. In 1932, a teacher at the Alert Bay school, wasinjured while playing basketball with the students. The local doctor diagnosed her as
being tubercular. She continued to teach, but was suffering from such pain that shesought treatment in Vancouver, where a doctor concluded she was not tubercular. The
school matron, however, told other staff that she was both tubercular and a “mental
case.” As a result, the woman was ostracized by the staff, her teaching performance
declined, and her contract was not renewed.301
One sign of disloyalty was to take one’s complaints about the principal to IndianAffairs. Schools discouraged the practice, but records make it clear that, with someregularity, staff members felt obliged to turn to Ottawa for help. Problems at the
Middlechurch school were continual. In 1902, ex-staff members presented a petition
to Indian Commissioner David Laird, calling for an investigation into the management of the school. According to an article in the Winnipeg Telegram, the petition

722 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

said that Principal Dagg had “not treated the petitioners in a gentlemanly manner,has discharged some of them without just cause, and has displayed incompetency
in the management of the Indian school.” According to the petition, twenty-one staff
members had left the school in the previous twenty months.302 Before the government
investigated the complaints further, both Dagg and the matron resigned.303
Protestant school employees had not taken the type of vows of obedience thatcharacterized life in Roman Catholic orders, but if they wanted to remain employed,
they often had to accept undesirable postings and transfers. Mildred McCabe wastransferred from the Aklavik Anglican hospital in the Northwest Territories to the Fort
George school in northern Québec, despite the fact that, according to Fort George
principal Trevor Jones, she had “made it plain to Archdeacon Fleming that she did notwant to come to Fort George. Since he had insisted that she should come for two years,
she would put in the time, but would do as little as possible.”304 When the school was
hit by an influenza epidemic, to Jones’s relief, McCabe “proved herself a willing nurse
and visited every family regularly.”305
The Protestant schools often were operated as family affairs. Missionary Thomas
Crosby’s wife, Emma, played a central role in establishing and running the Port
Simpson girls’ school in the 1880s.306 At the Anglican school at Wabasca in 1895, W.
R. Haynes was the manager and Mrs. Haynes was the matron.307 Elkhorn principal A.
E. Wilson’s wife, Aldia, was a teacher at the school at the time of their marriage.308 In
1915, the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan was “conducted by the Rev. H. W. Atwater,
the principal, and his two daughters, all of whom are trained teachers.”309 In 1939, theAnglican school on the Blood Reserve employed Rev. Middleton as principal, a Mr.
Middleton as farmer, and a G. Middleton as teacher. The engineer was A. Ransom andthe assistant cook was Mrs. A. Ransom.310
John Matheson was the principal of the Anglican school at Onion Lake in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while his brother Edward was principal of the Battleford school during the same period. Edward’s wife was Josephine
Raymond, a former staff member at the Battleford school.311 After her death from cancer, Edward Matheson married another staff member, Eleanor Shepphird.312 WhenJohn Matheson died in 1916, his wife, Elizabeth, took over as principal of the Onion
Lake school.313 Elizabeth Matheson’s brother, James Scott, became the farm instructor at the Battleford school.314 Her daughter Letitia and one of her husband’s nieces,Anne Cunningham, were teachers at the Onion Lake school.315 Principal Elizabeth
Matheson left the school in 1918 when she took a position as a medical inspector in
the Winnipeg public schools.316
There were explicit worries that some families were ‘feathering their own nests.’ In1931, the Alberni, British Columbia, school employed F. E. Pitts as principal at a salaryof $1,600 a year, his wife as the school matron at $925 a year, and their daughter Ketha
as primary teacher at $780 a year. In addition, their room and board were provided.

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 723

Indian Affairs inspector G. Barry thought they were all overpaid, recommending thatthe total family income of $3,305 be reduced to $2,640. He also thought that Pitts was
not doing a good job, and said that his administration of the school was “very weak.”317
Other reports raised questions about the effectiveness of the spouses who were
employed in the schools. Mrs. Menzies was the wife of the principal at the Presbyterianschool in northwestern Ontario, and she also served as school matron. Shortly after
her arrival in 1924, Indian agent Frank Edwards concluded that she “does not care for
Indians and has very little sympathy with them, and she is not liked by the staff.”318 An
unsigned report from later that year stated that although she appeared to be “the actual
head of the institution,” she had “no sympathy for the work” and could not “handle thestaff.”319 In 1927, Menzies came into conflict with staff over the treatment of children
and Aboriginal families. When Miss Brodie, a teacher at the school, asked Menzies’s
permission to give some bread from the school kitchen to “an old dying woman,” thematron refused. Brodie was allowed, however, to buy a loaf from the school to give tothe woman. When the school nurse, Miss Reid, asked to have eggs added to the dietsof sick children, that request was also denied. The nurse, similarly, purchased the eggs
out of her own salary and provided them to the students.320
In 1925, an Indian Affairs official questioned whether the wife of the Gleichen,
Alberta, school principal could “satisfactorily undertake the full duties of Matronin-charge on account of her own three small children.” While the Anglican Church
Missionary Society defended the matron’s ability to discharge her responsibilities, it
agreed to consider hiring additional staff members. However, it was pointed out that
this could not be done until a new residence was constructed for the principal.321 In
other situations, it was thought the wife was providing better service than the husband. Dr. Peter Bryce wrote of the Gleichen principal in 1907, “The Principal is a delicate man, epileptic, and though good-intentioned, is physically unsuited for such a
position. His wife, however, seems to be a most capable woman, and keeps things
together, with the assistance of Canon Stocken of the Mission Church, who lives but ashort distance away.”322
In many Protestant schools, an adversarial relationship could develop that set
the staff against both the principal and his wife, particularly if the wife was also theschool matron. If they were not to become disruptive, differences had to be repressed.
Anna Phillips went to work at the Anglican mission and school at Onion Lake in 1895.
Born in England, she had started work as a house servant as a child, and worked for
Manitoba Lieutenant-Governor John Schultz before going north to Onion Lake.323 She
served as matron when the Onion Lake principal’s wife, Elizabeth Matheson, went
east to resume her training to become a medical doctor. After Elizabeth’s return, thetwo women often clashed. Elizabeth felt her position in the school had been usurped.
Furthermore, her husband, the school principal, made her aware that he was ashamedof her impatience.324 Phillips stayed at the mission for nine years, leaving only when she

724 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

married another missionary. As her wagon started rolling away, Principal Matheson
said to his wife, “Thank God, that woman’s gone.”325
Shingle Point, Yukon, school employee Adelaide Butler was not happy when theschool principal, Sherman Shepherd, married a former teacher. She thought theyclaimed more than their share of the scarce resources devoted to the school. In a letter, she complained:
They have their own house just south of the church, and more has been spent onthat one little dwelling than on all the rest of the residences put together. Mrs. S is
one who gets as much stuff around her as she possibly can, and the place is justchockfull of stuff, she went round here grabbing everything she could lay hands
on, and she would even have taken some of my own personal things if I had notheld on tightly. She behaves as if she were Queen of Shingle Point and we were
just her subjects.326

In another, despairing, letter home, she wrote, “There is nothing else to do, I cannot
get away! I sometimes wonder why I came, and if I am going to survive, and now there
is a chance that I shall be here for another year after this one.”327
Butler thought she could last her full five-year commitment if two other staff members were replaced. But, she warned, “I am not going to lie down under it tamely,
someone is going to hear something, and on this mail too.”328
In other schools, relations may have been more harmonious. Romances often
developed between staff members that led to marriages. While Adelaide Butler was
deeply unhappy at Shingle Point, Bessie Quirt, another of the school’s early employees, maintained lifelong friendships with the staff and students she met at the school.
In 1979, she was the last of the school’s original staff still alive. She wrote, “The writeris the only one living of the original five and she misses the friendship and fellowshipof the others who have passed on.”329 Of the Hay River school in the 1930s, Louise
Topping wrote that, to amuse themselves, the staff members “had a social evening,with 2 different members each week in charge. They would put on Shakespeare plays,
musical evenings or stunt nights.”330 In addition, she had very strong and fond memories of the staff recreations:
Often too they held skating parties and wiener roasts. One night walking 2 miles
up the river with a party, and there having a bean supper, and it was good in thetent sitting on boughs, with a fire in the centre of the camp, with steaming coffee
over it. Those are the times one loves the north. Then we had our ping ponggames and the dark days when lights were used almost continually passed andthe days lengthened in Jan and Feb one still found much to take up their time
and with the brighter days even of lower temperatures one had glorious walks
and often dog-team rides.331

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 725

Relations between the Roman Catholic
male and female orders
The relations between the male and female Roman Catholic orders were not always
free from conflict. In most cases, the position of school principal was held by a priest,
usually an Oblate. Despite the dominant role usually played by members of the malereligious orders in the operation of the schools, there were sometimes surprising actsof self-assertion from the nuns who worked there. The leaders of the female orderssought to protect their order’s independence and autonomy while still fulfilling their
responsibilities. This led to conflict over pay, housing, access to appropriate religious officials, and recognition of what the church viewed as the proper relationship between men and women. There are examples of these conflicts from British
Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
The Sisters of Saint Ann, for example, believed that it was not morally appropriate for them to be overseeing the daily lives of young boys. They generally requiredthat the Oblates agree to hire young women, usually of Aboriginal ancestry, to takecare of the younger boys. If the Oblates refused to do this, the Sisters of Saint Ann
refused to provide staff. They also objected to the Oblates’ attempts to place sisters
in charge of the supervision of male dormitories.332 The Sisters of Saint Ann initiallyprovided staff at the Kamloops school in 1890. They withdrew their services from theschool because the Oblates had not appointed a Roman Catholic priest as principal.
The sisters demanded a priest-principal and an on-site chapel. They returned in 1892,
after a priest was hired to serve as principal.333 Because Indian Affairs refused to fundMétis children who were attending the Mission school, in the early 1890s, Vancouver
Bishop Paul Durieu called on the order to send the Métis children there to an orphanage. The sister in charge of the school refused to do so, feeling that she was bound tohonour a commitment to educate the children locally. In response, Durieu had hertransferred.334
Indian Affairs official R. H. Cairns wrote in 1924 that for the previous two years at
the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school, there had been “more or less discord among
the staff.” This discord had increased with the appointment of a new principal, Father J.
M. Smith. In response to the “entire lack of harmony” that had developed, the Oblates
withdrew the principal. According to Cairns, the nuns were working well together, but,he concluded, “conditions will not be normal till a strong efficient man is found who
will bring about harmony.”335
The correspondence among the principal of the Kamloops school, Father James
McGuire, the provincial superior of the British Columbia Sisters of Saint Ann, Sister
Mary Gabriel, and Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott sheds light both on
the conflicts that could arise within the Catholic religious orders and on the livesof residential school employees. In 1926, Father McGuire was not pleased with the726 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

performance of Sister Mary Monica, who was the senior Sister of Saint Ann at the
Kamloops school. He had opposed her appointment and believed her work to be “detrimental to the progress of the girls in class and very expensive to me.”336 Sister Mary
Gabriel disagreed completely. In her mind, the problem lay with McGuire. She wrote
to Scott:Father McGuire is a well-educated man and might fit wonderfully in a university,
but the bedrock of the school, its very elements, he cannot conceive. He canrun the farm; the plant, and all the outside work, but the inside drudgery of thecooking, mending, sewing, laundry work, taking care of the sick and a thousand
other details do not register with him. To tell you plainly, Father McGuire is a sickman; the worry and work of that institution is too much for him in his physicalcondition. He is a wreck.

Sister Mary Gabriel went on to say that it would be difficult to find Sisters of SaintAnn “physically strong enough to cope with the conditions” at the school. Father
McGuire had requested that he be supplied with teachers who had teaching qualifications. However, Sister Mary Gabriel said, “These girls—now Sisters—educatedin Victoria, Vancouver, or elsewhere, never could succeed with the slow, indolent,
uncultured child in an Indian school.” They were needed to teach in Catholic highschools and academies, and she “could not spare them to teach in an Indian school.”
She noted that the twenty Sisters of Saint Ann who were working at residential schools
in British Columbia were receiving a salary of $16 a month. She compared this to the$7,000 a year plus room and board that the order was obliged to pay better qualified
lay teachers to work in some of the schools it operated for non-Aboriginal students.
As a result, she said, the order would not be providing any more staff to the Kamloops
school. “We cannot afford to place a Sister there whose education is worth a salary of
Sixty dollars ($60) per month for the [$16] pittance allowed. We simply cannot submit
to it.”337
Sister Mary Gabriel’s tactics bore some fruit. By February 1927, the sisters at the
Kamloops school were receiving $30 a month.338 (In the 1930s, this amount was
reduced to $25 a month.)339 In the face of ongoing pressure from Indian Affairs, theOblates granted Father McGuire a leave of absence. Sister Mary Gabriel was much
more conciliatory in her assessment of McGuire by the time of his departure, sayingthat while he “may have been persistent and probably dictatorial in his manner of
expressing his views,” he hadlabored here ten years and not one cent of salary did he accept; all was turned
into the common fund for the betterment of the Indians. He has hardly a suit ofclothes to his name and leaves in a condition which no ordinary man, save one
who has dedicated his life to missionary work, would possibly endure.

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 727

She also was prepared to acknowledge that Sister Mary Monica—whom she had
previously defended—had proved to be less than satisfactory, since “she was somewhat deaf and did not speak English very well.”340
By then, Sister Mary Gabriel had turned her attention to conditions at the Mission
school. She informed the Oblate provincial superior that it would be impossible tocontinue to provide seven sisters to the school at the rate of $16 a month. She also drewattention to the “dilapidated state of the house, the cold and other inconveniences,”all of which, she said, were “prejudicial to the health of the sisters.”341 Her efforts toimprove salaries at the Mission school had little success. She had asked that the Sisters
of Saint Ann be paid $30 a month; the Oblates offered to pay $250 a year ($20.83 amonth). She called this “a trifle” more than their current rate of $16 a month, particularly in light of the “absolutely detrimental” living conditions and the fourteen-hourdays the sisters were required to work.342 She reminded the Oblate provincial superior
in the summer of 1928 that the order had its own financial obligations:
I request you to reconsider your offer of $250.00 per annum or what would be$20.83 per month and allow us the minimum wage of $1.00 per day or $30.00 per
month. If you are not in a position to meet this at the end of September quarter,
we will charge it up and consider it arrears until such time as you may be able topay in full.

She concluded, “If you consider sixty years of service at $16.00 per month and thelives that have been exhausted during that period of time, there should surely be nohesitation in granting our request.”343
However, the best she could do was win a commitment from the Oblates in thesummer of 1928 that they would pay $30 a month when they “were in a position tomeet their obligations.” A year later, when her term of office as provincial superior of
the Sisters of Saint Ann was up, the Oblates had yet to agree to her request.344 It was
not until 1939 that the salaries of the Sisters of Saint Ann at the Mission school wereincreased to $25 a month.345
At the Cranbrook school, Oblates and the Sisters of Providence clashed over matters great and small. For example, the principal took offence when a sister had thepresumption to tell the school’s hired man—in the principal’s words, “a servant, a
non-catholic”—that the priest was able to drive a car.346 More frustrating was Father
Maurice Lépine’s decision to hire a farmer whom the sisters had “many reasons tocomplain of,” and then to raise his salary, even though “the sisters could not meettheir current expenses.”347 Their disagreements with the Oblates led them to leave theschool in 1929.348
In 1893, the Sisters of Providence’s superior general, Mother Marie-Godefroy,pledged to provide Bishop Émile Grouard with staff for Oblate residential schools in
the Athabaska region of Alberta. She agreed that the first twenty-five sisters would

728 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

work for room and board, and those who were appointed later would receive $25 ayear. In exchange, the Oblates committed to taking care of the sisters’ material andspiritual needs. In coming years, this commitment would be a source of contention,with the Sisters of Providence arguing for pay raises on the basis that the commitment was not intended to be perpetual.349 Some of the members of the order felt that
their concerns were not taken seriously. One sister, frustrated by the treatment she
received from one Oblate when she asked about Indian Affairs policy, raised her concerns with another, more approachable, priest. He told her, “I shouldn’t tell you this,but the bishop has forbidden us ever to talk business with the Sisters.”350 Despite theircomplaints, the original arrangement remained in place throughout this period andright up to the 1950s.351
At the Wabasca school in Alberta, the Sisters of Providence were short of food in
the early 1920s. In November 1923, Mother Bernard du Sacré-Coeur complained toBishop Grouard that the sisters had not had a proper food supply for a year and had
been reduced to writing letters to their families to ask for money and food. Two of
the sisters had become so ill that they had to be given medical treatment.352 At the
Joussard, Alberta, mission, the sisters had to work by the light of 40-watt bulbs, while
the Oblates were supplied with 100-watt bulbs. Another complaint centred on Oblate
unwillingness to purchase baking ovens for the missions, which would have relieved
the sisters from staying up all night to bake bread for the Oblates and the residential
school students.353
At the Cluny, Alberta, school in 1908, the Oblate principal, Father Jean-Louis Le
Vern, forbade social conversations between the Oblates and the sisters.354 Prior to1934, the Sisters of Providence had been administering the Cluny school. In that year,
they were obliged to turn it over to the Oblates. Under a new financial agreement, thesisters were expected to work for $15 a month. The Oblates claimed that this was all
the school could afford, but the sisters, who were familiar with the school’s financesfrom the years they had spent running it, were not convinced.355
At times, the Oblates must have felt that the female orders had the upper hand. In
the 1920s in Saskatchewan, Indian Affairs pressured the Oblates to establish a farm at
the Delmas school on which boys could be taught farming skills. Father A. Naessens
explained to Deputy Minister Scott thatin this School, the Rev. Sisters have practically the administration and therunning of the Institution, they have been frequently told about the wishes of the
Department with regards the training of the older boys in farming; but they seemto have objections towards complying with these instructions in that respect.

Naessens said they would probably establish a farm if Indian Affairs directly
instructed them to do so.356 The principal also wrote to explain that the sisters would
be arranging the farming instruction, adding that he had no responsibility in theThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 729

matter. Scott responded that the principal ought to have control of his school, and thata prairie school that did not provide instruction in farming was not likely to “remaina factor in our educational programme.”357 One Oblate, J. B. Beys, explained to Scottthat “by special arrangement of our Bishops, in the early days the Sisters had the fullmanagement of the Schools. Little by little this has been changed in most Schools,
but still prevails in the Schools of Delmas, Onion Lake and Hobbema.” He added thatthe Delmas school lacked the funds to purchase the needed farm equipment.358 By
the early 1930s, however, the school had a small farm operation with sixteen hectares
under cultivation.359
The personal relations between priests and nuns (or sisters) were very closely controlled. In 1890, Bishop Vital Grandin wrote the Reverend Mother Ste. Marie, the general mother of the Sisters of the Assumption in Nicolet, Québec, about the rules thatshould apply to nuns being sent to the Onion Lake school. He warned that the government recognized only one person as a teacher at the school and the grant for thatteacher would be $300—“which is not sufficient.” In addition to teaching, the nuns
were expected to wash and mend the church linens and the male missionaries’ clothing, prepare meals for themselves and the missionaries, and clean the churches andrectories. Contact between the missionaries and nuns would have to be closely regulated. Although the missionaries were to eat their meals in the nuns’ residence, they
were to eat in a room that was completely separated from the rest of the building. The
food was to be passed to the missionaries through a hatch. Nuns were to make theirconfessions to priests through a screen, never at night, and should not prolong theseencounters by dwelling on minutiae. If it was necessary for a nun to speak to a priest,
she should ensure that she was accompanied by another sister, or by a child—one who
could not understand what was being said, but could serve as a witness to what wasdone. Illness particularly could give rise to temptations, since “it could happen thata patient who is normally very modest and scrupulous will request that we offer very
delicate favours.” The concern was with both appearances and reality. Grandin notedthat the sisters would be surrounded by people who did not believe in their virtue. He
said it should be recognized that since both the missionaries and nuns were alone andisolated, the mutual favour and consolation they provided each other “could create
certain dangers between the children of God, as saintly and perfect as they may be.”360

Aboriginal staff
Aboriginal people presented a potential source of employees for the schools.
However, during this period, attitudes of racial superiority, coupled with distrust ofolder Aboriginal people, meant that, in some cases, schools consciously chose not tohire Aboriginal staff. Such attitudes also made it difficult for the schools to keep any

730 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Aboriginal staff members who were hired. As early as 1884, Indian Affairs inspector T.
P. Wadsworth opposed the practice of employing Aboriginal women to work as cleaners in the schools and the practice of hiring Aboriginal men to do casual labour at theBattleford school. Although it was economical, he said, it attracted Aboriginal adults
to come to the school in hopes of getting employment, and also allowed the students
the chance of “surreptitiously communicating with their friends.” He preferred to see“a sufficient number of white servants” permanently employed at the schools.361
Alex Sutherland of the Methodist Church reported in 1896:
Our efforts to develop native helpers in our Indian work has not beenencouraging, but if we find some young men of good promise it might be well to
do what we can to aid them; but these are cases in which we need to move withcaution lest we find ourselves with men upon our hands for whom we have no
appointment.362

Clifford Tobias, a former Mohawk Institute student, was considered for a position
as a teacher in an Indian day school in Ontario in 1918. An unnamed Indian Affairs
official opposed his appointment, not because of his age or limited training, but
because he was Aboriginal. Based on his experience, the official wrote, hewould not advise putting any Indian in charge of an Indian School. These
children require to have the ‘Indian’ educated out of them, which only a whiteteacher can help to do.
It would be much better to select a white, returned soldier of equal or higher
attainments, and make an effort to provide a home for him on the Indian
Reserve, near the school.
An Indian is always and only an Indian and has not the social, moral andintellectual standing required to elevate these Indian children, who are quite
capable of improvement.363

In 1914, the Anglican Church recommended that the Reverend Louis Laronde beappointed as the principal of The Pas school. Indian Affairs official Martin Benson
described him as “a French half-breed, a graduate of St. John’s College,” with experience teaching in day schools. Benson acknowledged that Laronde was fully qualified,but, in correspondence with Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott, he noted, “I
think our past experience goes to show that we would be taking great risks in putting aschool of this class in charge of a half-breed.”364 Indian Affairs informed Bishop Jervois
Newnham that it would not approve Laronde’s appointment. However, the Anglican
Church appointed him.365 Rev. Laronde served as principal of residential schools in
The Pas and in Lytton, British Columbia.366
Despite these prejudices, some Aboriginal people were employed in various
regions of the system throughout this period. The most successful ones taught inThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 731

eastern Canada. The Mohawk Institute hired former student Isaac Barefoot to work
as a teacher in 1869. Barefoot went on to serve as acting principal. He later became
ordained as an Anglican minister.367 Susan Hardie had a very long and successful
history at the Mohawk Institute. A former student of the school, she started working
at the institute shortly after she obtained her teaching certificate in 1886.368 She was
the school governess as early as 1894, and was paid $200 a year.369 By 1915, she was
the senior teacher at the school, and was placed in charge of the school during theabsence of the principal in 1920. Her salary by then was $600 a year.370 She was highly
regarded: according to a local Indian Affairs official, she passed “from 4 to 6 pupils into
the High School every year.” In addition, he wrote, “a large part of her time is taken up
after school hours in other duties pertaining to her over sight of the girls.” By 1920, shereportedly had been teaching for thirty-four years.371 In 1921, she obtained a testimonial letter from Ontario school inspector T. W. Standing, who said that she was a “dulyqualified teacher, having been trained in the Toronto Normal School.” He thought her
to be an “excellent disciplinarian,” able to secure “the affection as well as the respectof her pupils.”372 She retired at the beginning of the 1936–37 school year, and was givena pension of $50 a month.373 Martha Hill, who attended the Mohawk Institute from1912 to 1918, recalled Hardie as a very strict disciplinarian, and described an incident
in which Hill refused to put out her hand to allow Hardie to administer a strapping.
According to Hill, Hardie gave her a shove. “I tripped on the radiator and I fell, and I
laid there. By the scruff of the neck she shoved me in the seat.”374 Raymond Hill, who
was at the school from 1929 to 1937, recalled Hardie as a capable teacher, adding, “We
got a good education.”375
In 1903, Regina principal J. A. Sinclair could boast that one of his teachers, Miss
Cornelius, wasa full-blooded Oneida Indian girl, and was trained in Hampton Agricultural andNormal Institute, Virginia. She has more than sustained the good record she
made last year, and the presence among our pupils of an Indian girl, with all therefinement and capacity of the best white ladies, has been a great inspiration.376

Miss Cornelius left the following year, lured away to a better paying school in the
United States. In making a plea for money to keep her at the school, Sinclair wrote,“Her loss will be little less than a calamity in the school, and indeed to our whole
Indian work, as she is the most forcible answer possible to the common pessimism
regarding Indian education.”377
In the early 1930s, the Brandon school hired former student Lulu Ironstar as ateacher.378 According to one teaching evaluation, she had “made a fine beginning”
and was “thoughtful and effective in teaching.”379 After a few years, however, her name
disappears from the record.

732 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Many former students also took positions as trades instructors at the schools. For
example, in 1894, Isaiah Badger, a former student from the Battleford school, was running the shoe shop at the Middlechurch school in Manitoba.380 Louise Moine, who
attended the Qu’Appelle school in the early twentieth century, recalled:
There was one little nun who was a full blooded Indian. She was gifted andtalented and did most of the oil painting required in the school. I remember
the roses and rosebuds she painted on the wide white ribbons that we wore
as “Children of Mary.” It was a delicate work of art. She also did all types ofhandwork and taught handicrafts to the girls such as crocheting, embroidery andbeadwork.381

At the Anglican school at Fort George, a young Cree woman named Charlotte was
hired in the 1930s to make parkas and moccasins for the children. According to theprincipal, Trevor Jones, she “also taught them how to make bear-paw snowshoes. She
became, in fact, our childcare supervisor, with many of the matron’s duties.”382
There were also marriages between staff and Aboriginal students. After attending
the Birtle school in 1910, Susette Blackbird took a year of training at the Presbyterian
Missionary and Deaconess Training Home. She then returned to Birtle, where she
married the school principal, W. W. McLaren. The mixed-race couple was not allowed
to use a room in the school as their living area. Some teachers did not like the fact that
Susette spoke to the children in Aboriginal languages, not because this was forbidden,
but because it created a bond between them that did not include the other teachers.
It was also felt that McLaren would not be able to maintain the requisite distance anddignity from the students if he were living in the school.383 In a letter to Indian Affairs,
Presbyterian Church official R. P. MacKay wrote, “Mr. MacLaren’s [sic] marriage to oneof the Indian pupils has embarrassed very much.” MacKay thought it might be necessary to dispense with McLaren’s services entirely.384
A deeply hurt McLaren wrote, “It is a poor lookout for the future of our church and
our Dominion when the union of Christian people of different races is made a groundof offence.”385
McLaren had good reason to believe that he and his wife had been let down bya system that claimed to be struggling to eliminate barriers between Aboriginal andnon-Aboriginal people. Nonetheless, one of the McLarens’ children, Elsie, was educated at the Brandon residential school. Her experiences of the school were positiveand led her to go on to university. There, she met her future husband, Harry Meadows.
He had taught at the Norway House residential school, where he worked to develop
a curriculum that was more suited to the students’ needs, having concluded that theprovincial curriculum was “impractical and almost useless.” Eventually, Harry andElsie taught at the Norway House school.386

The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 733

Challenges to the dominant values
The men and women who came to work in residential schools believed that they
were bringing Aboriginal people spiritual salvation and the benefits of a superior civilization. To most of them, Aboriginal people were seen to be inferior, and judged tobe heathen and savage; their spiritual beliefs were considered to be little more thansuperstitions, and their way of life was believed to be barbaric. In the minds of many
staff members at residential schools, Aboriginal parents had nothing to contributeto the education of their children. These harsh judgments were based on a sense ofcultural and racial superiority. Such notions dominated the operation of the schools
throughout this period and contributed to the ongoing conflict that existed between
the schools and Aboriginal communities. Coupled with the federal government’s
ongoing underfunding of residential schools, this colonial approach to education
devalued the students’ cultures, excluded their parents, breached the Treaties, andwas imposed without consultation. It ensured that most students’ experiences at residential school were harsh and alienating.
Yet, it is important to recognize that, within the schools, many positive relationships did develop. In some cases, staff developed ongoing interests in Aboriginal lifeand culture. There were staff members who began to question the very underpinningsof the residential school approach. These were a minority and their impact was limited. But the impact and record that they have left make it clear that not all residential
school conversations were one-way affairs; there were staff members who listened,learned, and attempted to change.
Cree Chief Piapot and Qu’Appelle principal Joseph Hugonnard clashed at many
points during their lives. Piapot, for example, was jailed for organizing a ceremonial
dance. Hugonnard had been a strong advocate of laws suppressing such dances andhad raised protests when he felt the government was not enforcing these laws.387 Yet,
the two men developed a relationship that allowed them to converse regularly despite
their differences. When Hugonnard advised Piapot to convert to Catholicism, thechief replied,
You want to teach me your religion. Do you know the Great Spirit made thatcountry where you came from and planted you there and gave you this religion.
The Great Spirit gave you a land over there and people who grew up there got
this religion. Then something got into your head to come to this country—mycountry—for God gave me this country, and all these Indians.

When Hugonnard cautioned him that a refusal to convert could send him to hell,
Piapot said he knew of no such place in his religion, suggesting the priest would haveto show him the way to such a place, if it existed.388 A less combative relationshipdeveloped between former Mission school student Cornelius Kelleher and former
school principal Léon Fouquet. When Kelleher was an adult, he and Fouquet became

734 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

friends. Kelleher remembered Fouquet as a “very gentle sort of an old man” withwhom he held numerous discussions about the school’s early years.389
An even deeper relationship developed between Edward Ahenakew and theMatheson family. Ahenakew became the assistant principal of the Anglican schoolat Onion Lake in 1912. He remained a lifelong friend of Principal John Matheson andhis family, eventually presiding over the funeral of Matheson’s widow, Elizabeth, in
1958.390 Matheson’s daughter, Ruth Matheson Buck, edited Ahenakew’s memoir,
Voices of the Plains Cree.
Eleanor Brass recalled that a teacher at the File Hills school took a special interestin her, and even provided her with extra lessons to help prepare her for high school.391
Edward Groat, who attended the Mohawk Institute in the 1930s, had very positive
memories of the boys’ master, Roy Pengelly. He recalled how he helped the boys build
a canoe, which they were allowed to take out on Mohawk Lake. “He taught us how
to paddle a canoe. Here’s a white man teaching Indians how to paddle a canoe! But I
have never forgotten that. He was never harsh but he taught us things. I think if he’dstayed longer than that we’d have learned an awful lot more.”392
Small acts of kindness were not forgotten. Mount Elgin principal O. B. Strapp, who
was often remembered for his harsh discipline, discovered that a group of girls weresecretly making extra pan bread for themselves because it reminded them of home.
Rather than punishing them, he allowed the girls who worked in the kitchen to makeone loaf of pan bread a month.393
Although the schools were intended to eradicate traditional Aboriginal culture,
many of the staff members had a genuine, somewhat naïve, curiosity about the culture. Frances Walbridge wrote from Round Lake in 1939:
I thought I was dreaming the first time I saw an old Indian complete with pigtails
and black felt hat. I am told that we shall be able to attend a Sun dance next
spring although the Gov’t doesn’t permit them. Some of the children came toschool with moccasins and beaded belts, though most of them are quite familiar
with white ways.394

Once, she took twenty-eight female students for an evening swim. She wrote, “Thelake was calm, the sunset was beautiful and a sharp new moon showed itself faintly.
The children formed themselves in a circle and moved in the water as you have seen
them in Indian dances. I am told they will tell old tales if they think you are sympathetic, and I’ve heard a few already.”395
After relating her attendance at an Inuit dance at Shingle Point on the Arctic Ocean,
Adelaide Butler wrote, “Honestly, I like the natives better than the white people forsome things, I don’t mean I want to go native, as I could not live like they do, nor eat
their food, but they are kinder and merrier than some of the white people who are up
here to teach them to live better lives—that sounds queer, doesn’t it?”396The staff experience: 1867–1939 • 735

At some risk to their own careers, staff members sometimes laid their concerns
over matters such as discipline and education before federal officials. Mary Johnson,
a teacher at the Moose Fort school in northern Ontario, wrote to Indian Affairs Deputy
Minister Frank Pedley in May 1912 to complain that the missionary in charge, a Mr.
Haythornthwaite, had taken several girls out of the dormitory and “had two of themcruelly whipped.” She wrote that their hands were discoloured for days afterwards.
She also reported that in previous times, he had “chased the girls around their bedrooms.”397 Indian Affairs investigated the allegations and exonerated Haythornthwaite.
As a result, Johnson and another school employee resigned, to the relief of IndianAffairs.398
A teacher at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school, A. C. Ockoniy, complained
to Indian Affairs in 1922 that he had been unjustly criticized for not properly controlling the students. According to Ockoniy:
I am used to run [sic] my schools without punishments, except in very rare cases,
and have been taught in the Normal School for three years all the little tricks tohandle boys without a strap, I can do it. I have been a sergeant in the Army here
for a year and in all this time I never have punished any of my soldiers; and if mycompany had been less well kept than others, I would not have kept my stripes
very long, you know that. But the only discipline Father knows is to knock boys
over the head or any place he can catch them and kick them etc. (I have to stop
here, I might say more than I want to say at the present time.)399

In 1929, when Lucy Affleck was teaching at the Round Lake school, she wrote alengthy and highly critical letter about the school to Arthur Barner, who was then the
superintendent of Indian missions for the United Church. Affleck felt that the conflicts
between staff and the principal, R. J. Ross, were aggravated by the fact that the principal’s wife’s mother had served as school matron. She was unofficially replaced by theprincipal’s wife, who, since she also taught at the school, had little time to carry out
these additional tasks. Relations were further strained by the fact that the principal
and his wife had vacated their residence and were living in the school, making it difficult “to keep a qualified, efficient matron ‘on the job.’” According to Affleck, the principal’s wife, Mrs. Ross, “is a strong disciplinarian, wonderfully so, but the discipline is
not the result of training or the rule of love.”400 Superintendent Barner responded toher letter by advising her that “steps would be taken at once to improve the situation.”
A month later, Affleck was fired. In doing so, Principal Ross told her that “the church
demands the immediate dismissal of any one disloyal to the staff.”401
Affleck repeated most of her concerns in a letter to Indian Commissioner Graham
after her dismissal.402 Little of this would have been news to Graham. That fall, he hadalready received a highly critical inspector’s report on the school from A. G. Hamilton,
who had disapproved of the fact that the principal and his wife were living in the schoolrather than in the residence provided for them, since they had turned rooms intended

736 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

for school purposes into private rooms. At that time, there were already eight girls
without beds, and four more coming. This corroborated Lucy Affleck’s charge that theschool was overcrowded.403 Both Hamilton’s report and a recent school inspector’sreport from the fall of 1929 had nothing but the highest of praise for Affleck’s abilities
as a teacher.404 Despite this, Affleck was gone and R. J. Ross, who had taken over theschool in 1922, continued on in his post as principal until his retirement in 1939.405
A broader critique of the government and church policies began to emerge by thelate nineteenth century. Surprisingly, one of the most articulate exponents of theseviews was E. F. Wilson, the founding principal of the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario. Over the course of his career, it appears, Wilson re-evaluated his
views on the purpose of education. Initially, he was a proponent of the type of radical assimilation being attempted at the Carlisle school in the United States.406 An
1877 Shingwauk school document embraced goals that were typical of the schools of
the period. The school was intended “to wean our Indian boys altogether from theirold savage life; to instill into them civilized tastes, to teach them English thoroughly,
to encourage their intercourse with white people, and in fact to make Canadians ofthem.”407
In his later years, Wilson became much more interested in Aboriginal culture andlanguage. He founded the Canadian Indian Research and Aid Society in 1890. The
following year, the society’s magazine, The Canadian Indian, published a series of
unsigned articles that sociologist David Nock has argued were written by Wilson.408
These challenged the assimilationist goals that lay at the heart of the residential
school endeavour. One article, attributed simply to “Fair Play,” came out in favour ofAboriginal self-government.
The policy of the white man’s government, it seems to me, both in Canada andin the United States, is to un-Indianize the Indian, and make him in every sensea white man. And it is against the policy that the Indian, whether in a wild state,or semi-civilized, or nearly wholly civilized, as it seems to me, is setting up hisback. I believe it is this more than anything else that is hindering his progress, forhe views everything that the white man does for him with suspicion, believingthat this hated policy for the absorption of his race and his nationality is at theback of it. He is willing, ready to adopt the white man’s clothing, the white man’slaws, the white man’s religion, and, for commercial purposes, the white man’s
language; but he is not willing to give up his nationality or his communism, or
his native language in the domestic circle—he wishes to live apart from the whiteman, in a separate community, and to exercise, so far as is compatible with his
position in the country, a control over his own affairs.
And what can be the harm in allowing him to do so? Would it be any menace
to the peace of our country if the civilized Indians of Ontario were permitted toThe staff experience: 1867–1939 • 737

have their own centre of Government—their own Ottawa, so to speak, their own
Lieutenant-Governor and their own Parliament?409

As a Christian missionary, Wilson could not abandon the goal of religious conversion. But he had come to question whether it was necessary for Aboriginal people to‘Canadianize.’ Despite these changes in his thinking, Wilson had not abandoned his
support for residential schooling. He remained as principal of the Shingwauk Home
until his retirement in 1893, and, as late as 1892, he was writing positively of the residential school system’s potential.410
Others began to speak of the system’s failure to respect Aboriginal parents andcommunities. In 1909, Red Deer principal Arthur Barner wrote of how parents “would
like to have something to say about the education of their children and I believe more
will be accomplished by confidence and cooperation than by any kind of compulsion.”411 Former Regina school principal R. B. Heron made a similar point in 1923,
when he observed that parents have “no voice” in teacher selection, curriculum, orhours of school attendance.412
The Indian Workers Association of the Presbyterian Church for Saskatchewan and
Manitoba in 1911 adopted a resolution calling for the education of First Nations children “in public schools, situated upon the reserves, or in school districts adjacent tothem.” Where this was not feasible, the association members favoured small boarding schools in which boys and girls could “mingle freely and naturally under careful supervision.” This, they felt, was preferable to the “large industrial school with its
institutional government, its rigid separation of the sexes, its atmosphere of suspicion on the part of the teachers.” Older attitudes were hard to discard, though. It was,for example, difficult for the Presbyterians to cast off the idea that children who had
been educated needed to be separated from their home communities. Even as the
Presbyterians called for reserve-based education, they also supported the creation ofcolonies where former students would be “protected from the parasitic habits of theirworthless friends.”413
At the senior level, there was recognition within the Oblate order that the emphasis on assimilation was ultimately undermining the schools’ effectiveness. In his 1936
report, Oblate Superior General Théodore Labouré questioned whether “the zeal for
bestowing the benefits of civilization on the Indian was carried too far.” It was, hewrote, excellent to seek to substitute “education for ignorance” and “work for idleness,” but was it necessary, he asked, to attempt “to make everything that is Indianin our Indian races disappear?”414 In the Northwest Territories, Roman Catholic
Archbishop Gabriel Breynat sought to slow the pace of assimilation. He wrote in 1935
that he thought it would be best to “introduce Native languages in the Indian school
together with courses in syllabic characters” to make sure the languages did not disappear.415 In 1939, he recommended that there be programs training students in how
to hunt and fish.416 That same year, in an article in the Toronto Star Weekly, he wrote,738 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“The story of the white man’s invasion of the Canadian Northwest may be named by
future historians as one of the blackest blots on the pages of Canadian history.”417 He
was also critical of his own Oblate order. In 1940, he resigned from the Oblate IndianWelfare and Training Commission, saying it had been ineffective in its efforts to protect Aboriginal people and advance their interests.418 Despite these criticisms, theOblates remained firmly committed to residential schooling.419
At Fort George, Anglican principal Trevor Jones came to be an admirer of the
Aboriginal culture. He observed, “The peace and harmony and satisfaction they
derived from their way of life was such that I envied them. No doubt this influenced
my determination in later years to work towards pursuing the churches and theGovernments to recognize aboriginal land titles and self-government in Canada.”
When he left Fort George in 1937, he said, 700 people turned up to say goodbye
to him and his wife.420 As he left, he questioned the mission legacy. He knew he wasleaving behind “buildings and furnishings and a management schedule which would
make it easier for our successors to follow an established routine.” But, he had cometo recognize that Aboriginal culture had values and that he had been part of a process that put those values at risk. “In particular, I was concerned that their traditional
beliefs and practices should not be tampered with, but that they should continue tobe encouraged to preserve them and assimilate them into their Christian way of life.”
This, he wrote, included a belief in a creator that was “responsible for everything thatexists, and in the human’s responsibility to protect, conserve and live in harmony withall creation, as demonstrated by Richard Rednose feeding the mosquitos with his own
blood.”421
Jones’s changing views would have sat in uneasy contradiction with his commitments as a Christian missionary and educator. Such changes reflect the impact of thedetermination of Aboriginal peoples to maintain their own identities throughout thisperiod. The adherence of Aboriginal people to their culture was powerful enough tolead missionaries such as Jones to re-evaluate their own views and attitudes. In suchcases, it was the students and their parents who reshaped the staff, and not the otherway around.

NotesIntroduction
1. For coercion, see: Ray, Illustrated History, 151–152. For fraud, see: Upton, “Origins ofCanadian Indian Policy,” 56. For failure to implement Treaties, see: Sprague, Canada’s
Treaties with Aboriginal People, 13. For taking land without Treaty, see: Fisher, Contact andConflict.
2. See: Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 222.
3. Barron, “Indian Pass System.”
4. For an example, see: An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes ofCanada 1880, chapter 28, section 72, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 75.
5. An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians, Statutes of Canada 1869, chapter 42,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 11.
6. For an example, see: An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884,
chapter 27, section 3, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 93.
7. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6810, file 470-2-3, volume 7, Evidence of D.
C. Scott to the Special Committee of the House of Commons Investigating the Indian Act
amendments of 1920, (L-2)(N-3).
8. Canada, “Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy,” page 20 of 24-page
portable document format file.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 60.
10. Indian Residential Schools Settlement – Official Court Website, http://www.
residentialschoolsettlement.ca/schools.html (accessed 5 February 2015).
11. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Statement of Apology – to former students of Indian
Residential Schools, 11 June 2008, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100
100015649.

Colonialism in the Age of Empire
1. TRC, AVS, Shirley Flowers, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, 20 September 2011, Statement Number: SP025.
2. “The Most Northerly Residential School in the British Empire,” Northern Lights, (February1933): 8, quoted in Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, xx.
3. Diffie and Winnius, Foundations, 78–83; Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 56.

740 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
4. Howe, Empire, 62–63.
5. Howe, Empire, 21–22.
6. Howe, Empire, 57.
7. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession, 16–40.
8. The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world (accessed 26 February 2012). These
examples follow a similar argument presented by Howe, Empire.
9. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 440. For Canada, see: Miller, Skyscrapers; Ray, An Illustrated
History; Dickason and Calder, A Concise History.
10. Howe, Empire, 13.
11. Howe, Empire, 13.
12. Wood, Empire of Capital, 33.
13. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 14, 15, 20, 22–23.
14. Wood, Empire of Capital, 33.
15. Howe, Empire, 14–16.
16. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 435.
17. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 434–435.
18. Hobsbawm, On Empire, 67.
19. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 6–28, 37, 134–144; Lovell, Opium War, 1–16.
20. Wood, Empire of Capital, 74–87.
21. Williams, American Indian, 121–147.
22. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism,” 394.
23. Howe, Empire, 78.
24. Coates, Canada’s Colonies, 9–10.
25. Curtin, World and the West, 1.
26. Hobsbawm, On Empire, 10.
27. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 23–25.
28. Gott, Britain’s Empire, 2.
29. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 440.
30. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 441.
31. Howe, Empire, 70.
32. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health, 48–55; Herring, “Toward a
Reconsideration,” 160. The devastation was so severe that one historian titled his study of
impact of colonialism on the Aboriginal people of North America American Holocaust.
Stannard, American Holocaust.
33. E. B. O’Callaghan and J. R. Brodhead, eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of New
York. 15 vols. (Albany, 1856–1883), 10:269, quoted in Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 158.
34. Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 4.
35. Gott, Britain’s Empire, 85.
36. Gilbert Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life (London, 1868), 3–4, quoted in Fisher,
Contact and Conflict, 117.
37. Duff, Indian History, 96.
38. Gott, Britain’s Empire, 152.
39. Gott, Britain’s Empire, 37–38.
40. See, for example: Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade; Francis and Morantz, Partners in Furs.
41. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism,” 388.
42. McNab, “Herman Merivale,” 280.

Notes • 741
43. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 432.
44. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 433, 439.
45. Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism,” 388, 391, 399.
46. Howe, Empire, 80–81.
47. Howe, Empire, 62.
48. Wood, Empire of Capital, 40–41.
49. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 24.
50. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 26.
51. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 26–27, 32.
52. Diffie and Winius, Foundations, 65–66.
53. Williams, American Indian, 72–73.
54. Frichner, “Preliminary Study,” 7–8; Diffie and Winius, Foundations, 94–95; Pagden, Peoples
and Empires, 54.
55. Diffie and Winius, Foundations, 152.
56. Diffie and Winius, Foundations, 152.
57. Diffie and Winius, Foundations, 173–174; Thomas, Rivers of Gold, 116–119.
58. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic, 11, 23; Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, 14.
59. Wallerstein, European Universalism, 4–5; Williams, American Indian, 97–108; Wood, Empireof Capital, 41.
60. Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 54–55.
61. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 33.
62. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 47.
63. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic, 11–12; Frichner, “Preliminary Study,” 11; Seed, Ceremonies ofPossession, 17–18.
64. H. Verelst, “Some Observations on the Right of the Crown of Great Britain to the North West
Continent of America,” PRC co 5/283, f. 5, quoted in Armitage, Ideological Origins, 192.
65. Prucha, Great Father, 15–16.
66. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 82.
67. F. Victoria, De Indis et de Ivre Belli Relectiones, ed. E. Nys, trans. J. Bate (1917), 138–139, quoted
in Williams, American Indian, 99.
68. Johnson v. M’Intosh quoted in Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land, 11.
69. Frichner, “Preliminary Study,” 19.
70. R. v. Sparrow, 1990 CanLII 104 (SCC); R. v. Van der Peet, 1996 CanLII 216 (SCC).
71. Banner, Why Terra Nullius, 95. The court case is referred to as Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2).
72. Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 111.
73. Emeric De Vattel, Le droit de gens ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite
et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (1758), in James Brown Scott, ed. (Washington,1916), 3:37–38, quoted in Pagden, Lords of All the World, 78–79.
74. Williams, American Indian, 136, 139–141.
75. John Davies, “Observations to the Earl of Salisbury on the State of Ireland,” in The Complete
Prose Works of Sir John Davies, ed. Reverend Alexander B. Grosart (St. George’s Blackburn,
Lancashire, 1876), 209–210, quoted in Wood, Origin of Capitalism, 159–160.
76. Howe, Empire, 86–87.
77. Howe, Empire, 86–87.
78. Quoted in Curtin, Imperialism, 294–295.
79. Kiernan, Lords of Human Kind, 140, 159–160, 180, 202–203.

742 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
80. Edwin W. Smith, Life and Times of Daniel Lindley (London, 1959), 308, quoted in Moorhouse,
Missionaries, 77.
81. Mann, “Torchbearers,” 4.
82. Sherard Osborn, The Past and Future of British Relations in China, Edinburgh and London(Edinburgh, 1860), 15, original found in Kiernan, Lords of Human Kind, 153.
83. Reade, Martyrdom of Man, 504.
84. Speech quoted in: Archibald Philip Primrose (5th earl of Rosebery) ... Australian speechlets,
1883–84 [by A. P. Primrose], http://books.google.ca/books?id=CncIAAAAQAAJ&printse
c=frontcover&dq=Australian+speechlets,+1883-84+[by+A.P.+Primrose.].&hl=en&sa=X&
ei=zN2IUuGdMOTA2gW0vIHYDA&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Australian%20
speechlets%2C%201883-84%20[by%20A.P.%20Primrose.].&f=false (accessed 17 November2013).
85. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from
Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (1877; repr., ed. Eleanor Burke Leacock,
Cleveland, 1963), 562–563, quoted in Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 19.
86. Canada, Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada,
third session—fifth Parliament, 48–49, Victoriae, 1885, 4 May 1885, 18:1588–1589.
87. Arthur St. John Adcock, The Prince of Wales’ African Book (London, 1926), quoted in Kiernan,
Lords of Human Kind, 210–211.
88. Osborne, Education, 4–7.
89. Thompson, Customs in Common, 387.
90. E. S. Furniss, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism (Boston, 1920; repr. 1965),
114, quoted in Thompson, Customs in Common, 387.
91. Kelly and Altbach, “Four Faces of Colonialism,” 1–2.
92. Kelly, “Colonialism, Indigenous Society,” 15.
93. Carnoy, “Education as Cultural Imperialism,” 81–82, 90–91.
94. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 53–54.
95. Australia, “‘Bringing Them Home,’” 25, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/
pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
96. Bartels and Bartels, When the North Was Red, 12; Bloch, Red Ties, 38.
97. George Simpson to Andrew Colville, 20 May 1822, in Simpson, Fur Trade and Empire, 181.
98. Quoted in Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 164.
99. Kelly, “Colonialism, Indigenous Society,” 12–13.
100. Kelly, “Colonialism, Indigenous Society,” 12–13.
101. Sullivan, Macaulay, 123–124.
102. “Minute on Indian Education,” in Thomas Babington Macaulay, Selected Writings, ed. John
Clive and Thomas Pinney (Chicago, 1972), 241, 246–247, quoted in Sullivan, Macaulay, 141,
144.
103. “Enseignement primaire,” Bulletin de l’Enseignement de l’Instruction Publique (Indochine),
partie scolaire, 4è Année, 5 (janv. 1925): 276n30, quoted in Kelly, “Colonialism, Indigenous
Society,” 19.
104. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Proceedings of the Department of Superintendence, Circulars ofInformation 3 (Washington, 1883), 3, quoted in Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 103.
105. Kelly and Altbach, “Four Faces of Colonialism,” 2.
106. Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind, 3.
107. Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, 5.

Notes • 743
108. Quoted in Wayne Broehl, Crisis of the Raj: The Revolt of the 1857 through British Lieutenants’Eyes (Lebanon, New Hampshire, 1986), cited in Gott, Britain’s Empire, 44.
109. Césaire, Discourses on Colonialism, 41.
110. Marshall, Our Empire Story, n.p.
111. Marshall, Our Empire Story, 117–118.
112. Marshall, Our Empire Story, 118.
113. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 45.
114. See: Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, Shocking Truth.
115. Clark, “Representations of Aboriginal Peoples,” 103–111.
116. Howe, Empire, 99–100, 123; Hobsbawm, On Empire, 4–5.
117. Benton-Banai, The Mishomis Book, 111–112.
118. For Canada, see, for example: McMillan and Yellowhorn, First Peoples; for a global
perspective, see: Coates, A Global History.

The churches and their mission of conversion
1. For example, see: Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 67.
2. King James Version (KJV), Matthew 28:19–20.
3. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 9.
4. For example, see: Choquette, Oblate Assault, 21.
5. Usher, William Duncan, 41. See also: Choquette, Oblate Assault; Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel;Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century.
6. Howe, Empire, 85.
7. Howe, Empire, 90; Perry, “Metropolitan Knowledge,” 109–111.
8. For example, see: A. A. den Otter, Civilizing the West, x. See also: Anuik, “Forming
Civilization,” 2.
9. Timothy Paul Foran, “Les Gens de Cette Place,” 23–24.
10. For example: Coutts, Road to the Rapids, 15.
11. See: Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 49–50.
12. Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century, 91–95.
13. Édits, ordonnances royaux, déclarations et arrêts du conseil d’état du Roi concernant le Canada(Québec, 1854–56), 1:5, quoted in Pagden, Lords of All the World, 34.
14. The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London with Seven Related Documents, intro.
Samuel M. Bemis, Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklets (Williamsburg, 1957), 2,
quoted in Pagden, Lords of All the World, 35.
15. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 68, 70.
16. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 55, 97–99.
17. Pagden, Peoples and Empires, 62–65.
18. Axtell, Invasion Within, 91–92.
19. Greer, Jesuit Relations, 5.
20. Greer, Jesuit Relations, 5–6; Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 199; Kamen, Spain’s Road,
279–281.
21. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 199.
22. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 1–20; McCarthy, From the Great River, 3–5.

744 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
23. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 1–6; Choquette, Oblate Assault, 1–20; Choquette, Canada’s
Religions, 173–176.
24. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 191–192, 194; see also: Choquette, Oblate Assault, 10.
25. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 69–71; McCarthy, From the Great River, 164.
26. Halpérin, “French Lawyers’ Fees,” 217.
27. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 83–84, 201; Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 50–64; McCarthy,
From the Great River, 156.
28. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 4–12, 131–139.
29. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 159, 164.
30. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 165–169.
31. Prucha, Great Father, 10; Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 66.
32. Szasz, Indian Education, 131–132.
33. Sullivan, Macaulay, 11; Usher, William Duncan.
34. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 169–170; Usher, William Duncan, 8.
35. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 230.
36. Church Missionary Society, “Some landmarks in the history of CMS,” http://www.cms-uk.
org/Whoweare/AboutCMS/History/CMStimeline/tabid/184/language/en-US/Default.aspx.
37. For example, see: Usher, William Duncan, 8, 11.
38. Usher, William Duncan, 10.
39. Usher, William Duncan, 11.
40. Moorhouse, Missionaries, 274.
41. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 74.
42. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 121.
43. Morantz, White Man’s Gonna Getcha, 213.
44. Usher, William Duncan, 20; Morantz, White Man’s Gonna Getcha, 75; Moorhouse,
Missionaries, 103.
45. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 9, 15; Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Methodism,” http://
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/378415/Methodism (accessed 25 November 2013).
46. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 16.
47. Quoted in Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 23.
48. John Wesley, Journal, abr. Nehemiah Curnock (New York, 1963), 7, quoted in Szasz, Indian
Education, 150.
49. The John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, Euerette –Tyerman, MSS, MA, JRL, 24, quoted in Szasz, Indian Education, 155.
50. Szasz, Indian Education, 169.
51. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 216–217.
52. Moorhouse, Missionaries, 33; Rompkey, Story of Labrador, 34, 36–39.
53. For example, see: Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God; McPherson, “Head, Heart, andPurse”; Hall, “Professionalization of Women Workers.”
54. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 161–162.
55. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 112–113.
56. McCarthy, From the Great River, 53.
57. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 213–214.
58. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage, 9, 98.
59. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 16.

Notes • 745
60. John Smith, The missionary’s appeal to British Christians on behalf of southern India (1841),
149, 153, quoted in Kiernan, Lords of Human Kind, 64.
61. William Duncan, Journal no. 2 1857, reel 2154, William Duncan Papers, Special Collections,
University of British Columbia, quoted in Higham, Noble, Wretched, and Redeemable, 56.
62. Quoted in Williamson, “Moravian Mission,” 35.
63. Usher, William Duncan, 15; Choquette, Oblate Assault, 16.
64. Thomas Crosby, Among the An-ko-me-num or Flathead Tribes of Indian of the Pacific Coast(Toronto, 1907), 104–105, quoted in Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 139.
65. Axtell, Invasion Within, 77–78, 107.
66. Reuben Gold Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Cleveland, 1896–1901),
quoted in Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 40.
67. Yukon Territorial Archives, “Annual Address of Mrs. Bompas, President Delivered at Dawson,
Y.T. August 13, 1906,” 7, quoted in Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 133.
68. Usher, William Duncan, 16.
69. Pagden, Lords of All the World, 64–72.
70. Prucha, Great Father, 9.
71. John Maclean, The Indians: Their Manners and Customs (Toronto, 1889), 264, quoted in
Higham, Noble, Wretched, and Redeemable, 170.
72. Church Missionary Intelligencer, A Monthly Journal of Missionary Information (London, 1849),
76, quoted in Usher, William Duncan, 13.
73. Usher, William Duncan, 13.
74. See, for example: McCarthy, From the Great River, xviii–xxi, 34; Choquette, Oblate Assault.
75. Usher, William Duncan, 4–5, 296–298.
76. Coccola to Bishop Paul Durieu, 28 April 1889, Coccola Correspondence Outward, Archives
Deschatelets, Ottawa, quoted in Coccola, They Call Me Father, 21.
77. Axtell, Invasion Within, 81, 279.
78. Jean Leflon, Eugène De Mazenod, trans. Francis D. Flanagan, OMI (New York, 1961), 1:209,
quoted in McCarthy, From the Great River, 4.
79. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 52; Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 30.
80. Instructions delivered to Reverend J. W. Tims on his proceeding to the Saskatchewan Mission,
5 June 1883, Archdeacon John William Tims Collection, Glenbow Institute, Calgary, Alberta,
quoted in Higham, Noble, Wretched, and Redeemable, 65.
81. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage, 3–4.
82. Quoted from John Horden, “News from the Great Lone Land: Letter from the Bishop of
Moosonee, January 28, 1892,” Jervois Newnham Papers, Library and Archives of Canada, in
Higham, Noble, Wretched, and Redeemable, 63.
83. Usher, William Duncan, 16.
84. Quoted in Whitehead, Cariboo Mission, 18.
85. The Times, 2 June 1840, quoted in Moorhouse, Missionaries, 23.
86. Henry Venn, to James Quaker, 29 November 1853, cited in W. Knight, The Missionary
Secretariat of Henry Venn, B. D. (London, 1880), 53, quoted in Usher, William Duncan, 22.
87. Vital Grandin, “Écrits, 1, Visite au pénitencier de Citeaux, Franc, avril 12 1878,” 132, cited in
Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 119–120.
88. Peake, Bishop Who Ate His Shoes, 118–128.
89. In the original: “un grand malheur” and “Pas une seule est morte.” Taché to Deschamps, 26
December 1880, Providence Historique, Archives Soeurs Grises de Montréal, Maison-Mère,

746 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Montréal, Québec, doc. cxiv, 3, quoted in Carney, “Relations in Education,” 57. Taché toDeschamps, 30 November 1880, Providence Historique, Archives Soeurs Grises de Montréal,
Maison-Mère, Montréal, Québec, doc. cii, 3, quoted in Carney, “Relations in Education,” 57.
90. Carney, “Relations in Education,” 57.
91. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 89.
92. McCarthy, From the Great River, xvii.
93. McCarthy, From the Great River, 21.
94. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 242.
95. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 174; Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 237, 269–289.

Residential schooling in French Canada: 1608–1763
1. H. P. Biggar, A Collection of Documents Relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval(Ottawa, 1930), 178, quoted in Pagden, Lords of All the World, 33.
2. Dickason with McNab, Canada’s First Nations, 75.
3. Marc Lescarbot, The History of New France [Paris, 1609], trans. W. L. Grant, intro. H. P. Biggar(Toronto, 1907), 2:211–217, quoted in Axtell, Invasion Within, 34; Glenn, American Indian, 19.
4. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 6; W. L. Grant, ed., Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604–1618(New York, 1907), 1:323, quoted in Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 154.
5. For example, see: Eccles, Canadian Frontier.
6. Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 45–49.
7. Greer, Jesuit Relations, 10–11.
8. Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 45–48.
9. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 69–70.
10. Axtell, Invasion Within, 12, 49.
11. Axtell, Invasion Within, 50–53.
12. Trudel, Beginnings of New France, 134–135; Louis Hennepin, A New Discovery of a Vast
Country in America (London, 1698), 2:6, quoted in Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 155.
13. Axtell, Invasion Within, 55–56; Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 50; Grassmann,“Pastedechouan,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pastedechouan_1E.html (accessed 30
November 2013).
14. Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 54–55; Trudel, Beginnings of New France, 134–135.
15. Magnuson, Education in New France, 27–28.
16. George M. Wrong, ed., The Long Journey to the Country of the Huron by Father Gabriel Sagard(Toronto, 1939), 130–131, quoted in Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 94.
17. William F. Ganong, ed., The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America(Acadia) by Nicolas Denys (Toronto, 1908), 1:404, quoted in Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects,
94.
18. R. G. Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (New York, 1959), 12:61, quoted
in Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 88.
19. Axtell, Invasion Within, 54.
20. Magnuson, Education in New France, 22–28; Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 48–61;
Axtell, Through Another Glass Darkly, 26; Axtell, Invasion Within, 78–80.
21. Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 96, 163.
22. Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 166.

Notes • 747
23. Axtell, Invasion Within, 50–53.
24. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 58–59, 73–75.
25. Paul Le Jeune, Jesuit Relations, 5:219 00 21, Relation of 1633, quoted in Greer, Jesuit Relations,36.
26. Magnuson, Education in New France, 47.
27. Mealing, Jesuit Relations, 120.
28. Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 55–56, Trigger, “Deadly Harvest,” 159–162; Trudel,
Beginnings of New France, 231.
29. Magnuson, Education in New France, 47–50; Trudel, Beginnings of New France, 231; Axtell,Invasion Within, 56–58; Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 56; Jaenen, Friend and Foe
Aspects, 95, 168.
30. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 47–49; Trudel, Beginnings of New France, 141, 232–233; Louis
Hennepin, A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America (London, 1698), 2:61, quoted in
Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 157–158, 161; Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 47, 54;
Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 131; Axtell, Invasion Within, 61.
31. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 64; Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 55; Axtell, Invasion Within,
61–62.
32. Magnuson, Education in New France, 17–28; Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 40; Choquette,
Canada’s Religions, 76.
33. Axtell, Invasion Within, 71–90.
34. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 57–61; Axtell, Invasion Within, 61–62; Jaenen, Friend and Foe
Aspects, 181–182.
35. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 82.
36. Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 57–58; Magnuson, Education in New France, 52–56,
Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 82.
37. D. G. Oury, ed., Marie de l’Incarnation, Ursuline (1599–1672). Correspondances (Solesmes,
1951), 809, quoted in Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 58.
38. Davis, Women on the Margins, 98–113.
39. Magnuson, Education in New France, 57–59; Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 48.
40. Jaenen, Friend and Foe Aspects, 175–176; Axtell, Invasion Within, 68–69.
41. R. G. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 1610–1701 (Cleveland, 1896–1901),
52:47n3, quoted in Phillips, Development of Education, 6–7.
42. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 4–5; Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 57–61; Carney,“Aboriginal Residential School,” 16.
43. Audet, “Society and Education,” 80–81, 446; Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 4–5; Jaenen,“Education for Francization,” 57.
44. Audet, “Society and Education,” 70–83; Moogk, “Les Petits Sauvages,” 38.
45. Vachon, “FranÇois de Laval,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/laval_francois_de_2E.html(accessed 30 November 2013).
46. Eccles, Canadian Frontier, 132–186.

Treaty-making and betrayal: The roots of Canada’s Aboriginal policy
1. McMillan and Yellowhorn, First Peoples, 88–89; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 36–38.

748 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
2. Dickason, “Huron/Wyandot,” 264; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 34–36; McMillan andYellowhorn, First Peoples, 78, 81.
3. Richter, Facing East, 134–137; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 37–38.
4. Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 56.
5. Jaenen, “French Sovereignty,” 34–38.
6. Banner, How Indians Lost Their Land, 87.
7. Richter, Facing East, 184–185.
8. Banner, How Indians Lost Their Land, 82, 87.
9. The Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763, reproduced in Getty and Lussier, Long as the Sun
Shines, 35.
10. Richter, Facing East, 164–171; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 54–57.
11. Richter, Facing East, 107.
12. Scott, “Indian Affairs,” 698.
13. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 49–50; O’Toole, White Savage, 64; Brandão, “Covenant
Chain,” http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/encyclopedia/entries/convenant-chain.
html (accessed 1 July 2013); Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, xvii, 186, 188.
14. O’Toole, White Savage, 153–154.
15. Johnson, quoted in Scott, “Indian Affairs,” 699
16. Leslie and Maguire, Historical Development of the Indian Act, 3; Library and Archives
Canada, online description (Biography/Administrative history), R10943-0-8-E (formerly
MG19-F35), Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern District of North America
fonds, http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.
displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=107265&rec_nbr_list=107265,104589,2877311,2908556,2895
926,2894998,2873710,2837321,2837207,165438 (accessed 2 December 2013).
17. Gwyn, “Sir William Johnson,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/johnson_william_4E.html(accessed 30 November 2013); O’Toole, White Savage, 116–117; Calloway, Scratch of a Pen,
48–52.
18. James Sullivan, ed., The Papers of William Johnson (Albany, 1921–1962), 3:457, quoted in
Borrows, “Wampum at Niagara,” 159.
19. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 9.
20. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 66.
21. Borrows, “Wampum at Niagara,” 158; Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 67.
22. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 47–48.
23. Anderson, Crucible of War, 161–174; Richter, Facing East, 192–193.
24. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 70.
25. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 73.
26. Richter, Facing East, 208.
27. Calloway, Scratch of a Pen, 90.
28. Johnson, “Sir William Johnson,” 578.
29. Ray, Illustrated History, 127–129.
30. Getty and Lussier, Long as the Sun Shines, 34.
31. Getty and Lussier, Long as the Sun Shines, 35.
32. Banner, How Indians Lost Their Land, 85.
33. Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” 128.
34. W. Johnson to W. Gage, 19 February 1764, in James Sullivan, ed., The Papers of William
Johnson (Albany, 1921–1962), 4:328–333, quoted in Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 72.

Notes • 749
35. Borrows, “Wampum at Niagara,” 162–164.
36. Borrows, “Wampum at Niagara,” 165.
37. Borrows, “Wampum at Niagara,” 166–167.
38. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 76.
39. Banner, How Indians Lost Their Land, 100–104.
40. Banner, How Indians Lost Their Land, 101; Dickason with McNab, Canada’s First Nations, 154.
41. Stanley, “Indians in the War,” 106–107; Dickason with McNab, Canada’s First Nations, 155.
42. Wilson, “Education in Upper Canada,” 190–192.
43. Ray, Illustrated History, 149–150.
44. Schmalz, Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, 120; Ray, Illustrated History, 153–155; Upton, “Origins
of Canadian Indian Policy,” 56.
45. Ray, Illustrated History, 151–152.
46. Schmalz, Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, 123; Ray, Illustrated History, 153–155.
47. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 85, 109, 224.
48. Upton, “Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 56.
49. Scott, “Indian Affairs,” 707.
50. Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 7–8.
51. Ray, Illustrated History, 152.
52. Hibbert, George IV, 71.
53. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, News Releases 2010, “Fact Sheet – The
Brant tract and the Toronto Purchase specific claims,” http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016064/1100100016065.
54. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 92–93.
55. Stanley, “Indians in the War,” 120.
56. Upton, “Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 51.
57. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 94–95; Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 116–117.
58. Schmalz, Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, 146; Ray, Illustrated History, 152–153.
59. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 117.
60. Ray, Illustrated History, 153.
61. Ray, Illustrated History, 153.
62. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 101–104.
63. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 82–83.
64. Milloy, A National Crime, 15.
65. Upton, “Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 56.
66. Darling to Earl Dalhousie, quoted in Bailey, Sketches of Indian Character, 52.
67. Darling to Earl Dalhousie, quoted in Bailey, Sketches of Indian Character, 52.
68. Aboriginal Tribes, Great Britain, Colonial Office 1834, 39–41, quoted in Graham, Medicine
Man to Missionary, 24.
69. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 104–105.
70. Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 27; Smith, Sacred Feathers, 151.
71. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 103.
72. Sir George Murray, quoted in Scott, “Indian Affairs,” 724.
73. Leslie, “The Bagot Commission,” 31–33.
74. Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 59.
75. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 82; Belmessous, Assimilation and Empire, 96.
76. Blackstock, “Aborigines Report,” 68.

750 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
77. Blackstock, “Aborigines Report,” 69–70.
78. “Meetings for the Sufferings, Information Respecting the Aborigines in the British Colonies.
Being Principally Extracts from the report Presented to the House of Commons, By the SelectCommittee Principally Appointed on that Subject 1838,” 34, quoted in Blackstock, “Aborigines
Report,” 79.
79. Blackstock, “Aborigines Report,” 80.
80. Blackstock, “Aborigines Report,” 82.
81. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 170.
82. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 156.
83. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 157.
84. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 156–158.
85. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 106; Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 25; Upton,“Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 57.
86. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 105.
87. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 194.
88. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 157; Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 59–60.
89. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 100–101; Wilson, “‘No Blanket to be Worn,’” 70–71; Upton,“Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 57–58.
90. Ray, Illustrated History, 153–155.
91. MacLean, “A Positive Experiment,” 55–56.
92. Upton, “Origins of Canadian Indian Policy,” 58.
93. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 164–166, 182.
94. Leslie, “The Bagot Commission,” 36–37.
95. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 110–114.
96. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 115–117.
97. Ray, Illustrated History, 156.
98. Sprague, Canada’s Treaties, 6.
99. Leslie and Maguire, Historical Development of the Indian Act, 23–26.
100. Tobias, “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation,” 130.
101. Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 59; Schmalz, Ojibwa of Southern Ontario, 175.
102. Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 60.
103. Milloy, “Early Indian Acts,” 60–61.

Pre-Confederation residential schools
1. The Mohawk Institute did not receive government funding from Indian Affairs until 1885.
Graham, Mush Hole, 9.
2. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 67; Carney, “Aboriginal Residential School,” 27.
3. Simcoe to Bishop Mountain, 30 April 1795, as quoted in The Correspondence of John Graves
Simcoe, ed. E. A. Cruickshank (Toronto, 1923–1931), 3:349, quoted in Wilson, “Education inUpper Canada,” 193.
4. Simcoe to Bishop Mountain, 30 April 1795, as quoted in The Correspondence of John Graves
Simcoe, ed. E. A. Cruickshank (Toronto, 1923–1931), 1:143, quoted in Wilson, “Education inUpper Canada,” 193.
5. Wilson, “Education in Upper Canada,” 194–195.

Notes • 751
6. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 5–23 (see especially: 11).
7. Wilson, “Education in Upper Canada,” 200–201.
8. J. G. Althouse, The Ontario Teacher, 1800–1910 (Toronto, 1967), 5, quoted in Wilson,“Education in Upper Canada,” 201.
9. Wilson, “Education in Upper Canada,” 201.
10. Wilson, “Education in Upper Canada,” 209–211.
11. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 216–217.
12. Ryerson, Report on a System, 20–22.
13. Ryerson, Report on a System, 23–24.
14. Ryerson, Report on a System, 9.
15. Peikoff and Brickey, “Creating Precious Children,” 46.
16. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 216–218.
17. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 220; Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 40.
18. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 224.
19. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 226.
20. Wilson, “Ryerson Years in Canada West,” 231–238.
21. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 24–32.
22. Finkel, Social Policy, 59.
23. Graham, Mush Hole, 7; “Mohawk Institute,” http://www.anglican.ca/relationships/trctemp/
histories/mohawk-institute.
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 12758, file 451/25-1, part 2, “Closingof Mohawk Institute,” G. D. Cromb, 30 June 1970. [NCA-017713]
25. Szasz, Indian Education, 35.
26. Szasz, Indian Education, 84; Richter, Facing East, 100–101.
27. Richter, Facing East, 100–101.
28. For more detail about Boyle’s legacy, see: Burton, “Crimson Missionaries,” especially: ‘Rules
and Orders Respecting the Charity Left by the Will of the Hon. Robert Boyle,’ 132.
29. Szasz, Indian Education, 101–106.
30. Jacob, “New England Company,” 451.
31. Jacob, “New England Company,” 451–453.
32. Jacob, “New England Company,” 452.
33. ‘Rules and Orders Respecting the Charity Left by the Will of the Hon. Robert Boyle,’ quoted in
Burton, “Crimson Missionaries,” 132.
34. Burton, “Crimson Missionaries,” 132–133.
35. Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia [1724], ed. Richard L. Morton (Chapel Hill, 1956),
114, quoted in Szasz, Indian Education, 74.
36. Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven,1961), 4:483, quoted in Szasz, Indian Education, 77.
37. Fingard, “New England Company,” 29–30.
38. Phillips, Development of Education, 65; Thomas, “Wood, Thomas,” http://www.biographi.
ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=36342 (accessed 4 January 2012).
39. Hamilton, Federal Indian Day Schools, 4–5; Fingard, “New England Company,” 30–32.
40. Aiton, “History of the Indian College,” 160.
41. Minutes of the Indian Committee, 12 September 1822, New England Company, MS 7920/2,
94, quoted in Fingard, “New England Company,” 33.
42. Fingard, “New England Company,” 30–33.

752 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
43. Upton, “Gell (Gill),” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gell_molly_ann_6E.html (accessed 30
November 2013); Fingard, “New England Company,” 33–34.
44. Fingard, “New England Company,” 35–37.
45. Fingard, “New England Company,” 36–37.
46. Upton, “Gell (Gill),” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gell_molly_ann_6E.html (accessed 30
November 2013).
47. Fingard, “New England Company,” 34.
48. New Brunswick Museum, Sussex Indian Academy papers, docs. 11, 19, 42; Webster ms coll.,
packet 31, [Walter Bromley], “Report of the state of the Indians in New Brunswick under thepatronage of the New England Company, 14th August 1822,” quoted in Upton, “Gell (Gill),”
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/gell_molly_ann_6E.html (accessed 30 November 2013).
49. Fingard, “New England Company,” 38.
50. Wilson, “‘No Blanket to be Worn,’” 66; Millman, “Stuart, John,” http://www.biographi.
ca/en/bio/stuart_john_1740_41_1811_5E.html (accessed 9 December 2013); Johnston,“Deserontyon, John,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/deserontyon_john_5E.html (accessed
9 December 2013).
51. Carney, “Aboriginal Residential School,” 23.
52. Klinck, “Norton, John,” http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=3050 (accessed 18
December 2011); Klinck, “Biography of Mohawk Chief John Norton,” http://www.warof1812.
ca/norton.htm; Graymont, “Thayendanegea,” http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_
nbr=2686 (accessed 25 November 2011).
53. Carney, “Aboriginal Residential School,” 23.
54. Carney, “Aboriginal Residential School,” 23; Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 13.
55. Graham, Mush Hole, 7.
56. Graham, Mush Hole, 8.
57. Graham, Mush Hole, 15.
58. Graham, Mush Hole, 48.
59. Richardson to Busk, 18 November 1837, quoted in Graham, Mush Hole, 46.
60. Graham, Mush Hole, 48.
61. Graham, Mush Hole, 48–50.
62. Bishop John Strachan, quoted in Hawkins, Annals of the Diocese, 198.
63. Graham, Mush Hole, 7.
64. Graham, Mush Hole, 54.
65. Graham, Mush Hole, 55.
66. Comeau-Vasilopoulos, “Oronhyatekha,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/oronhyatekha_13E.
html (accessed 21 August 2014).
67. Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 76; Graham, Mush Hole, 7.
68. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 94.
69. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 42.
70. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 45.
71. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 47.
72. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 47–49.
73. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 71.
74. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 44.
75. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 114.
76. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 116–117, 122–123.

Notes • 753
77. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 97.
78. MacLean, “Positive Experiment,” 41–43.
79. MacLean, “Positive Experiment,” 24, 40.
80. MacLean, “Positive Experiment,” 49–50.
81. MacLean, “Positive Experiment,” 24.
82. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 97.
83. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 163; Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 86.
84. Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 77.
85. United Church Archives, Wesleyan Methodist Church Collection, Box 102, 12C, John Sunday
to Reverend Alder, 7 April 1841, quoted in Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 27.
86. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 103, 107.
87. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 111; Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 171.
88. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 1–61.
89. MacLean, “Positive Experiment,” 30.
90. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 79; Smith, “Jones, Peter,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones_
peter_8E.html (accessed 30 November 2013).
91. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 126.
92. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 79; Smith, “Jones, Peter,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones_
peter_8E.html (accessed 30 November 2013).
93. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 80.
94. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 162; Smith, “Jones, Peter,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones_
peter_8E.html (accessed 30 November 2013).
95. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 96; Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 160.
96. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 115.
97. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 96; Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 160.
98. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 98.
99. Prucha, Great Father, 145–148.
100. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 98–99.
101. Toronto, The Christian Guardian, 29 September 1841, quoted in MacLean, “Ojibwa
Participation,” 102.
102. Annual Reports of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Church 1841, 217 and 1853–54, xv,
quoted in Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 94.
103. Peter Jones, London, 26 December 1844, in “An Address to the Christian Public of GreatBritain and Ireland in Behalf of the Indian Youth of Upper Canada, 1845,” quoted in Smith,
Sacred Feathers, 195.
104. Leslie, “Bagot Commission,” 40.
105. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 183–184.
106. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 194–195.
107. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
108. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
109. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 4–6.
110. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 6–7.
111. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 20.
112. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 21.
113. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 12.
114. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 22.

754 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
115. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 25.
116. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 34.
117. Minutes of the General Council of Indian Chiefs and Principal Men, 23.
118. Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 29.
119. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 109.
120. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 73.
121. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 76.
122. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 73.
123. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 73.
124. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 74.
125. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 75; Ryerson, Report on a System, 13, 32, 60.
126. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 75–76.
127. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 77.
128. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 73.
129. Ryerson, “Report on Industrial Schools,” 74.
130. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
131. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
132. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
133. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
134. Smith, Sacred Feathers, 213.
135. Quoted in Graham, Mush Hole, 8.
136. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 112.
137. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 114–115.
138. The Christian Guardian, 22 December 1852, quoted in MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 115.
139. Annual Reports, Methodist Episcopal Church, Missionary Society in Canada 1851, xii, quoted
in Graham, Medicine Man to Missionary, 78.
140. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 112–114.
141. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 114.
142. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 116.
143. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 118, 123.
144. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 118.
145. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 116–117.
146. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 120.
147. MacLean,” Ojibwa Participation,” 119.
148. Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 38–39.
149. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
150. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
151. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
152. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p,
153. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
154. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
155. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
156. Report of the Special Commissioners 1858, n.p.
157. Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 41.
158. Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 42.
159. Graham, Mush Hole, 8; Pettit,“‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 52.

Notes • 755

Mission schools in the Canadian West: 1820–1880
1. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 48–53, 98.
2. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, A.6/21, Governor and Committee to George Simpson, 11
March 1823, folio 50, quoted in Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 131.
3. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 130.
4. George Simpson to Andrew Colville, 20 May 1822, in Simpson, Fur Trade and Empire, 181.
5. Coutts, Road to the Rapids, 21.
6. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 106.
7. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 131–132; Eden Colvile to Simpson, 22
December 1851, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, D.5/32: 398, quoted in Grant, Moon of
Wintertime, 107.
8. Friesen, Canadian Prairies, 69–73.
9. Bumsted, Lord Selkirk, 350.
10. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 11–12; Choquette, Oblate Assault, 29–32; Grant, Moon of
Wintertime, 99.
11. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 133–134.
12. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 15–16.
13. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 99.
14. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 135.
15. John West, The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British
North America: And Frequent Excursions Among the North-West American Indians, in theYears 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 (London, 1824), 14–15, quoted in Porter, “Anglican Church,”
16–17.
16. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 135.
17. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 137; Boon, “Henry Budd,” http://www.
biographi.ca/en/bio/budd_henry_10E.html (accessed 7 December 2013).
18. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 141.
19. John West, The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British
North America: And Frequent Excursions Among the North-West American Indians, in theYears 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 (London, 1824), 96, quoted in Stevenson, “Red River Indian
Mission School,” 136–139.
20. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 139.
21. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 140.
22. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 140–141.
23. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 142.
24. Library and Archives Canada, Church Missionary Society A.88, Harbridge to Pratt, 26 June
1823, quoted in Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 144.
25. John West, The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British
North America: And Frequent Excursions Among the North-West American Indians, in
the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 (London, 1824), 150–151, quoted in Scott, “Cultivating
Christians,” 25.
26. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 147.
27. Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 151; Wille, “John West,” http://www.biographi.
ca/en/bio/west_john_7E.html (accessed 7 December 2013).
28. Mooney, “Henry Budd,” http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/budd_henry_1812-75.html (accessed
7 December 2013).

756 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
29. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, xxiii.
30. Pannekoek, “Charles Pratt,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pratt_charles_11E.html(accessed 7 December 2013).
31. Stevenson, “Church Missionary Society,” 44, 140, http://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/28298(accessed 7 December 2013).
32. Coutts, Road to the Rapids, 21. See also: Pannekoek, “Protestant Agricultural Zions,” 56–58.
33. Coutts, Road to the Rapids, 20; Beaumont, “William Cockran,” http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/
mb_history/33/cockran_w.shtml (accessed 7 December 2013).
34. Schodt, Native American, 100–101; Stevenson, “Red River Indian Mission School,” 156.
35. Margaret Arnett MacLeod, ed., The Letters of Letitia Hargrave (Toronto, 1947), 177, quoted in
Schodt, Native American, 104.
36. Levine, “John Macallum,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/macallum_john_7E.html(accessed 7 December 2013).
37. Pannekoek, “David Anderson,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/anderson_david_11E.html(accessed 7 December 2013). See also: SJR [St. John’s Ravenscourt], “History: 1820 to thePresent,” http://www.sjr.mb.ca/school-history.
38. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 29–32.
39. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 100–101.
40. Brooks, “British Wesleyan Methodist Missionary,” 30.
41. Brooks, “British Wesleyan Methodist Missionary,” 28–33; Hutchinson, “James Evans,” http://
www.biographi.ca/en/bio/evans_james_7E.html (accessed 7 December 2013).
42. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 35–37.
43. Hutchinson, “Thomas Hassall,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hassall_thomas_7E.html(accessed 7 December 2013).
44. Brooks, “British Wesleyan Methodist Missionary,” 24. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 101–102.
45. Brooks, “British Wesleyan Methodist Missionary,” 33.
46. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 114–117.
47. Bishop Provencher to Bishop Signay, 8 August 1841, English translation in Erickson, “Bury
Our Sorrows,” 21.
48. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 85–86.
49. Erickson, “Bury Our Sorrows,” 21, 29.
50. Duchaussois, Grey Nuns, 40; Erickson, “Repositioning the Missionary,” 120.
51. Erickson, “Bury Our Sorrows,” 27.
52. McCarthy, From the Great River, 10.
53. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 15–17.
54. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 38–47; Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 15–18.
55. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 206.
56. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 17–24.
57. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 43–44.
58. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 51–58.
59. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 28–29, 34; Choquette, Oblate Assault, 51–58.
60. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 24.
61. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 40.
62. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 41.
63. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 55.
64. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 58, 64–65.

Notes • 757
65. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 146.
66. Margaret MacLeod, ed., The Letters of Letitia Hargrave (Toronto, 1947), 28:164, quoted in Van
Kirk, “Many Tender Ties,” 214–215.
67. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 30–31.
68. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 94–96.
69. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 187–191; Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 69–71.
70. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 73–74.
71. Sister Charlebois, Notes and Sketches Collected from a Voyage in the North-West by a Sister ofCharity of Montreal for the furtherance of a Charitable Object (Montreal, 1875), 7, quoted in
Erickson, “Repositioning the Missionary,” 121.
72. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 99–100.
73. Goldring, “James Leith,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/leith_james_7E.html (accessed 7
December 2013); Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 104.
74. Pannekoek, “David Anderson,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/anderson_david_11E.html(accessed 7 December 2013).
75. Pannekoek, “Anglican Church,” 73–74.
76. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 105; Long, “Thomas Vincent,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
vincent_thomas_1835_1907_13E.html (accessed 7 December 2013); Long,“John Horden,”
http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/horden_john_12E.html (accessed 7 December 2013).
77. William Cockran, Journal, 30 September 1830, Library and Archives Canada, MG 17, Class C,
C1/M.2, reel 1-77, 14, quoted in Choquette, Oblate Assault, 130.
78. John West, The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British
North America: And Frequent Excursions Among the North-West American Indians, in theYears 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823 (London, 1824), 12, quoted in Coutts, Road to the Rapids, 27.
79. Church Missionary Society A77, 12, quoted in Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 221.
80. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 225.
81. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 1–6, 84–87, 97; Choquette, Oblate Assault, 1–20, 224.
82. Bishop Lafleche, quoted in Duchaussois, Grey Nuns, 57.
83. Archives Deschâtelets, HEB 6874, L88L.3, Grollier to Taché, Fort Norman, 20 July 1860,
quoted in Choquette, Oblate Assault, 145.
84. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 153.
85. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 175.
86. MacGregor, Father Lacombe, 209.
87. MacGregor, Father Lacombe, 210.
88. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 178.
89. McCarthy, From the Great River, 54; Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 113.
90. Archives Soeurs Grises de Montréal, Grandin to Hainault-Deschamps, 3 May 1862, quoted inCarney, “Grey Nuns and Children,” 291.
91. Methodist Missionary Society Committee Minutes, extracts, Microfilm reel A270, Box 13,
Reel 13, Canada 1841–1842, Mason to Secretaries, August 11, 1841, quoted in Brooks, “British
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary,” 29.
92. McCarthy, From the Great River, 53.
93. Provincial Archives of Manitoba, MG12E1, Bompas to Schultz, 3 June 1892, quoted in
McCarthy, From the Great River, 54.
94. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 60–65; Hutchinson, “James Evans,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/
bio/evans_james_7E.html (accessed 17 December 2013).

758 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
95. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 158.
96. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 103.
97. Carney, “Relations in Education,” 55.
98. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 73.
99. McCarthy, From the Great River, 157.
100. McCarthy, From the Great River, 156–157.
101. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 40.
102. McCarthy, From the Great River, 168, 169.
103. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 66.
104. Carney, “Relations in Education,” 54.
105. Carney, “Relations in Education,” 159.
106. Erickson, “Repositioning the Missionary,” 131.
107. McCarthy, From the Great River, 162.
108. Abel, Drum Songs, 118.
109. Erickson, “Bury Our Sorrows,” 33.
110. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 99–104.
111. Carney, “Grey Nuns and Children,” 292.
112. Erickson, “Repositioning the Missionary,” 131–132.
113. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 105–110.
114. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 102–103; Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 186–188.
115. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 77.
116. Duff, Indian History of British Columbia, 59–60.
117. For medical treatment, see: McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 77–78. For the goal of
separating Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, see: TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives –Ottawa, series 2, box 22, folder 1, Family History Bishop Durieu, E. M. Bunoz, “Catholic Action
and Bishop Durieu’s System,” unpublished manuscript, 29 January 1941, 2. [OMI-035015]
118. Augustin Demers had been appointed Bishop of Victoria Island in the 1840s, and thegeographic extent of his diocese was later extended to include much of present-day British
Columbia and Alaska. However, he had few missionaries at his command and enormous
territory to cover. As a result, he made few converts. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 10–13.
119. Gresko, “Louis-Joseph d’Herbomez,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/herbomez_louis_
joseph_d_11E.html (accessed 11 September 2014).
120. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 49–50.
121. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 89 (Williams Lake), 97 (Stuart Lake), 102 (the Kootenays).
122. Gresko, “Paul Durieu,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/durieu_paul_12E.html (accessed 31
August 2014).
123. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 58–59. For discussion of the degree to which Durieu was
the originator of the system that bore his name, see: Gresko, “Paul Durieu,” http://www.
biographi.ca/en/bio/durieu_paul_12E.html (accessed 31 August 2014).
124. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives – Ottawa, series 2, box 22, folder 1, Family History Bishop
Durieu, E. M. Bunoz, “Catholic Action and Bishop Durieu’s System,” unpublished manuscript,
29 January 1941. [OMI-035015]
125. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 135–137.
126. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 138–139.
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 1, E.
C. Chirouse to F. Devlin, 1 July 1896; [MIS-000002 ] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada

Notes • 759– Ottawa, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, E. C. Chirouse to D. C. Scott, 13 August 1923.
[GRG-001492]
128. Gresko, “Paul Durieu,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/durieu_paul_12E.html (accessed 31
August 2014). McNally gives the opening as 1862, McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 67.
129. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 67.
130. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 67–69.
131. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 70; Jones Clark, “Saint Mary’s Mission,” 81–82.
132. Jones Clark, “Saint Mary’s Mission,” 87.
133. Jones Clark, “Saint Mary’s Mission,” 89.
134. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 71; Jones Clark, “Saint Mary’s Mission,” 96–97.
135. Jones Clark, “Saint Mary’s Mission,” 83.
136. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. J. D’Herbomez to
Superintendent General Indian Affairs, 5 January 1874. [OMS-000897]
137. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1874, 9–10.
138. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 8–9, 36.
139. Journal of William Duncan, 7 June 1859, William Duncan Papers 1853–1916, University of
British Columbia Library, Vancouver, microfilm/C2154, quoted in Usher, William Duncan of
Metlakatla, 47.
140. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 58–61.
141. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 64.
142. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 65–69.
143. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1874, 9, 106.
144. Journal of William Duncan, 19 November 1865, William Duncan Papers, 1853–1916,
University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, microfilm/C2155, quoted in Usher,
William Duncan of Metlakatla, 77.
145. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 83.
146. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1874, 9–10.
147. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 119–135.
148. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 26–28, 35.
149. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 37, 94.
150. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 34–35.
151. Thomas Crosby, Among the An-ko-me-nums or Flathead Tribes of Indians of the Pacific Coast(Toronto, 1907), 49, quoted in Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 35.
152. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 67–68.
153. Hare and Barman, “Good Intentions,” 182–183.
154. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 63.
155. Hare and Barman, “Good Intentions,” 188.
156. Hare and Barman, “Good Intentions,” 190.
157. Thomas Crosby, letter in the Christian Guardian, 4 November 1875 (letter dated 5 September
1875), quoted in Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 63.
158. Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian, 64.
159. Bolt, “Thomas Crosby,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/crosby_thomas_14E.html (accessed
1 September 2014).
160. Usher, William Duncan of Metlakatla, 124–135; Bolt, Thomas Crosby and the Tsimshian,
73–77.

760 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Confederation, colonization, and resistance
1. Berger, Sense of Power, 225; Naylor, Canada in the European Age, 321–323; Conrad and Finkel,
Canada, 242–260. For discussion of “manifest destiny,” see: Merk and Bannister, Manifest
Destiny.
2. McNeil, Native Claims, 6.
3. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 156; Davin, Report on Industrial Schools, 10. Population
figures for this period are only estimates. James Miller cites 12,000 mixed-blood people in
1870, and, in his 1879 report, Nicholas Flood Davin stated that 28,000 people were under
Treaty. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 199; Davin, Report on Industrial Schools, 10.
4. House of Commons Debates from the Sixth Day of November, 1867, to the Twenty-Second
Day of May, 1868, 200, cited in Milloy, “A National Crime,” 20.
5. An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians, Statutes of Canada 1869, chapter 42,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 11.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1870, 4.
7. An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1876, chapter
18, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 24.
8. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 255.
9. An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1867,
chapter 18, section 62, subsection 6, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 41; An Act to amend
and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1880, chapter 28, section 74,
subsection 1, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 75.
10. An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1880, chapter
28, section 72, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 75.
11. An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1880, chapter
28, section 10, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 58.
12. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1895, chapter 35, section 3, amending An Act
respecting Indians, Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43, reproduced in Venne, IndianActs, 141.
13. An Act to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1881, chapter 17, section 12,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 90.
14. An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884, chapter 27, section 1,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 93.
15. An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884, chapter 27, section 2,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 93.
16. An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884, chapter 27, section 3,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 93.
17. An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884, chapter 27, section
16, amending section 99 of the Indian Act, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 98.
18. An Act to amend “The Indian Act,” Statutes of Canada 1881, chapter 17, section 1, reproduced
in Venne, Indian Acts, 88.
19. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1890, chapter 29, section 10, adding section 133
to the Indian Act, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 163.
20. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1894, chapter 32, section 3, amending section
38 of the Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43; An Act respecting Indians, Statutes ofCanada 1895, chapter 35, section 1, amending section 38 of the Revised Statutes of Canada
1886, chapter 43; An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1898, chapter 34, section

Notes • 761
2, amending section 38 of the Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 125–126.
21. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1895, chapter 35, section 6, amending section 70of the Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 158.
22. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1895, chapter 35, section 2, amending section
70 of the Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43; An Act respecting Indians, Statutes ofCanada, 1898, chapter 34, section 6, amending section 70 of the Revised Statutes of Canada
1886, chapter 43, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 137–138.
23. Carter, Aboriginal People, 115–116.
24. Carter, Aboriginal People, 115–117.
25. Canada, A History of the Vote in Canada, 45–54, 79.
26. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 3–7.
27. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 8; Taylor, “Two Views of the Meaning,” 14.
28. Library and Archives Canada, Department of the Secretary of State of Canada fonds,“Biography/Administrative History,” http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.
php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=14&rec_nbr_list=14,15,1610404,16
12267,1612067,1610597,1610519,1610452,1610397,1610370 (accessed 14 June 2014).
29. Titley, Indian Commissioners, ix.
30. Leighton, “Victorian Civil Servant,” 104–107.
31. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 31–34.
32. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, 99.
33. Library and Archives Canada, MG 29 E 106, Hayter Reed Papers, volume 18, Personnel M-P,
Reed to T. M Daly, date illegible, 1893, quoted in Titley, “Hayter Reed,” 112.
34. Leighton, “Victorian Civil Servant,” 111.
35. Hildebrandt, Views from Fort Battleford, 35–36.
36. Hildebrandt, Views from North Battleford, 34–35.
37. Hildebrandt, Views from North Battleford, 37.
38. Ray, Illustrated History, 88–89; McMillan and Yellowhorn, First Peoples, 299–301.
39. Ray, Illustrated History, 165–171; Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 162–165; McMillan andYellowhorn, First Peoples, 301–306.
40. Conrad and Finkel, Canada, 265.
41. McNeil, Native Claims, 2–3; Naylor, Canada in the European Age, 323.
42. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 142ff.
43. Carter, Aboriginal People, 106–109; Ray, Illustrated History, 199; Friesen, Canadian Prairies,
126.
44. Carter, Aboriginal People, 102; Friesen, Canadian Prairies, 124–128.
45. Ray, Illustrated History, 194–203; Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 199–206; McMillan andYellowhorn, First Peoples, 306–307.
46. Carter, Aboriginal People, 109. The Métis of Manitoba waged a long court battle for the land
they had been promised. In March 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in their favour, findingthat the government had failed to implement the land grant provision of the Manitoba
Act, 1870. Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), Supreme Court of
Canada Judgment, March 3, 2013, http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/
item/12888/index.do?r=AAAAAQAFTWV0aXMAAAAAAAAB.
47. Great Britain, Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory Order (Schedule A), 23 June 1870,
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/p1t32.html.

762 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
48. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 150; Ray, Illustrated History, xiv, 207–208; McMillan andYellowhorn, First Peoples, 129–165.
49. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 216. For pre-Treaty diplomacy, see: Milloy, Plains Cree.
50. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 154.
51. Friesen, “Magnificent Gifts,” 205, 212.
52. Erasmus, Buffalo Days, 250.
53. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 153.
54. Friesen, “Magnificent Gifts,” 213.
55. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 63.
56. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 80.
57. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 153.
58. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 164–165.
59. Ray, Illustrated History, 212; Taylor, “Canada’s Northwest Indian Policy,” 3.
60. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 80; Stonechild, New Buffalo, 11–12; Ray, Illustrated
History, 210–211.
61. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 156.
62. Ray, Illustrated History, 211. For dates and terms, see: Aboriginal Affairs andNorthern Development Canada, Treaty Texts, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/
eng/1370373165583/1370373202340 (accessed 28 January 2014).
63. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs, 1871, Secretary of State Howe to Commissioner
Simpson, 6 May 1871, 6, quoted in Daugherty, Treaty Research Report, n.p. http://www.
aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/STAGING/texte-text/tre1-2_1100100028661_eng.
pdf (accessed 20 January 2014).
64. Stonechild, New Buffalo, 11.
65. Ray, Illustrated History, 156, 212; Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 117–118.
66. Taylor, “Canada’s Northwest Indian Policy,” 5.
67. Library and Archives Canada, RG 10, volume 3650, file 8347, D. Mills to Laird, 1 August 1877,
quoted in Titley, Indian Commissioners, 49.
68. For a fuller discussion, see: Friesen, “Magnificent Gifts.”
69. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 137–138.
70. Hildebrandt, First Rider, and Carter, True Spirit and Original Intent, 305.
71. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 170, 178–179.
72. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 157.
73. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 28.
74. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 67.
75. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 177, 184.
76. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 43.
77. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 91.
78. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 160; Titley, Indian Commisssioners, 43.
79. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 162.
80. Spry, “William Joseph Christie,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/christie_william_
joseph_12E.html (accessed 21 January 2014); Turner, “James McKay,” http://www.biographi.
ca/en/bio/mckay_james_10E.html (accessed 21 January 2014).
81. Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, “Ballendine, Peter,” biographical sheet, http://www.gov.
mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/biographical/b/ballendine_peter.pdf (accessed 21 February 2012);
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1322, FIND015/34312, MIKAN no. 1502641,

Notes • 763“Scrip affidavit for McKay, John; born: 1832; father: James McKay; mother: Margaret Gladu(Métis); claim no: 2868; date of issue: Sept. 5, 1878; scrip no: 12299; amount: $160,” (1878),
items 1–2; St. Germain, Indian Treaty-Making Policy, 64–65.
82. Dempsey, “Erasmus, Peter,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Institut Historica/Dominion
Institute, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/peter-erasmus (accessed 28
January 2012).
83. Coates and Morrison, “Treaty Research Report—Treaty Five,” http://www.aadnc-aandc.
gc.ca/eng/1100100028695 (accessed 12 February 2012). See also:“B. Mode of Life” and “C.
Assessing Mode of Life,” in MacIntosh, “From Judging Culture,” 407–411. MacIntosh provides
a thorough discussion, explanation, and critique. She points out, for example, that wage
labour was more common among ‘Indians’ than stereotyping allowed (or continues to allow).
Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 101–102.
84. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 32.
85. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 52.
86. Stonechild, New Buffalo, 13.
87. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 182.
88. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 34.
89. Parker, William Parker, 23.
90. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 28.
91. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 61.
92. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 202.
93. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 68–69.
94. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 62.
95. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 167.
96. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 106.
97. Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 244.
98. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 176–177,180–181.
99. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 164.
100. Friesen, “Magnificent Gifts,” 208, 212.
101. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 22–23.
102. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant, 168–169, 179, 183; Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered
Treaties, 151; Lindsay and Brown, History of the Pimicikamak People, 58–62, http://www.
uwinnipeg.ca/rupertsland/pimdigitalopt.pdf.
103. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 211.
104. Friesen, “Magnificent Gifts,” 211.
105. Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 100.
106. Hildebrandt, First Rider, and Carter, True Spirit and Original Intent, xi, 112, 218, 255.
107. Hildebrandt, First Rider, and Carter, True Spirit and Original Intent, 129.
108. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 315, 319, 323, 333, 345–346, 353, 371.
109. Taylor, “Canada’s Northwest Indian Policy,” 5–6.
110. Provincial Archives of Manitoba, MG12, B1, No. 439, Lieutenant-Governor Morris to Ministerof the Interior Campbell, September 1873, quoted in Daugherty, Treaty Research Report,
n.p., http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/STAGING/texte-text/tre12_1100100028661_eng.pdf (accessed 20 January 2014).
111. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 49.
112. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 93.

764 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
113. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 185, 215.
114. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 292.
115. See, for example, on Treaty 4: Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 87–88.
116. Carter, Aboriginal People, 132–133.
117. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 226–227.
118. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 226–227.
119. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3645, file 7806, J. A. N. Provencher to the
Minister of the Interior, 9 May 1877, quoted in Talbot, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties, 159.
120. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 75
121. Friesen, Canadian Prairies, 309.
122. Hildebrandt, Views from Fort Battleford, 44.
123. Carter, Aboriginal People, 13–138.
124. Hildebrandt, Views from Fort Battleford, 44.
125. Ray, Illustrated History, 215.
126. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 231.
127. Tobias, “Canada’s Subjugation,” 222.
128. Hildebrandt, Views from Fort Battleford, 47.
129. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 233.
130. Stonechild, “Indian View,” 263.
131. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 228–230.
132. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 222; Stonechild, “Indian View,” 263; Wiebe,“Mistahimaskwa,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mistahimaskwa_11E.html (accessed 14
July 2014).
133. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 228–234; Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 3697, file 15423, J. Andsell Macrae to department, 25 August 1884, quoted in Miller,
Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 234.
134. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 228–230.
135. Stonechild, “Indian View,” 263.
136. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 234–239.
137. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 106–117.
138. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 85–105.
139. Carter, Aboriginal People, 102; Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 241; Ray, Illustrated
History, 219.
140. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 126–145.
141. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 243–248.
142. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 168–169.
143. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 23, 271–271, J. A. Macdonald to Lansdowne, 3September 1885, quoted in Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 221.
144. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 192–213.
145. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 83.
146. Glenbow Archives, Dewdney papers, box 2, file 38, 587–588, J. A. Macdonald to E. Dewdney,
20 November 1885, quoted in Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 221.
147. Stonechild and Waiser, Loyal Till Death, 221, 226–227.
148. Return to an Order of the House of Commons, 2 May 1887, Canada, Sessional Papers (No.
20b), 1887, 37, quoted in Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 254.

Notes • 765
149. Glenbow Archives, Edgar Dewdney Papers, box 4, file 66, 1414–20, quoted in Stonechild andWaiser, Loyal Till Death, 250–253.
150. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3710, file 19, 550-3, Lawrence Vankoughnet toJohn A. Macdonald, 14 August 1885, quoted in Barron, “Indian Pass System,” 28.
151. Library and Archives Canada, Dewdney Papers, North-West Rebellion, MG 27, 2076-87,
Hayter Reed to Edgar Dewdney, 16 August 1885, quoted in Barron, “Indian Pass System,” 29.
152. Barron, “Indian Pass System,” 30.
153. Carter, Aboriginal People, 163.
154. Canada, Sessional Papers (No. 12), 1890, 165, Reed to Superintendent General, 31 October
1889, copy at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/indianaffairs/001074-119.01-e.
php?page_id_nbr=6766&PHPSESSID=bv7um1pu2kfk5ipd9o9hagoo93 (accessed 25 January2014).
155. Carter, Lost Harvests, 208–210; Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 76.
156. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 35.
157. Ahenakew, Voices of Plains Cree, 148.
158. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 1–23.
159. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 22–26.
160. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 49–50.
161. Roy and Thompson, British Columbia, 21–23.
162. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 49–50, 70, 95–96, 157.
163. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 66–68.
164. Duff, Indian History of British Columbia, 98–100.
165. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 159–176.
166. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 175–178.
167. Duff, Indian History of British Columbia, 93–94; Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 191–195.
168. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 87–106.
169. Quoted in LaViolette, Struggle for Survival, 71.
170. “Impressions regarding missionary efforts among the Indians …,” Glenbow Archives,
A.T586A, 3,469, Archdeacon John Williams Tims papers, 1872–1953, 7, quoted in Pettipas,
Severing the Ties, 97.
171. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 136–137.

National and international models for Canada’s residential schools
1. Beggs, Juvenile Delinquency, 10–11.
2. Clifford, “His Dominion,” 315; Avery, ‘Dangerous Foreigners,’ 7–15; Petryshyn, Peasants in thePromised Land, 129–138; Woodsworth, Strangers Within Our Gates, 113–115.
3. Woodsworth, Strangers Within Our Gates.
4. Baratay, “Affairs de moeurs.”
5. Driver, “Discipline Without Frontiers?,” 272–277.
6. F. Demetz, quoted in Anonymous, Une visite à Mettray (Paris, 1864), quoted in Driver,“Discipline Without Frontiers?,” 277–278.
7. Driver, “Discipline Without Frontiers?,” 282.
8. Parker, Uprooted, 190.
9. Prucha, Great Father, 145.

766 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
10. Berkhofer, Salvation and the Savage, 14–15.
11. Peyer, Tutor’d Mind, 172.
12. Prucha, Great Father, 147, 152.
13. Prucha, Great Father, 151–154; for removal policy, see: Prucha, Great Father, 183–213.
14. Prucha, Great Father, 183–198.
15. Prucha, Great Father, 214–292.
16. Adams, Education for Extinction, 7.
17. Adams, Education for Extinction, 7–8.
18. Prucha, Great Father, 708–709.
19. Adams, Education for Extinction, 30.
20. John Miles, quoted in Richard Henry Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with theAmerican Indians, 1867–1904, ed. Robert M. Utley (New Haven, 1964), 243, quoted in Niezen,
Spirit Wars, 66.
21. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 4–5.
22. Niezen, Spirit Wars, 55.
23. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 6.
24. Adams, Education for Extinction, 40–47.
25. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 24–25.
26. Adams, Education for Extinction, 51–52.
27. Niezen, Spirit Wars, 46.
28. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 186; Standing Bear, My People the Sioux, 123–133.
29. Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux (Boston, 1928), 141, quoted in Niezen, Spirit Wars,
63.
30. Richard Henry Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian,
1867–1904, ed. Robert M. Utley (New Haven, 1964), 283, quoted in Adams, Education for
Extinction, 55.
31. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 170.
32. Adams, Education for Extinction, 56–57.
33. Adams, Education for Extinction, 117.
34. Adams, Education for Extinction, 115.
35. Adams, Education for Extinction, 120.
36. Adams, Education for Extinction, 54.
37. Adams, Education for Extinction, 157.
38. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 174–175.
39. White, “Carlisle Barracks Plan,” Indian Time, http://www.indiantime.net/story/2014/04/17/
reader-submission/carlisle-barracks-plans-to-restore-indian-school-farmhouse/13640.html(accessed 23 November 2014).
40. McMillan and Yellowhorn, First Peoples in Canada, 93–98.
41. White, “Free to be Kanien’kehaka,” 29, 180–181; personal communication, Louellyn White toTruth and Reconciliation Commission, 17 November 2014.
42. For reports on such instances, see: Norton, “Father of 10 Returned”; [Father of 10 returned
from residential school a stranger] Nancy Tarbell Deer, Letter to the editor, Indian Time, 24
February 1984. [seq-2] The records of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Centre
also report on former Carlisle students who moved to Canada. Carlisle Indian School Digital
Resource Centre, http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/search/node/Canada (accessed 1
December 2014).

Notes • 767
43. Adams, Education for Extinction, 56–57.
44. Adams, Education for Extinction, 58.
45. Adams, Education for Extinction, 58–59.
46. Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club, 91.
47. Annual Report, Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1890, clii, quoted in Adams, Education for
Extinction, 121.
48. Adams, Education for Extinction, 63–64.
49. Adams, Education for Extinction, 149.
50. Adams, Education for Extinction, 150.
51. Adams, Education for Extinction, 125.
52. Adams, Education for Extinction, 130.
53. Adams, Education for Extinction, 130–131.
54. Adams, Education for Extinction, 132.
55. McConnell to the Secretary of the Interior, 31 October 1899, quoted in Child, Boarding School
Season, 57.
56. Child, Boarding School Season, 63.
57. Adams, Education for Extinction, 215–222.
58. Lake Mohonk Conference Proceeding, 1889, 16–17, quoted in Prucha, Great Father, 701–704.
59. Prucha, Great Father, 711.
60. Prucha, Great Father, 816–818.
61. Adams, Education for Extinction, 321–328; Lindsey, Indians at Hampton Institute.
62. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 136–142.
63. Minutes of the 1848 Gold Coast District Meeting, Cape Coast, Methodist Missionary Society
Archives London, quoted in Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 143.
64. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 142–159.
65. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 26–28, 217, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/
content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report; Manne, “In Denial,” 1–5.
66. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 20–24, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/
content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
67. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 25, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/
pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
68. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 34, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/
pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
69. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 50–51, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/
content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
70. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 89, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/
pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
71. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 79–80, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/
content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
72. Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 103, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/
pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.
73. Manne, “In Denial,” 8–9; “Australia, “Bringing Them Home,” 132–192, www.humanrights.gov.
au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report; Read, Stolen
Generations, 9, 12, 17, 18, 22.
74. Finkel, Social Policy, 43–44.
75. Bradbury, “Fragmented Family,” 112–115.

768 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
76. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 72; Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 95,
104–107.
77. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 105.
78. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 72.
79. Winzer, History of Special Education, 115–120.
80. Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 212.
81. Archives of Ontario, RG 22, series 15, box 1, number 33, York County Clerk of the Peace,
Incorporations of Benevolent Societies, quoted in Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 213.
82. William H. Howland, Royal Commission on the Relation of Capital and Labour Report, 1889,
quoted in Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 209.
83. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 75–76.
84. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 76, 85.
85. Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 215.
86. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 100.
87. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 104.
88. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 76.
89. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 88–89, 91.
90. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 84, 86.
91. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 91.
92. Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys,’” 91–92.
93. Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 216.
94. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 143.
95. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 136.
96. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 138.
97. Parker, Uprooted, xiii.
98. Parker, Uprooted, 19–35.
99. Parker, Uprooted, 70–73; Bagnell, Little Immigrants, 141–149.
100. For a general discussion of the treatment of these children, see: Bagnell, Little Immigrants;
Parker, Uprooted; Parr, Labouring Children.
101. Rose, Sake of the Children, 100–104.
102. Parr, Labouring Children, 105.
103. Parr, Labouring Children, 115.
104. Algoma Missionary News and Shingwauk Journal, 1 July 1885, quoted in Wilson, “‘No Blanket
to be Worn,’” 75.
105. Canada, Proceedings of the Round Table Conference on Juvenile Delinquency (Ottawa, 1928),
quoted in Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 115.
106. Bennett, “Turning ‘Bad Boys,’” 222–224.
107. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 112.
108. Bullen, “J. J. Kelso,” 146–148.

Laying the groundwork for the residential school system
1. An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians, the better management of Indian Affairs,
and to extend the provision of the Act 31st Victoria, Chapter 42, Statutes of Canada 1869,
chapter 6, section 12 (6), reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 13.

Notes • 769
2. An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1880, chapter
28, section 74, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 75.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1870, 5–6, 25–27. The Mohawk
Institute is referred to as the “Six Nations of the Grand River, Number 1 School.”
4. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3679, file 12046, John A. Macdonald,
Memorandum to Council, 19 October 1880.
5. L. Vankoughnet, unpublished memorandum to Sir John A. Macdonald, 20 September 1882,
Ottawa, Department of Indian Affairs Archives, quoted in Daniels, “Legal Context of Indian
Education,” 160.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1878, 8.
7. Parker, Uprooted, 145.
8. Davey, “Rhythm of Work,” 114–117.
9. Wilson, Missionary work, 129, 130–131; Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 26.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1877, 7; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1880, 8.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1877, 156.
12. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1878, 8; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs. 1882, xviii–xxviii.
13. Read, “John Stoughton Dennis,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=39594(accessed 27 June 2012).
14. Canada, Sessional Papers 1885, number 116. F., 95–96, J. S. Dennis to Sir John A. Macdonald,
20 December 1878.
15. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 90–91.
16. Thompson, “Nicholas Flood Davin,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_
nbr=6664 (accessed 20 June 2012).
17. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 2.
18. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 1.
19. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 2.
20. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 3.
21. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 2.
22. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 5.
23. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 1, 5; Prucha, Great Father, 746–755.
24. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 5–7.
25. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 7.
26. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 7–9.
27. Bumsted, “McKay, James,” 159–160; Davin, Report on industrial schools, 9.
28. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 11.
29. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 10.
30. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 10.
31. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 10.
32. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 11.
33. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 12.
34. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 13.
35. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 12, 15.
36. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 14.
37. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 13–16.

770 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
38. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 15.
39. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 12.
40. Canada, Sessional Papers 1885, number 116, 82, David Laird, 13 March 1879.
41. Canada, Sessional Papers 1885, number 116, 87, Alex, Archbishop to St. Boniface to Colonel
Dennis, 29 January 1879.
42. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3708, file 19502, part 1, Northwest Territories
and Manitoba – Correspondence and Reports Regarding Roman Catholic Missions,
Farms on Reserves, and Destitute Indians. Copy of a letter addressed to the Honourable
Mr. Langevin, Minister of Public Works (original stamped 25 May 1880). Online MIKAN
no. 2061654 (Original available online as pages 31–36, translations 37–43).
43. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3708, file 19502, part 1, Northwest Territories
and Manitoba – Correspondence and Reports Regarding Roman Catholic Missions, Farms on
Reserves, and Destitute Indians, Grandin to Macdonald, September 27, 1880. Online MIKAN
no. 2061654 (online pages 57-58).
44. Hughes, Father Lacombe, 286.
45. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, Archbishop of Quebec to Sir
John A. Macdonald, February 1883. [Microfilm reel C-10118]
46. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney to Superintendent
General Indian Affairs, 16 April 1883. (Microfilm reel C-10118). frames e007673625 toe007673632).
47. Hodgetts, Pioneer Public Service, 217–219, 225.
48. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 May 1883), 1376.
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, L. Vankoughnet to J.
A. Macdonald, 11 June 1883. [120.06662]
50. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, Copy of a report of a Committeeof the Honourable the Privy Council approved by his excellency the Governor General inCouncil, on the 19th July 1883. (Microfilm reel C-10118).
51. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 2:44.
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, L. Vankoughnet toFather Lacombe, 23 July 1883. [120.06664]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toReverend Thomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
54. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-2, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General, 16 June 1884. Microfilm reel C-10118, e007673913.
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3833, file 65138, part 2, F. Bourne to
Hayter Reed, 2 October 1884. [PUL-009344-0001]
56. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3767, file 33170, G. Mann to Assistant IndianCommissioner, 22 October 1886. Microfilm reel C-10135: frame e007719323.
57. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 266.
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3919, file 116751-1, author unknown
to Hayter Reed, 11 July 1889. [PLD-009535-0000]
60. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 129–131, 162–163.
61. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 1.
62. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, xi.

Notes • 771
63. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, xxi.
64. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 324.
65. Canada, House of Commons Debates (9 May 1883), 1107–1108.
66. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 12; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndianAffairs, 1883, 104.
67. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 2; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndianAffairs, 1883, 104.
68. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 350.
69. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 174.
70. Ridley, Snapshots from the North, 112.
71. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 106–108.
72. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 149.
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3825, file 60511-1, J. Hugonard to
Indian Commissioner, 23 November 1903. [RCA-011007-0001]
74. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1882, 213.
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, MG17, B2, Class ‘G’ C.1/P.2, Resolutions regarding
the administration of the North-West Canada Missions, 7 April 1903. [PAR-003622]
76. Canada, Sessional Papers 1885, number 116. F., 95–96, J. S. Dennis to Sir John A. Macdonald,
20 December 1878.
77. Canada, House of Commons Debates (9 May 1883), 1101.
78. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 11.
79. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, xi.
80. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, H. Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 24 February 1891. Microfilm reel C-10134:
e007718224–e007718227.
81. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, Andsell Macrae, 18 December
1886.

Student accounts of residential school life: 1867–1939
1. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 8–9.
2. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 11.
3. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 14.
4. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 15–16.
5. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 18–19.
6. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 20–28.
7. Little Pine, Little Pine’s Journal, 29.
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 1, “LakeSuperior Mission. Proposed Industrial Home for Indian Children at Garden River, Algoma
District,” 11 March 1873. [SWK-001283-0003]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 1, Buhgwajjene
to Manager, Indian Affairs, 30 September 1873. [SWK-001877-0001]
10. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 55–56.
11. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 56.
12. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 89.

772 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
13. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 94.
14. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 90–93.
15. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 105–107.
16. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 102–103.
17. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 105.
18. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
19. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
20. Gresko, “Everyday Life,” 80.
21. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
22. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
23. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
24. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 55.
25. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 56.
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 124.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 194.
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 135.
29. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 133.
30. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 15–16.
31. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 17.
32. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 19.
33. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 52.
34. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 109.
35. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, vi–viii.
36. Smith, “Frederick Ogilvie Loft (Onondeyoh),” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/loft_
frederick_ogilvie_16E.html (accessed 15 August 2012).
37. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3212, file 527787-4, F. O. Loft, 26 November 1919,
quoted in Kulchyski, “Considerable Unrest,” 101.
38. Titley, Narrow Vision, 195; Kulchyski, “Considerable Unrest,” 95–117.
39. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
40. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
41. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
42. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 3 July 1909, 5.
43. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 3 July 1909, 5.
44. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
45. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 17 July 1909, 4.
46. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 3 July 1909, 5.
47. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
48. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 31.
49. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 37.
50. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 43–44.
51. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 49.
52. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 51–52.
53. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 52–54.
54. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 57.
55. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 60–61, 70; Patterson, “Peter Reginald Kelly,” http://www.
thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/peter-reginald-kelly (accessed 11 August 2014).

Notes • 773
56. McCullough, “Peyasiw-awasis,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/peyasiw_awasis_15E.html(accessed 6 June 2014).
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6294, file 623-1, part 1, ChiefThunderchild to D. C. Scott, 7 September 1923. [THR-000602]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6294, file 623-1, part 1, ChiefThunderchild to D. C. Scott, 7 September 1923. [THR-000602].
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6294, file 623-1, part 1, ChiefThunderchild to D. C. Scott, 7 September 1923. [THR-000602].
60. McCullough, “Peyasiw-awasis,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/peyasiw_awasis_15E.html(accessed 6 June 2014).
61. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 14–24.
62. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 75–76.
63. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 133–134.
64. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 130–131.
65. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 132.
66. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 128.
67. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 127–128.
68. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 17–18, 163.
69. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 118.
70. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 119.
71. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 119.
72. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 119.
73. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 129.
74. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 130.
75. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 131.
76. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 157–158.
77. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 158.
78. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 160.
79. Pettit, “‘To Christianize and Civilize,’” 321.
80. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 7.
81. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 8.
82. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 11.
83. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 11.
84. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 19.
85. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 21.
86. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 40–41.
87. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 12.
88. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 23–24.
89. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 25.
90. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 25.
91. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 26.
92. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 30.
93. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 30.
94. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 49–52.
95. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 66.
96. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 67.

774 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
97. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 57.
98. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 58.
99. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 74.
100. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 75.
101. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 20.
102. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 28.
103. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 29.
104. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 36.
105. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 33–34.
106. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 33–35.
107. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 31.
108. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 30.
109. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 36–37.
110. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 45–46.
111. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 46.
112. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 47–49.
113. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 5–6.
114. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 8–9.
115. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 9.
116. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 20.
117. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 21–22.
118. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 22.
119. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 23–24.
120. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 13.
121. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 22.
122. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25.
123. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 22.
124. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 23.
125. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 26–27.
126. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25.
127. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 24–25.
128. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 24.
129. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25–26.
130. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25.
131. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 26.
132. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 28–29.
133. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 31.
134. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 31.
135. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 92–94.
136. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 98–103.
137. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 108.
138. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 106.
139. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 63.
140. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 65.
141. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 65.
142. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 66.

Notes • 775
143. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 66.
144. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 64.
145. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 100.
146. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 71.
147. Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, 67.
148. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 49–51.
149. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 35–42.
150. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 53–54.
151. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 53.
152. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 54.
153. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 56.
154. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 57.
155. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 58.
156. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 60–61.
157. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 63.
158. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 69–70.
159. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 88.
160. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 94.
161. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 26–28.
162. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 28.
163. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 126.
164. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 40.
165. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 45.
166. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 46.
167. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 60.
168. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 62.
169. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 69.
170. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 144–145.
171. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 80–81.
172. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 34–35.
173. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 53, 84.
174. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 85.
175. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 127.
176. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 126–127.

Establishing and operating the system: 1867–1939
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884 (for High River, 76; forBattleford, 154; for Qu’Appelle, 161).
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 170–181.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 60.
4. For Dewdney’s views, see: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1890,
xii. For Hoey, see: TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B53 2256, P. O.
Plourde to Father Charron, 19 September 1938. [OGP-020129]
5. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 May 1888), 1681.

776 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, xi.
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, xviii.
8. Gaston Carrière, L’Apôtre des Prairies: Joseph Hugonnard, o.mi. 1848–1917 (Montréal, 1967),
38, quoting Father J. Hugonnard in Petites Annales (Paris, 1912), 22: 262–263, quoted in
Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School,” 73.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 282.
10. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, School Files, 1879–1953,
A. Sutherland to L. Vankoughnet, 22 April 1883.
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 13, 15 July 1897. [100.00108]
12. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, 10 January 1884. L.
Vankoughnet to John A. Macdonald, 10 January 1884.
13. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-1, E. Dewdney to L.
Vankoughnet, 18 November 1884.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, L.
Vankoughnet to P. Durieu, 17 October 1889. [AEMR-010307]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, MR C 8773,“Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Duncan
Campbell Scott to Mr. Meighen, 6 June 1920. [NCA-002405]
17. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, E. Dewdney to Deputy
Superintendent General, 20 March 1886; Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,”
90; Titley, Frontier World, 61.
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Duncan
Campbell Scott to Mr. Meighen, 6 June 1920. [NCA-002405]
19. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, xxi.
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897, 38, 39. [100.00108]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, 1 June 1903. [RIS-000047]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 24 June 1903. [TAY-003529]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 6 September 1906. [BVL-000743]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Scott, 8 September 1915. [PLP-000917]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Russell
T. Ferrier to R. Fletcher, 18 May 1922. [NCA-002423-0001]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4044, file 344441, Tom Lean to J. A. J.
McKenna, 22 June 1909. [SBR-001705-0000]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Russell
T. Ferrier to A. B. Fallis, 6 November 1923. [NCA-002431]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, MR C 8773,“Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, D. L. Clink to
Indian Commissioner, 4 June 1895. [EDM-003380]

Notes • 777
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, H. Reed to AssistantCommissioner, 28 June 1895. [EDM-003376]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1, Reverend
Canon Gould to Duncan Campbell Scott, 26 January 1920. [IRC-041334]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 1, “Regulations
on the Subject of Indian Schools and Their Inspection, Approved by the Minister of Education
for Ontario, and the Department of Indian Affairs,” Geo. W. Ross, 19 April 1884. [BAX-000165]
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1914, xxiii.
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, Indian Agent, Hagersville to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 20 February 1922;[AEMR-255312] 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, 178–179.
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm reelC-8149, FA 10-17, Russell T. Ferrier to Mary Gilbert, 20 October 1926. [AEMR-255333]
36. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, Andsell Macrae, 18 December
1886.
37. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 1, L. Vankoughnet to John A.
Macdonald, 26 August 1887.
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
39. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, Andsell Macrae, 18 December
1886.
40. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 1, L. Vankoughnet to John A.
Macdonald, 26 August 1887.
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Memorandum, J. D. McLean, 20 July 1897. [AEMR-120110]
43. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3836, file 68557, H. Reed, Suggestions for theGovernment of Indian schools, 27 January 1890.
44. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvii.
45. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1890, xiii.
46. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvi.
47. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvi.
48. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvi.
49. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 60.
50. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186, 187, 200, 209.
51. For example, according to the 1891 Indian Affairs annual report, the Kamloops, Cranbrook,
Kuper Island, Middlechurch, St. Boniface, and Elkhorn schools were being funded on a percapita basis. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 221–243.
According to the following year’s report, the government was paying all the expenses of sevenschools. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 285–307.
52. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 270–296.

778 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
53. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, J. McDougall to Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, 28 October 1883.
54. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-2, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 12 January 1884.
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, Alex Begg to A. M.
Burgess, undated, received 20 September 1883; [AEMR-252135] Wade, “Alexander Begg,”
http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=40673 (accessed 14 November 2012).
56. Titley, “Industrial Education,” 375.
57. Titley, “Industrial Education,” 375–376.
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, “Memorial:
Members of the Baptist Ministerial Association of the City of Toronto,” to J. J. C. Abbott, 27
May 1892. [AEMR-120099]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, John J. McGee
to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 16 August 1892. [AEMR-120103]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary Indian Affairs, 9 May 1900. [EDH-002457]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Perm. volume 3694, file 14676, Paul Durieu toThomas Daly, 24 January 1893. [MIS-202057]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, Bunoz to
Durieu, 7 October 1895. [MIS-001403]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6458, file 886-1, part 1, Skeena
River Agency – Port Simpson United Church Residential School – Establishment – General
Administration, 1897–1943, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8779, Martin Benson to Deputy
Superintendent General, 9 May 1905. [PSM-200747]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 24 February 1904. [THR-000123]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 16 May 1903. [THR-000121]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Glen
Campbell to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 October 1912. [AEMR-120216]
67. TRC, NRA, Headquarters 777/25-1-007, 02/13–03/65, volume 1, HQ., Assistant Deputy to W.
B. L. Donald, 20 February 1913. [GRU-002708]
68. TRC, NRA, Headquarters 777/25-1-007, 02/13–03/65, volume 1, HQ., D. C. Scott to Frank
Pedley, 9 April 1913. [GRU-002710]
69. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 305–306.
70. Daniels, “Legal Context,” 165.
71. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON. Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6, file106, E. A. Henry to Dr. Farquharson, 5 February 1908. [RIS-000581]
72. TRC, RBS Series, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1,
Memorandum for the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 18 September 1891.
[2058153]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, P. Durieu to C.
Sifton, 5 November 1897. [MIS-001414]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8787, J. D. McLean to A. O’N. Daunt, 6 December 1922. [MIS-004968]

Notes • 779
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6372, file 764-5, part 3, W. M. Graham
to The Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 May 1926. [MRY-008665]
76. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 1, “Report of the Indian and Eskimo Commission to the Executive
Committee MSCC for the year ended June 30, 1938.” [AAC-083306]
77. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B132 5753, Hayter Reed, 31 October(year illegible). [OGP-010004]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, Hayter Reed
to L. Vankoughnet, 8 December 1892. [SMD-001147]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3858, file 81812, to Hayter Reed, 29
August 1891. [120.06695]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1,
1905–1934, D. C. Scott to Joseph Guy, 28 December 1927. [AEMR-254325]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, Deputy
Superintendent General to Charles Stewart, 31 October 1927. [AEMR-120381]
82. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 13.
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6088, file 310-1, part 1, John G.
Anderson to Duncan C. Scott, 16 October 1922. [FGA-000950-0000]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6088, file 310-1, part 1, Duncan C.
Scott, to J. G. Anderson, 27 October 1922. [FGA-000951]
85. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 6, S. Gould to D. C. Scott, Ottawa, 18 December 1931. [AAC-090271]
86. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Triennial Report of theBoard of Management to the Board of Missions, M.S.C.C. 07/1934, Accession GS 75-2A,
Archibald [Fleming], Bishop of the Arctic, “The Arctic,” in S. Gould, General Secretary, Boardof Management, M.S.C.C., “Triennial Report of the Board of Management, M.S.C.C.,” 4 July
1934, 353. [AGS-000185]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6112, file 350-10, part 1, W. L. Tyrer toSutherland, 8 February 1934. [FGA-001100]
88. Although no trace of the decision to award funds to the Catholic school has been found in thearchives, by April 1937, the Oblates had begun submitting official Indian Affairs paperwork
with regard to the student population at St. Joseph’s. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, file 351-10, part 1, D. Couture, “Application for
Admission to the Ste. Theresa Fort George Catholic Residential School for Louise Jolly,” 1 April
1937. [FTG-003180-0000]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toThomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General Indian Affairs, 16 April 1883. [AEMR-252120]
91. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, R. Sinclair to J. Macdonald, 23
October 1883. [AEMR-252142]
92. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-1, Office of the Chief Architect,
Department of Public Works to F. H. Ennis, 1 September 1884.
93. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, 104.
94. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3924, file 116823, L. Vankoughnet to Sir John A.
Macdonald, 15 March 1886.

780 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
95. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 222–243.
96. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 288–292.
97. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, xii–xiii, 285–307.
98. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 222–243.
99. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 221–243.
100. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 285–307.
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 1, Privy Council
Order Number 1278, 7 June 1888; [PLD-007312] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume3819, file 58418, J. Hugonnard to Hayter Reed, 11 May 1889; [PLD-009475] Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, J. Hugonnard to E. Dewdney, 5 May 1891.
[PLD-009435]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, E. Dewdney to J.
Hugonnard, 13 April 1891. [PLD-009425]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1,
Memorandum, 25 November 1891. [KUP-091346]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
105. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 52.
106. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 53.
107. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 52.
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
110. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 328–346. In 1896, forexample, the federal government was paying all expenses at the new industrial school at
Brandon, Manitoba. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 400–
417. A similar practice was followed at the Calgary school in 1897. Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 316–332.
111. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1A, The Bishop of Rupert’s
Land to Hayter Reed, 8 May 1893.
112. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1 A, H. Reed to Bishop of
Rupert’s Land, 31 May 1893.
113. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, H. Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 4 August 1890.
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 20 May 1891. [PLD-009429]
115. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 196.
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121607, the Deputy
Superintendent of Indian Affairs to A. E. Forget, 18 January 1895. [RIS-000385-0000]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121607, Deputy
Superintendent of Indian Affairs to A. E. Forget, 18 January 1895. [RIS-000385-0000]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, Hayter Reed
to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 28 January 1897. [BRS-000200]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121/607, A. N. McNeill toprincipals, 19 January 1898. [PLD-008611]

Notes • 781
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 2, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 October 1902. [SWK-001441]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Benson to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 28 November 1902. [MER-000328]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, 19 December 1902. [RIS-000009]
123. Enns, “‘But What Is the Cost?’,” 110–111.
124. Enns, “‘But What Is the Cost?’,” 112–113.
125. Enns, “‘But What Is the Cost?’,” 113.
126. Brown and Cook, Canada, 54–68; Hall, “Sir Clifford Sifton,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
sifton_clifford_15E.html (accessed 17 July 2014).
127. Canada, House of Commons Debates (10 April 1901), 2763.
128. Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 129.
129. Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 130.
130. Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 131–132.
131. Hall, “Clifford Sifton,” 133.
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00108, 100.00109]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897, 45. [100.00108]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 16. [100.00109]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 10–11. [100.00109]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 12. [100.00109]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 6. [100.00109]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897. [100.00108]
142. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin Benson, to J. D.
McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897. [100.00108]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897. [100.00108]
146. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, xxvi–xxvii.
147. Canada, House of Commons Debates (14 July 1899), 7486.

782 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
148. Canada, House of Commons Debates (18 July 1904), 6946–6947.
149. Canada, House of Commons Debates (18 July 1904), 6956.
150. Canada, House of Commons Debates (18 July 1904), 6946.
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3964, file 149874, Martin Benson to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 March 1902. [RIS-000351]
152. TRC, NRA, ACC-AB-Diocese of Calgary Affidavit of Records, 3,81,18,1-12, A. Van Thiel toBishop of Calgary and Saskatchewan, June 1899. [CGY-081709] For Thiel’s position, see:
Lewis, “Anglican Church,” 8.
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 2, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 October 1902. [SWK-001441]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 2, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 24 June 1903. [SWK-001445]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 16 March 1906. [MER-000344]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, 2 October 1903. [RIS-000057]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 15 November 1904. [MDD-000532]
158. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979, 199C, box 5, file 72, R. B. Heronto R. P. McKay, 4 June 1905. [RIS-000209]
159. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 55–56.
160. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, xxvii–xxviii.
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, MG17, B2, Class ‘G’ C.1/P.2, Church Missionary
Society, “Resolutions Regarding the Administration of the North-West Canada Missions,” 7
April 1903. [PAR-003622]
162. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 43.
163. Blake, Don’t you hear, 4.
164. Blake, Don’t you hear, 5.
165. Blake, Don’t you hear, 7.
166. Blake, Don’t you hear, 7–8.
167. Blake, Don’t you hear, 8.
168. Blake, Don’t you hear, 11.
169. Blake, Don’t you hear, 12.
170. Blake, Don’t you hear, 17.
171. Blake, Don’t you hear, 19.
172. Blake, Don’t you hear, 35.
173. Blake, Don’t you hear, 40.
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, “Report on
Indian Missions and Schools,” Presented to the Diocesan Synod, Diocese of Calgary, J. W.
Tims, August 1908; [OLD-008159] The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No.
1979.199C, box 5, file 68, “Report of the Synod’s Commission on Indian Affairs,” 5 December
1904. [RIS-000246]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155] For an earlier assessment ofNotes • 783
salaries, see: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 29 December 1885.
177. Blake, Don’t you hear, 9.
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
179. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Frank Pedley to Norman Tucker, 26 March 1909. [AAC-090228] The
schools proposed for closure in Alberta and Saskatchewan were located at Kamsack, File
Hills, and Round Lake, on the Peigan Reserve, the Old Sun’s Reserve, the Sarcee Reserve, atPrince Albert (Emmanuel College), the Gordon’s Reserve, Onion Lake, Morley, and on the
Blood Reserve.
180. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
181. Canada, House of Commons Debates (14 June 1897), 4076.
182. Canada, House of Commons Debates (30 March 1906), 950.
183. Archives of Saskatchewan, MacKay Papers, Frank Oliver, “Letter to S. H. Blake, 28 January,
1908,” quoted in Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 225–226; Anglican Church
General Synod Archives, 75-103, series 2-14, Frank Oliver to A. G. G., 28 January 1908, quoted
in Gull, “‘Indian Policy,’” 15.
184. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Letter signed by S. H. Blake, Andrew Baird, Hamilton Cassels, T.
Ferrier, R. F. MacKay, 22 May 1908; [AAC-090192] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley to Frank Oliver, 9 April 1908. [AEMR120157] For Blake’s involvement in the MSCC’s Indian Committee, see: Grant, Moon of
Wintertime, 192–193.
185. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, F. Pedley to N. Tucker, 26 March 1909. [AAC-090228]
186. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, “Report of the Sub-Committee of the Advisory Board On Indian
Education,” n.d. [AAC-090231]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3919, file 116751-1A, J. B. Magnan to
D. Laird, 12 December 1902; [SBR-003409] Clifford Sifton to Governor General in Council, 23
December 1903. [FAR-000095]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Mr. Oliver, 30 May 1908. [120.00294] The schools proposed for closure were located at
Kamsack, Grayson, Lestock, Onion Lake, Delmas, the Blood Reserve, the Peigan Reserve,
Hobbema, and Cluny.
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Frank Oliver, 9 April 1908. [AEMR-120157]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, J. Hugonnard
to Frank Oliver, 28 March 1908. [PLD-007334]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs to T. Ferrier, 18 July 1908. [AEMR-016328]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Heron toFrank Oliver, 16 February 1909. [AEMR-120164]

784 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-4, part 1, Association ofIndian Workers to Frank Oliver, 19 February 1909. [AEMR-016332]
194. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1,
1905–1934, Emile Legal to Frank Pedley, 20 July 1908. [AEMR-254243]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, “Report on
Indian Missions and Schools,” Presented to the Diocesan Synod, Diocese of Calgary, J. W.
Tims, August 1908. [OLD-008159]
196. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Arthur Barner to S. H. Blake, 16 February 1909. [AAC-090206]
197. Blake, Don’t you hear, 39.
198. Blake, Don’t you hear, 11.
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Superintendent General Indian Affairs to T. Ferrier, 18 July 1908. [AEMR-016328]
200. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 32.
201. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 273.
202. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 274.
203. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 273–274.
204. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
205. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
206. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, “Re: Per Capita Grants at Indian Residential Schools,” Russell Ferrier, 5April 1932. [120.18050]
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,“Correspondence and Agreement Relating to the Maintenance and Management of Indian
Boarding Schools,” Ottawa, Government Printing Bureau, 1911. [AEMR-120208A]
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Memorandum, 26 June 1917. [AEMR-010655]
209. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Notes on Indian Education.”
Memorandum for Hon. Mr. Meighen, 1919. [AEMR-010656]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Scott, 7 February 1916. [100.00230]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, J. Welch to D.
C. Scott, 28 July 1916. [MIS-001473]
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Scott, 27 August 1917. [DRS-000507-0000]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Memorandum, 26 June 1917. [AEMR-010655]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, Martin Benson,
7 June 1913. [EDM-000594]
215. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Scott, 19 January 1916. [PLD-007466]
216. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, T. Ferrier to
Duncan C. Scott, 28 March 1918. [AEMR-120239]

Notes • 785
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs to School and Account Branches, 3 July 1919.
[AEMR-120246] In a 1932 letter, Russell Ferrier wrote that the increases were in 1919 and
1921. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, Russell Ferrier, 5 April1932. [AEMR-255375]
218. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 364; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, xxvi; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, Clerk of the Privy Council to Superintendent General,
Indian Affairs, 18 February 1918; [ELK-000248] RG10, volume 6350, file 753-1, part 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to James Endicott, 5 June 1919; [EDM-000242] Provincial Archives of Alberta,
PAA 71.220B92 3866, W. M. Graham to Principal, Ermineskin Roman Catholic Boarding
School, 28 October 1922. [OGP-030045]
219. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1922, 18; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1923, 8.
220. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, J. H. Edmison
to Duncan C. Scott, 20 January 1921. [AEMR-016359]
221. For examples of deficits, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17,
volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, 1905–1934, G. Leonard to Duncan C. Scott, 27 January 1921;[AEMR-254258V] J. L. Levern to Reverend Naissens, 29 January 1921; [AEMR-254258B] Sister
Briault to Duncan C. Scott, 31 January 1921; [AEMR-254258C] J. Brachet to Duncan C. Scott,
31 January 1921. [AEMR-254258H]
222. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1923, 7.
223. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 4,“Memorandum to Honourable Charles Stewart, Re: Ownership Indian Residential Schools,”
12 May 1922. [120.06758]
224. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 3, Microfilm reelC-8134, Deputy Superintendent General to Mr. Buskard, 25 November 1932. [AEMR-010717]
225. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10294, file 486/25-1-002, part 1, H.
W. McGill to Superintendent General, 5 January 1934; [AEMR-010722] RG10, volume 6001,
file 1-1-1, part 3, Harold W. McGill to Heads of Church Organizations conducting Indian
Residential Schools, 19 April 1934. [SRS-000748-0001]
226. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, J. B. Beys to
Duncan Campbell Scott, 17 February 1922. [SBR-001686]
227. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 2, J. O. Plourde
to R. A. Hoey, 4 March 1938. [SPR-001856]
228. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6113.C73R 5, Undated presentation of the
Welfare and Training Branch of Indian Affairs. [OMI-030415]
229. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-7, part 1, Russell Ferrier
to C. E. Manning, 4 May 1927. [AEMR-016405]
230. Clifford, Resistance to Church Union, 1. For details on transfer of schools, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-7, part 1, J. H. Edmison to D. C.
Scott, 7 July 1927; [RLS-001003] List of Indian Residential Schools Under the Mandate of theUnited Church showing the average attendance for the year ended March 31st, 1927. [AEMR120377A]

786 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1,
1905–1934, Duncan C. Scott to J. B. Beys, 27 May 1927. [AEMR-254315]
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, Russell Ferrier, 5 April 1932.[ AEMR-255375]
233. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, Extract from
Report of Indian Superintendent Boyd for the Year 1923–24, On Indian Education in Nova
Scotia, 19 May 1924; [SRS-000005] J. D. McLean to J. J. Ryan, 9 March 1911. [SRS-000816]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, Extract from
Report of Indian Superintendent Boyd for the Year 1923–24, On Indian Education in Nova
Scotia, 19 May 1924; [SRS-000005] A. J. Boyd to Indian Affairs, 20 January 1925. [SRS-000006]
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, Reverend F. C.
Ryan to Indian Affairs, 8 October 1925. [SRS-001546]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2064, file 265-1, part 1, D. C. Scott to
A. J. Boyd, 23 April 1927. [SRS-000009]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, A. J. Boyd to
D. C. Scott, 11 July 1927. [SRS-000016]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 24 January 1930. [SRS-000058]
239. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 60.
240. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 12.
241. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 27.
242. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs , 1931, 13.
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, Russell T.
Ferrier, to Church Officers and Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 29 March 1932.
[AEMR-016416A] TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACCMSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 27, file 1, The Joint delegation and interview with the Prime
Minister, 20 December 1934. [AAC-087280]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, part 1, Harold
McGill to Church Officers, Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 22 February 1933. [AEMR255373]
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, Harold McGill
to Joseph Guy, 29 March 1933. [AEMR-254348]
246. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11552, file 312-11, part 5, A. S.
Williams to Inspectors of Indian Agencies, Indian Agents, Church Officers, and Principalsof Indian Residential Schools, 13 July 1935; [AEMR-177231] RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-17-1, part 1, Harold McGill to Inspectors of Indian Agencies, Indian Agents, Church Officers,
Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 26 March 1936. [AEMR-255369]
247. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-?, part 1, R. A.
Hoey to Dr. McGill, 4 November 1938. [AEMR-120432]
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 2, J. O. Plourde
to R. A. Hoey, 29 June 1939; [AEMR-254352] Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod
Archives ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 27, file 1, R. A. Hoey to Geo. Dorey, 22 June
1939. [AAC-087334]
249. Prucha, Great Father, 2:808, 837; Child, Boarding School Seasons, 32–33.
250. Adams, Education for Extinction, 332.

Notes • 787
251. L. Meriam, ed., The Problem of Indian Administration (Baltimore, 1928), 13, quoted in Szasz,
Education and the American Indian, 20.
252. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 3.
253. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 28.
254. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 27.
255. Adams, Education for Extinction, 330.
256. Speech delivered by Collier to the American Federation of Arts, Washington, DC, 14 May
1934, reprinted in Indians at Work 1 (1 June 1934): 9, quoted in Szasz, Education and theAmerican Indian, 44–45.
257. W. C. Ryan and Rose K. Brandt, “Indian Education Today,” Progressive Education 9 (February1932): 84, quoted in Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 67.
258. Prucha, Great Father, 2:980.
259. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 34, 65.
260. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 48.
261. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 50–51, 55.
262. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 67–68.
263. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 72–75.
264. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 61.
265. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 31.
266. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 60.
267. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 60.
268. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 3, P. Phelan to
Dr. McGill, 22 February 1934. [AEMR-177226]

The struggle over enrolment: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, John
Semmens to E. McColl, 19 February 1895. [BRS-000174]
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 160.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, xxvi.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 130.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 125.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 104.
7. Barker, Forty Years a Chief, 2, 16–17.
8. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 80.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 161.
10. Tobias, “Canada’s Subjugation,” 228–232.
11. Barron, “Indian Pass System”; Bennett, Study of Passes.
12. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 118, 122.
13. An Act further to amend “The Indian Act, 1880,” Statutes of Canada 1884, chapter 27, section
10, amending Statutes of Canada 1880, chapter 28, section 74, reproduced in Venne, IndianActs, 97.
14. Oreopoulos, Canadian Compulsory School Laws, 8–9.
15. Nowakowski, “Indian Residential Schools,” 81.
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 77.

788 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 139.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 122.
19. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, E. Dewdney to Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, 29 December 1885.
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
21. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 394, file 123764-1, L. Vankoughnet to E.
Dewdney, 13 April 1892.
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, to Hayter Reed, 13June 1891. [PLD-009433]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, May 20, 1891. [PLD-009429]
24. Ray, Miller, and Tough, Bounty and Benevolence, 192–195; Tobias,“Ahchuchwahauhhatohapit,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
ahchuchwahauhhatohapit_14E.html (accessed 17 July 2014).
25. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 161.
26. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3940, file 121698-13, Extract from a Report of
the Committee of the Honourable Privy Council, Approved by His Excellency on the 20th
September 1897.
27. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3940, file 121698-13, J. D. McLean to H. R.
Halpin, 21 December 1897.
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 152.
29. Tobias, “Ahchuchwahauhhatohapit,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
ahchuchwahauhhatohapit_14E.html (accessed 17 July 2014).
30. Star Blanket material is based on Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School,”
182–183; Starblanket, “Beyond Culture,” 2; Starr-Spaeth, “Star Blanket,” 125–
127; Tobias, “Ahchuchwahauhhatohapit,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
ahchuchwahauhhatohapit_14E.html (accessed 17 July 2014).
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, xxvi.
32. Tobias, “Ahchuchwahauhhatohapit,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
ahchuchwahauhhatohapit_14E.html (accessed 17 July 2014).
33. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4068, file 422752, October 1912, Letter from
Chief Star Blanket to the Governor General.
34. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4068, file 422752, 5 December 1912.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, xxii.
36. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1894, chapter 32, section 11, new sections added
to Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 164.
37. 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. [AGA-001516-0000]
38. 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.
[AGA-001516-0000]
39. These were: Mount Elgin, the Mohawk Institute, Shingwauk and Wawanosh homes (counted
as one), and Wikwemikong.

Notes • 789
40. These were: Brandon, St. Boniface, Rupert’s Land (Middlechurch), and Washakada (morecommonly known as “Elkhorn”).
41. These were: Battleford, Regina, Qu’Appelle, and Emmanuel Training School.
42. These were: Morley, St. Joseph’s (High River), Red Deer, and St. Albert.
43. These were: Kuper Island, Kamloops, Kootenay, Alert Bay, Metlakatla (spelled as
Metlakahtla), Williams Lake, and Coqualeetza.
44. These were: Portage la Prairie, Pine Creek, and Birtle.
45. These were: Onion Lake, File Hills, Gordon’s Reserve, Muscowequan, Duck Lake, Round Lake,
and Crowstand.
46. These were: the Blackfoot Boarding School, the Blood Boarding School, and the Lac La Biche,
Piegan, Sarcee, and Stony Plain schools.
47. These were: Port Simpson’s Girls Home, and All Hallows Boarding School at Yale.
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1, John J.
McGee, “At The Government House At Ottawa, Monday, 1st Day of April, 1895.” [AGA-0015160001]
49. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, Hayter Reed to AssistantIndian Commissioner, 20 December 1894.
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, Deputy
Superintendent Indian Affairs to E. McColl, 8 March1895. [BRS-000175]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-5, part 1, R. S.
McKenzie to The Indian Commissioner, Regina, 30 October 1895. [SMD-001170-0000]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Hayter Reed
to E. D. Cameron, 24 April 1896. [TAY-003516]
53. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvii.
54. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, xxi–xii.
55. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxvii.
56. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 315, 319, 323, 333, 345–346, 353, 371.
57. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, E. Dewdney to Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, 29 December 1885.
58. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, E. Dewdney to Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs, 29 December 1885.
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 1, Hayter Reed
to Owen Owens, 16 May 1894. [GDC-005971]
61. Porter, “St. Paul’s Boarding School,” 43, 48, 60.
62. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 154.
63. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 154–156.
64. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 167.
65. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 168.
66. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 219, 224.
67. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 136, 140.
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, R. B. Heron to
Rev. Dr. Grant, 13 November 1913. [FHR-000095-0001]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Mr. Scott, 20 December 1913. [FHR-000096]

790 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8777, J. D. McLean to W. R. Robertson, 30 July 1918. [KUP-003824]
71. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, xxvi.
72. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 308.
73. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 284.
74. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 282.
75. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 365.
76. Library and Archives Canada, RG10 (Red Series), volume 2552, file 112220, Magnus Begg toDavid Laird, 19 January 1901.
77. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, Magnus Begg to David Laird,
19 January 1901.
78. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, J. Hugonnard to David Laird, 9January 1901.
79. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, D. Laird to J. Hugonnard, 8January 1901.
80. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 312–317.
81. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 205–206.
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6321, file 658-1, part 1, J. R. Matheson
to Frank Pedley, 22 January 1906. [PAR-000974]
83. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, J. A. J. McKenna to Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 8 June 1903.
84. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112220, J. A. J. McKenna to Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 8 June 1903.
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm reelC-8149, FA 10-17, D. Laird to Indian Agent, Touchwood Hills, 29 April 1904; [AEMR-255240]
D. Laird to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 May 1904. [AEMR-255241]
86. TRC, NRA, Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children, Ottawa, Government
Printing Bureau, 1908; [AEMR-010652] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file150-40A, part 1, Acting Deputy Minister [Justice?] to Deputy Superintendent General IndianAffairs, 24 June 1908. [AEMR-177176]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank Pedley
to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
88. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 77.
89. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 128–129.
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, J. D.
McLean to A. Sutherland, 16 August 1898. [NCA-014601]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, J. D.
McLean to A. W. Vowell, 2 August 1900. [NCA-014608]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, J. D.
McLean to Principals of All Industrial Schools, 22 February 1911. [AEMR-120194]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, J. D.
McLean to various principals, 18 April 1911. [AEMR-120199]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 December 1901. [100.00132]

Notes • 791
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 17 October 1907. [DRS-000467]
97. Anglican Church General Synod Archives, Journal of Proceedings (1909): 172, quoted in Gull,“‘Indian Policy,’” 10–12.
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10416, Shannon Box 56B, 1908–1909,
NAC, J. D. McLean to U. Verreau 3 April 1909. [EDH-002930]
99. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 578.
100. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 408.
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, David Laird to Indian Agent,
Sarcee Agency, 14 March 1901. [SAR-000397]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. J. McNeill to D. Laird, 10
December 1901. [SAR-000404]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, D. Laird to Indian Agent,
Sarcee, 16 December 1901. [SAR-000407]
104. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 232.
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, David Laird to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 April 1906; [PAR-000980-0000] RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part1, Microfilm reel C-9802, M. Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 21
February 1907. [120.00284]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3858, file 81812, unidentified to
Hayter Reed, 29 August 1891. [120.06695]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1641, 1893–1894, Samuel Lucas toAssistant Commissioner Regina, 15 November 1893. [SAR-000134]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1135 [no file number], A. Forget toAgents and Principals of Boarding and Industrial Schools, 15 March 1895. [EDH-002532]
109. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 263.
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466, 987/1824, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, R. Sedgewick to Acting Deputy Superintendent
General Indian Affairs, 11 October 1891; [SQU-001298-0001] RG10, volume 1575, C-14851,
1898–1899, NAC, Application for Admission, 30 November 1898. [BQL-008267-0001]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA10-379, 1999-01431-6, box 405, 987/251-018, part 1, Indian Education – Squamish Students Residence, Fraser District, 1950–1969,
NAC Ottawa, P. Phelan to Legal Adviser, 17 November 1952; [SQU-000595] Burnaby, RG10, FA
10-136, volume 11466, 987/18-24, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, P. Phelan to W.
S. Arneil, 22 November 1952. [SQU-001297]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, 1897–1908, “Application for
Admission,” 6 June 1900. [SAR-070003-0000]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, John Nelson to theIndian Commissioner, 14 August 1894. [EDM-009774] For additional information on Seenum,
see: Whitefish Lake First Nation, #128, “Our History,” http://www.wfl128.ca/chief_history.
html (accessed 17 November 2014).
114. Battleford Herald, volume 17, number 10, March 1895.
115. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2552, file 112-220-1, Martin Benson to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 25 September 1903.

792 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, Microfilm
reel C-9802, M. Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 21 February 1907.
[120.00284]
117. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 273.
118. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 269.
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 13 February 1904. [100.00140]
120. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 256–257.
121. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 374.
122. 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; [AGA-001516-0000] Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children(Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1908). [AEMR-010652]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1, Acting
Deputy Minister [Justice?] to Deputy Superintendent General Indian Affairs, 24 June 1908.
[AEMR-177176]
124. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 161.
125. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 155.
126. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 66–67.
127. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 101.
128. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3767, file 33170, G. Mann to Assistant IndianCommissioner, 22 October 1886.
129. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 101.
130. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 167; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 340–341.
131. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 361.
132. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 358.
133. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3922, file 116820, E. Matheson to Frank Pedley,
24 August 1907, cited in Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 236.
134. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 341.
135. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 477.
136. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, Duncan Campbell Scott toFrank Pedley, 19 February 1912, cited in Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,”
261–263.
137. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, xxvi.
138. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 124.
139. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 161. For details of
L’Heureux’s dismissal, see: Library and Archives Canada, Hayter Reed Papers MG 29, E 106,
volume 18, Personnel H-L, J. W. Tims to Indian Commissioner, October 27, 1891 and L.
Vankoughnet to H. Reed, 7 December 1891.
140. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 125.
141. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 76.
142. Lewis, “Anglican Church,” 7; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1887, 124. (Although spelled “Sims” in the source document, this was likely the controversial
Anglican missionary J. W. Tims, who commenced his work in this region in 1883.)
143. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 124, 125.

Notes • 793
144. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 125.
145. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 123.
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3796, file 47249, Hayter Reed to
Indian Commissioner, 5 April 1888. [RCA-010972]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3833, file 65138, part 2, A. Lacombe
to Hayter Reed, 4 September 1888. [MRY-010790]
148. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 214.
149. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 258.
150. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 297; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 474.
151. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, J. D. McLean to Harry Gunn,
30 July 1917.
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, Indian Agent to Father
Naessens, 10 September 1906. [SAC-000870]
153. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, W. J. Dilworth to Assistant
Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 28 July 1917. For Nordmann’s name, see:
Titley, “Dunbow Indian Industrial School,” 107.
154. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B16 668, unsigned letter to J. T. McNally,
22 February 1922. [OGP-090011]
155. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3866, W. M. Graham to Principal,
Ermineskin Roman Catholic Boarding School, 28 October 1922. [OGP-030045]
156. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6553.C73R 5, “Tabulated Record of Industrial
Schools,” 31 December 1902. [OMI-030267]
157. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 110.
158. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 362.
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3919, file 116751-1A, J. P. Magnan to
D. Laird, 10 December 1902. [SBR-003409]
160. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, xxxiii; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 191 (this reflects on the Fort Frances portionof the statement); TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3919, file 1167511A, Clifford Sifton to Governor General in Council, 23 December 1903. [FAR-000095]
161. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, Bishop of Rupert’s Land to E.
Dewdney, 23 January 1891.
162. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 329.
163. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 346.
164. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 191; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, xxxiii.
165. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 375.
166. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 197.
167. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3990, file 175581, J. A. Markle to IndianCommissioner, 28 February 1896.
168. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 233.
169. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 5, file 72, R. B. Heronto R. P. McKay, 6 April 1905. [RIS-000209]
170. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6, file 116, James
Farquharson to R. P. MacKay, 3 December 1908. [RIS-000555]

794 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
171. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 364. For evidence of IndianAffairs dissatisfaction with the management of the Regina school, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, W. M. Graham to Secretary, IndianAffairs, 17 November 1910. [RLS-000027]
172. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 91; TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, A. Sutherland to Superintendent General,
Indian Affairs, 6 January 1893. [EDM-003965]
173. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 91.
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, A. Sutherland to
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 4 January 1898. [EDM-003969]
175. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 384.
176. United Church Archives, A. Sutherland papers, Prairie provinces, Indian missions, Red Deer
Industrial Institute, 1908, A. Barner, Principal, box 133, 19 September 1908, quoted in Fox,
“Failure of Red Deer Industrial School,” 93.
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, W. E. S. James to Frank Oliver, David Laird, and William Verreau, 22
February 1909. [AEMR-255255]
178. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer Industrial School,” 95.
179. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer Industrial School,” 94.
180. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 86.158C, box 2,
file 2, Red Deer Industrial School Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC Docs Toronto, Arthur Barner to A.
Sutherland and T. Ferrier, 4 May 1909. [UCA-080255-0008] For Barner’s role in the campaign
to keep the schools open, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod
Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Arthur Barner to S. H. Blake, 16
February 1909. [AAC-090206]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10421, Shannon Box 450, NAC,
Microfilm reel T-10075, James Seenum to C. E. Hughes, 2 February 1913. [SLA-004016] This isapparently the same James Seenum as discussed earlier in the chapter. Seenum was born inthe early 1840s and died in 1917. See: Whitefish Lake First Nation, #128, “Our History,” http://
www.wfl128.ca/chief_history.html (accessed 17 November 2014).
182. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10412, Shannon Box 40, J. F.
Woodsworth to C. E. Race, 1 August 1914. [EDM-003964]
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, Microfilm reelC-10162, J. F. Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 August 1914. [EDM-000946]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 May 1919; [EDM-000958] file 116818-22 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to James Endicott, 5 June 1919. [EDM-000992]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-1, part 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to James Endicott, 5 June 1919. [EDM-000242]
186. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 24.
187. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 21.
188. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 314.
189. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 423.
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3924, file 116823, E. F. Wilson to theSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 25 June 1888. [ELK-000001]

Notes • 795
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3924, file 116823, E. F. Wilson to theSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 28 April 1891, 10 January 1889. [ELK-000053, ELK000020]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3924, file 116823, Edward F. Wilson to
the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 10 January 1889. [ELK-000020]
193. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 433.
194. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, Clerk of the
Privy Council to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 18 February 1918. [ELK-000248]
195. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1881, 167.
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3918, FA 10-13, file 116.659-1,
1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence Pertaining to Kamloops
Industrial School, J. A. Mackay to A. W. Vowell, 29 May 1892. [KAM-009637]
197. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 259.
198. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 124; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 158.
199. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 235.
200. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 136.
201. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 119.
202. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 136.
203. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 175.
204. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 4, 1926–1933, N.
Coccola to R. H. Moore, 30 September 1927. [LEJ-004381]
205. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, xxxi; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 434.
206. Pettit, “‘To Christianize and Civilize,’” 203.
207. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6038, file 157-1-1, Alfred Adams and five others
to Thomas Deasy, 20 January 1914.
208. 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), 114. 32; “Individuals Responsible for Indian and Northern
Affairs in Canada, 1755 to 2006,” Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada,
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016471/1100100016472 (accessed 22 July 2014).
209. Petites Annales des Missionaires Oblats de Marie Imaculée (Paris, 1912), 262, cited in
Nowakowski, “Indian Residential Schools,” i, 81–82.
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10410, Shannon Box 36, 1918–1920,
Untitled circular, Duncan Campbell Scott, 9 November 1914. [AEMR-200902]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, W. J. Dilworth
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 August 1914. [PUL-000900]
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to W. J. Dilworth, 21 August 1914. [PUL-000901]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, W. J.
Dilworth to the Blood Indians, undated. [BPD-000725]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 1, T. Ferrier toChief Berens, 29 September 1915. [NHU-001892]

796 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
215. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1, E. L.
Newcombe to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 February 1918. [AEMR177180]
216. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, A. F. MacKenzie, 10 December 1919. [AEMR-255278] For letters urging
enforcement of attendance regulations, see: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume6032, file 150-40A, part 1, Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools,
1904–1933, Microfilm reel C-8149, FA 10-17, J. H. Edmison to J. D. McLean, 20 September
1919; [AEMR-255273] D. C. Scott to Mr. Meighen, 11 December 1919; [AEMR-255279] RG10,
volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1, “Resolution on Compulsory Attendance,” Methodist
Church, General Board of Missions, 6 October 1919. [AEMR-177181]
217. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, T. B. R. Westgate to The
Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 21 October 1930.
218. 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,
178–179.
219. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm
reel C-8149, FA 10-17, J. D. McLean to J. W. Waddy, 19 March 1926. [AEMR-255327]
220. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1920, 13.
221. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, xi.
222. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 22.
223. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 308.
224. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 495.
225. 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. [OGP020790]
226. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1924, 15.
227. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, A. M. Boyce to
Indian Affairs, 29 March 1921; [TAY-002416-0001] Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1921, 73.
228. Johnston, Indian School Days, 19.
229. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 7,
file 127, W. McWhinney to Dr. MacKay, 30 November 1909. [CRW-000197]
230. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 65810, part 3, C. P. Schmidt
to the Secretary of the Department of Indian Affairs, 21 May 1929. [PAR-020832]
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6438, file 878-5, part 3, George Forbes
to Deputy Superintendent General, 7 March 1936. [JOE-025233]
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 1, E. A. W. R.
McKenzie to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 September 1935. [MRS-045480]
233. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-10, part 1, George A.
Dodds to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 February 1936. [FHR-001084]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, F. J. Clarke to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 August 1936. [NCA-011528]

Notes • 797
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 757-10, part 1, 1930–1942,
W. B. Murray to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 April 1938. [MOR-071134-0000]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2064, file 265-1, part 1, D. C. Scott to
A. J. Boyd, 23 April 1927. [SRS-000009]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Philip Phelan
to A. Richard, 14 June 1937. [SRS-008116]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, A. Richard to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 16 June 1937. [SRS-007670]
239. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, Charles
Hudson, to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 September 1938. [SRS-007871-0000]
240. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, N. A.
McDougall to Indian Affairs, 28 September 1939. [SRS-005074]
241. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 280-10, part 1, Chas.
Hudson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 20 November 1939. [SRS-007989-0000]
242. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, John R.
McMullen to R. A. Hoey, 9 November 1939. [SRS-004629]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 2, B. Maurault
to Indian Affairs, 26 August 1937. [CRS-000235]
244. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 21.
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3853, file 78880, Affidavit of Es-quasis, 15 April 1891; [PLD-009096-0002] Affidavit of Manitouwastotin, 24 April 1891. [PLD009096-0003]
246. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6303, file 651-1, part 1, D. Laird to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 April 1902. [MRS-001381]
247. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 30 March 190X (last figure not legible).
[120.00219]
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, W. J. Dilworth
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 August 1914. [PUL-000900]
249. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2277, E. Ruaux to Dr. McGill, 16January 1933; [OGP-020855] A. F. MacKenzie to E. Ruaux, 28 March 1933; [OGP-020857] E.
Ruaux to A. F. MacKenzie, 3 April 1933; [OGP-020858] J. E. Pugh to E. Ruaux, 16 May 1933;[OGP-020860] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1544, S. H. Middleton to J. E.
Pugh, 17 January 1933. [MRY-003610]
250. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220/1325, J. H. Allard to Reverend
Provincial Father, 21 February 1935. [THR-000377]
251. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Accession No. 71.220/1325, J. H. Allard, 13 August
1935. [THR-000379]
252. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1925, 13.
253. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to E. Laird, 5 November 1928. [100.00395]
254. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to C. A. Stevenson, 30 June 1927. [AEMR-120374]
255. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to A. D. Menzies, 23 January 1929. [CJC-001357]

798 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
256. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, W. M.
Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 January 1926. [NCA-014625-0000]
257. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, J. D.
McLean to W. M. Graham, 12 February 1926. [NCA-014625-0001]
258. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7184, file 1/25-1-5-7, part 1, W. M.
Graham to Secretary, 19 February 1926. [NCA-014626]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, Joseph Guy to
Duncan C. Scott, 26 October 1925. [SBR-001693-0000]
260. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Appointment of Truant Officers, D. C. Scott, 7 February 1927. [MRS-000045]
261. The following is a listing of RCMP reports from a five-year period, 1928 to 1932, dealing withthe enforcement of the Indian Act attendance provisions: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 1, “RCMP report, re. Kathline Whitecloud,” 18
October, 1928; [PLD-003224-0002] W. Mulhall to W. P. Lyndsay, 3 April 1929; [PLD-0032310001] J. G. Metcalfe to NCO in Charge, RCMP Regina, 12 October 1929; [PLD-003245-0001]
R. W. Greatwood to Indian Affairs, 11 April 1930; [PLD-003278-0001] RG10, volume 6196,
file 464-1, part 1, D. K. Anderson to RCMP, Winnipeg, 27 October 1930; [SJS-000319-0001]
RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 4, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, re Joe
Quinney,” 15 August 1931; [PAR-017103-0001] RCMP report re Joseph Antoine, 20 August
1932; [PAR-017101] RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, RCMP report re William Beaulieu,
5 September 1932; [SBR-110541] RCMP report re Ambrose Sutherland, 8 November 1932.
[SBR-110550]
262. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1544, J. D. McLean to J. E. Pugh, 11
December 1928. [PUL-000017]
263. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1932–33, chapter 42, section 1, amending
Revised Statutes of Canada 1927, chapter 98, section 10, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts,
248.
264. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1931, 12.
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1,
Headquarters – Compulsory Attendance of Pupils – Indian Schools, 1904–1933, Microfilm reelC-8149, FA 10-17, Russell T. Ferrier to T. B. R. Westgate, 28 October 1930. [AEMR-255349]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1014, V. LeGoff to S. L. Macdonald, 21
March 1932. [THR-007124]
267. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1014, Indian Agent to V. LeGoff, 23
March 1932. [THR-007128]
268. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1014, Court Summons, 21 March
1932. [THR-007127]
269. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1014, Indian Agent to George
Lightfoot, 15 November 1932. [THR-007147]
270. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-10, part 1, R. C. Torrens,
RCMP Report, 16 October 1937. [THR-000214-0001]
271. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, R. H. Moore to L. H. Rivet, 8 April
1936. [PRC-000091]
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, L. Beuglet
to His Excellency Bishop Guy, 20 September 1935. [MAR-071113] The correspondence isconfusing in that Gambler’s name is given as John Muchmaton Gambler and Jean Baptiste

Notes • 799
Gambler. But it is clear from the names of his daughters and his Treaty number that the two
names refer to the same person.
273. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, re: John Gambler,” Constable S. L. Grayson, 6 August 1935.
[MAR-071104-0001]
274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, L. Beuglet to
His Excellency Bishop Guy, 29 September 1935. [MAR-071113]
275. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, M.
Christianson to The Officer Commanding, RCMP, Edmonton, Alberta, 24 August 1935; M.
Christianson to Jas. H McIntosh, 24 August 1935; M. Christianson to Secretary of IndianAffairs, 24 August 1935. [MAR-071104-0002, MAR-071104-0003,MAR-071104-0000]
276. Todd Lamirande, “The Power of the Indian Agent: The story behind this 1935 letter,”
APTN National News, N. P. L’Heureux to J. H. McIntosh, 24 July 1935, http://aptn.ca/
news/2014/10/02/power-indian-agent-story-behind-1935-letter/ (accessed 5 October 2014).
277. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, N. P.
L’Heureux to Constable McKay, 1 February 1938. [MAR-071194-0003]
278. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, W. Mortimer
to N. P. L’Heureux, 12 February 1938. [MAR-071194-0002]
279. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, N. P.
L’Heureux to Jean Baptiste Gambler, 5 July 1938. [MAR-071197]
280. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 2, Application
for Admission for Angelique Marguerite Gambler, 11 October 1940; [MAR-071255-0002]
Application for Admission for Annie Clara Gambler, 11 October 1940. [MAR-071255-0001]
281. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, N. P.
L’Heureux to The Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, Dept. of Mines and Resources, 21 January
1938. [JRD-071063] For the name Agnes Cunningham, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, “Application for Admission for Florence
Cardinal,” 1 April 1938. [JRD-071074]
282. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, Philip Phelan
to Paul Serrand, 31 January 1938. [JRD-071067]
283. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, R. A. Hoey toJ. W. McClung, 27 January 1938. [JRD-001362]
284. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, “Application
for Admission for Florence Cardinal,” 1 April 1938. [JRD-071074]
285. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, N. P.
L’Heureux to Wanakew Cardinal, 6 July 1938; [MAR-071198] Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Report re FranÇois (Wanakew) Cardinal, 12 December 1938, D. E. Forsland. [MAR-071200]
286. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 1, 1936–1939, NAC, J. D.
Caldwell to [Severed], 16 March 1939. [KUP-004496]
287. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, W. C. Lewies
to Indian Affairs, 25 July 1939. [MER-001136]
288. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1920, 13.
289. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6810, file 470-2-3, volume 7, Evidence of D.
C. Scott to the Special Committee of the House of Commons Investigating the Indian Act
amendments of 1920, (L-2)(N-3).
290. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 51.

800 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
291. Revised Statutes of Canada 1906, chapter 81, section 89, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts,
204; Moore, Leslie, and Maguire, Historical Development, 103–104.
292. Statutes of Canada 1911, chapter 14, section 2, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 49, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 193.
293. Statutes of Canada 1911, chapter 14, section 1, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 46, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 191.
294. Statutes of Canada 1914, chapter 35, section 8, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 149, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 230.
295. Statutes of Canada 1910, chapter 28, section 3, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 105, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 211; Statutes of Canada 1914,
chapter 35, section 7, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906, chapter 81, section 105,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 211.
296. Statutes of Canada 1918, chapter 26, section 4, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 90, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 206.
297. Statutes of Canada 1919, chapter 56, section 1, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1906,
chapter 81, section 48, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 192.
298. Statutes of Canada 1930, chapter 25, section 16, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1927,
chapter 98, section 141, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 301.
299. Statutes of Canada 1936, chapter 20, section 2, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1927,
chapter 98, section 69, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 269.
300. Statutes of Canada 1930, chapter 25, section 16, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1927,
chapter 98, section 140, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 300.
301. Titley, Narrow Vision, 59.
302. See: Titley, Narrow Vision, 51, for the repeal. For the new provision, see: Statutes of Canada
1932–33, chapter 42, section 7, amending Revised Statutes of Canada 1927, chapter 98,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 287.
303. Titley, Narrow Vision, 147–148.
304. Titley, Narrow Vision, 54–55.
305. Elections Canada, History of the Vote, 85.
306. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1920, 13.

The educational record of residential schools: 1867–1939
1. Canada, House of Commons Debates (9 May 1883), 1108.
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-3, L. Vankoughnet toJohn A. Macdonald, 10 January 1884. [PLD-007553]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to George Prewer, 8 February 1922. [CRS-001015]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to George Prewer, 8 February 1922. [CRS-001015]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, xi.
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 180–181.
8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 126.

Notes • 801
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 173–174.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 299.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 290.
12. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 23.
13. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 104.
14. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 281.
15. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 297.
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 339.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 356.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 288.
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Gordon J.
Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 16 July 1908. [MER-000361]
20. Gidney and Millar, How Schools Worked, 278.
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1209, file 974/2, D. M. MacKay to Dr.
H. W. McGill, 17 April 1939. [KUP-005550-0001]
22. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 65.
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toReverend Thomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, C-8773, “Rules
and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
25. 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. [AGA-001516-0000]
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 171.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 246.
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Duncan
Campbell Scott to Mr. Meighen, 1 June 1920. [NCA-002403]
29. Wallace, First Book of Canadian History, 3–4; Brown, Building the Canadian Nation, 39. (TheTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada would like to thank Kenneth W. Osborne fordrawing these citations to its attention.)
30. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 246–249.
31. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, Andsell Macrae, 18 December
1886, 6.
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 256–356.
34. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 351.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 139.
36. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 101.
37. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3970, “Inspector’s Report on
Ermineskin Indian Residential School,” E. L. Fuller, 2 December 1926. [OGP-032534]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, Duncan
Campbell Scott to Mr. Meighen, 1 June 1920, D. C. Scott to R. S. Thornton, 27 July 1920. [NCA002403, NCA-002407]
39. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1921, 28.

802 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
40. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3679, file 12046, John A. Macdonald,
Memorandum to Council, October 19, 1880.
41. Stamp, “Evolving Patterns,” 316.
42. Gregor and Wilson, Development of Education, 39–40.
43. Stamp, “Evolving Patterns,” 298–299.
44. Gregor, “Teacher Education,” 227.
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897, 4, 25. [100.00108]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, Memorandum, 15 July 1897, 18–19. [100.00108]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, A. W. Neill toA. W. Vowell, 8 July 1909. [ABR-007011-0001]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, A. W. Vowellto Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 July 1909. [ABR-007011-0000]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, “Extract from
Agent Neill’s Report on the West Coast Agency for the Month of March, 1910.” [ABR-007004]
50. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 55. [RCA-000298]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908. [RCA-000298]
53. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1914, xxiii.
54. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, xxx; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1916, xxxv; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1917, 15; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1918, 23;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 33; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1920, 14; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1921, 28; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1922, part
1, 18.
55. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1923, 8.
56. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1924, 15.
57. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1925, 14.
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1,
Alberta Inspectorate, Red Deer, 4 November 1914. [SAC-001227]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. D. McLean to E. Ruaux, 9 April 1923. [MRY-001536]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, J. D.
McLean to E. Ruaux, 3 February 1925. [NCA-003948]
61. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, The Indian And Eskimo Commission of the Missionary Society of the
Church of England in Canada, “Introduction to the Outline of the Duties of the Teacher,” fromthe cover letter, 1922. [AAC-090244]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Duncan C. Scott, 23 March 1923. [AEMR-120285]

Notes • 803
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Duncan C. Scott, 28 April 1923. [AEMR-120291]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 7581, part 1, W. M. Graham, 16 April 1923. [OLD-000405]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, W. M. Graham
to Russell T. Ferrier, 28 February 1922, “Memorandum for File,” Russell T. Ferrier, 17 March
1922. [PLD-007086, PLD-007242]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, W. M. Graham
to Russell T. Ferrier, 28 February 1922. [PLD-007086]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, Graham, 13
December 1923. [PLD-000708]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 655/23-5, Russell T. Ferrier
to W. M. Graham, 3 November 1925. [PLD-008912]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 655/23-5, “Inspectors’
Report on Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School,” 6 February 1929. [PLD-008922-0001]
70. TRC, NRA, Grey Nuns Archives, St. Boniface, Manitoba M6/04/01, Sister Pulvermacher toReverende Mere Ste. Emelienne, 10 May 1932. [GNB-000032]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 655/23-5, Inspector’sReport on Lebret Indian Residential School, R. L. Horning, 17, 18, 27 March 1936. [PLD008942-0001]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 2, Russell T.
Ferrier to J. H. McKechnie, 3 January 1923. [AEMR-177199]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, “Extract from Inspector’s Report on the Kootenay Residential
School,” 31 May 1925. [EGN-008050]
74. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5076, volume 1. School Inspector’s Report, C. K. Rogers, 15 April 1926. [SBR-000884]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, FA 10-17,
Duncan C. Scott to Most Reverend Alfred A. Sinnott, 4 November 1926. [120.18206]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-5, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Duncan Campbell Scott, 16 February 1928. [RLS-000257-0000]
77. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/23-5037, volume 1, W. M. Graham to Indian Affairs, 14 January 1931. [SPR-004999-0000]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 3, “Department
of Indian Affairs, Schools Branch,” 31 March 1935. [SRS-000279]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 4, W. M. Graham
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 February 1922. [ELK-000299]
80. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 83.050C, box 144-21, “Statement of Policy Re Indian
Residential Schools,” June 1936. [UCC-050004]
81. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 4, “Minutes of the Committee of the
Indian Missions of the Oblate Fathers, 12 October 1939.” [OMI-033064]
82. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 194.
83. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 261.
84. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 262.
85. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 276.

804 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, Assistant
Deputy Minister and Secretary to A. Chaumont, 13 June 1911. [PCR-000050]
87. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5075, “Inspector’s report on the Pine Creek Indian Residential School,” J. S. Peach, 19 March
1925. [PCR-000089-0001]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Rev. J. Hugonard, 30 May 1911. [PLD-007442]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, R. H. Cairns,
inspector to J. D. McLean, 5 January 1915. [COQ-000390]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, S. R. McVitty
to DIA Secretary, 17 August 1915; J. D. McLean to S. R. McVitty, 26 August 1915. [MER-000385,
MER-000383]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, “Extract from
Report of Inspector Sexton on the Mount Elgin Residential School,” 31 May, 1 June 1926.
[MER-000457]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, “Extractfrom Report of Mr. Inspector Sexton, dated December 19th, 1927, on the Mount Elgin Indian
Residential school.” [MER-000458]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, “Extract from
Report of Mr. Inspector Sexton, Date December 4th and 5th, 1928, on his inspection of theMount Elgin, Indian Residential School.” [MER-000460]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, “Extract from
report of separate school inspector J. M. Bennet, on Kenora Boarding School,” 27 June 1922.
[KNR-000665]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, “Extractfrom Report of Mr. Inspector Cairns dated September 5th and 6th, 1928 on the Alberni Indian
Residential School.” [ABR-001591]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, Duncan C.
Scott to T. B. R. Westgate, 30 June 1931. [SWK-001540]
97. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 374.
98. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 457.
99. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 349.
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Assistant
Deputy and Secretary to A. S. Grant, 11 April 1916. [CJC-000835]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-6, part 1, Department
of Indian Affairs, “Inspector’s Report on St. Barnabas Indian Residential School,” D. Hicks, 23
and 25 September 1929. [PAR-001011]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-6, part 1, Department
of Indian Affairs, Inspector’s Report on St. Barnabas Indian Residential School, D. Hicks, 30
September 1931. [PAR-001018]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-5, part 4, A. G.
Hamilton Inspection Report, not dated. [DRS000570]
104. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 342–343.
105. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 433–434.
106. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1890, 119.
107. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 323.

Notes • 805
108. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 317.
109. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 320.
110. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
111. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 27–28.
112. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 377.
113. Archives de la Société historique de Saint-Boniface, Fonds Soeurs Grises du Manitoba,
03/31/1 (Photograph).
114. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 83.050C, box 144-21, “Statement of Policy Re Indian
Industrial Schools,” June 1936. [UCC-050004]
115. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 432.
116. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 344.
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, W. J. Dilworth
to Assistant Deputy Indian Affairs, 25 February 1915. [AEMR-120228]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, “Extract from Agent’s Report for the month of August, 1923.” [CFT000175]
119. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
120. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 64.
121. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 76.
122. Graham, Mush Hole, 459.
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, R. B. Heron toRegina Presbytery, April 1923. [AEMR-016371]
124. These are among the main elements of colonial education, as identified by historian Jo-Anne
Fiske in Fiske, “Life at Lejac,” 268–269.
125. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.182C, box 1, file 3, F. E. Pitts
to Dr. Edmison, August 1923. [RIS-000554]
126. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 39–42.
127. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 349–350.
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. D. McLean to Reverend E. Ruaux, 21 June 1915. [MRY-001517]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-5, part 4, Joseph
Hamilton Inspection Report, not dated. [DRS-000570]
130. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/23-5038, volume 1, H. L. Winter to Indian Affairs, 9 September 1932. [MRS-000138-0001]
131. 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, “Report on the Christie
Residential School,” R. H. Cairns, 10 September 1928. [CST-000852]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast Agency –Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931 F.A. 10-17, Microfilm reel
C-8759, Assistant Deputy and Secretary to R. P. McKay, 20 February 1911. “Extract from reportof Mr. Agent Cox on the Ahousaht Boarding School for the month of September, 1914.” [AST200016, AST-200023]
133. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5105, volume 1, J. E. S. Dunlop to Indian Affairs, 15 June 1933. [NHU-001177]
134. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, 96.

806 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
135. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 20.
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-6, part 1, Department
of Indian Affairs Inspector’s Report for the St. Barnabas, Indian Residential school, D. Hicks,
25 September 1928. [PAR-003233]
137. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, S. R. McVitty to Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 30 January 1928.
138. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 452.
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-6, part 1, Inspector ofIndian Agencies to D. C. Scott, 16 March 1915. [PAR-003222]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 302-11, W. M. Veazey toIndian Affairs, 11 December 1924. [THR-000312-0001]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 302-11, Inspector W. H.
Magee, 23 November 1926. [THR-000308]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-10, part 1, “Excerpts
from report of Inspector Campbell Inness on Thunderchild Residential School, 22 February
1937.” [THR-000220-0001]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8449, file 511/23-5-014, “Inspector’sReport on the Birtle Boarding School,” Boyd Morrison, 9 November 1922. [NCA-002531]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-6, part 1, “Inspector’sReport on Anglican Indian Residential School, Onion Lake,” Charles Nivens, 3 June 1926.
[PAR-003231]
145. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/235-018, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on the Gordon’s Indian Residential School,” J. E.
McKechnie, 25 August 1926. [GDC-011270-0001]
146. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/23-5020, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on Muscowequan Indian Residential School,” R. C. Moir,
16 June 1932. [MDD-000680-0001]
147. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/23-5020, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on Muscowequan Indian School,” R. C. Moir, 7 December
1933. [MDD-000687-0001]
148. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 961/23-5,
1922–1964, volume 1, RCAP, “Inspector’s Report on the Kuper Island Indian Residential
School,” G. H. Barry, 23 September 1931. [KUP-000289-0002]
149. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, A. G. Hamilton to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 28 February 1936.
[KNR-000333]
150. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 194.
151. Dion, My Tribe the Crees, 156–163.
152. Morley, Roar of the Breakers, 57, 158.
153. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 14–24.
154. Johnston, Buckskin & Broadcloth, 46.
155. Brantford Expositor, “Norman Lickers First Ontario Indian Lawyer,” November 18, 1938,
quoted in Briggs, “Legal Professionalism,” 2.
156. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 376.
157. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1914, xxiii.
158. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 747.

Notes • 807
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 2, “Successful
Graduates,” 1930; G. Sutherland to Dr. McGill, 4 May 1936. [TAY-004294-0002, TAY-003083]
160. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 170.
161. Gidney and Millar, How Schools Worked, 13.
162. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1926, 17.
163. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1936, 21.
164. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, IERSC Minutes, 01/3310/34, pg.1654-1877, Accession GS-75-103, series 2:15[a], box 18, Missionary Society of the
Church of England in Canada, “Minutes of Meeting of Indian Residential School Commission,
MSCC, Held on Tuesday October 9, 1934.” [AGS-000512]
165. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1939, 223.
166. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/23-5018, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on the Gordon’s School,” J. G. McKechnie, 25 September
1923. [GDC-011278-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Mary B. Ross
to E. B. McKenzie, 14 March 1936. [RLS-000384-0001]
168. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 30 March 190[?] (last figure not legible).
[120.00219]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 December 1901. [100.00132]
170. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 457.
171. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, T. H. Carter toAssistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 October 1914. [AEMR-120224]
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6377, file 766-10, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
F. S. Lajoie, 8 February 1938. [FTV-071050]
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Vol. 6436, File 877-22, pt. 1, J.D. Sutherland,
to Kenneth Beaton, 22 October 1935. [NCA-002385]

The student as labourer: 1867–1939
1. Thommasen, Grizzlies and White Guys, 21–22.
2. 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, 4. [MER-000328]
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, xxvii.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 191.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 273–274.
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-60, part 1, R. A. Hoey,
Circular letter to teachers, 15 January 1937. [AGA-000134]
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 131.
8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 169.
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, Benson, Report on
the Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Schools, 30 August 1895, 35. [TAY-003821-0000]
10. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 20,
file 252, 1935 UCC Commission on Indian Education – United Church Archives – Toronto,

808 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“Report of Commissioner on Indian Education,” Appointed by the Board of Home Missions
and the Woman’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canada, 18. [UCA-081639]
11. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, J. P. Mackey to Secretary
Indian Affairs, 30 January 1939.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2047, file 9212, part 2, L.
Vankoughnet to E. Dewdney, 18 December 1889, 4. [MER-000047-0000]
13. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 158.
14. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 167.
15. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 92.
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1890, 118–119.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 89.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 495.
19. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 372.
20. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 412.
21. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 474.
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 91.
23. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 90.
24. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 195.
25. Speare, Days of Augusta, 18.
26. oUr Space (University of Regina’s DSpace), Interview with Mary Englund 1, conducted by
Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, Tape Number #IH-BC.79, http://ourspace.uregina.ca/
handle/10294/983; oUr Space (University of Regina’s DSpace), Interview with Mary Englund2, conducted by Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, Tape Number #IH-BC.79, http://ourspace.
uregina.ca/handle/10294/984.
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, ‘The Advocate
Newspaper’, Vol. 1, No. 5, November & December 1915, 7. [DRS-000499]
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 288.
29. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 447. Mary Angus was known as Susan
Whitecap when she attended the Battleford school because there were “so many Marys in theschool.” Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 451.
30. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 454.
31. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 108.
32. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 116.
33. Barman, “Separate and Unequal,” 113–116.
34. Mrs. Mary Hickman, Chilliwack, 17 December 1983, quoted in Barman, “Separate andUnequal,” 116.
35. Graham, Mush Hole, 431.
36. Graham, Mush Hole, 441.
37. Graham, Mush Hole, 355.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 287.
39. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 253.
40. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 134.
41. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 323.
42. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 340; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 408–442; Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1906, 446–448.

Notes • 809
43. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 49.
44. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 195.
45. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 133.
46. Titley, “Red Deer Industrial School,” 63–64.
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 27. [RCA-000298]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, M.
Christianson to W. M. Graham, 11 September 1925. [PLP-000954]
49. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 23–24.
50. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 321.
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, Paul Durieu to A. W. Vowell, 15 June 1893. [JOE-070025]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, Martin Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 June 1899. [JOE-070027]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toW. M. Graham, 10 June 1915. [PLD-007460]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to Scott, 23 January 1922. [CRS-001009]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toGeorge Prewer, 5 February 1922. [CRS-001014-0001]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3790, file 44467, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 5 June 1891. [PLD-009489]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3790, file 44467, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, 9 February 1892. [PLD-009509]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3790, file 44467, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, 12 April 1892. [PLD-009513]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889, 4. [TAY-003820-0001]
60. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 115.
61. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 253.
62. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxix.
63. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 114.
64. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 214.
65. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 133.
66. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 326.
67. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 260.
68. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 321.
69. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 276.
70. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 309.
71. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 329.
72. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 267.
73. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 326.
74. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 330.
75. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 393–394.
76. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 451.
77. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 450.

810 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
78. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 613.
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, R. Lee
McCutcheon to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 August 1939. [SRS-004231]
80. 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, 10.
[AGA-001516-0000]
81. The British Postal Museum and Archive, P.O. Savings Bank, http://postalheritage.org.uk/
page/3581/P.O.-Savings-Bank.
82. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 112. TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. E. Forget to Indian Agents and Principals ofIndustrial Schools, 14 December 1897; [AEMR-252032] volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Frank
Pedley to Reverend and dear sirs, 21 March 1908. [AEMR-120155]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. E. Forget to Indian Agents,
Principals of Industrial Schools, 14 December 1897. [AEMR-252032]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. E. Forget to Indian Agents,
Principals of Industrial Schools, 3 February 1898. [AEMR-252033]
85. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 155.
86. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 139.
87. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1 A, H. Reed to Bishop of
Rupert’s Land, 31 May 1893.
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
89. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 266.
90. TRC, CAR, United Church Archives, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Board of Foreign
Missions, Records Pertaining to Missions to Aboriginal People in Manitoba and the North
West, 79.199C, box 8, file 146, C1101, W. W. McLaren to Dr. Farquharson, May 2, 1912.
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, H. Janes to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 September 1915, 3–4. [MER-000384-0000]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, Report on the Kootenay Agency, G. S. Pragnell, 13 September 1923.
[EGN-007948]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, W. M.
Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 9 June 1930. [NCA-003893]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, NAC,
Russell Ferrier to W. M. Graham, 14 June 1930.[PUL-007872]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-1, part 1, G. C.
Mortimer to W. E. Ditchburn, 23 October 1931. [EDM-000307]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-1, part 1, Eddy Smith to
G. C. Mortimer, 18 October 1931. [EDM-000308]
97. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 701/23-17 volume 1 03/32-05/63 CR-HQ,
M. Christiansen to Dr. Scott, 25 March 1932. [RCA-000507]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 3, Russell T.
Ferrier to T. D. Irvin, 7 November 1930. [SRS-001370]
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, part 1, draft
letter, 22 May 1929. [SWK-001295]

Notes • 811
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, T. R. L.
MacInnes to Mrs. D. T. L. McKerroll, 12 November 1936. [CJC-000703]
101. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2276, W. M. Graham to Reverend
Principal, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, 16 June 1930. [OGP-020833]
102. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 74.
103. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 93.
104. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 467.
105. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 468.
106. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 470.
107. Graham, Mush Hole, 451.
108. Graham, Mush Hole, 359.
109. Graham, Mush Hole, 361.
110. Informant B, quoted in Fiske, “Life at Lejac,” 255.
111. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 59.
112. 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]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to D. C. Scott, 18 October 1916. [PLD-000491]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to W. M. Graham, 17 November 1916. [PLD-007468]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-9807, Deputy Superintendent General to C. Cahill, 1 March 1917. [AEMR-013531]
116. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 114.
117. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 361–362.
118. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 149–150.
119. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 49.
120. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 264.
121. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 167.
122. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 150.
123. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 434.
124. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 383.
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6471, file 890-11, part 1, 1929–1939, T.
J. Fahlman to D. Scott, 30 September 1930. [MIS-001706]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, Extract from letter of Agent G. H. Gooderham, Dated June 10, 1922, on
the Crowfoot School. [CFT-000161]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1,
part 1, Commissioner W. M. Graham, 16 April 1923. [OLD-000405]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to W. J. McAllen, 20 October 1924. [LEJ-001014]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, Frank Flatfootto Indian Affairs, 26 May 1923. [PCR-000058]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, A. Ogletree toActing Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 30 June 1923. [PCR-000061]
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Frank Flatfoot, 27 November 1923. [PCR-000062]

812 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, Frank Flatfootto Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 January 1924, 3. [PCR-000063]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Frank Flatfoot, 24 January 1924. [PCR-000064]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, A. Ogletree toFrank Flatfoot, 11 March 1924. [PCR-000070]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, “Extract fromthe Inspector’s report on Pine Creek Indian Residential School, includes Commissioner’scomments, 4 March 1926.” [PCR-000094]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6435, file 877-11, part 1, “Extractfrom Report of Inspector Cairns on the Alberni Residential School,” 1 September 1926. [ABR007076]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6435, file 877-11, part 1, “Extractfrom Report of Mr. Inspector Cairns dated November 9th and 10th, 1927 on the Alberni Indian
Residential School.” [ABR-007079]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6427, file 875-5, part 2, “Extract from
Report of Mr. Inspector Cairns dated May 2nd, 1928 on his inspection of the Alert Bay Boys’
Residential School.” [MIK-003796]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1,
Agent’s Report respecting the Blood, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School for the Month ofOctober 1929. [NCA-003885]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1,
Agent’s Report respecting the Blood, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School for the Month ofNovember 1930. [MRY-009594]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-11, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 18 March 1931. [SRS-000721]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1,
Agent’s Report respecting the Blood, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School for the Month of
May 1932; [NCA-003914] March 1935. [NCA-003932]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-5, part 3, “Extract from
Report of Public School Inspector Skuce, regarding his inspection of the Chapleau Indian
Residential School, on December 2nd, 1931.” [CRS-001508]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6435, file 877-11, part 1, “Extract from
Inspector Barry’s Report regarding his visit to the Alberni Indian Residential School on April
26th, 1932.” [ABR-007112]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, M.
Christiansen to Harold McGill, 15 May 1936. [NCA-003938]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, C.
Pant Schmidt to Harold McGill, 23 November 1938. [MRY-009652]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, “Extracts fromletter received from Rev. W. A. Hendry, 7 October 1930.” [PLP-000961]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 6, S. R. McVitty
to Secretary Indian Affairs, 3 January 1929. [MER-000751]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 6, J. D. McLean
to S. R. McVitty, 7 January 1929. [MER-000752]

Notes • 813
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 6, S. R. McVitty
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 31 May 1929. [MER-000757]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 2, J. Brachet toRussell T. Ferrier, 24 September 1928. [PCR-010241]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6188, file 461-5, part 5, A. G.
Hamilton to Acting Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 26 February 1936, 2. [CJC-000953-0000]
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 2, J. Brachet to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 July 1929. [PCR-000117]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6271, file 582-5, part 4, J. Brachet to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 November 1931. [PCR-004366]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to A. F. MacKenzie, 20 May 1930. [SRS-000252]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6219, file 471-13, part 1, Paul J. Gros
Louis to Indian Affairs, 6 June 1932; [AGA-000068] Paul H. Groslouis to Indian Affairs, 28
December 1938. [AGA-000164]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6219, file 471-13, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to J. Howitt, 13 June 1932. [AGA-000069]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6219, file 471-13, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
M. A. Bastien, 6 January 1939. [AGA-000166]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11552, file 312-11, R. W. Frayling to J.
W. Waddy, 9 February 1935. [GDC-000530-0001]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11552, file 312-11, R. W. Frayling to
A. E. MacKenzie, 25 February 1935. [GDC-000530-0000] This document is described as being
in file 11552 by the NRA database. The image, however, is stamped as being in volume 11553.
The letter is addressed to A. E. MacKenzie. It was likely intended for A. F. MacKenzie.
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 3, William Hall
to Indian Affairs, 30 April 1936. [PLD-000746]
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to G. Leonard, 6 May 1936. [PLD-006119]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 3, G. Leonard to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 May 1936. [PLD-000749]
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to William Hall, 18 May 1936. [PLD-000750]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 3, William Hall
to Indian Affairs, 30 April 1936. [PLD-000746]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876A-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1931–1950 F.A. 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, A. E. Caldwell to P. B. Ashbridge, 28 February 1938. [AST-200154-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, Microfilm reel
C-88754, NAC, R. C Scott to A. O’N. Daunt, 14 May 1938. [COQ-000564]
168. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 69.
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Copy ofCatherine Sacks Statement, n.d. [SRS-000280-0004]
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 October 1936. [SRS-000280-0000]

814 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
171. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson, to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 16. [100.00109]
172. ChiefCalf, “Victorian Ideologies,” 127.
173. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 177.
174. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 221.
175. Graham, Mush Hole, 443.
176. Graham, Mush Hole, 451.
177. Calf Robe, Siksika, 11–14.
178. Titley, “Industrial Education,” 392.
179. Boon, These Men Went Out, 39–40.
180. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 18.
181. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 322.
182. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 322.
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, M.
Christianson to Dr. McGill, 2 June 1937, 2. [SRS-000083]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, R. A. Hoey toJ. P. Mackey, 14 June 1937. [SRS-000084]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey toJ. P. Mackey, 21 January 1939. [SRS-000085]
186. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, J. P. Mackey to Secretary
Indian Affairs, 30 January 1939.

Recreation and sports: 1867–1939
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 351.
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 375.
3. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948,“Indian Children at Festival,” Calgary Daily Herald, 10 May 1932. [MOR-004254-0001]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 42. [RCA-000298]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 361.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, “Christmas Treeat the Industrial School,” Elkhorn Mercury, 6 January 1910. [ELK-000220]
8. United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Accession No. 2000.135C /TR, Fonds 3558,
Marion Steele Noble Laing Fonds, 1898–1912, J. W. Russell to Minnie Steele, 1898.
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 11. [100.00109]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1544, J. D. McLean to R. N. Wilson, 2October 1909. [PUL-000002]
11. Mattison, “On the March,” 6.
12. Mattison, “On the March,” 6.
13. Herbert, “Nineteenth-Century Bands,” 12, 16.
14. Herbert, “Nineteenth-Century Bands,” 23, 29, 30–32.

Notes • 815
15. “Music in Humble Life,” Household Words (11 May 1850): 161–164, quoted in Herbert,“Nineteenth-Century Bands,” 33.
16. Herbert, “Nineteenth-Century Bands,” 34.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 383.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 446, 457.
19. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 115.
20. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 364.
21. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 427.
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 391.
23. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 345.
24. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 174.
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 3 November 1936. [CJC-000705]
26. Neylan, “Here Comes the Band,” 48.
27. Neylan, “Here Comes the Band,” 54.
28. Neylan, “Here Comes the Band,” 56–59.
29. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 155.
30. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 187.
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 279. The history of libraries
in residential schools is described and analyzed in greater detail in Edwards, Paper Talk,
73–83.
32. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 330.
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 349.
34. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 230, 259.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 297.
36. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 258.
37. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 312.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 349.
39. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 356.
40. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 388.
41. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 318.
42. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 338.
43. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 304.
44. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 417.
45. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 437.
46. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 467–468.
47. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 389.
48. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 472.
49. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 400.
50. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 459.
51. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 187.
52. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Northern Lights, January
1913. [DYK-201301]
53. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Lucy L. Affleck to Dr. Barner, 3
October 1929. [UCB-005108]
54. Moss, Manliness and Militarism, 82–83.

816 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
55. Moss, Manliness and Militarism, 61–89.
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, MG17, B2, Class ‘G’ C.1/1.0, Appendix D, The
Guide, December 1895. [PAR-003614]
57. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Northern Lights, January
1913. [DYK-201301]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, Microfilm reelC-10162. The Wawaskasoo, March 1916. [EDM-000951]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, The Advocate,
March and April 1916. [DRS-000500]
60. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
27, The Gazette, March 1933; [GSA-000025] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426,
file 875-1, part 3, St. Michael’s Indian Residential School, Alert Bay, B.C. News Letter, No. 4,
January 1934. [MIK-000317]
61. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B227 8848, The Moccasin News, 9October 1937. [OGP-032717]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 150-62, part 1, Headquarters – Publicationsof Residential Schools, 1937–1946, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6034, Moccasin Telegram,
December 1937. [BQL-200187]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6034, file 150-62, part 1, Thunder
Report, number 2, 1938. [THR-000711-0001]
64. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
27, The Gazette, March 1933. [GSA-000025]
65. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 10.
66. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 67.
67. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 39–42.
68. Mott, “Games and Contests,” 19–20, 22.
69. Fisher, Lacrosse, 12–16; Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 26–27; Mott, “Games and Contests,”
20–22.
70. Cosentino and Howell, History of Physical Education, 3; Fisher, Lacrosse, 21.
71. Fisher, Lacrosse, 12–16; Mott, “Games and Contests,” 20–23.
72. Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, 250.
73. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford, 168.
74. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 69.
75. Quoted in J. Purcell, “English Sport and Canadian Culture in Toronto, 1876–1911,” Master’s ofPhysical Education thesis, University of Windsor, 41–42, quoted in Metcalfe, Canada Learns
to Play, 126.
76. Hall, Girl and the Game, 25–26.
77. Hall, Girl and the Game, 7–8; Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 126.
78. Hall, Girl and the Game, 28–29.
79. Lenskyj, “Femininity First,” 188–189.
80. Red Man and Helper, 24 October 1902, 1, quoted in Adams, Education for Extinction, 186;
more generally, see: Adams, Education for Extinction, 181–191.
81. Adams, Education for Extinction, 188.
82. Buford, Native American Son, 342.
83. Child, Boarding School Seasons, 4.
84. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 11, 48, 63, 86.

Notes • 817
85. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 13.
86. Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 52.
87. Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play, 47–98.
88. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 146–147.
89. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 114.
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, “Resolutionsof the Indian Worker’s Association of the Presbyterian Church for Saskatchewan and
Manitoba,” 1911. [CRW-000285-0002]
91. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 98.
92. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 251.
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 3, The
Thunderbird, Alert Bay Indian Residential School, volume I, Easter 1928. [MIK-000291]
94. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 322.
95. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 260.
96. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 353.
97. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 260; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 353; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1899, 392.
98. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,20a.
99. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,
15a.
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 757-5, part 2, volume 6356, 1926–1934, NAC, M.
Christianson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 January 1933. [MOR-005622]
101. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 429.
102. Calf Robe, Siksika, 7.
103. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 313.
104. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 322.
105. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 392.
106. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 320.
107. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 372.
108. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 413.
109. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 384.
110. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 22.
111. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 348.
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, “Extract from
Inspector’s Report on the St Mary’s Mission Boarding School, November 24th and 25th,” R. H.
Cairns. [MIS-001493]
113. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 379.
114. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 323.
115. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 349–350.
116. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 430.
117. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools, 19.

818 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
118. For evidence of physical activity including calisthenics, see: Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 293, 296, 299, 302, 311, 318, 319, 338, 340, 341, 364, 439,
441, 463, 471, 499, 501, 502, 507, 533, 538, 548, 564, 583, 584, 591; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1912, 309, 311, 318, 328, 329, 330, 333, 339, 342, 358, 371,
396, 449, 450, 455, 458, 459, 460, 472, 483, 493, 495, 501, 530, 537, 542, 549, 550, 551, 560, 567,
576, 577, 578, 582.
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Inspection
report, 31 October 1929. [DRS-000566]120. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Lucy L. Affleck to Dr. Barner, 3
October 1929. [UCB-005108]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to R. J. Ross, 25 June 1930. [RLS-000308]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, “Extract from
report of J. P. B. Ostrander, Indian Agent, for month of December 1930, on Round Lake Indian
Residential School.” [RLS-000879]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6221, file 472-23, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
A. G. Hamilton, 30 December 1936. [MCI-004998]
124. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, T. M. Kennedy to Reverend
Father Provincial, 1 December 1937. [OKM-000248]
125. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, T. M. Kennedy to Reverend
Father Provincial, 1 December 1937. [OKM-000248]
126. Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 52; Adams, Education for Extinction, 188; Forsyth, “Bodies
of Meaning,” 16.
127. Cosentino and Howell, History of Physical Education, 13–14, 23–34.
128. Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 33.
129. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 155.
130. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 20.
131. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 98–99.
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, “Report on the
Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Board Schools,” Benson, 30 August 1895. [TAY-0038210000]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 649-1, part 2, George Ley
King to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 February 1899; [SWK-001434] J. D. McLean to George
L. King, 10 February 1899; [SWK-001435] J. D. McLean to Deputy Minister of Militia andDefence, 13 February 1899. [SWK-001436]
134. Cosentino and Howell, History of Physical Education, 38.
135. Socknat, Witness against War, 35–36.
136. Dunae, “Strathcona Trust,” http://www.viu.ca/homeroom/content/topics/programs/st.htm(accessed 1 May 2013).
137. Cosentino and Howell, History of Physical Education, 27.
138. Socknat, Witness against War, 112.
139. Socknat, Witness against War, 114.
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, J. D. McLean toA. E. Wilson, 14 November 1912. [ELK-000240]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 1, Assistant
Deputy Minister and Secretary to A. K. O. Ockoniy, 7 June 1917. [LEJ-000944]

Notes • 819
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 881-1, part 1, Stuart Lake Agency – Lejac
Residential School – General Administration, 1905–1934 F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6443,
Microfilm reel C-8767, A. O. Ockoniy to W. Allan, 14 June 1922. [LEJ-200235-0001]
143. Socknat, Witness against War, 132.
144. Socknat, Witness against War, 286–287.
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-17, part 1, Russell
Ferrier to Rhodes, 19 November 1931. [FHR-000818]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-17, part 1, F. Rhodes to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1931. [FHR-000819]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6214, file 469-17, part 1, Benjamin
Fuller to Russell T. Ferrier, 17 August 1928. [SWK-001623]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6214, file 469-17, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to B. P. Fuller, 24 August 1928. [SWK-001624]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, “Mohawk
Cadets Passed Inspection,” Brantford Expositor, 2 July 1920. [TAY-003597]
150. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 318.
151. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 325.
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to E. Fiset, 5 September 1918. [PLD-007510]
153. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1912, 511.
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 3, The
Thunderbird, Alert Bay Indian Residential School, volume I, Easter 1928. [MIK-000291]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 888-11, part 1, Lytton Agency – St. George’s
Residential School – Vocational Training – Supplies – F.A.10-17, Perm. volume 6466,
Microfilm reel C-8785, “Indian Residential Schools Cadet Corps,” n.d. [GRG-250064-0001]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-10-004, volume 10316, 1925–1958 NAC, L.
W. Miller to S. Middleton, 19 June 1925. [PUL-003155]
157. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file A.320/571, Indian [and Eskimo] School
Commission, 1933–1937, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1640, Archival Box 41 Anglican Dioceseof Athabasca Fonds, “Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary Society of
the Church of England in Canada, St. Paul’s Indian Residential School, The Blood Reserve,
Cardston, Alberta,” 1933. [PUL-800286]
158. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 9-8.1, box
131. “St. Barnabas, M.S.CC.,” no date. [GSA-000034]
159. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2837, file 171340, Wm. Hamilton Merritt to The
Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs, 11 May, 1898.
160. Lackenbauer and McGowan, “Competing Loyalties,” 96. For a biography of William Hamilton
Merritt senior, see: J. J. Talman, “William Hamilton Merritt,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/
merritt_william_hamilton_1855_1918_14E.html (accessed 13 May 2014).
161. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2837, W. Hamilton Merritt to Deputy Minister
Indian Affairs, 11 May 1898, H. C. Ross to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 May 1898.
162. Morris, Treaties of Canada, 69, 230, 234.
163. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2991, Microfilm reel C-11307, file 215-977,
Indian Affairs Notice to all Superintendents, 22 April 1900, quoted in Winegard, King and
Kanata, 37.
164. Winegard, King and Kanata, 38.

820 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
165. Winegard, King and Kanata, 7.
166. Winegard, King and Kanata, 9.
167. House of Lords Records Office/Parliamentary Archives (London, United Kingdom), Andrew
Bonar Law Papers, BL/55/16. Memorandum: Colonial Office to Governors General and
Administrators of British Dominion, Colonies and Protectorates, 8 October 1915, quoted in
Winegard, King and Kanata, 54.
168. Winegard, King and Kanata, 9.
169. Winegard, King and Kanata, 6.
170. Winegard, King and Kanata, 50–51; Veterans Affairs Canada, Orders and Decorations, http://
www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/cmdp/mainmenu/group01 (accessed 5 July 2013).
171. Winegard, King and Kanata, 110.
172. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 370.
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, J. W.
Tims to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 February 1911; [PUL-000882] Provincial Archives ofAlberta, file A.320/571, Indian [and Eskimo] School Commission, 1933–1937, Archival Acc.
PR1970.0387/1640, Archival Box 41 Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, “Indian Residential
School Commission of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, St. Paul’s
Indian Residential School, The Blood Reserve, Cardston, Alberta,” 1933. [PUL-800286]
174. Forsberg, Chief Mountain, 33–40.
175. Dempsey, “Indians and World War One,” 3–4; Dempsey, “Albert Mountain Horse,” http://
www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=41736 (accessed 1 May 2013).
176. Winegard, King and Kanata, 5.
177. Forsberg, Chief Mountain, 37–47.
178. Dempsey, “Albert Mountain Horse,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.
php?BioId=41736 (accessed 1 May 2013); Winegard, King and Kanata, 3–5.
179. Winegard, King and Kanata, 70–72.
180. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6766, file 452-13, Glen Campbell to D. C. Scott, 3
February 1916.
181. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6766, file 452-13, D. C. Scott to Glen Campbell, 7
February 1916.
182. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6766, file 452-13, D. C. Scott to C. Brouillet, 22
February 1916.
183. Winegard, King and Kanata, 71.
184. Thompson, Chief Peguis, 61.
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1393, “Report of W. W. Gibson,
Principal of the File Hills Boarding School for the year ended March 31st, 1916.” [FHR-0015100000]
186. Lackenbauer and McGowan, “Competing Loyalties,” 103, 114; Winegard, King and Kanata,64.
187. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1930, 21.
188. Lackenbauer and McGowan, “Competing Loyalties,” 100; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 2, “Successful Graduates,” undated. [TAY-0042940002]
189. Montour, Brown Tom’s School Days, 69.
190. Winegard, King and Kanata, 112–113.

Notes • 821

The deadly toll of infectious diseases: 1867–1939
1. Scott, “Indian Affairs,” 615.
2. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3940, file 121698-13, Summary of statements
made at meeting attached to correspondence, H. R. Halpin to Secretary, Indian Affairs,
16 November 1897. For Kah-pah-pah-mah-am-wa-ko-we-ko-chin’s name and his being
deposed from office, see: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3940, file 121698-13,
Extract of a report of a Committee of the Honourable Privy Council Approved his Excellency
on the 20 September 1897.
3. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
4. These gaps are discussed in a separate volume of this report.
5. Bynum, Spitting Blood, xiv–xix, xxiii; Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 73; Lux, Medicine that
Walks, 42; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 4–5, 42.
6. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 5–6.
7. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 5, 72.
8. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 29, 69.
9. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 158.
10. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 90, 119–120.
11. Grzybowski and Allen, “Tuberculosis,” 1025; Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 8–10, 199–203,
231.
12. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 8–10, 96.
13. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 176–177.
14. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 181; Bynum, Spitting Blood, 138–145.
15. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 39, 41.
16. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 142–143.
17. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 146–147; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 23–24.
18. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 153–156; Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 41.
19. Rosenblatt, “Pulmonary Tuberculosis,” 173.
20. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 209–211.
21. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 185–186; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 189–192, 253;
Murray, “Century of Tuberculosis,” 1181.
22. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 189–200; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 197.
23. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 198.
24. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 3.
25. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 57; Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 15.
26. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 17.
27. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 8.
28. Farrell, Congress on Tuberculosis, 12.
29. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 27–28; Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 42.
30. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 32–33.
31. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 160.
32. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 164–165.
33. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 41.
34. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 45, 138.
35. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 133.
36. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 45–47.
37. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 48.

822 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
38. Hader, “Effect of Tuberculosis,” 132–133; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 95, 139–140.
39. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 87, 103.
40. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 67.
41. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 93.
42. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 168–169, 177.
43. Wherrett , Miracle of Empty Beds, 41.
44. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 292.
45. Finkel, Social Policy, 101–102.
46. Much of the following discussion draws heavily on the work of Maureen Lux’s Medicine that
Walks.
47. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health, 48.
48. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health, 49.
49. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 191; Ferguson, “Tuberculosis Among the Indians,” 7.
50. Pepperell et al., “Dispersal of Mycobacterium,” 6528.
51. Ferguson, “Some Light Thrown on Infection,” 18–19; Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 99.
52. Dubos and Dubos, White Plague, 191; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 3.
53. Ferguson, “Tuberculosis Among the Indians,” 10, 12; Ferguson, “Some Light Thrown on
Infection,” 24.
54. Ferguson, “Some Light Thrown on Infection,” 24.
55. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 255.
56. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, Treaty No. 6, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/
eng/1100100028710/1100100028783.
57. Morris, The Treaties of Canada, 185.
58. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, xxxvi.
59. Hader, “Effect of Tuberculosis,” ii.
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2873, file 851-1-9, part 1, P. E. Moore
to D. G. Emerson, 31 August 1954. [AEMR-171159]
61. For an example, see: McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 76–68.
62. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 142–147.
63. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3632, file 6326, R. N. Wilson to Superintendent
General Indian Affairs, 3 February 1901.
64. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3067, file 254-017-1, Circular to Indian Supts.
and Agents, 1 March 1902.
65. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 10.
66. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3067, file 254-017-1.
67. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3654, file 8904, Laird to Mills, 22 May 1878, citedin Lux, Medicine that Walks, 33.
68. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3744, file 29506-2, Augustus Jukes to F. White, 17
October 1882.
69. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3745, file 29506-4 part 1, O. C. Edwards to
MacDonald.
70. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 45.
71. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health, 187–188. For an example of withholding
rations, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. J. McNeill to D.
Laird, 10 December 1901. [SAR-000404]
72. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 49.

Notes • 823
73. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4048, file 360377, General instructions to newly
appointed Indian agents in British Columbia, 1910; Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 3086, file 279222-1, Circular to all Agents in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta,
from J. D. McLean, 17 December 1906; and to all Agents from J. D. McLean, 13 April 1908,
quoted in Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 89–90.
74. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 182–183.
75. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 110.
76. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, xiv.
77. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxiv.
78. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3949, file 126345, H. Reed to A. E. Forget, 14
February 1895; F. X. Girard to Indian Commissioner, 1 April 1895; N. J. Lindsay to A. E. Forget,
31 May 1895; A. B. Stewart to A. E. Forget, 12 March 1895.
79. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, xix–xx.
80. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, xix–xx.
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toThomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, Rules andRegulations, Kootenay Industrial School, 17 October 1889. [AEMR-011621A]
83. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3765, file 31161, M. M. Seymour to John A.
Macdonald, received 30 September 1885; Edgar Dewdney to Superintendent General, IndianAffairs, 17 October 1885.
84. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 173.
85. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-5, H. Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 13 May 1891.
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, H. J. Denovan, 1
May 1901. [EDM-009805]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, D. Laird to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 17 May 1904. [EDM-009841]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, J. A. Graham toJ. A. Sinclair, 2 February 1904. [RIS-000075]
89. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 139; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 88.
90. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 137.
91. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 139.
92. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 128.
93. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 96.
94. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 128.
95. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 173.
96. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, Indian Commissioner toSuperintendent General Indian Affairs, 2 October 1884.
97. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 141.
98. Wasylow, “History of Battlefield Industrial School,” 462.
99. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, Bishop of Rupert’s Land to E.
Dewdney, 27 November 1890.
100. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3765, file 3275-3, unsigned to IndianCommissioner, received 26 January 1892.

824 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2765, file 822-1-A901, part 1, P. H.
Bryce to F. Pedley, 26 March 1906. [NPC-600090]
102. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3881, file 934189, M. Begg to A. Forget, 23
February 1895.
103. Dempsey, Amazing Death of Calf Shirt, 190–191.
104. Dempsey, Amazing Death of Calf Shirt, 193.
105. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, R. G. MacDonnell to Alex
McGibbon, 29 May 1895.
106. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, R. G. MacDonnell to Alex
McGibbon, 29 May 1895.
107. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, Hayter Reed to A.E. Forget, 6April 1895.
108. Chambers, Royal North-West Mounted Police, 116.
109. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, W. M. Baker to Alex McGibbon,
1 June 1895.
110. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, John McCrea to Alex
McGibbon, 31 May 1895.
111. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3912, file 111762, R. G. MacDonnell to Alex
McGibbon, 29 May 1895. The name is spelled MacDonell in the original, but is actually
MacDonnell. See Lethbridge Herald, “Death Calls One More MacLeod Pioneer,” 19 March
1915.
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, M. Begg to theIndian Commissioner, 2 May 1895; [OLD-008058-0001] W. M. Baker to Alex McGibbon, 6 June
1895. [OLD-008067-0002]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, IndianCommissioner to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 27 February 1896. [OLD008076]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, “That BlackfootTrouble: The Missionary’s Flight,” Toronto Globe, 5 [?] July 1895. [OLD-008068-0001]
115. Pettit, “‘To Christianize and Civilize,’” 302.
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-1, volume 1346, Microfilm reel
C-13916, Cowichan Agency – Incoming Correspondence re Kuper Island Industrial School,
1891–1907, NAC Ottawa, G. Donckele to W. R. Robertson, 25 October 1900. [KUP-022107]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Elijah Manass
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 April 1902. [MER-000321]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, W. W.
Shepherd to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 April 1902. [MER-000322]
119. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3931, file 117377-1C, A. Gordon to C. Sifton, 18
January 1902.
120. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 107.
121. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 91–97.
122. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 88.
123. Daschuk, Clearing the Plains, 176–177.
124. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 209.
125. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3964, file 149874, “Statement showing status of
pupils discharged from Industrial Schools up to 30th June 1897.” [RIS-000341]

Notes • 825
126. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 313.
127. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 255.
128. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 292.
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6334, file 662-1, part 1, J. Decorby toWilfrid Laurier, 15 June 1899. [SPR-001903-0001]
130. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, A. B. Stewart to IndianCommissioner, 20 June 1896; W. J. Lindsay to Indian Commissioner, June 6, 1896; J. L. Hicks to
Indian Commissioner, 6 June 1896; S. E. Macadam, 5 June 1896; R. Spencer to A. E. Forget, 11June 1896.
131. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, Hayter Reed to A. E. Forget,
10 July 1896.
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, W. R. Tucker
to Department of Indian Affairs, 26 May 1904. [PLD-008659-0001]
133. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, P. H. Bryce to F. Pedley, 5
November 1909.
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 1, David Laird to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 16 September 1904. [PLD-007062-0000]
135. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-5, H. Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 13 May 1891.
136. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 453.
137. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 475.
138. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 429.
139. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 384.
140. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 473.
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3733, file 27089, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 6 June 1887. [PLD-009609-0000]
142. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3917, file 116575-5, M. M. Seymour, M.D. to
Indian Commissioner, 17 September 1895.
143. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3917, file 116575-5, Deputy Superintendent
General, Indian Affairs to Indian Commissioner, 14 November 1895.
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 11 May 1903. [RIS-000045]
146. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3917, file 116575-5, M. M. Seymour, M.D. to
Indian Commissioner, 17 September 1895.
147. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 400.
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
149. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 140.
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1135, no file number, Illegible for theCommissioner, to Principals, 26 May 1896. [EDH-002544-0000]
151. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 346.
152. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 208.
153. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 330.
154. Meijer Drees, “Reserve Hospitals,” 149–176.

826 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3909, file 107557, J. D. Lafferty to
Clifford Sifton; [OLD-008886-0001] Lux, Medicine that Walks, 114.
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3909, file 107557, “Memorandum:
Mr. Smart,” 29 December 1899. [OLD-008210]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1, Martin
Benson, 8 February 1901. [MRY-009509]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, 1 June 1903. [RIS-000047]
159. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Frank Pedley to the IndianCommissioner, 2 June 1903.
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6212, file 469-5, part 1, S. E. Fleming
M.D., J. Douglas McLean M.D. and R. J. Gibson M.D. to the Shingwauk Indian School Board ofManagement, 6 March 1906. [SWK-001274-0001]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 2 September 1908; [CRS-000816]
J. D. McLean to H. A. West, 4 September 1908; [CRS-000817] H. A. West to J. D. McLean, 5September 1908. [CRS-001136-0000]
162. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3993, file 186790, J. A. Markle to Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 17 October 1905.
163. Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in Canada, 49th Annual Report, 1873, xxxi, quoted in
Graham, Mush Hole, 237.
164. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1A, “Third Annual
Report of the Rupert’s Land Industrial School for the Year Ending 30 September 1892.”[2058143]
165. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3965, file 150000-4, David Laird to the Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 10 July 1901; Martin Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 September 1901.
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3965, file 150000-4, J. D. Lafferty toDavid Laird, 18 July 1905. [PLD-008573-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3965, file 150000-4, Martin Benson to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 16 May 1906. [PLD-008573-0000]
168. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3965, file 150000-4, David Laird to Frank Pedley,
3 May 1906.
169. Bryce, Story of a National Crime, 3.
170. Brown and Cook, Canada, 55–56, 68.
171. Brown and Cook, Canada, 79.
172. Brown and Cook, Canada, 63.
173. T. S. Sproule, in Canada, House of Commons Debates (1903), 6591, quoted in Brown and
Cook, Canada, 73.
174. Palmer, Patterns of Prejudice, 28.
175. Brown and Cook, Canada, 55.
176. Peter H. Bryce, Sessional Papers 1910, number 25, 110, quoted in Avery, Dangerous
Foreigners, 19. For differences in the immigration policies of Sifton and Oliver, see: Avery,
Dangerous Foreigners, 96–97.
177. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, xx–xxi.
178. Bryce, Story of a National Crime, 3.
179. Sproule-Jones, “Crusading for the Forgotten,” 203.

Notes • 827
180. Peter Bryce, “The Struggle against Tuberculosis,” in National Council of Women of Canada,
Yearbook (1908), 34, quoted in McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 7.
181. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 274–275.
182. Farrell, Congress on Tuberculosis, 12.
183. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 276.
184. McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 19.
185. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 277.
186. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 282.
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, C. E. Carthew
to W. M. Graham, 26 January 1903. [FHR-000011]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, “Report on
the Coqualeetza Institute For The Year Ending June 30, 1910.” [COQ-000375]
189. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 282.
190. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, F. Fisher to Frank Oliver,
29 June 1906; “Copy of Resolution No. 30, Tuberculosis Among Indians,” Associated Boardsof Trade of Western Canada, Third Annual Convention, Edmonton, Alberta, 13 and 14 June
1906; Secretary Treasurer, Saskatchewan Medical Association to Frank Pedley, 28 March 1906;
R. R. Earle to Frank Pedley, 5 June 1906.
191. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools, 18.
192. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools, 17.
193. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools, 18.
194. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 2:52–57.
195. Bryce, Story of a National Crime, 4.
196. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools, 18.
197. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, Saturday Night, untitlededitorial, 23 November 1907; Montreal Star, “Death Rate Among Indians Abnormal,” 15
November 1907; Ottawa Citizen, “Schools and White Plague,” 16 November 1907.
198. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, J. A. Markle to
Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 22 November 1907. [RCA-000313]
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, J. I. Fleetham to
Secretary, 28 November 1907. [RCA-000317]
200. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, T. Ferrier to theeditor, 23 November 1907. [RCA-000315]
201. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 350.
202. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, W. R. Haynes toSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 23 November 1907. [RCA-000314]
203. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, J. Hugonard to Secretary
Indian Affairs, 17 December 1907.
204. Ferguson, “Tuberculosis Among the Indians,” 15.
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4037, file 317021, Peter H. Bryce toFrank Pedley, 4 June 1907. [CJC-000959-0002]
206. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, “Recapitulation continued
and remarks,” J. D. Lafferty, undated.
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Accession V92-93/006, box #1, RG29, NAC-BC, J. D.
Lafferty to Frank Pedley, May 1908. [JON-004179]

828 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, D. C. Scott to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 15 May 1908. [OLD-008151.]
209. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, Frank Pedley toFrank Oliver, 19 June 1908. [OLD-008152]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, H. W. Gibbon
Stocken to Bishop of Calgary, 29 July 1908. [OLD-008154]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, D. Scott to Acting
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 15 August 1908. [OLD-008156]
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1155, Indian Agent to Secretary
Indian Affairs, 31 July 1912. [OLD-000280]
213. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, Frank Pedley to Frank Oliver,
19 April 1909.
214. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, P. H. Bryce to F. Pedley, 5
November 1909.
215. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, J. D. Lafferty to P. H. Bryce,
22 January 1910.
216. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1. “Recommendations basedon conclusions from the Investigation of 243 Indian School Children.” For the Frimley model,
see: Bynum, Spitting Blood, 142–143.
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, D. C. Scott,“Notes on Dr. Bryce’s Report – with suggestions for future action,” 7 March 1910.
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Superintendent General Indian Affairs to T. Ferrier, 18 July 1908. [AEMR-016328]
219. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, D. C. Scott, “Notes on Dr.
Bryce’s report – with suggestions for further action,” 7 March 1910.
220. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, J. D. Lafferty to F. Pedley, 22June 1910.
221. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Correspondence andAgreement Relating to the Maintenance and Management of Indian Boarding Schools (Ottawa:
Government Printing Bureau, 1911). [AEMR-120208A]
222. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3957, file 140754-1, D. C. Scott to Deputy
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 28 March 1911.
223. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 297.
224. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 295.
225. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 300.
226. Bryce, Story of a National Crime, 6–8.
227. Bryce, Story of a National Crime, 17.
228. Bryce, Story of a National Crime.
229. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 105–106.
230. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4076, file 451868, J. D. McLean to O. I. Grain, 5January 1914.
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3909, file 107557, O. I. Grain to D. C.
Scott, 18 January 1914. [OLD-008226]
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, O. I. Grain, 18
January 1914. [PUL-000891]

Notes • 829
233. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, Samuel
Middleton to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 February 1914. [PUL-000894]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-5, part 1, O. I. Grain to
D. C. Scott, 26 September 1916. [PUL-001015]
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, O. I. Grainto D. C. Scott, 5 November 1914. [CRW-000206]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, O. I. Grain to D.
C. Scott, 25 January 1914. [EDM-000937]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, J. J. Gillespie
to E. H. Yeomans, 22 January 1913. [CYP-005030-0001]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, J. W. Tims to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 February 1913. [CYP-005031]
239. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, [Illegible],
Inspector of Indian Agencies to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 March 1913. [CYP-005034]
240. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to H. A. Gunn, 20 January 1914; [CYP-005044] J. D. McLean to J. W. Tims, 22 April 1918. [CYP005063]
241. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1541, N. D. Steele to D. C. Scott, 2January 1918. [BPD-001531-0001]
242. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, F. A. Corbett to W.
M. Graham, 7 December 1920. [RCA-000510-0001]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, W. M. Graham to D.
C. Scott, 7 December 1920. [RCA-000510-0002]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, Duncan C. Scott toJames Lougheed, 11 December 1920. [SAR-000470-0000]
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, S. Gould, 14January 1921. [SAR-000475]
246. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1922, 18.
247. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4076, file 451868, J. D. McLean, Memorandum,
16 May 1922.
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Extract from
Inspector’s Report on Chapleau Boarding School, 3 May 1915. [CRS-000883]
249. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, R. S.
McKenzie to O. I. Grain, 30 July 1915. [CJC-000828-0000]
250. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Cowichan Agency – Letterbooks [Indexed],
07/1921–02/1922, F.A. 10-1, Perm. volume 1390, Microfilm reel C-13933, Alfred H. Lomas toW. E. Ditchburn, 27 October 1921. [KUP-230101]
251. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 884-14, part 1, “Extract from
report of Inspector Cairns,” 9 November 1922. [KUP-003836-0000]
252. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, “Indian Industrial School
Kuper Island B.C., Ex-Pupils,” 31 March 1919. [KUP-004250]
253. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-6, part 1, W. Murison toW. M. Graham, 5 December 1923. [RLS-000196-0001]
254. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1,“Memorandum of the Convention of the Catholic Principals of Indian Residential Schools
held at Lebret, Saskatchewan, August 28 and 29, 1924.” [200.4.00016]

830 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
255. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3403, file 823-1-A772, T. J. Fleetham
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 March 1915. [NPC-604045a]
256. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3403, file 823-1-A772, O. I. Grain to D.
C. Scott, 18 March 1915. [NPC-604045]
257. Provincial Archives of Alberta, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, école Dunbow, Boîte 80, #3381,
Journal quotidien de l’école Dunbow, 18 January 1916, quoted in Pettit, “‘To Christianize andCivilize,’” 254.
258. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10750, Shannon File, 1913–1916,
Incoming Correspondence, J. D. McLean to William McLeod, 4 January 1915. [CRS-000873]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to D. C. Scott, 23 January 1922. [CRS-001009]
260. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toGeorge Prewer, 2 February 1922. [CRS-001014-0001]
261. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 198–199.
262. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1,
Correspondence and Agreement Relating to the Maintenance and Management of Indian
Boarding Schools (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1911). [AEMR-120208A]
263. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, J. Riou to Department
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 June 1910.
264. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, J. MacArthur
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 December 1910. [SMD-001209]
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to W. J. Chisholm, 12 January 1911. [SMD-001210]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, pt. 1, O. Charlebois
to J. D. McLean, 6 April 1911. [BVL-000769]
267. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to O. Charlebois, 19 April 1911. [BVL-000770]
268. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, E. Lecoq to D.
C. Scott, 2 November 1912. [NHR-000378]
269. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10750, Shannon File, 1913–1916,
Incoming Correspondence, J. D. McLean to William McLeod, 4 December 1914. [CRS-001774]
270. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10750, Shannon File, 1913–1916,
Incoming Correspondence, J. D. McLean to William McLeod, 1 April 1915. [CRS-001757]
271. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10750, Shannon File, 1913–1916,
Incoming Correspondence, J. D. McLean to William McLeod, 9 April 1915. [CRS-001759]
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10750, Shannon File, 1913–1916,
Incoming Correspondence, J. D. McLean to William McLeod, 7 May 1915. [CRS-001762]
273. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 1, “Certificate
of Health,” 5 August 1920. [PAR-020341-0002]
274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-13, part 1, Headquarters– Schools – Medical Supplies, 1923–1941, D. C. Scott, to W. M. Graham, 16 February 1925.
[120.18196]
275. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document source, J. McGuire to A. F. MacKenzie, 24
September 1927. [OKM-000086]
276. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, Russell Ferrier
to D. C. Scott, 27 March 1922. [PLD-000687]

Notes • 831
277. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to A. F. MacKenzie; [SRS-004811] 3 July 1930, A. F. MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 8 July 1930.
[SRS-000257]
278. Ferguson, “Tuberculosis Survey,” 381.
279. For a summary of contemporary views of what constituted proper treatment for tuberculosis,
particularly the benefits of ventilation, rest, and diet, see: McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret,
43.
280. Ferguson, “Some Light Thrown on Infection,” 19.
281. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 105–106.
282. Hader, “Effect of Tuberculosis,” 110.
283. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1927, 11–12.
284. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, E. L.
Stone to Dr. Scott, 1 August 1930; [NPC-620454] Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1930, 10.
285. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 252, 255.
286. Stewart, “Red Man and White Plague,” 674–675.
287. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2775, file 822-1-X200, part 1b, E. W.
Montgomery to E. D. R. Bissett, 23 January 1930. [120.13004B]
288. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, E. L.
Stone to Dr. Scott, 1 August 1930. [NPC-620454]
289. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1930, 10.
290. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1932, 8.
291. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-13, part 1, Department
of Indian Affairs, Circular Letter, 1 March 1932. [SRS-000657]
292. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2777, file 822-1-X500, part 1, E. L.
Stone to A. L. McQuarrie, 7 November 1934. [NPC-605490]
293. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3087, file 279222-IC, Letter to All Indian Agentsfrom A. F. MacKenzie, 26 June 1933, quoted in Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 118.
294. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3087, file 279222-IC, Memorandum to All Indian
Agents, Re: Sick Relief, Special Relief for Sick Indians, from A. F. MacKenzie, 20 September
1933, quoted in Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 119.
295. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3087, file 279222-1C, Circular to All Indian
Agents in Ontario and British Columbia and accompanying letter from A. F. MacKenzie, 10
February 1934, quoted in Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 120.
296. Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 123.
297. Struthers, No Fault of Their Own, 71–73.
298. Shewell, ‘Enough to Keep Them Alive,’ 123.
299. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6453, file 884-5, part 3, 1930–1931,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies –Accounts (Reports), FA 10-17, C. C. Perry to W. E. Ditchburn, 12 June 1930. [EGN-008478]
300. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 37, Surveys for
Tuberculosis – Blood Indian Reserve 1929–1939, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 2,“Report on Examinations Made at School on Blood Indian Reserve, June 23rd to 26th, 1930.”[PUL-800274]

832 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
301. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 37, Surveys for
Tuberculosis – Blood Indian Reserve 1929–1939, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 2,“Blood Indian Survey October 1934.” [MRY-800064]
302. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 37, Surveys for
Tuberculosis – Blood Indian Reserve 1929–1939, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 2,“Blood Indian Survey October 1936–37.” [MRY-800065]
303. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2760, file 822-1-A494, part 1, Dr. H. K.
Mitchell, 6 October 1933. [NPC-601644]
304. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, J. J.
MacRitchie to E. L. Stone, 24 February 1934. [SRS-005440]
305. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 1, “Certificate
of Health,” 5 August 1920; [PAR-020341-0002] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume3957, file 140754-1, Frank Pedley to Frank Oliver, 19 April 1909.
306. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 885-10, part 6, Cowichan Agency – Kuper
Island Industrial School – Admissions – Discharges 1934–1939, FA 10-17, Perm. volume 6457,“Application for Admission,” 17 March 1933. [KUP-265021]
307. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, R. H. Moore
to Dr. Pitts, 18 October 1935. [LEJ-004071]
308. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to F. E. Pitts, 9 July 1931. [ABR-000758]
309. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, Dr. C. Pitts to
R. H. Moore, 22 October 1935. [LEJ-004073]
310. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, R. H. Moore
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 November 1935. [LEJ-004074]
311. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-13, part 2, P. Phelan toT. F. H. Reed, 17 February 1937. [LEJ-005032]
312. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-13, part 2, Harper Reedto Secretary, Indian Affairs, 9 March 1937. [LEJ-005031]
313. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-13, part 2, T. R. L.
MacInnes to R. H. Moore, 14 February 1938. [LEJ-005048]
314. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6451, file 882-23, part 1,“Memorandum of an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of Clarina
Matthew,” 13 September 1936. [KAM-000648-0001]
315. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 4, D. F.
MacInnis to J. P. Mackey, 11 February 1939. [SRS-001698-0001]
316. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 4, E. L. Stone to
J. P. Mackey, 16 February 1939. [SRS-001699]
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2917, file 851-1-A672, part 1, E. L.
Stone to W. M. Graham, 28 April 1931. [NPC-620696]
318. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 1879, file 630/109-2, part 1-A,
Hay River Residential School, 1923–1930, FA 85-8, A. J. Vale to O. S. Finnie, 13 July 1929; [HRU000550] D. L. McKeand to A. J. Vale, 20 July 1929. [HRU-000551]
319. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2915, file 851-1-A671, part 1a,John Albert to Indian Department, 7 April 1934; [NPC-602628b] RG10, volume 1015, W. B.
Treleaven to Indian Affairs, 9 April 1934. [THR-000558]

Notes • 833
320. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2915, file 851-1-A671, part 1a, A. F.
MacKenzie to Secretary Treasurer, Rural Municipality of Cut Knife, Saskatchewan, 18 April
1934. [120.13052]
321. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Bishop Guy to Harold W. McGill,
19 March 1935. [GMA-001272] Lux gives the provenance as GAI, M742, box 4, file 36.
322. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 35, Surveys for Tuberculosis – Blackfoot Indian
Reserve 1937–1938, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival Box 2, J. Riou to Dr. Baker, 29
November 1937. [CFT-800140-0000]
323. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 20,
file 252, 1935 UCC Commission on Indian Education – United Church Archives – Toronto,“Report of Commission on Indian Education,” 1935. [UCA-081639]
324. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 April 1932. [SRS-002183]
325. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, Allan Kennedy toW. M. Graham, 7 January 1922. [AEMR-013537]
326. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, C. C. Parker
to J. P. Mackey, 21 April 1932. [SRS-002234]
327. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 7 May 1936. [SRS-005377]
328. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, D. F.
MacInnis to T. R. L. MacInnes, 26 June 1933. [SRS-000273]
329. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, J. P. Mackey,
10 July 1933. [SRS-000658]
330. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, M. L.
Scammell to E. L. Stone, 20 July 1933. [SRS-000960]
331. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-23, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to Indian Agents, Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 17 April 1935. [SBR001147-0000]
332. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-23, part 1, Indian Affairs
Memorandum, 17 April 1935. [SBR-001147-0001]
333. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-23, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to Indian Agents, Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 17 April 1935. [SBR001147-0000]
334. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6315, file 655-23, part 1, P. Phelan to
S. Lovell, 19 January 1937. [GUY-000094]
335. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6314, file 655-10, part 1, S. Lovell to
the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 January 1937. [GUY-000096]
336. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6315, file 655-23, part 1, S. Lovell to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 November 1939. [GUY-000102-0000]
337. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1933, 14.
338. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, Duncan Campbell Scott to C. Perrault, 25 March 1930. [MCI-000604]
339. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6220, file 472-9, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to Frank Edwards, 4 April 1930. [MCI-000607]
340. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, C. Perrault to Frank Edwards, 2 May 1930. [MCI-000613-0001]

834 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
341. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, A. F. MacKenzie to Frank Edwards, 30 November 1931. [MCI-000672]
342. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, H. Reed to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 April 1939. [LEJ-001963]
343. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, “Lejac Indian
Residential School Quarterly Report,” A. R. Simpson, 31 March 1939. [LEJ-000786]
344. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 2, F. O’Grady to
A. O’N. Daunt, 7 February 1937. [MIS-001573]
345. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey toW. V. Doran, 19 March 1937. [MIS-001578]
346. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6451, file 882-23, part 1,“Memorandum of an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of [nameredacted],” 24 September 1935. [KAM-000644-0001]
347. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6448, file 882-5, part 6, Vancouver
Province, “Indian School Opened,” 21 April 1929. [KAM-000802]
348. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Harold McGill, 22 March 1933. [DRS-000612]
349. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6460, file 887-5, part 5, F. J. C. Ball to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 March 1931. [SLT-001576]
350. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1933, 14; Ferguson, “Some Light
Thrown on Infection,” 24; Lux, Medicine that Walks, 208–209.
351. Ferguson, “Some Light Thrown on Infection,” 25.
352. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, R. G.
Ferguson to Thomas Murphy, 29 August 1932. [NPC-620452a]
353. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, E. L.
Stone to H. McGill, 4 November 1932. [NPC-620451]
354. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Bishop Guy to Harold W. McGill,
19 March 1935. [GMA-001272]
355. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 213–214.
356. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1,“Tuberculosis Research Among the Indians of the Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit 1933.” [NPC620446]
357. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, file L1022.M27M 10,“Report on Indian Boarding School Children in Saskatchewan,” Director of Medical Services,
October 1934. [RCS-000738-0000]
358. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1229, file 311-T7-24, part 3,“Appendix B, Tuberculosis Research Among the Indians of the Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit,
1935.” [NPC-622228c]
359. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1225, file 311-T7-16, D. A. Stewart toJohn Bracken, 14 November 1934. [RCM-006201]
360. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, W. E. J.
Paul to Mackenzie King, 11 December 1935. [NPC-620435]
361. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 202–203; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 84; Weindling,“Origins of Informed Consent,” 41.
362. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 210–211.
363. Houston, R. G. Ferguson, 99.

Notes • 835
364. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1,“Tuberculosis Research Among the Indians of the Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit 1933”;[NPC-620446] A. B. Simes, “Progressive Report on B.C.G. Vaccination of Children of the
Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit, 1934.” [NPC-620439a]365. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 210–211.
366. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1,“Tuberculosis Research Among the Indians of the Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit 1933”;[NPC-620446] A. B. Simes, “Progressive Report on B.C.G. Vaccination of Children of the
Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit, 1934;” [NPC-620439a] Lux, Medicine that Walks, 211.
367. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 210–211.
368. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 109–110.
369. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1225, file 311-T7-16, “Tuberculosis
Amongst Indians,” n.d. [NPC-600392]
370. Stewart, “Red Man and White Plague,” 674.
371. Stewart, “Red Man and White Plague,” 674.
372. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2279, Harold McGill to All Indian
Agents, 14 January 1937. [OGP-020890]
373. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2777, file 822-1-X500, part 1, H. W.
McGill to A. L. McQuarrie, 15 January 1937. [NPC-605463]
374. Stewart, “Red Man and White Plague,” 675–676.
375. Canadian Tuberculosis Association Bulletin 15, 3 (March 1937): 4, quoted in Hader, “Effect ofTuberculosis,” 117.
376. Hader, “Effect of Tuberculosis,” 117; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, “Minutes of the Standing Committee on Indian Tuberculosis,” 10March 1938. [NPC-620426]
377. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, H. McGill
to Deputy Minister, 19 April 1937; [NPC-620434] 11 June 1937. [NPC-620432]
378. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, E. L.
Stone to A. B. Simes, 15 May 1937. [NPC-620433]
379. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2697, file 802-2-2, part 3, “Another
Milestone Passed,” W. S. Barclay, n.d. [NPC-606199]
380. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, “A World
Within a World, Best Describes Coqualeetza Indian Residential School,” Chilliwack Progress,
14 December 1938. [COQ-000569-0001]
381. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC- MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 23, file 1, T. B. R. Westgate, “Report of the Secretary of the Commission on His
Visit to the Alert Bay, Blood, Peigan, Blackfoot, and Elkhorn Schools, February–March 1939.”[AAC-083340]
382. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-25, part 1, P. E. Moore
to McGill, 3 March 1939; [FAR-002164-0001] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1-019, volume 1, J. Brachet to F. M. Hughes, 26 October 1946.
[FAR-060226]
383. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-25, part 1, T. R. L.
MacInnes to A. G. Hamilton, 21 September 1938. [FAR-002154]
384. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-25, part 1, P. E. Moore
to McGill, 3 March 1939. [FAR-002164-0001]

836 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
385. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-25, part 1, H. W. McGill
to J. Brachet, 31 May 1939. [FAR-002168]
386. Wherrett, Miracle of Empty Beds, 114; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, Secretary to A. B. Simes, 20 April 1938. [NPC-620421]
387. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, E. L.
Stone and H. W. McGill to All Indian Agents, 10 February 1938. [NPC-620428]
388. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2919, file 851-1-A772, part 1, J. Riou
to E. L. Stone, 21 February 1938. [NPC-603400]
389. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 46b, Surveys for Tuberculosis – Crees –Hobbema 1937–1942, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 3, J. R. Enman to A. H. Baker,
19 September 1938; [ERM-800188] Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2911, file 8511-A494, part 1, G. C. Brink to E. L. Stone, 28 October 1938; [NPC-605126] RG29, volume 3132,
file 861-2-1, part 1, “Annual Report, Indian Health Services,” E. L. Stone, 1938. [120.13257]
390. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2964, file 851-4-001, part 1, Secretary
to A. B. Simes, 20 April 1938. [NPC-620421]
391. Taubenberger and Morens, “1918 Influenza,” DOI: 10.3201/eid1201.050979 (accessed 22
October 2014).
392. Jones, Influenza 1918, 5, 18; Lux, Medicine that Walks, 185.
393. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 263.
394. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndiansAffairs, 1906, 393.
395. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Assistant Deputy andSecretary to S. McKenzie, 21 October 1918.
396. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, R. S. McKenzie to
Assistant Deputy Minister, Indian Affairs, 23 October 1918.
397. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-1, volume 1347, Cowichan Agency –Incoming Correspondence re Kuper Island Industrial School, 1907–1920, Indian Agent to J.
Geurts, 19 October 1918. [KUP-022343]
398. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, Ogletree to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 October 1918. [PLP-000935]
399. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, “Extract fromletter from W. A. Hendry, Principal of the Portage la Prairie Boarding School,” 4 November
1918. [PLP-000941]
400. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Boyce toSecretary, Indian Affairs, 24 October 1918. [TAY-003573]
401. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6217, file 471-1, part 1, T. A. Desautels
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 November 1918. [AGA-001428]
402. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 90.
403. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2919, file 851-1-A772, part 1, William
Gordon to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 31 October 1918.
[NPC-603410]
404. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2919, file 851-1-A772, part 1, W. M.
Gordon to Assistant Deputy, Indian Affairs, 13 April 1919. [NPC-603403]
405. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 89.
406. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, A. Naessens to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 January 1919.

Notes • 837
407. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2918, file 851-1-A675, part 1, W.
Murison to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 November 1918. [NPC-602928]
408. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2915, file 851-1-A671, part 1a, W.
Sibbald to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 December 1918. [NPC-602635-01]
409. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2912, file 851-1-A501, part 1, H. S.
Norquay to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 December 1918. [CLD-000698]
410. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1918. [EDM-000956]
411. TRC, NRA, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, Deputy Superintendent General to J. F.
Woodsworth, 5 December 1918. [EDM-000957]
412. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1918. [EDM-000956]
413. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer Industrial School,” 107–108.
414. For examples of such efforts, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume3920, file 116818, H. J. Denovan, 1 May 1901; [EDM-009805] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, D. Laird to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 17 May 1904.
[EDM-009841]
415. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, A. D. McNabb
to J. D. McLean, 11 February 1919. [SWK-001408]
416. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, George
Algoma to Duncan Campbell Scott, 21 February 1919. [SWK-001410]
417. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2912, file 851-1-501, part 1, G. H.
Wheatley to O. I. Grain, 21 February 1919. [NPC-606155]
418. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2938, file 851-1-X500, part 1, W. E.
Ditchburn to Duncan Campbell Scott, 4 December 1918. [NPC-621735]
419. Father Allard’s Diary, quoted in Cronin, Cross in the Wilderness, 219.
420. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 183.
421. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2925, file 851-1-A987, part 1, “B.C.
Epidemic of Spanish Influenza.” [NPC-608037a]
422. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, T. J. Godfrey to
J. D. McLean, 25 February 1920. [CRS-000952]
423. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2274, Hugh F. Baker to the
Reverend Principal, 15 January 1919. [OGP-020790]
424. TRC, NRA, Headquarters 777/25-1-007, 02/13–03/65, volume 1, HQ., J. B. Sutherland to D. C.
Scott, 28 October 1919. [GRU-002737]
425. Cadigan, Newfoundland & Labrador, 191.
426. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 187.
427. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 4, H, A. R. Lett
to Parents and Friends, June 1937; [GRG-022262] RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, C. C.
Perry to Indian Affairs, 6 May 1927. [GRG-001611]
428. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6214, file 469-13, part 2, Charles
Hives to G. H. Sims, 3 February 1938. [SWK-001664-0000]
429. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6302, file 650-23, Victor Bleau, P. E.
Lavoie, and S. L. Macdonald, 17 June 1937. [BVL-000498-0002]
430. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 337.
431. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 315.

838 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
432. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 236.
433. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 1, 1886–1927,
John McDougall to Rev. A. Sutherland, 14 January 1888. [MOR-004638-0001]
434. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, J. A. Sinclair to
Indian Commissioner, Winnipeg. [RIS-000071]
435. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 13, file 937022, part 21, James
Patterson to F. Montizambert, 22 November 1901. [NPC-622043]
436. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, W. R. Taylor to
the Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 16 November 1915. [DRS-000494]
437. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, O. I. Grain to
Duncan C. Scott, 29 November 1915. [DRS-000497]
438. Singh and Romanowski, “Syphilis,” 189, 196.
439. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to T. I. Byrne, 7 March 1932. [SRS-002220-0001]
440. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 March 1932. [SRS-005388]
441. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 13 November 1933. [SRS-001086]
442. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 5 January 1934. [SRS-005380]
443. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. Mackey, 18 January 1934. [SRS-000276]
444. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6457, file 885-10, part 6, Cowichan Agency– Kuper Island Industrial School – Admissions –Discharges 1934–1939, FA 10-17, Application
for Admission Form, 17 March 1933. [KUP-265021]
445. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2915, file 851-1-A671, part 1a, Lang
Turner to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 31 October 1921. [NPC-602633]
446. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 2, A. O’N. Daunt,
18 December 1924. [MIS-004992]
447. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 7, A. F.
MacKenzie to K. J. Beaton, 9 July 1935. [MER-000845]
448. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-13, part 1, T. R. McLeod
to E. L. Stone, 28 October 1935. [MER-000804]
449. Maura, Sisters of Charity, 233–234. For Kateri Tekakwitha, see: Greer, Jesuit Relations.
450. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, A. J. Stuart
to R. C. McDonald, 5 March 1905; [MIS-001424] W. McLaughlin to Secretary, Department ofIndian Affairs, 8 March 1905; [MIS-001426] R. C. McDonald to A. W. Vowell, 13 March 1905.
[MIS-001427]
451. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1394, J. D. McLean to G. B. Stanton, 7
May 1916. [FHR-001463]
452. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, J. McArthur to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 July 1909; [SMD-001186] 6 July 1909. [SMD-001187]
453. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R. H. Moore to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 April
1939. [KUP-005051]
454. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 751-13, part 1, 1923–1937,
Jos. Angin to Harold McGill, 24 August 1936. [BQL-005481]

Notes • 839
455. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 751-13, part 1, 1923–1937,
W. E. Gullion to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 September 1936. [BQL-005485-0000]
456. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6236, file 659-10, part 4, W. F. Dreaver
to Mr. Graham, 21 September 1931. [ORC-010164]
457. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 4, “Admission
and Discharge of Pupils at Onion Lake (Anglican) School during December 31 Quarter, 1931.”[PAR-123489]
458. TRC, NRA, NAC, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-23, part 1, 1935–44, J. D. Sutherland, Acting
Superintendent of Indian Education, to G. C. Laight, Indian Agent, Edmonton, 6 November
1936. [EDM-003356]
459. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6216, file 470-23, part 1, Letter from
Simon Wesley, Blackstone House, as quoted in a letter from Philip Phelan, Chief, Training
Division, Indian Affairs, to Rev. J. F. J. Marshall, Principal, Indian Residential School, Sioux
Lookout, 2 March 1937. [PLK-001020]
460. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 2, Andrew
Gordon to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 20 May 1936. [PLD-003359-0001]
461. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 2, Frank Boothto the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 July 1936. [PLD-000159]
462. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 2, J. D.
Sutherland to Frank Booth, 16 July 1936. [PLD-000160]
463. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 3, Admission
and Discharge Form, Qu’Appelle School, September 1938. [PLD-013057]
464. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6215, file 470-5, part 3, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 8 October 1936. [PLK-000125-0000]
465. George, Living on the Edge, 28.
466. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, Andrew S. Grant to theSecretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 8 March 1913.
467. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, J. Geurts to W. R. Robertson, 7
April 1920. [KUP-004249]
468. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, George
Prewer to J. D. McLean, 8 March 1922; [CRS-001142] Russell T. Ferrier to George Prewer, 9March 1922. [CRS-001139]
469. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 April 1934. [NPC-605083p]
470. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 4,
file 56, J. A. Sinclair to R. P. MacKay, 30 December 1903. [RIS-000131]
471. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2923, file 851-1-A978, part 1, Sargt. D.
Angermann to Officer Commanding, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Vancouver BC, 26 June
1923. [NPC-622741]
472. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Inspection
report, 31 October 1929. [DRS-000566]
473. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2922, file 851-1-A901, part 1, Indian
agent to assistant secretary and deputy, 1 August 1919. [NPC-603425]
474. World Health Organization, Water Sanitation Health, Water-related Diseases, Trachoma,
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/trachoma/en/ (accessed 11 April2014).

840 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
475. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 281.
476. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 272.
477. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 281; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 280.
478. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 272.
479. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, F. W. Jacobs to
J. A. Macrae, 9 April 1906. [MER-000345-0001]
480. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, F. A.
Corbett to W. M. Graham, 7 December 1920, 6–7. [RCA-000510-0001]
481. Feibel, “Fred Loe,” 504.
482. Feibel, “Fred Loe,” 505.
483. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1928, 8.
484. Byers, “Trachoma in Canada,” 372.
485. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-370, part 1, E.
L. Stone to W. M. Graham, 1 March 1929; [NPC-620519] see also: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-370, part 1, E. L. Stone to D. C. Scott, 20 June
1929. [NPC-620518]
486. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1937, 193.
487. Byers, “Trachoma in Canada,” 375. Byers was the author of “On the Necessity of Better
Recognition and Isolation of Trachomatous Patients in Canada,” which was published in the
Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery in 1901. See Byers, “Trachoma in Canada,” 376.
488. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 288, file 402-7-1, part 2, Department
of Indian Affairs, “Trachoma,” 1 October 1931. [NPC-620744]
489. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, Russell T.
Ferrier, to Church Officers and Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 29 March 1932.
[AEMR-016416A] TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACCMSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 27, file 1, The Joint delegation and interview with the Prime
Minister, 20 December 1934. [AAC-087280]
490. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1939, 221; TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-370, part 3, P. E. Moore to Phillip Tygeson, 21
June 1945. [NPC-620268]
491. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
7, file 2, E. Lockhart to the Ladies of the W.M.S., Presbyterian Church in Canada, undated.
[BIR-000547]
492. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-370, part 3, P. E.
Moore to Phillip Tygeson, 21 June 1945. [NPC-620268]
493. Feibel, “Fred Loe,” 506–507.
494. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-370, part 3, P. E.
Moore to Phillip Tygeson, 21 June 1945. [NPC-620268]
495. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, G. Donckele to W. H. Lomas, 29
December 1898. [KUP-005086]
496. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6217, file 471-1, part 1, L. N. Dugas to Dear Sir, 25
August 1913.
497. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, H. N. Awrey to
D. C. Scott, 25 August 1919; [MFI-000170W] Rachlam to Duncan Campbell Scott, 13 October
1919. [MFI-000176-0000]

Notes • 841
498. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, A. J.
MacKenzie to W. Haythornthwaite, 6 September 1919. [MFI-000172]
499. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, W.
Haythornthwaite to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 October 1919. [MFI-000175]
500. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, Translation ofstatement of Chief Woomastoogish, George Hardisty, and Andrew Butterfly and John Dick, 13
October 1919. [MFI-000176-0001] For original, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada
RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, undated statement in syllabics. [MFI-000176-0002] For
the band the men were from, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume6203, file 467-1, part 1, W. Rachlam to Duncan Campbell Scott, 13 October 1919. [MFI000176-0000]
501. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Charles
McGibbon to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 March 1916. [TAY-003558]
502. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6472, file 905-1, part 1,
F. Cook to Officer Commanding, Great Slave Lake Sub-District, Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, 8 July 1929. [HRU-000922-0001]
503. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6334, file 661-10, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 June 1934; [RLS-000360] Philip Phelan to J. P. B.
Ostrander, 14 June 1934. [RLS-000361]
504. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, H. H. Nash to
Indian Commissioner, 24 September 1895. [CYP-004985] For the boy’s name, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, H. H. Nash to the IndianCommissioner, 25 October 1895. [CYP-004987]
505. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, “Indian BoysKilled,” Winnipeg Daily Tribune, 23 January 1899. [CYP-004995]
506. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, W. R. Haynes
to R. N. Wilson, 16 January 1899. [CYP-004994]
507. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-23, part 1, O. B. Strapp
to H. W. McGill, 13 June 1939. [MER-000960]
508. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-23, part 1, R. A. Hoey toO. B. Strapp, 21 June 1939. [MER-000961]
509. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 26.
510. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, A. O’N. Daunt
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 1 August 1920. [IRC-047108]
511. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to N. Coccola, 12 July 1930. [LEJ-001056]
512. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 208.

Building and maintaining the schools: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG11, volume 3914 [No file number], 1890,“Specification of the Several Works and Materials required in the erection and completion

842 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof Industrial School buildings at Red Deer, N.W.T., according to the accompanying Drawings
prepared by the Department of Public Works, Ottawa,” December 1890. [EDM-002391]
3. 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]
4. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-1, Bishop of Rupert’s Land to E.
Dewdney, 24 March 1890.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 1, D. Ewart to E.
F. E. Roy, 26 October 1898. [NHU-001867]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-9, part 1, Duncan C.
Scott to T. J. Godfrey, 25 June 1919; [CRS-000908] RG10, volume 6260, file 577-5, part 1, H. E.
Matthews to J. D. McLean, 24 April 1913; [NHR-000946] RG10, volume 6334, file 662-1, part 1,
J. D. McLean to Chas. Cahill, 17 November 1911. [SPR-001949]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 4, 1926–1933,
Microfilm reel C-8768, D. C. Scott to A. Meighen, 2 June 1920. [LEJ-004351]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-5, part 8, 1920–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8768, D. C. Scott to W. Foran, 29 March 1921. [LEJ-002845]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 1, R. T. Ferrier,Fraser Lake Industrial School, 1 September 1922. [LEJ-000999]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-5, part 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 2 March 1925. [EDM-000553]
11. TRC, NRA Library and Archives Canada, RG22M, Acc. 912016, Item 985, National Map
Collection, 178648, “Plan of Indian Residential School, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia,” Gurney
E. Orr, 1928; [SRS-006527] RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 1, Gurney Orr to Dr. Scott, 28
March 1928; [SRS-000662] RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 2, Gurney Orr to Dr. Scott, 23
April 1929. [SRS-000705]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 3,“Memorandum: Re Shubenacadie Residential School,” Philip Phelan, 5 May 1930; [SRS001359] RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 3, J. P. Mackey to Indian Affairs, 28 March 1930.
[SRS-001353]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 3, J. P. Mackey to
Unknown, Indian Affairs, 30 July 1932. [SRS-001388-0000]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 2, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 28 September 1907. [NHU-000137]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, Microfilm reel C-13916, Rev. P.
Claessen to W. R. Robertson, 16 December 1908. [KUP-004234]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, Microfilm reel C-13916, Rev. P.
Claessen to W. R. Robertson, 15 October 1909. [KUP-004236]
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 424.
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, no document file source, “Extract from Reportof Inspector Ditchburn for the Month of October, 1915, Southwestern Inspectorate, B.C.,
October 1915.” [KUP-091301]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 4, Microfilm reel
C-8777, G. H. Barry, 3 March 1931. [KUP-004095]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 4, Microfilm reel
C-8777, “Extract from report, G. A. Barry, 7 February 1934.” [KUP-004128]

Notes • 843
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 4, Microfilm
reel C-8777, H. Graham to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 11 February 1935. [KUP004131]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 4, 1936–1939, A. F.
MacKenzie to H. Graham, 20 February 1936. [KUP-004376]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 13. [RCA-000298]
24. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Account Number 1979.199C, box 6, file 106,
Reverend E. A. Henry to Dr. Farquharson, 5 February 1908. [RIS-000581]
25. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Account Number 1979.199C, box 7, file 124, J.
D. McLean to Reverend R. P. McKay, 19 August 1909. [RIS-000630]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 27. [RCA-000298]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6343, file 750-5, part 2,
Ruaux to D. C. Scott, 5 September 1924. [PUL-009341]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, M.
Christianson to W. M. Graham, 28 October 1927. [PUL-001008]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6372, file 764-5, part 4, M.
Christianson to W. M. Graham, 2 April 1929. [MRY-008656]
30. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 328.
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 547.
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Benson to
Scott, 11 November 1914. [CRW-000057]
33. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, AC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2.15, box 23, file 1, Report of the Field Secretary on his visit to various centres in Alberta in
February 1922, T. B. R. Westgate. [AAC-085019]
34. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, T. B. R. Westgate to D. C. Scott, pages 3, 4, 22 November 1923. [AAC090253]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-1, part 1, T. B. R.
Westgate to Russell T. Ferrier, 22 November 1923. [WFL-000458]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6427, file 875-5, part 3, Kwawkewlth
Agency – Alert Bay Residential School – Building Maintenance, Field Secretary, Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 22
January 1931. [MIK-012570]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6427, file 875-5, part 3, Kwawkewlth
Agency – Alert Bay Residential School – Building Maintenance, T. B. R. Westgate, Field
Secretary, Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada to Secretary, Department
of Indian Affairs, 01 September 1931. [MIK-012588]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-5, part 1, Assistant
Secretary-Treasurer, Indian Residential School Commission, M.S.C.C. to Secretary, IndianAffairs, 19 June 1936. [WFL-000069]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 2, “Report andDiary of Trip to Wabasca From January 29th to February 2nd, 1937,” N. P. L’Heureux. [JON000305]

844 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, D. C. Scott toReverend J. Welch, 20 April 1928. [MIS-000052]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, D. C. Scott toW. E. Ditchburn, 8 September 1928. [MIS-000061]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6471, file 890-11, part 1, 1929–1939, T.
J. Fahlman to D. Scott, 30 September 1930. [MIS-001706]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, G. S. Pragnell,“Inspection report New Westminster Agency, 15 December 1930.” [MIS-000066]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6471, file 890-11, part 1, 1929–1939,
A. O’N. Daunt to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 March 1931. [MIS-001710]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, A. O’N. Dauntto the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 April 1931. [MIS-000069]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, “Inspection
report, New Westminster Agency, No. 6, June 26, 1933.” [MIS-000074]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 2, Deputy
Superintendent General to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 12 February 1934. [MIS001532]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 2, A. M. D.
Gillen, 10 January 1934. [MIS-001529]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 3, Deputy
Superintendent General to Superintendent General, 16 February 1934. [MIS-000079]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6588, file 1A-1780-20, part 1, C. E.
Webb to T. S. Mills, 18 March 1938. [MIS-004006]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6499, IND 13-1-33, McGill to Wardle,
12 April 1938. [MIS-001686]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6471, file 890-11, part 2, F. O’Grady to
R. A. Hoey, 19 January 1939. [MIS-001719]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6277, file 584-5, part 5, Private
Secretary, Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, to Dr. McGill, 5 March 1935. [SBR-000576]
54. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1076, volume 1, V. A. Vincent to R. A. Hoey, 30 March 1937. [SBR-000366]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 7, Oliver B.
Strapp to R. B. Cochrane, 8 March 1937. [MER-000869]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6551, file 1A-1456-11, part 1, H. W.
McGill to Director, Surveys and Engineering Branch, 18 March 1939. [PCR-010341-0001]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 December 1899. [PCR-010011]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6551, file 1A-1456-11, part 1, Brick to
Stinson, 10 May 1939. [PCR-010345]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6271, file 582-5, part 5, H. McGill to
Deputy Minister, 14 August 1939. [PCR-100881-0000]
60. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 204.
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6356, file 757-5, part 1, J. W. Butler to
A. Sutherland, 10 March 1892. [MOR-000882]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Hayter Reed
to W. E. Jones, 20 November 1893. [CRW-000014]

Notes • 845
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, M. M.
Seymour to Rev. Principal, Qu’Appelle School, 27 September 1897. [PLD-007268-0002]
64. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 348.
65. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 371.
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 4, 5. [100.00109]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897, 8. [100.00109]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 September 1901. [MER-000317]
69. 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]
70. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 362.
71. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979, 199C, box 6, file 106, Reverend
E. A. Henry to Dr. Farquharson, 5 February 1908. [RIS-000581]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, David Iverach
to Rev. A. S. Grant, 7 July 1915. [BIR-000041]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-5, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. T. Johnston, 29 August 1927. [SBR-002001]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-5, part 2, “Extract from
report of Mr. Inspector Bennett, 14 September 1927.” [KNR-000832]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 4, Williams to
Thomas G. Murphy, 22 April 1932. [KNR-000850]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 7, Frank
Edwards to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 16 November 1939. [KNR-000872]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 7, Frank
Edwards to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 12 February 1940. [KNR-000890]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6448, file 882-5, part 5, 1925–1928,
PARC, M. G. Archibald to Father McGuire, 15 June 1927. [KAM-000770]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6448, file 882-5, part 5, 1925–1928,
PARC, J. McGuire to Colonel Pragnell, 17 June 1927. [KAM-000769]
80. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1076, volume 1, W. M. Graham to Duncan C. Scott, 22 May 1930. [SBR-000346]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6277, file 584-5, part 5, O. Chagnon to
A. G. Hamilton, 28 May 1934. [SBR-001878-0001]
82. Quoted in Whitehead, Cariboo Mission, 118.
83. United Church of Canada Archives – Winnipeg, Andrew Baird Papers, H 157-160, Neil
Gilmour to Baird, 2 December 1897, in Hildebrand, “Staff Perspectives,” 171.
84. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 306.
85. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 278.
86. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 374.
87. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 413.
88. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 386.
89. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 19179, 199C, box 6, file 106, Reverend
E. A. Henry to Dr. Farquharson, 5 February 1908, 2. [RIS-000581]

846 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, H. B. Currie tothe Department of Indian Affairs, 27 July 1927. [BIR-000081-0001]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4041, file 334503, F. H. Paget to Frank
Pedley, 25 November 1908, 54, 56–57. [RCA-000298]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 4092, file 546898, W. M. Graham to D.
C. Scott, 7 December 1920. [SAR-000470-0003]
93. 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]
94. 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 the date of Hoey’s appointment, see: Manitoba
Historical Society, “Memorable Manitobans: Robert Alexander Hoey (1883–1965),” http://
www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/hoey_ra.shtml (accessed 21 December 2013).
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940, 9. [BIR-000248]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940, 4. [BIR-000248]

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939
Table 18.1. Schools destroyed by fire: 1867 to 1939
1. Foran, “Les Gens de Cette Place,” 72–73.
2. Wilson, Missionary work, 129, 130–131.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 21; Shanahan, Jesuit
Residential School, 28.
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8754, Hayter Reed to T. Mayne Daly, 10 November 1893. [COQ-000277]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6324, file 659-5, part 1, Acting
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs to Assistant Indian Commissioner, 12 March 1894.
[ORC-008088]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6196, file 464-5, part 1, “Disastrous
Fire: St. Joseph’s Convent, Orphanage and Catholic Church Destroyed,” in Fort William Daily
Journal, 10 April 1895. [SJS-000078-0001]
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 317.
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, “Blaze at
Brantford: The Mohawk Institute Totally Destroyed,” in The Globe, story datelined 19 April
1903; [TAY-003519] Martin Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 21 April
1903. [TAY-003521]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 4 February 1904. [JON-000079]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 1, Frank Pedley
to David Laird, 11 January 1904. [PLD-000665]
11. Stanley, “Alberta’s Half-Breed Reserve,” 96–98.

Notes • 847
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 883-1, part 1, Bella Coola Agency – Kitamaat
Boarding School – General Administration, 1906–1932, F. A. Perm. volume 6451, Microfilm
reel C-8773, Green to F. Pedley, 22 May 1909, 6. [KMT-095620]
13. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 191.
14. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 527.
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 581-9, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Scott, 18 August 1915. [NHU-000001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6376, file 766-5, part 1, Martin
Benson to Duncan Scott, 10 November 1914. [FTV-000003]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8759, W. E. Ditchburn to D. C. Scott, 15 June 1917. [ABR-000682]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, R. H. Cairns to
J. D. McLean, 6 June 1917. [SLT-003478]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, R. H. Cairns to
J. D. McLean, 6 June 1917. [SLT-003478]
20. Ausland, “Chateau Saint-Jean,” part 1, http://www.jkcc.com/robes.html (accessed 1 January2012).
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 651/25-1, part 1, C. F. Hives
to R. A. Hoey, 9 February 1947. [PAR-009212]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, C. E.
Manning, 20 October 1921. [PSM-200026-0001]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6367, file 762-5, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Harold Laird, 8 January 1924. [JRD-003064]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, Sister Mary
Gabriel to D. Scott, 26 October 1927. [KAM-000186]
25. Ausland, “Chateau Saint-Jean,” part 1, http://www.jkcc.com/robes.html (accessed 1 January2012).
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Louis Mederic
Adam to Indian Affairs, 22 September 1927. [BVL-000879]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, O. Charlebois
to Duncan Scott, 21 September 1927; [BVL-000874] Louis Mederic Adam to Indian Affairs, 22
September 1927. [BVL-000879]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1,
T. B. R. Westgate to Duncan C. Scott, 4 July 1928. [OLD-000312]
29. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 93.281/26, Stephans to Reverendes Soeurs del’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge, Nicolet, P.Q., 22 May 1928. [ORC-000796]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 1, S. S. Moore toW. M. Graham, 4 February 1929. [GDC-006542-0001]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. McNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, H. W. McGill
to Thomas G. Murphy, 18 November 1932. [PLD-000027]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1, Joseph Guy toHarold McGill, 25 March 1933. [AEMR-254347]

848 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Samuel Lovell
to Dr. McGill, 20 March 1933. [DRS-000611-0000]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6433, file 877-5, part 5, W. L. Healey
to Fire Marshall, 24 February 1937. [ABR-006601-0001]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6480, file 940-5, part 6, T. B. Caulkin
to Commissioner Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 18 April 1939. [CAR-015059-0001]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6185, file 460-5, part 2, H. McGill toHenri Belleau, 24 August 1939. [FTA-000625]

Table 18.2. Outbuildings destroyed by fire: 1867 to 1939
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 19.
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 150.
3. TRC, NRA, Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for theYear Ended 30th June 1896, 317. [ELK-000436]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, Magnus Begg to
Indian Commissioner, 19 October 1896. [OLD-008079]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 1, Extract of aletter of the Principal of the St. Mary’s Mission School; dated 22 May 1896. [MIS-000001]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 422.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 May 1903. [TAY-003524]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 June 1903. [TAY-003528]
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 424.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 415.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 399.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-5, part 1, J. D. McLean
to T. T. George, 22 November 1907. [MER-000199]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 652/23-5, part 1, “Agent’s
Report respecting Duck Lake Boarding School for the Month of September 1913.” [SMD001451]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 3, S. R. McVitty
to Duncan Campbell Scott, 4 June 1915. [MER-000635]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1, P. H.
Gentleman to Dr. Westgate, 2 April 1921. [OLD-000468]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-6, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Indian Affairs, 11 December 1923. [RLS-000196-0000]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-5, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 December 1925. [CYP-000544]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-5, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary Indian Affairs, 30 June 1926; [CRS-001190-0000] RG10, volume 6306, file652-5, part 3, W. M. Graham to Duncan C. Scott, 5 May 1926. [SMD-001611]
19. Greyeyes, “St. Michael’s Indian residential school,” 147.
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-5, part 2, J. W. Waddy toW. M. Graham, 29 July 1931. [MDD-006063-0001]

Notes • 849
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. Poulet, 13 August 1931. [MDD-000859]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-5, part 2, 1922–1930, W.
E. Gullion to Duncan C. Scott, 17 September 1928. [BQL-006674]
23. Jansen, “Power, Resistance,” 118.
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 1883, file 630/219-2, part 2,
Shingle Point Anglican School 1932, F.A. 85-8, A. L. Fleming to Chairman, Dominion Lands
Board, 18 January 1934. [SPU-000206]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 5, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 March 1934. [PAR-008946]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 4, P. G. Lazenby
to Secretary Indian Affairs, 23 April 1934. [BIR-000200]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6307, file 653-5, part 4, A. F. McKenzie to G.
A. Dodds, 15 March 1935. [FHR-001336]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 5, 1933–1938,
Microfilm reel C-8768, R. H. Moore to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 October 1935. [LEJ-0046380000]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6475, file 916-5, part 1, G. Breynat toH. McGill, 31 January 1936. [FRU-010052]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6475, file 916-5, part 1, Extract fromRadiotelegram from Dr. Bourget, Resolution, N.W.T., 27 December 1935. [FRU-010048]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, file 351-5, part 1, J. O. Plourde, 2November 1938. [FTG-000548]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 7, Frank
Edwards to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 December 1938. [KNR-000859]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6322, file 658-5, part 7, J. T. Hill to
Secretary Indian Affairs, 28 February 1939. [PAR-001067-0000]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 7, Frank
Edwards, 5 January 1939. [KNR-000866]

Table 18.3. Additional reported fires that did not destroy buildings
1. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 68.
2. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 28.
3. E. F. Wilson, Autobiographical Journal, 47, quoted in Porter, “Anglican Church,” 33.
4. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 368–369.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 386.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 405.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Public Archives,
David Laird to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 28 December 1899; [EDM-009798] RG18, volume 295,
file 271-05, 1900–1905, NAC, J. R. Huddle to Officer Commanding, 19 July 1900. [EDM-002395]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, G. H.
Wheatley to David Laird, 13 March 1901. [BIR-000015]
9. Titley, “Industrial Education,” 397–398.
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, T. T. George to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 June 1906. [MER-000395]

850 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, Principal
Wilson to David Laird, 19 March 1908. [ELK-000217]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, Secretary,
Indian Affairs to T. T. George, 30 January 1908. [MER-000394]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, S. Spencer
Page to The Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 25 March 1913. [CRW-000045]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, Agent’s Reportfor Month of November 1913, Chas. A. Cox, 3 December 1913. [ABR-006993]
15. Marceau-Kozicki, “Onion Lake,” 129.
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Secretary Indian Affairs, 8 June 1914. [PLD-007452]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6364, file 760-1, part 1, 1892–1936,
Microfilm reel C-8717, George H. Race to the Secretary, 18 January 1917. [SAL-000088]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, P. Schmidt toSecretary, Indian Affairs, 17 September 1917. [SMD-001235]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. E.
Ditchburn to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 January 1918. [MIK-002569]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 4, S. R. McVitty
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 July 1922. [MER-000674]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8767, N. Coccola to McAllan, 6 August 1923. [LEJ-003744-0001]
22. TRC, NRA, English Language Summary of the Fort Resolution Chronicles, volume 1, 1903–
1942, 38. [GNN-000077-0001]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to W. M. Halliday, 3 October 1924. [MIK-002612]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, “Extractfrom Agent’s Report on the Birtle Residential School, for the month of February, 1925.” P. G.
Lazenby. [BIR-000070]
25. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, file L1027.M27L 121,
Principal Cowessess Indian Residential School, to Russell T. Ferrier, 16 March 1926. [MRS006020]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6219, file 472-5, part 2, Russell Ferrier
to Dr. Scott, 9 June 1927. [MCI-000243]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 1, 1886–1927,
Indian Agent, Department of Indian Affairs, Morley to Russell T. Ferrier, 1 November 1927.
[MOR-005523]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6321, file 658-5, part 4, “Statement ofGeorge Peechow, Age 17 Years in connection with an outbreak of fire at the Anglican Indian
School, Onion Lake Sask., on Friday evening at 8 o’clock p.m. Feb. 10th 1928.” [PAR-0170080001]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, J. D.
McLean to A. O’N. Daunt, 6 October 1928. [MIS-001505]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-5, part 4, W. M. Graham
to Secretary Indian Affairs, 24 December 1929. [DRS-000572-0000]
31. TRC, NRA, English Language Summary of the Fort Resolution Chronicles, volume 1, 1903–
1942, 56. [GNN-000077-0001]

Notes • 851
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8701, W. M. Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 September 1929. [BQL-001728]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 3, Report Re Fireat Camperville, Manitoba, Thomas Baird, 24 November 1930. [PCR-000124]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6322, file 658-5, part 5, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 28 August 1930. [PAR-015011-0000]
35. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Minutes of the Meetings ofIndian Residential School Commission MSCC, 01/1930–11/1932 Accession GS 75-103, series
2:15[a], box 18, “Minutes of Meeting of Indian Residential School Commission, MSCC, Heldon Tuesday, April 7, 1931,” 5. [AGS-000145]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6346, file 751-5, part 4, 1932–1933,
NAC, W. E. Gullion to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 December 1932. [BQL-006214-0000]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6366, file 761-5, part 2, Bishop Guy toHarold W. McGill, 11 December 1933. [FVD-000726-0000]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6366, file 761-5, part 2, Bishop Guy toHarold W. McGill, 11 December 1933. [FVD-000726-0000]
39. TRC, NRA, English Language Summary of the Fort Resolution Chronicles, volume 1, 1903–
1942, 66. [GNN-000077-0001]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10413, file Shannon Box 45, M.
Christianson to G. C. Laight, 26 September 1933. [CFT-004504]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6357, file 757-5 part 4, 1935–1938,
NAC, [Illegible] for T. R. L. MacInnes, to M. Christianson, 15 October 1935. [MOR-0044480000]
42. TRC, NRA, Minutes of the Meetings of Indian Residential School Commission MSCC,
02/35–05/38, pg. 1902-2256 Accession GS 75-103, series 2:15[a], box 19, Minutes of Meeting ofIndian Residential School Commission, MSCC, held on Tuesday, May 14, 1935. [AGS-000529]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 4, J. P. Mackey,
20 November 1936. [SRS-001501]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6215, file 470-5, part 3, H. McGill to
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 6 October 1936. [PLK-000124]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6357, file 757-5, part 4, 1935–1938,
NAC, W. Barr Murray to C. Pant Schmidt, 25 July 1938. [MOR-004509-0001]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 6, 1938–1941, A.
R. Simpson to D. M. MacKay, 25 September 1939. [LEJ-002960-0001]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Kwawkewlth Agency – Alert Bay Residential School– Building Maintenance – Supplies and Accounts, 1937–1939, F.A. 10-17, volume 6428, file875-5, part 6, National Archives of Canada – Ottawa, M. S. Todd to Secretary, Department ofIndian Affairs, 14 June 1939. [MIK-013732]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 6, 1938–1941,
Microfilm reel C-8768, J. H. F. Lacey to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 September 1939. [LEJ002940]

Table 18.4. School fires that were suspected or proven to be deliberately set
1. Wilson, Missionary work, 130–131, 142.
2. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 28.

852 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
3. E. F. Wilson, Autobiographical Journal, 47, quoted in Porter, “Anglican Church,” 33.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 386.
5. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 368–369.
6. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 368.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, “Blaze at
Brantford: The Mohawk Institute Totally Destroyed,” in The Globe, story datelined 19 April
1903; [TAY-003519] Martin Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 21 April
1903. [TAY-003521]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 May 1903. [TAY-003524]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 June 1903. [TAY-003528]
10. Stanley, “Alberta’s Half-Breed Reserve,” 96–98.
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, Secretary,
Indian Affairs to T. T. George, 30 January 1908. [MER-000394]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, S. Spencer
Page to The Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 25 March 1913. [CRW-000045]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, P. Schmidt toSecretary, Indian Affairs, 17 September 1917. [SMD-001235]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. E.
Ditchburn to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 January 1918. [MIK-002569]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6364, file 760-1, part 1, 1892–1936,
Microfilm reel C-8717, George H. Race to the Secretary, 18 January 1917. [SAL-000088]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. M.
Halliday to Ditchburn, 17 January 1918. [MIK-000274]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to W. M. Halliday, 3 October 1924. [MIK-002612]
18. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, file L1027.M27L 121,
Principal Cowessess Indian Residential School, to Russell T. Ferrier, 16 March 1926. [MRS006020]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 1, 1886–1927,
Indian Agent, Department of Indian Affairs, Morley to Russell T. Ferrier, 1 November 1927.
[MOR-005523]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6321, file 658-5, part 4, “Statement ofGeorge Peechow, Age 17 Years in connection with an outbreak of fire at the Anglican Indian
School, Onion Lake Sask., on Friday evening at 8 o’clock p.m. Feb. 10th 1928.” [PAR-0170080001]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, J. D.
McLean to A. O’N. Daunt, 6 October 1928. [MIS-001505]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8701, W. M. Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 September 1929. [BQL-001728]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 3, “Report Re
Fire at Camperville, Manitoba,” Thomas Baird, 24 November 1930. [PCR-000124]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. MacNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930; [CLD-000934] RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1,

Notes • 853“Crime Report: Re: [name redacted], Treaty Indian Cross Lake, Man. Arson, 28 October 1931.”[CLD-004089]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10413, file Shannon Box 45, M.
Christianson to G. C. Laight, 26 September 1933. [CFT-004504]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6357, file 757-5 part 4, 1935–1938,
NAC, [Illegible] for T. R. L. MacInnes, to M. Christianson, 15 October 1935. [MOR-0044480000]

Fire, a deadly hazard: 1867–1939
1. Wilson, Missionary work, 129, 130–131.
2. Wilson, Missionary work, 136.
3. Wilson, Missionary work, 142.
4. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 32.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 417.
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 28 January 1904. [PLD-000673]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, H. W. McGill
to Thomas G. Murphy, 18 November 1932. [PLD-000027]
8. 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, “Inspection of the St. Mary’s Indian
School, Mission, Cranbrook, British Columbia,” Adams, P., 25 October 1938. [EGN-004990]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6055, file 265-5, part 4, J. P. Mackey,
20 November 1936. [SRS-001501]
10. Manore, “Vision of Trust,” 7; Pettit, “‘Christianize and Civilize,’” 54; Harrington, “Shingwauk
School,” 24.
11. Stanley, “Alberta’s Half-Breed Reserve,” 96–98.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, O. Charlebois
to Duncan Scott, 21 September 1927; [BVL-000874] Louis Mederic Adam to Indian Affairs, 22
September 1927. [BVL-000879]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. McNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]
14. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1A, J. Ashby to E.
McColl, 21 October 1895; J. Ashby to E. McColl, 22 October 1895; E. McColl to T. Mayne Daly,
30 October 1895. [2058143]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Harry J.
Thompson, to Officer Commanding, Royal North West Mounted Police, Prince Albert, 8
November 1909. [BVL-000766]
16. TRC, NRA, English Language Summary of the Fort Resolution Chronicles, volume 1, 1903–
1942, 43, 44. [GNN-000077-0001]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast Agency– Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931, F.A. 10-17, Perm.
volume 6430, Microfilm reel C-8759, Indian Agent, West Coast Indian Agency to Secretary,854 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Department of Indian Affairs, 6 April 1915; [AST-200025] Assistant Deputy and Secretary toCharles Cox, 25 April 1916. [AST-200026]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 4 February 1904; [JON-000079] David Laird, to theSecretary, Department of Indian Affairs, page 1 of 1, 26 January 1904. [JON-000077]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, Sister Mary
Gabriel to D. Scott, 26 October 1927. [KAM-000186]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, H. W. McGill
to Thomas G. Murphy, 18 November 1932. [PLD-000027]
21. André, “Fire Escapes,” 38, 52.
22. André, “Fire Escapes,” 53.
23. André, “Fire Escapes,” 54; “The Collinwood School Fire,” The Encyclopedia of Cleveland
History, http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=CSF (accessed 13 January 2013).
24. André, “Fire Escapes,” 56.
25. André, “Fire Escapes,” 57.
26. “The Parliament Buildings,” http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Parliament/Publications/ParliamentBuildings/ParlBlgs-e.asp (accessed 13 January 2013).
27. Wilkins, “Montreal Diary: A Century Worth Celebrating for Westmount Park School,”Montreal Gazette, 22 November 2013, http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/
century+worth+celebrating+Westmount+Park+School/9202882/story.html.
28. Maines, Asbestos and Fire, 132.
29. Le musée interactif du Montréal juif, “Montreal Hebrew Orphan’s Home,” http://mimj.ca/
location/1049 (accessed 15 January 2014).
30. Maines, Asbestos and Fire, 132.
31. Observer, “Brothers’ Heroism Revealed: Gave Lives in Canadian School Fire,” 27 January 1938,
http://obs.stparchive.com/Archive/OBS/OBS01271938p01.php.
32. 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]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, G. H.
Wheatley to David Laird, 13 March 1901. [BIR-000015]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG 10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, W. Murison
to W. Graham, 17 November 1927. [BIR-000093]
35. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/23-5018, volume 1, J. G. McKechnie to Bishop of Qu’Appelle, 8 June 1918. [GDC-011275-0001]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-5, part 2, 1925–1929,
Microfilm reel C-8707, W. M. Graham to D. C. Scott, 14 October 1927. [EDM-007410]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 153/6-1-890, volume 2, St. Mary’s Ind. Res.
School General, Jan/55–Feb 24/64, F.A. 10-333, Acc. 78-C-18, Parc Box 308320, Temp Box 28,
National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, A. O’N. Daunt to D. C. Scott, 7 March 1928. [MIS010279]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6212, file 469-5, part 3, W. J. Phillips
to A. S. McCaig, 26 October 1929. [SWK-001252]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate, to The Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 January 1934. [JON-000270]

Notes • 855
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, Extract from
Inspector Hamilton’s Report regarding his inspection of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential
school on 7 and 8 March 1932. [PLD-008542]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, H. W. McGill
to Thomas G. Murphy, 18 November 1932. [PLD-000027]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6328, file 660-5, part 3, J. Sutherland
to Dr. McGill, 14 October 1933. [PLD-008580]
43. 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, “Inspection of the St. Mary’s Indian
School, Mission, Cranbrook, British Columbia,” 25 October 1938. [EGN-004990]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1642, 1894–1896, Samuel Lucas toIndian Commissioner, Regina, 13 January 1896. [SAR-000320]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8767, “Extract from Inspector’s Report on the Fraser Lake Residential
School,” 23 April 1923. [LEJ-003751]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8767, W. J. McAllan to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 June 1923. [LEJ-003706]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924, N.
Coccola to McAllan, 6 August 1923. [LEJ-003744-0001]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8767, Acting Deputy Superintendent General to Charles Stewart, 10
September 1923. [LEJ-003761]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1,
P. H. Gentleman to Dr. Westgate, 2 April 1921. [OLD-000468]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-5, part 4, M.
Christianson to Indian Affairs, 1 December 1927. [PLP-000874-0001] For positive assessmentof the Portage school, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file583-5, part 4, “Portage la Prairie Residential School,” M. Christianson, 25 June 1927. [PLP000866]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6350, file 753-5, part 1,
NAC, W. M. Graham to D. C. Scott, 3 April 1924. [EDM-003806]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-5, part 1, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 May 1925. [EDM-00115]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-5, part 4, Joseph
Hamilton Inspection Report, not dated, 5. [DRS-000570]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 2, Williams
Lake Agency – Cariboo Industrial School – General Administration, 1913–1937 F.A. 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8762, G. Forbes to A. F. MacKenzie, 13 December 1932. [JOE-201925-0001]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6265, file 579-5, part 6, S. Perrault to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 June 1934. [FAR-002747]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-5, part 3, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts
1931–1938, F.A. 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8759, “West Coast Agency Inspection Report, No. 9,”
Geo. S. Pragnell, 18 August 1937. [AST-200097]

856 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 876-6, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – Inspectors’ Reports, 1933–1940, F.A. 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8759, “Inspector’s Report on Ahousaht Indian Residential School,” Gerald H. Barry, 4
April 1939. [AST-200078-0003]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-5, part 4, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration – Supplies – Accounts 1938–
1944, F.A. 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8759, “Agent’s Report on West Coast Agency for January
1940,” P. B. Ashbridge, 31 January 1940. [AST-200084]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8777, Deputy Superintendent General to A. W. Vowell, 25 November 1895. [KUP-004057]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, J. D. McLean to A. J. McNeill, 1
May 1907. [AEMR-252036]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, David Laird to Principals of all
Indian Boarding and Industrial Schools, 14 March 1908. [AEMR-252037]
62. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2275, Duncan Scott to Principalsof Indian Residential Schools, 6 October 1927. [OGP-020818] For number of deaths in the
Beauval fire, see: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, O.
Charlebois to Duncan Scott, 21 September 1927; [BVL-000874] Louis Mederic Adam to IndianAffairs, 22 September 1927. [BVL-000879]
63. 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]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2047, file 9212, part 2, W. W.
Shepherd to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 26 November 1890. [MER-001342]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, J. D. McLean
to S. R. McVitty, 11 March 1910. [MER-000402]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, Robert
Ogilivie to Indian Affairs, 30 October 1912. [MER-000435-0000]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 5, “Extract From
Inspector’s Report on the Mount Elgin Residential School, June 6, 1924,” J. H. Sexton. [MER000708]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 6, “Extractfrom Report of Mr. Inspector Sexton, dated December 19th, 1927, on the Mount Elgin Indian
Residential School.” [MER-000740]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 6, A. F.
MacKenzie to S. R. McVitty, 8 August 1929. [MER-000758]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6467, file 889-5, part 1, 1908–1932,
Vancouver Agency – Squamish Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies –Accounts, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8785, NAC Ottawa, O. L. Lister to Sister Superior, 20
February 1923. [SQU-002300-0001]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 2, A. O’N. Dauntto D. C. Scott, 15 September 1926. [MIS-000042]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-5, part 2, “Extract from
Report of Inspector Bennett on the Kenora Residential School, 8 October 1926.” [KNR-000721]

Notes • 857
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-5, part 2, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy Minister and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 December 1927. [KNR000838]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-5, part 2, F. J. McDonald
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 May 1928. [KNR-001593]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 6, “Excerpt fromGrand Jury Inspection Report on the Kenora Residential School,” 3 November 1938. [KNR000720]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Mr. Graham, 11 September 1929. [RLS-000282-0001]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6440, file 879-5, part 3, West Coast
Agency – Christie Industrial School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts – 1932–
1940, F.A. 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8763, NAC Ottawa, “Extract from Report of Inspector G.
H. Barry Dated April 25, 1934, on his inspection of the Christie Indian Residential School.”[CST-006646]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 3, Charles Hives
to T. B. R. Westgate, 15 October 1923. [PAR-007641]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 3, Duncan C.
Scott to Charles Stewart, 14 November 1923. [PAR-008605]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, H. B. Currie to
Indian Affairs, 12 October 1927. [BIR-000090]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6273, file 583-5, part 4, W. A. Hendry
to W. Graham, 5 October 1927. [PLP-000869-0001]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6453, file 884-5, part 2, 1924–1930,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Vocational Training – Supplies –Accounts,
FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8774, L. Choinel to E .H. Small, 11 January 1928. [EGN-007479]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-5, part 1, T. B. R.
Westgate to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 20 July 1929. [WFL-000116]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6353, file 754-5, part 2, D., 1926–1936,
Microfilm reel C-8709, W. M. Graham to Duncan C. Scott, 17 May 1930. [EDM-003837]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6264, file 579-5, part 3, P. Bousquet to
J. D. McLean, 23 April 1923. [FAR-003892-0000]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6219, file 472-5, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to C. Perrault, 23 September 1925. [MCI-000163]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 4, C. F. Hives toT. B. R. Westgate, 18 October 1927. [PAR-008144]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Louis Mederic
Adam to Indian Affairs, 22 September 1927. [BVL-000879]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, O. Charlebois
to Duncan Scott, 21 September 1927; [BVL-000874] Louis Mederic Adam to Indian Affairs, 22
September 1927. [BVL-000879]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, “Beauval
Mission Fire,” The Standard, 29 September 1927. [BVL-000882]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. MacNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]

858 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
92. TRC, AVS, Evelyn Jebb, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Manitoba, 16 January 2012, Statement Number: 2011-0293.
93. TRC, AVS, Bella Quekeapow, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Norway House First Nation, Manitoba, 9 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0287.
(Translated from Cree to English by Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government
Services Canada, 8956128.)
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. MacNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. MacNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, J. L. Fuller to
A. MacNamara, 8 March 1930; [CLD-000933-0000] William Gordon to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs, 10 March 1930. [CLD-000934]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-5, part 4, George Dodds
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 February 1932. [FHR-000853]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-5, part 4, George Dodds
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 March 1932. [FHR-000215]
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-5, part 3, “Excerpt fromletter dated July 6, 1938 from Dr. J. J. Wall.” [RLS-000398]
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 772/23-5-001, “Agent’s
Report,” G. H. Gooderham, June & July, 1935. [CFT-001732]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6215, file 470-5, part 4, John Marshallto A. G. Hamilton, 17 March 1938. [PLK-000148-0001]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives 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]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 5, 1933–1938,
Microfilm reel C-8768, “Report and recommendations of the school engineer concerning FireFighting equipment at the School,” 16 February 1938. [LEJ-004713]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 6, 1938–1941,
Microfilm reel C-8768, “Extract from Inspector Barry’s report dated October 16, 1939.” [LEJ002948]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-5, part 3, Thomas
Robertson to Indian Affairs, 27 October 1937. [THR-000201]
106. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6, file 105, D. M. Laird
to Rev. Sir, 14 January 1908. [RIS-000577]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, PARC, W. M.
Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 July 1925. [CYP-005124]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6265, file 579-5, part 5, W. M. Graham
to Duncan C. Scott, 5 July 1930. [FAR-004247]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-5, part 3, W. M. Graham
to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 May 1931. [SBR-001840]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, “Mackay
Indian Residential School (C.E.),” A. G. Hamilton, 6 November 1931. [DRS-000589]

Notes • 859
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 580-5, part 5, W. M. Graham
to Mr. Scott, 1 December 1931. [DRS-000620]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, M.
Christianson to Indian Affairs, 2 March 1932. [DRS-000594]
113. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 201.
114. 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] volume 6356, file 757-5, part 3, 1934–1935, M. Christianson to Secretary,
Indian Affairs, 18 March 1935. [AEMR-177210]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-5, part 7, “Extract ofReport from Inspector A. G. Hamilton Dated December 8, 1937, On His Inspection of the
Elkhorn Indian Residential School.” [ELK-000122]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, J. D. McLean to A. J. McNeill,
1 May 1907; [AEMR-252036] Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2275, Duncan
Scott to Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 6 October 1927; [OGP-020818] Library andArchives Canada, file 886-1, part 3, Skeena River Agency – Port Simpson Girls Residential
School, 1894–1950, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6458, “Extract from Inspector Barry’s Letter of
May 23 1937.” [PSM-200643]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 886-5, part 2, Skeena River Agency – Port
Simpson United Church Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts,
1933–1950, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6458, Microfilm reel C-8779, “Extract from Inspector
Barry’s Report Regarding his Inspection of the Port Simpson Indian Residential School, 21
May 1937.” [PSM-200553]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 886-5, part 2, Skeena River Agency – Port
Simpson United Church Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts,
1933–1950, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6458, Microfilm reel C-8779, Report of W. E. Collison, 4June 1938. [PSM-200555]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6350, file 753-5, part 2, 1925–1929,
Microfilm reel C-8707, W. M. Graham to D. C. Scott, 18 October 1927. [AEMR-010872]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1,
T. B. R. Westgate to Duncan C. Scott, 4 July 1928. [OLD-000312]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6321, file 658-5, part 4, “Statement ofGeorge Peechow, Age 17 Years in connection with an outbreak of fire at the Anglican Indian
School, Onion Lake Sask., on Friday evening at 8 o’clock p.m. Feb. 10th 1928.” [PAR-0170080001]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, “Blaze at
Brantford: The Mohawk Institute Totally Destroyed,” in The Globe, story datelined 19 April
1903; [TAY-003519] Martin Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 21 April
1903. [TAY-003521]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 May 1903. [TAY-003524]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 June 1903. [TAY-003528]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 24 June 1903. [TAY-003529]
126. E. F. Wilson, Autobiographical Journal, 47, quoted in Porter, “Anglican Church,” 33.

860 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, “Crime
Report: Re: Roman Catholic Boarding School, Cross Lake – Loss of by fire. 7 October 1931,”
Saul, D.C. [CLD-000941]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, John L. Ross
to Maurice Dupre, 23 January 1932. [CLD-000944]
129. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 386.
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 3, J. Magnan to
Duncan C. Scott, 27 October 1930. [PCR-000122]
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. M.
Halliday to Ditchburn, 17 January 1918. [MIK-000274]
132. Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe Canada, Grandin Province Archives, Acc. 71.200, box
132, file 5737, Louis Guillaume to Father Provincial, 12 April 1942.
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6364, file 760-1, part 1, 1892–1936,
Microfilm reel C-8717, George H. Race to the Secretary, 18 January 1917. [SAL-000088]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 September 1901. [MER-000325]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Indian Affairs, 7 November 1901. [MER-000319]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. M.
Halliday to Ditchburn, 17 January 1918. [MIK-000274]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, W. E.
Ditchburn to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 22 January 1918. [MIK-002569]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to W. E. Ditchburn, 29 January 1918. [MIK-002568]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to W. M. Halliday, 3 October 1924. [MIK-002612]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6364, file 760-1, part 1, 1892–1936,
Microfilm reel C-8717, George H. Race to the Secretary, 18 January 1917. [SAL-000088]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, Canada, 757-1 part 1, volume 6355, 1886–1927, Indian
Agent, Department of Indian Affairs, Morley to Russell T. Ferrier, 1 November 1927. [MOR005523]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6357, file 757-5, part 4, 1935–1938,
NAC, [Illegible] for T. R. L. MacInnes, to M. Christianson, 15 October 1935. [MOR-0044480000]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, A. O’N. Daunt
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 25 September 1928. [MIS-001504]
144. Wall, “Train a Wild Bird,” 38.
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, E. D.
Cameron to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 April 1906. [TAY-003539]
146. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Chester Ferrier to R.
Ashton, 17 August 190. [Final digit left blank.]
147. Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe Canada, Grandin Province Archives, Acc. 71.200, box
132, file 5737, Louis Guillaume to Father Provincial, 12 April 1942.
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, Secretary,
Indian Affairs to T. T. George, 30 January 1908. [MER-000394]

Notes • 861
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, S. Spencer
Page to The Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 25 March 1913. [CRW-000045]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6305, file 652-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to C. P. Schmidt, 4 December 1917. [SMD-001244]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, [redacted] and[redacted] to Henry Ellis, 7 March 1928. [PAR-001008-0001]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 3, “Report Re
Fire at Camperville, Manitoba,” Thomas Baird, 24 November 1930. [PCR-000124]
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-5, part 3, “Report Re
Fire at Camperville, Manitoba,” Thomas Baird, 24 November 1930; [PCR-000124] J. Magnan to
Duncan C. Scott, 27 October 1930. [PCR-000122]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6271, file 582-5, part 4, S. J. Waite to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 January 1932. [PCR-000131]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, John L. Ross
to Maurice Dupre, 23 January 1932; [CLD-000944] RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, P. G.
Lazenby to Indian Affairs, 18 April 1939. [CLD-100001]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6260, file 577-1, part 1, “Crime
Report: Re: [Name redacted], Treaty Indian Cross Lake, Man. Arson,” 28 October 1931. [CLD004089]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
P. G. Lazenby, 27 April 1939. [CLD-004168]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10413, file Shannon Box 45, M.
Christianson to G.C. Laight, 26 September 1933. [CFT-004504]

Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939
1. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 140.
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, “Required for the useof the Industrial Schools about to be opened in the N.W. Territories at Qu’Appelle, Battleford,
and in Treaty 7.” [PLD-009144] The table sets out rations for six months. It presents the bacon
ration at half a pound a day and the beef ration at a pound a day. However, it also indicatesthat these are for 91 days, while all other provisions are for 180 days.
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toReverend Thomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, Microfilm
reel C-8773, “Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School”; [AEMR-011621A] L.
Vankoughnet to P. Durieu, 17 October 1889. [ABV-003457]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3879, file 91833, Order-in-Council, 22
October 1892. [RIS-000354]
6. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
7. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson to Deputy
Superintendent General, 17 March 1904.
8. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 2, file6, Andrew Baird to Hamilton Cassells, 9 January 1893. The letter discusses the shift from full862 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
funding to per capita funding, and notes that the church believes the grant should be not lessthan $140; the government, $120. [RIS-000455] Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 4, file 52, A. J. McLeod
to Assistant Commissioner, Regina, 13 April 1895. This letter states that the dietary scale dates
from 1891. [RIS-000148-0003]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836, J. McKenna, J. Menzies, and
R. MacKay to Superintendent General Indian Affairs, 11 March 1904. [RIS-000077]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, J. Hugonnard to E.
Dewdney, 5 May 1891, 4. [PLD-009435]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, J. N. Lemmens
to Supt. Genl. Indian Affairs, 10 November 1891. [KUP-000872]
12. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 260.
13. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, G. Donckele to A. W.
Vowell, 12 April 1894.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, A. M. Carion to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 June
1910. [KAM-009714]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, “Extract of Report of Indian Agent John F. Smithon the Kamloops Industrial School during the quarter ended September 30, 1917.” [KAM009748]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, L. Turner to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 March 1921; [PAR-000950-0000] Duncan C. Scott to S. Gould, 1
April 1921. [PAR-000950-0001]
17. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, 71.220 B54 2274, Russell T. Ferrier to Principals of
Residential Schools, 19 January 1922. [OGP-020792]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 12373, file 1922, Russell T. Ferrier tothe Indian Agent, 19 January 1922. [FFR-000154]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 12373, file 1922, H. M. Brassard to
Russell T. Ferrier, 28 January 1922. [FFR-000155]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13, part 1, E. L. S. to J. P.
Mackey, 18 September 1929. [SRS-000242]
21. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 174, 256, 258.
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 174.
23. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 114.
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3918, file 116659-1, John F. Smith toAssistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 March 1918. [AEMR-255360]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, F. V. Agnew to Indian Affairs, 4 June 1918. [KAM009763]
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 451.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 445–456.
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]

Notes • 863
29. Green, Cassell’s Dictionary, 401.
30. Graham, Mush Hole, 435.
31. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Lucy L. Affleck to Dr. Barner, 3
October 1929. [UCB-005108]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6343, file 750-5, part 3, J. D. McLean
to E. Ruaux, 8 November 1929. [MRY-009750]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6467, file 889-1, part 1, 12/1894–
11/1933, Vancouver Agency – Squamish Residential School – General Administration, FA 1017, Microfilm reel C-8785, NAC Ottawa, F. J. C. Ball to R. T. Ferrier, 20 July 1931. [SQU-000469]
34. Farrell, Congress on Tuberculosis, 12.
35. Paterson, “IV.E.6. – Lactose Intolerance,” http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/lactose.
htm.
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, Microfilm reelC-10164, W. M. Graham to Duncan C. Scott, 1 October 1914. [AEMR-013533]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, “Extract from Nurse Ramage’s report, November 1921.” [CFT-0001560001] For Ramage’s first name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936, Microfilm reel 8705, “Extract of Monthly Report of Nurse
Margaret Jean Ramage, October 1921. [CFT-000147]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, “Extract of report of G. H. Gooderham, for month of October 1921.” [CFT000148]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to Reverend A. Watelle, 31 January 1922. [THR-000149]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to Reverend A. Watelle, 16 February 1922. [THR-000151]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2,“Memorandum for File,” Russell T. Ferrier, 17 March 1922. [PLD-007242]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 2, 1922–1924,
Microfilm reel C-8767, “Extract from Inspector’s Report on the Fraser Lake Residential
School, dated April 23rd and 24th, 1923.” [LEJ-003751]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 1, N. Coccola toJ. D. McLean, 22 June 1923. [LEJ-001012]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. B. Hardinge, 21 September 1923. [MDD-000731]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6324, file 659-5, part 2, “Onion Lake
R.C. Boarding School,” 1926. [ORC-000346-0001]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Mr. Graham, 23 June 1927. [BIR-000079]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6252, file 575-5, part 2, W. Murison to
W. Graham, 17 November 1927. [BIR-000093]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 580-14, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. W. Waddy, 25 April 1927. [DRS-000574]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6268, file 580-14, part 1, J. W. Waddy toAssistant Deputy and Secretary, 6 May 1927. [DRS-000575]

864 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. Waddy to
Indian Affairs, 24 November 1928. [DRS-000564]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Inspection
report, 31 October 1929. [DRS-000566]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6315, file 655-14, part 1, “Extract from
Report of Mr. Inspector Hamilton Dated October 24th, 1928, on his inspection of the Guy
Indian Residential School.” [GUY-051450]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6315, file 655-14, part 1, “Extract from
Letter of Mr. Commissioner Graham Dated November 7, 1928, on the Guy Indian Residential
School.” [GUY-051451]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6467, file 889-1, part 1, 12/1894–
11/1933, Vancouver Agency – Squamish Residential School – General Administration, FA
10-17, Microfilm reel C-8785, NAC Ottawa, A. F. MacKenzie to F. J. C. Ball, 25 June 1931. [SQU000467]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, “Extract fromthe January report of Nurse Pears, re The Pas Agency,” 18 February 1933. [DRS-000606]
56. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, T. M. Kennedy to Reverend
Father Provincial, 2 December 1937. [OKM-000248]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 884-14, part 1, Microfilm
reel C-8777, “Extract from report of Inspector Cairns, Dated Nov. 9 1922, on the Kuper Island
Industrial School.” [KUP-003836-0000]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, R. T. Ferrier toW. M. Halliday, 8 March 1922. [MIK-002590]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, Memorandum for File, 25 March 1924. [EGN-007951]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 2, “Extract from
Report of Inspector Cairns on the Alert Bay Boys’ School,” 27 April 1926. [MIK-002621]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 4, W. Murison to
Indian Affairs, 2 June 1925. [ELK-000330]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6453, file 884-5, part 3, 1930–1931,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies –Accounts (Reports), FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8774 and C-8775, NAC Ottawa, C. C. Perry to
W. E. Ditchburn, 12 June 1930, 2. [EGN-008478]
63. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
64. Graham, Mush Hole, 441.
65. Graham, Mush Hole, 374.
66. Baker, Khot-La-Cha, 30.
67. TRC, NRA Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Gordon
Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 May 1915. [TAY-003553]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6217, file 471-1, part 1, F. C. Collier,
24 December 1920. [AGA-001434-0001]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6217, file 471-1, part 1, D. C. Scott to
V. Gravel, 3 January 1921. [AGA-001435]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to G. Leonard, 12 January 1923. [PLD-000700]

Notes • 865
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, H. Graham to
R. T. Ferrier, 7 March 1922. [GRG-001413]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, PARC, W. M.
Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 July 1925. [CYP-005124]
73. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 452–454.
74. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 53.
75. Graham, Mush Hole, 446.
76. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 2, file6, Andrew Baird to Hamilton Cassells, 9 January 1893. The letter discusses the shift fromfull funding to per capita funding, and notes that the church believes the grant should be$140; the government, $120. [RIS-000455] Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 4, file 52, A. J. McLeod toAssistant Commissioner, Regina, 13 April 1895. This letter states that the dietary scale dates
from 1891. [RIS-000148-0003]
77. French, My Name Is Masak, 22.
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Martin Benson
to Deputy Superintendent General, 30 December 1904. [RIS-000089]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 312-11, “Staff Meals for theMonth of May, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School”; [GDC-011802] “Children’s Daily
Menu for the Month of May, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.” [GDC-011803]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-5, part 7, “Children ‘s
Menus, Elkhorn Indian Residential School, November 18th-19th, 1934”; [ELK-000116-0001]
RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Children’s Menu, 1936.” [BRS-000065]
81. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 258; TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 9137, file 312-11, “Children’s Daily Menu for the Month ofMay, 1931, Gordon’s Indian Residential School.” [GDC-011802]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6467, file 889-1, part 1, 12/1894–
11/1933, Vancouver Agency – Squamish Residential School – General Administration, FA 1017, Microfilm reel C-8785, NAC Ottawa, F. J. C. Ball to R. T. Ferrier, 20 July 1931. [SQU-000469]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Indian Affairs, 6 November 1931. [DRS-000589]
84. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 961/23-5,
1922–1964, volume 1, RCAP, G. H. Barry to C. C. Perry, 17 March 1936. [KUP-000267-0001]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 2, 1936–1939, J. Geurts to
H. Graham, 2 April 1937. [KUP-004470]
86. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 961/23-5,
1922–1964, volume 1, RCAP, G. H. Barry, “Inspector’s Report,” 27 March 1938. [KUP-0002630003]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Shannon File 4, part 2, volume 11949,
1930–1935, “Lesser Slave Lake Agency,” Driftpile, Alberta, 31 January 1935. Report for January
1935. N. P. L’Heureux. [MAR-003845-0000]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 2, “Report andDiary of Trip to Wabasca From January 29th to February 2nd, 1937,” N. P. L’Heureux. [JON000305]
89. Johnston, Indian School Days, 32.
90. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
91. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 80–81; Manuel and Posluns, Fourth World, 66.

866 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
92. Elizabeth Graham’s book The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools is an essential
source of information on food at these institutions. Graham, Mush Hole, 455.
93. Graham, Mush Hole, 455.
94. Graham, Mush Hole, 435.
95. Graham, Mush Hole, 368.
96. Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Transcript Disc # 182, Mary Englund interviewed by
Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, PABC No. 3868.
97. Graham, Mush Hole, 363.
98. Graham, Mush Hole, 458.
99. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 53.
100. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 613.
101. Graham, Mush Hole, 357.
102. Graham, Mush Hole, 449.
103. Graham, Mush Hole, 446.
104. RC, NRA, Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Kuper Island Industrial School, Add Mss
1267 V. 39, Kuper Island Conduct Book, Antone, No. 70, Edward, No. 71, Felix, No. 72, Thomas,
No. 78, Louis Dick, No. 81, Jeannin, No. 82, Francis, No. 83, Frank, No. 85, Willie, No. 87,
Basile, No. 94, Archie, No. 96, Abraham Crocker, No. 99, Robert Paul, No. 101, Francis, No. 102,
Emile Keith, No. 108, Frank, No. 109, John Baptist, No. 110, Robert Iravis, [Illegible], No. 114,
Thomas, No. 117, Baptiste Paul, No. 134. [KUP-005146] For student disdain for turnips, see
Graham, Mush Hole, 368.
105. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 24.
106. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25–26.
107. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 481.
108. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 383.
109. Graham, Mush Hole, 455.
110. Graham, Mush Hole, 441.
111. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 109.
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, Mrs. George
Perger to Indian Affairs, 18 November 1935. [NCA-011504-0002]
113. See, for examples: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 8781, part 1, Statement of Mary Sticks, 28 February 1902; [IRC-047079] Statement of Christine
Haines, 28 February 1902; [IRC-047082] Statement of Ellen Charlie, 28 February 1902. [IRC047081]
114. Brantford Expositor, “Damages for Plaintiff in Miller vs. Ashton Case,” 1 April 1914.
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 1, T. Ferrier toChief Berens, 29 September 1915. [NHU-001892]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 1, George Bunn
to Duncan Campbell Scott, 24 September 1915. [NHU-001889-0000]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8754, M. Alexander, J. Jones, S. Wallace, M. Norman to A. M. Tyson, 12 January 1915. [COQ000392]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8754, J. D. McLean to T. Deasy, 6 April 1916. [COQ-000407]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Perm. volume 6451, file 883-1, part 1, Bella
Coola Agency – Kitamaat Boarding School – General Administration, 1906–1932, F. A. 10-17,Notes • 867
Microfilm reel C-8773; [KMT-095676-0001] Library and Archives Canada, “Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, Re: Kitimat Indian Reserve, Re: Hanna Grant, Deceased, 15 June
1922,” I. Fougner to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 June 1922. [KMT-095674]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, Edward B. toparents, 14 December 1923. [PAR-000960-0002]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toF. C. Mears, 11 January 1924. [PAR-000960-0000]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, Lang Turner
to K. A. Baptiste, 21 January 1924. [PAR-000962]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, L. Turner to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 March 1921. [PAR-000950-0000]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, Duncan C.
Scott to S. Gould, 1 April 1921. [PAR-000950-0001]
125. Loft, “Indian and Education,” 12 June 1909, 2.
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 23 December 1903. [PLD-008655-0001]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, A. M. Carion to A. Irwin, 16 September 1909.
[KAM-009710]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, John T. Ross to
C. Brouillet, 21 July 1920. [AEMR-016665]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-?, part 1, R. A.
Hoey to Dr. McGill, 4 November 1938. [AEMR-120432]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, Frank
Edwards to the Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 26 June 1939. [IRC-048013]

School clothing: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toReverend Thomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-3, L. Vankoughnet toJohn A. Macdonald, 10 January 1884. [PLD-007553]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 109–111.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 1, n.d., “The
Shingwauk Home for Indian Boys, Central Regulations.” [SWK-001892]
6. Rutherdale, Women and White Men’s God, 19.
7. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 194.
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, volume 793, file 6334, part 1, Shingle Point
Day and Residential School, 1923–1932, Duncan C. Scott to O. S. Finnie, 14 April 1930; [SPU000114] O. S. Finnie to R. A. Gibson, 23 April 1930. [SPU-000115]
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 124.

868 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to R. P. MacKay, 4 June 1908. [CJC-000813]
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 451.
12. Graham, Mush Hole, 439.
13. Graham, Mush Hole, 355.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to J. D. McLean, 15 July 1897. [100.00109]
15. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 54.
16. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 113.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 178.
18. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
19. 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]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, J. Hugonnard
to Indian Commissioner, 6 October 1894. [PLD-007330]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-3, L. Vankoughnet toJohn A. Macdonald, 10 January 1884, 14. [PLD-007553]
22. Graham, Mush Hole, 439.
23. Graham, Mush Hole, 436.
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, A. Fraser to
Secretary Indian Affairs, 26 November 1931. [DRS-000590]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, A. M. Carion to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 June
1910. [KAM-009714]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm reelC-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, J. B. Salles to D. C. Scott, 2 April 1917. [KAM009741]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, W. Murison toW. M. Graham, 29 June 1925. [RLS-000215-0001]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Lucy Affleck
to Mr. Graham, 15 November 1929. [RLS-000293-0001]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6196, file 464-5, part 1, J. D. McLean
to J. G. Burk, 19 October 1927. [SJS-000311]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6196, file 464-1, part 1, Peter
Manitominess to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 February 1929. [SJS-000315]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8449, file 511/23-5-014, A. G.
Hamilton to Dr. Harold McGill, 4 December 1936. [BIR-002431]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, A. G. Smith toA. G. Hamilton, 8 March 1937. [BIR-000222]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 3 November 1936. [CJC-000705]
34. 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]

Notes • 869
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toThomas Clarke, 31 July 1883; [120.06668] 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. [AEMR010788]

Discipline: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Ed. Maillard to Father ByrneGrant, 28 April 1931. [SEC-001245]
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, 96.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 111.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 299.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, “Report on the
Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Schools,” Benson, 30 August 1895. [TAY-003821-0000]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 371.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, The Advocate
Newspaper, Vol. 1, No. 5, November & December 1915, 7. [DRS-000499]
8. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 472.
9. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 9-81, box 131, MSCC Publications, Reports of IRSC, “Indian and Eskimo Residential School
Commission of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,” 18. [CRS-002147]
10. Johnston, Indian School Days, 138.
11. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, G. Forbes to Very Reverend
Father Provincial, 4 January 1939. [CIS-000113]
12. Greven, Spare the Child, 55–60.
13. See, for example: Proverbs, 13:24, 22:15, and 29:15.
14. Hodgins, Documentary History of Education, 239.
15. Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 59–60.
16. Quoted in Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 59–60.
17. Axelrod, “No Longer a Last Resort,” 267.
18. Quoted in Axelrod, Promise of Schooling, 59.
19. Acts, Relating to the Education Department, Ontario (Toronto, 1891), 103, quoted in Wrock,“History of Legal Actions,” 63.
20. Wrock, “History of Legal Actions,” 85–109.
21. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 77.
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 128.
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, MR C-8773,“Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, “Duties ofAssistant as Approved by Department,” 20 February 1888. [PLD-009411]
26. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3930, file 117377-1A, H. Reed toBishop of Rupert’s Land, 31 May 1893, 8.

870 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
27. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3558, file 64, part 39, David Laird to
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 13 March 1899.
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, H. Reed to AssistantCommissioner, 28 June, 1895. [EDM-003376]
29. United Church of Canada Archives, Winnipeg, Andrew Baird Papers, E 1955–1959, G. G.
McLaren to Rev. Baird, 16 November 16, 1892, quoted in Hildebrand, “Staff Perspectives,”
137–138.
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, G.
Donckele to W. H. Lomas, 29 December 1896. [KUP-004264]
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 389.
32. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 390.
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 391.
34. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 311.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 382.
36. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 386.
37. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 376.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 322.
39. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, A. Paull to W.
E. Ditchburn, 21 August 1922. [ABR-000750]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, H. B. Currie to
C. A. Cox, 9 September 1922. [ABR-000069]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6459, file 887-1, part 2, C. C. Perry to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 May 1936. [SLT-000540]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, David Laird to
Indian agent, Onion Lake Agency, 28 November 1906. [PAR-000985]
44. TRC, NRA, Kelleher, Accession No. 705, Tape 1, Track 1, no date. [OMS-000283]
45. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 118.
46. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 452.
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, G.
Donckele to H. W. Lomas, 2 January 1891. [KUP-004252]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6457, file 885-10, part 6, Microfilm
reel C-8778, H. Graham to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 13 February 1935. [KUP007040]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 1, A. J. Vale to
Secretary Indian Affairs, 27 April 1936. [CRS-001254]
50. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Principal’s Report for the Fiscal
Year ending March 31st, 1938.” Cariboo Indian Residential School, Williams Lake, British
Columbia. [WLM-000070]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, W. M.
Graham to Sir, 4 July 1907. [CRW-000023]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 11 October 1907. [CRW-000026]
53. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6, file100, Mr. McWhinney to unknown, August 1907. [CRW-000168-0001]

Notes • 871
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, S. Rogers toSuperintendent, Indian Education, 30 January 1926. [TAY-002695]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 July 1923. [GDC-006502]
56. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E497402016, volume 2, M. Christianson to W. M. Graham, 5 November 1923. [GDC-001157]
57. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 155.
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, J. Waite to
the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 October 1932. [SBR-110544]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, J. D.
Sutherland to J. Waite, 3 November 1932. [SBR-110545]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, O. Chagnon
to J. Waite, 14 October 1935. [SBR-110610-0001]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 1, Oliver B.
Strapp to Philip Phelan, 20 October 1937; Philip Phelan to O. B. Strapp, 22 October 1937.
[MER-003064, MER-003066]
62. Radunovich and Evans, “Bed Wetting,” 1–2.
63. Spanish school diary, September 1, 1924, quoted in Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 145.
64. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 145.
65. Radunovich and Evans, “Bed Wetting,” 1–2.
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, “Report on the
Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Schools,” Benson, 30 August 1895. [TAY-003821-0000]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10 (Red), volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, J. G.
Ramsden to J. D. McLean, 23 December 1907. [TAY-003542]
68. Graham, Mush Hole, 356.
69. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. 1979.199C, box 4, file 47, W. S. Moore
to Reverend R. P. McKay, 11 March 1903. [RIS-000171]
70. Bush, Western Challenge, 110.
71. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, Assistant Deputy andSecretary, Indian Affairs to Andrew S. Grant, 7 January 1913. [RLS-000049] In the 1911–12
Indian Affairs annual report, R. B. Ledingham was listed as the principal of the Round Lake
school, and H. McKay was listed as the acting principal in the following year’s report. Canada,
Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1912, 418; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 430.
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, S. R. McVitty
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 April 1920. [MER-001362]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, Gordon J.
Smith to Indian Affairs, 14 March 1922. [TAY-002470]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, Duncan
Campbell Scott to Gordon J. Smith, 18 March 1922. [TAY-002475]
75. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E497402016, volume 3, S. S. Moore to W. M. Graham, 18 March 1925. [GDC-002445]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, Eben
McKenzie to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 November 1938. [MRS-045581]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, Philip Phelan
to E. McKenzie, 3 December 1938. [MRS-045584]

872 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, W. Stewart to
Deputy Attorney General, Alberta, 28 December 1937. [JRD-001355]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, N. P.
L’Heureux to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 January 1938. [JRD-003400-0000]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, Public
Archives – Canada, R. A. Hoey to The Commissioner Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 7January 1938. [JRD-071051]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, Public
Archives – Canada, Paul Serrand to R. A. Hoey, 24 January 1938. [JRD-071066]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6368, file 762-10, part 3, Public
Archives – Canada, Philip Phelan to Paul Serrand, 31 January 1938. [JRD-071067]
83. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, file L1027.M27L 141,
J. P. B. Ostrander to P. Bousquet, 16 December 1919. [MRS-006018]
84. Graham, Mush Hole, 440.
85. Graham, Mush Hole, 369.
86. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-10, part 1, W. Murison
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 November 1932. [FHR-000221]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, John
Semmens to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 14 April 1896. [BRS-000190]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, A. E. Forget toJohn Semmens, 17 April 1896. [BRS-000191]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, John
Semmens to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 20 April 1896. [BRS-000193]
91. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Thomas Ross to Clifford Sifton,
21 April 1902.
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, James Woodsworth
to A. Sutherland, 9 December 1902. [EDM-009818]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, “Reporton Investigation of Complaints made by Thos. Ross and Daniel S. Kern, regarding themanagement of the Red Deer Industrial School, held under the instructions of the IndianCommissioner’s Letter No. 37/47 dated December 26th, 1902.” W. J. Chisholm. [EDM-003971]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Public Archives,
Asst. Indian Commissioner to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 June 1903. [EDM-009831]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. Waddy toAssistant Deputy and Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 27 November 1922. [DRS000521]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 580-5, part 5, A. G.
Hamilton, no date, 7–8. [DRS-000619]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Samuel Lovell
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 26 August 1932. [DRS-000598]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 September 1932. [IRC-041006-0000]
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, T. R. L.
MacInnes to T. B. R. Westgate, 21 September 1932. [DRS-000604]

Notes • 873
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton to The Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 24 February 1936. [CJC-000713]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, C. M.
Turnell to unidentified, 21 June 1915. [TAY-003555]
102. Graham, Mush Hole, 355.
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Duncan
Campbell Scott to C. A. Webb, 1 May 1918. [TAY-003566]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Gordon J.
Smith to Secretary Indian Affairs, 31 July 1918. [TAY-003572]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to Mr. Scott, 23 January 1922. [CRS-001009]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toGeorge Prewer, 2 February 1922. [CRS-001014-0001]
107. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E487402016, volume 5, Gordon’s Student Residence, 28–31, Indian Agent to W. M. Graham, 27
September 1928. [IRC-047119]
108. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3880, file 92499, Memorandum, Hayter Reed,undated; T. Clarke, “Report of Discharged Pupils,” Sessional Papers 1894, Paper 13, 103.
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofReverend Henry Boening, 3 March 1902; [IRC-047093] Statement of Joseph Fahey, 3 March
1903. [IRC-047092]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofAntonio Boitano, 1 March 1902. [IRC-047086]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, Statement of H. P. Horan, 4 March 1902. [JOE-060023]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, E. Bell to A. W.
Vowell, 28 February 1902. [IRC-047077]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, E. Bell to A. W.
Vowell, 28 February 1902. [IRC-047076]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofMary Sticks, 28 February 1902. [IRC-047079]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statementof Christine Haines, 28 February 1902. [IRC-047082]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofEllen Charlie, 28 February 1902. [IRC-047081]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, National Archives – Ottawa, Statement of E. Batiste, 3 March 1902. [JOE060020]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement
Francis, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047091]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement
Louis, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047088]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofAugustine, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047087]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, Statement of Johnny Sticks, 28 February 1902. [JOE-060004]

874 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofJoseph Fahey, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047092]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofReverend Henry Boening, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047093]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Statement ofSister Euphresia, 3 March 1902. [IRC-047094]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, Statement of Little Pete, 28 February 1902. [JOE-060009]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1890–1912, “Inquisition,” Inquest report, 28 February 1902. [JOE-060131]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, Indian
Superintendent to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 April 1902. [IRC-047104]
128. Brantford Expositor, “Damages for Plaintiff in Miller Vs. Ashton Case,” 1 April 1914.
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Kelly andPorter to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 29 September 1913. [TAY-001781-0001]
130. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Duncan Campbell Scott
to W. J. Roche, 28 October 1913.
131. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Duncan Campbell Scott
to Kelly and Porter, 30 October 1913.
132. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Duncan Campbell Scott
to W. J. Roche, 28 October 1913.
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Martin
Benson to Duncan Campbell Scott, 26 March 1918. [TAY-001803]
134. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Duncan Campbell Scott
to W. J. Roche, 3 December 1913.
135. Brantford Expositor, “Damages for Plaintiff in Miller Vs. Ashton Case,” 1 April 1914.
136. Brantford Expositor, “Damages for Plaintiff in Miller Vs. Ashton Case,” 1 April 1914.
137. Brantford Expositor, “Damages for Plaintiff in Miller Vs. Ashton Case,” 1 April 1914.
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, J. D.
McLean to C. A. Webb, 10 February 1911; [GRG-022008] Daniels, “Legal Context,” 260–261.
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Martin
Benson to Scott, 19 October 1914. [TAY-003547-0000]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Gordon J.
Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 31 July 1918. [TAY-003572]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, “Extract From
Inspector Semmens’ Report on the Kenora and Savanne Agencies.” 8 July 1914. [CJC-000001]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, John
Semmens to J. D. McLean, 17 August 1914. [CJC-000003]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to John Semmens, 19 August 1914. [CJC-000004]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, The Assistant
Deputy and Secretary to J. H. Edmison, 4 August 1917. [CJC-000845]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, A. O’N. Daunt
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 1 August 1920. [IRC-047108]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to A. O’N. Daunt, 9 August 1920. [IRC-047109]

Notes • 875
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 1, A. O’N. Daunt
to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 16 August 1920. [IRC047110]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8762, 1913–1937, S. P. J. Stanislaus to Sir, 22 August 1920. [JOE-060025]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 2, Microfilm
reel C-8762, 1913–1937, A. O’N. Daunt to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7September 1920. [JOE-070047]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6436, file 878-1, part 2, R. H. Cairns to
A. F. McKenzie, 7 November 1920. [IRC-047116]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1,
Assistant Deputy and Secretary to J. W. Tims, 25 January 1911; [PUL-000881] Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, PARC, S. Gould to D. C. Scott, 25
November 1920. [CYP-005079-0000]
152. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accession GS 75-403, series
2:15[a], box 16, [Illegible] Chairman, Indian and Eskimo Commission Westgate, T. B. R., Field
Secretary, Indian and Eskimo Commission, “Minutes of the Meeting of the Indian Residential
School Commission held on March 18th, 1921.” [AGS-000014]
153. TRC, NRA, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–11/1951, S. H. Middleton to L. B.
Pett, 28 November 1949. [AEMR-170287]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1, part
1, 20 August 1919; [OLD-000497] RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1, “Statement taken by
Constable Wright, RNWMP, 27 November 1919”; [IRC-041330] Thomas Graham to W. M.
Graham, 1 December 1919. [IRC-041328]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1, P. H.
Gentleman to Canon Gould, 12 January 1920. [IRC-041335]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to D. C. Scott, 10 June 1920. [OLD-000444]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 7581, part 1, T. B. R. Westgate to Duncan C. Scott, 30 June 1922. [OLD-000456]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, Microfilm reel 8705, file 752-1,
part 1, 1894–1936, “Extract from Nurse Ramage’s report, November 1921”; [IRC-047117-0001]“Extract from monthly report of Nurse Margaret Jean Ramage, October 1921.” [CFT-000147]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, Microfilm reel 8705, file 752-1,
part 1, 1894–1936, W. M. Graham to D. C. Scott, 3 December 1921. [IRC-047117-0000]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 752-1, volume 6348, part 1, 1894–1936,
Duncan Campbell Scott to J. Riou, 16 December 1921. [IRC-010294]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 752-1, volume 6348, part 1, 1894–1936, J.
Riou to Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 10 January 1922. [IRC-048217]
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 752-1, part 1, volume 6348, 1894–1936,
Duncan Campbell Scott to Reverend J. Riou, 17 January 1922. [IRC-010661]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, Frank
Edwards to the Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs. 4 October 1922. [KNR-000674]
For Kerbrat’s name, see: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1923, 56.

876 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 23 September 1922.
[KNR-000673]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, Minakijikok to
D. C. Scott, 30 September 1924. [KNR-000804-0001]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 October 1924. [KNR-000803]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to J. B. Beys, 6 February 1925. [KNR-000799]
168. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 12 February 1925.
[KNR-000796]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. W. Waddy toW. M. Graham, 1 September 1924. [DRS-000530]
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. M. Graham
to Mr. Scott, 9 September 1924. [DRS-000531]
171. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to Dr. Westgate.16 September 1924. [DRS-000532]
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. M.
Graham, 24 September 1924. [DRS-000533]
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, Westgate to
the Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 28 November 1924. [DRS-000538]
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. D. McLean
to J. W. Waddy, 8 January 1925. [DRS-000540]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. W. Waddy to
D. C. Scott, 4 November 1924. [DRS-000537]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. W. Waddy toW. M. Graham, 5 October 1925. [DRS-000543-0001]
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, P. Constant toW. M. Graham, 1 October 1925. [DRS-000546]
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. M. Graham
to The Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 12 October 1925. [DRS-000543-0000]
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate to Duncan C. Scott, 7 December 1925. [DRS-000553].
180. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. M.
Graham, 7 January 1926. [DRS-000558]
181. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives Anglican Church of Canada
GS-75-103, B17, Minutes of meeting of Indian and Eskimo Held on Tuesday, January 11th,
1927, 11. [AAC-083001]
182. In the 1927–28 school year, Bird was the principal of the James Smith Reserve day school in
Saskatchewan. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1928, 57.
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, E. J. Smith to D. C. Scott, 23 January 1928. [IRC-048140]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. E. Pugh to D. C. Scott, 25 January 1928. [IRC-048141]

Notes • 877
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. E. Pugh to D. C. Scott, 20, January 1928. [IRC-041322]
186. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, D. C. Scott to J. E. Pugh, 21 January 1928. [IRC-048138]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. E. Pugh to D. C. Scott, 25 January 1928. [IRC-048141]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, D. C. Scott to J. E. Pugh, 4 February 1928. [IRC-048143]
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, “Report of Sergeant A. Howard, 26 January 1928.” [IRC-048142]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, Report of Sergeant A. Howard, 26 February 1928. [IRC-048148]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm
reel C-8699, A. M. MacDonald, “Judgment of His Honour Judge MacDonald in the case of His
Majesty the King and Edwin Smith,” 2 May 1928. [IRC-048164]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, D. C. Scott to J. B. Boys, 22 June 1928. [IRC-048169]
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, “Extract from Letter of Mr. J. E. Pugh, Indian Agent, Cardston, Alta.” 1 December 1928.
[MRY-001614]
194. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, Acc. 71.220 B54 2278, Author unknown (From
University of Ottawa) to Dr. McGill, 1 May 1934. [IRC-049042]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. Pugh to Dr. Harold McGill, 19 March 1934. [MRY-001628]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, Deputy Superintendent General to J. E. Pugh, 10 May 1934. [MRY-001629]
197. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1 part 1, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, “Report on Conclusion of Case: William Shoup,” 3 January 1931.
[NHU-000444-0001.
198. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10421, Microfilm reel T-10074,
Shannon Box 35, part B, 1928–1935 NAC, W. E. Gullion to W. M. Graham, 2 February 1932.
[BQL-007653]
199. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/3-5 part 1, 1913–1952 CR-HQ, Joseph
Angin to Deputy Superintendent General, 22 February 1932. [BQL-007099]
200. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, Duncan Scott to U. Langlois, 26
March 1932. [OGP-060085]
201. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, Russell T. Ferrier to U. Langlois,
8 April 1932. [OGP-060088]
202. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, U. Langlois to Russell T. Ferrier,
22 April 1932. [OGP-060093]
203. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, Russell T. Ferrier to U. Langlois,
4 May 1932. [OGP-060095]
204. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, Joseph Angin to Rev. Father
Provincial, 14 April 1932. [OGP-060091]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 751-13, part 1, 1923–1937,
Microfilm reel C-8704, Jos. Angin to Harold McGill, 24 August 1936. [BQL-005481]

878 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
206. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1277, Thomas H. M. Tuck to
Reverend Father, 16 October 1933. [OGP-060101]
207. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B29 1130, U. Langlois to Very Reverend
Mother Gallant, 13 November 1935. [OGP-100206]
208. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220 B31 1279, Chief Moses, 29 April 1939.
[OGP-060159]
209. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220 B31 1279, H. Routhier to Chief Moses, 3
May 1939. [OGP-060160]
210. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B31 1279, L. Balter to H. Routhier, 31
January 1941. [OGP-060171]
211. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B32 1301, P. A. Charron to H. Routhier,
14 July 1942. [OGP-070289]
212. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 2–3.
213. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 4.
214. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 4.
215. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 4–5.
216. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 6.
217. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 7.
218. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 8.
219. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 14.
220. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 9–10.
221. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 10–14.
222. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 6.
223. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 15.
224. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 15.
225. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 16.
226. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 17.
227. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 16.
228. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 16.
229. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 17.
230. Audette, “Report on the Commission,” 17.
231. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 155–156.
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, Constable E.
Stanley, 13 January 1936. [CJC-000720-0001]
233. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, E. W. Byers to
J. D. Sutherland, 13 January 1936. [CJC-000722]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 24 February 1936. [CJC-000714-0000]
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to Frank Edwards, 30 January 1936. [CJC-000717]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, H. H. Craig to
H. A. Snell, 29 July 1937. [MSC-000080-0001]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, Horace W.
Snell to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 August 1937. [TAY-003114]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, H. H. Craig to
H. A. Snell, 14 August 1937. [TAY-003116-0001]

Notes • 879
239. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
H. W. Snell, 28 August 1937. [MSC-000089-0001]
240. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, statement ofCyril H. Lager, 31 August 1937. [TAY-003120-0001]
241. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, H. Snell to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 September 1937. [TAY-003120-0000]
242. 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]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
H. H. Craig, 3 September 1937. [MSC-000093-0001]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9151, file 312-4C, Ed Poor Man andJim Worm to T. Robertson, 26 September 1938. [GDC-005052]
245. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E 49740216, volume 4, Frayling to J. W. Waddy, 6 October 1938. [IRC-047124]
246. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9151, file 312-4C, Thomas Robertson
to R. Mulcaster, 25 October 1938. [GDC-005027]
247. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2, T. R. L.
MacInnes to R. W. Frayling, 19 November 1938. [GDC-009302]
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, A. J. Vale to
Secretary, Welfare and Training Service, Indian Affairs Branch, 3 September 1939. [CRS001325-0001]
249. Library and Archives Canada, Duncan Campbell Scott to W. J. Roche, 28 October 1913.

Covering up sexual abuse: 1867–1939
1. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse, 2–3.
2. Criminal Code, 1892, Statues of Canada 1892, chapter 29, reproduced in “A History ofCanadian Sexual Assault Legislation, 1900–2000, http://www.constancebackhouse.ca/
fileadmin/website/1892.htm#22 (accessed 3 May 2013). Female homosexuality was notformally criminalized in Canada until 1953; see: Warner, Never Going Back, 19.
3. Carlier, Sauvageons des villes, 199; Baratay, “Affaire de moeurs.”
4. Pierre, “Les colonies pénitentiaires,” 50.
5. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 128–129.
6. Dempsey, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=41654 (accessed 28
February 2014).
7. Huel, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Alberta+History/2012/
September/22-p52200 (accessed 26 April 2013).
8. Dempsey, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=41654 (accessed 28
February 2014).
9. Huel, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Alberta+History/2012/
September/22-p52200, (accessed 26 April 2013).
10. Dempsey, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=41654 (accessed 28
February 2014).
11. Library and Archives Canada, Hayter Reed Papers MG 29, E 106, volume 18, Personnel H-L, J.
W. Tims to Indian Commissioner, October 27, 1891.

880 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
12. Library and Archives Canada, Hayter Reed Papers MG 29, E 106, volume 18, Personnel H-L, L.
Vankoughnet to H. Reed, 7 December 1891.
13. Huel, “Jean L’Heureux,” http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Alberta+History/2012/
September/22-p52200 (accessed 26 April 2013).
14. Library and Archives Canada, Sifton Papers, volume 19, 12124–28; 12129–39; 12123. E.
Applegarth to A. Forget, 28 June 1897.
15. Library and Archives Canada, Sifton Papers, volume 19, 12129–39; 12123. J. H. Fairlie to A.
Forget, 23 August 1897. A. Forget to Sifton, 30 Oct. 1897.
16. Library and Archives Canada, Sifton Papers, volume 19, 12123. A. Forget to C. Sifton, 30
October 1897.
17. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3558, file 64, part 39, D. Laird to superintendent
general, Indian Affairs, 11 March 1899.
18. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3558, file 64, part 39, D. Laird to superintendent
general, Indian Affairs, 13 March 1899.
19. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 162–163.
20. United Church Archives Mission to the Aboriginal Peoples in Manitoba and the Northwest,
box 8, file 151, H. McKay to R. P. McKay, 1 October 1912; box 7, file 131, P. W. Gibson Ponton
to R. P. McKay, 1 February 1911, quoted in Bush, Western Challenge, 111.
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, Mary
Sandoval to Editor, Ottawa Valley Journal, 26 September 1916. [IRC-048206-0005]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, [nameredacted] to Mr. Scott, 14 November 1916. [SWK-001405]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, Duncan C.
Scott to [name redacted], 16 November 1916. [SWK-001406]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, W.
McWhinney to Dr. Grant, 15 August 1914; [CRW-000053] W. McWhinney to Dr. Grant, 20
August 1914; [CRW-000356] W. G. Blewett to the Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 25
August 1914. [CRW-000054]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, W. Graham to
Duncan Campbell Scott, 5 September 1914. [IRC-048006]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, 19
September 1914. [CRW-000358]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6281, file 604-1, part 1,
Andrew S. Grant to D. C. Scott, 27 November 1915. [CRW-000227]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, Crime Report,
Sergeant J. W. Kempston, 25 July 1924. [MDD-000904-0001]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, W. M.
Graham, 13 August 1924. [MDD-000906]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. W. Waddy, 10 June 1932. [MDD-000997]
31. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, Ontario, Women’s Missionary
Society (WD) fonds, Acc. 1991-7020, box 3, file 4, “Minutes of the Council Executive,
Presbyterian Church, 18 November 1930.” [BIR-001546]
32. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, Ontario, Women’s Missionary
Society (WD) fonds, Acc. 1988-7004, box 8, file 8, H. R. Horne, 15 January 1931. [BIR-0005260001]

Notes • 881
33. J. F. Lockhart, 6 May 1940, cited in undated document from Presbyterian Church in Canada
Archives titled “The following are extracted from a review of material in the Presbyterian
Church in Canada Archives concerning residential schools.”
34. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, W. Byrne Grant to “Joe,” 19 March 1930.
[OBG-000396]
35. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, W. Byrne Grant to “Joe,” 21 March 1930.
[OBG-000397]
36. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, W. Byrne Grant to “Joe,” 22 March 1930;[OBG-000398] 19 August 1930. [OBG-000403]
37. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, PB 576.E26F 51, “The Oblates of Mary Immaculate,
St. Charles’ House, New Westminster, B.C.”, 30 June 1931. [OMI-031061]
38. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, G. Forbes to Very Reverend Father
Provincial, 8 April 1932. [OBG-003260]
39. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, G. Forbes to Very Reverend Father
Provincial, 4 September 1938. [CIS-000110]
40. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, F. O’Grady to Very Reverend Father
Provincial, 11 November 1938. [OMS-000567]
41. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, G. Forbes to Very Reverend Father
Provincial, 4 August 1940. [CIS-000170]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report regarding runaways from Kuper Island School,” 10 January 1939.
[IRC-040001]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939,” D. M. MacKay to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, Ottawa, 12 January 1939.
[IRC-040007-0001]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Cpl S. Service, 13 January 1939. [IRC-040003]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report regarding Kuper Island School Investigation,” Constable George
Armstrong, 30 January 1939. [IRC-040022] For information on his living at the school, see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report regarding runaways from Kuper Island School,” 10 January 1939.
[IRC-040001]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report, Corporal S. Service to NCO R. Dunn, 13 January 1939. [IRC040003]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report, Sergeant R. Dunn, 13 January 1939. [IRC-040002]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Police report regarding Kuper Island School Investigation, Constable George
Armstrong, 30 January 1939. [IRC-040022]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939, Confidential Notes,” Gerald H. Barry, 13 January 1939. [IRC-040010]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939,” G. H. Barry to Major D. M. MacKay, 15 January 1939. [IRC-040012]

882 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939,” G. H. Barry to Major D. M. MacKay, 17 January 1939. [IRC-040014]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939,” Harold McGill to Major D. M. MacKay, 27 January 1939. [IRC-040021]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13356, “Investigation – Kuper Island
School 1939,” Deputy Attorney General, BC, to Superintendent General, Canada, 18 February
1939. [IRC-040024-0001]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8777, J. C. Cody to Indian Affairs Branch, Ministry of Natural Resources, 28 March 1939.
[KUP-003876]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1209, file 974/2, D. M. MacKay to Dr.
H. W. McGill, 17 April 1939. [KUP-005550-0001]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 1, 1936–1939, J. D.
Caldwell to J. Camirand, 16 March 1939. [KUP-004494]

Student victimization of students: 1867–1939
1. Graham, Mush Hole, 438.
2. Graham, Mush Hole, 366.
3. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 80.
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, Charles J.
Eagle to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 21 December 1895. [BRS-000186-0001.]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 1, John
Semmens to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 4 January 1895. [BRS-000184]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, G.
Donckele to W. H. Lomas, 8 March 1897. [KUP-004266]
7. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933, file 117657-1, Agent on the Blood Reserve,
28 July 1917.
8. Graham, Mush Hole, 366.
9. Graham, Mush Hole, 357.
10. Graham, Mush Hole, 359.
11. Graham, Mush Hole, 369.
12. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 71.
13. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 53.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, A. J. Vale to T.
J. Godfrey, 9 November 1939. [CRS-001330-0001]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, O. E. Rothwell
to A. B. Simes, 16 November 1939. [FHR-000511-0001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, A. B. Simes toThomas Robertson, 9 November 1939. [FHR-000510]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, Thomas
Robertson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 December 1939. [FHR-000515-0000]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, J. D. Burger toW. Munday, 26 May 1939. [MER-000492, MER-00491]

Notes • 883
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6447, file 882-5, part 1, P. Durieu to A.
W. Vowell, 6 March 1893. [KAM-002393]
20. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. 1979.199C, box 4, file 44, W. S. Moore to
the Convenor of the Presbytery F.M. Committee, 1903. [RIS-000184]
21. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3922, file 116820-1, Frank Pedley to David Laird,
25 February 1905; David Laird to Frank Pedley, 15 September 1905.
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, A. R. Lett to D.
C. Scott, RG10, 15 October 1924. [GRG-001513]

Truancy: 1867–1939
1. D. G. Oury, ed., Marie de la Incarnation, Ursuline (1599–1672). Correspondance (Solesmes,
1951), 97, quoted in Jaenen, “Education for Francization,” 58.
2. Sylvester Hurlburt, Wesleyan Methodist Church in Canada, Missionary Society Reports,
1842–1860, quoted in MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 120.
3. Wilson, Missionary Work, 167–170.
4. 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. [AGA-001516-0000]
5. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1919–1920, chapter 50, section 1, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 178.
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 650-40A, part 1,“Appointment of Truant Officers,” D. C. Scott, 7 February 1927. [MRS-000045].
7. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1932–1933, chapter 42, section 1, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 248.
8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 104.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 423.
10. Johnston, Indian School Days, 53.
11. Johnston, Indian School Days, 107–115.
12. Graham, Mush Hole, 429.
13. Graham, Mush Hole, 370.
14. Batten, Man Who Ran Faster, 12–13.
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 8, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Russell Mallett, missing from The Indian Residential
School, Brandon, Manitoba,” 26 April 1939. [BRS-000254]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 8, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Russell Mallett, missing from The Indian Residential
School, Brandon, Manitoba,” 9 May 1939. [BRS-000255]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 10, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Russell Mallett, missing from The Indian Residential
School, Brandon, Manitoba,” 16 August 1939. [BRS-000258]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Thomas “Tommy” Linklater et al,” 23 September 1936.
[BRS-000240-0006]

884 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Thomas ‘Tommy’ Linklater et al,” 20 October 1936.
[BRS-000240-0005]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Abner Elliott and Leonard Beeswax, truants,” 13
October 1938. [MER-001043-0001]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Abner Elliott and Leonard Beeswax, truants,” 11January 1939. [MER-001048-0001]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 280-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Re: Wallace LeBillois,” 9 April 1939; [SRS-007982-0003] “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Re: Leo Toney,” 9 April 1939. [SRS-006098-0001]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Re: Paul Bone,” 12 October 1929. [PLD-003245-0001]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 657-10, part 1, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Edward LeRat, 17 October 1938. [MDD-007964-0001]
25. Graham, Mush Hole, 445.
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8754, J. Hall to F. Devlin, 19 January 1900. [COQ-000345]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, F. Devlin to A.
W. Vowell, 19 October 1899. [MIS-001421]
28. For example of horse, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323,
file 658-10, part 2, “RCMP Report Re: George Peechowe and Artemas Wood,” 4 October
1923; [PAR-020443-0001] for automobile, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6308, file 653-10, part 1, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Douglas
Shingoose, George Gambler, Truant Indian Boys,” 20 November 1936; [FHR-001134-0001]
for train, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-10,
part 1, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Michael Bryant, Cote Indian Reserve,”
12 April 1934; [FHR-001047-0001] for boat, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 2, “RCMP Report regarding Alice and Mary Ann Bull,”
15 October 1935; [PCR-101214-0002] for use of dog, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 280-10, part 1, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Re: Wallace
LeBillois,” 9 April 1939. [SRS-007982-0003]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Douglas Shingoose and Donald Stevenson,” 23
February 1935. [FHR-001050-0001]
30. North-West Mounted Police, Annual Report, 1894, 52–53.
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, C. E. Somerset toIndian Commissioner, 6 October 1896. [EDM-009788]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Mohawk
Institute to Hayter Reed, 18 March 1896. [TAY-003510]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, “RCMP
Report regarding [name redacted],” 16 October 1933. [SBR-110565-0001]
34. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 122.

Notes • 885
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, A. H. L.
Mellor to Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 19 September 1935. [SBR-1106070000]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police report, Re: [names redacted],” 21 November 1937. [MER-0005800001]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police report, Re: [name redacted],” 12 March 1939. [MER-001057-0001]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report on Preliminary Hearing, Defendant [name redacted],” 14March 1939. [MER-001056-0001]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, Report on Conclusion of Case, Re: [name redacted],” 20 March
1939. [MER-001058-0001]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, A. D. Moore
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 16 September 1940. [CRS-000507-0000]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, Father J. A.
Bedard to F. Devlin, 14 October 1899. [MIS-001422]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Gordon J. Smith, 21 November 1914. [TAY-003551]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, Gordon Smith
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 October 1922. [TAY-002497]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Gordon Smith, 31 October 1922. [TAY-002498]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, E. V. Bird to T.
B. R. Westgate, 9 November 1925.[DRS-000551]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 1, R. W.
Greatwood to Indian Affairs, 11 April 1930. [PLD-003278-0001]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-5, part 1, J. D. McLean
to A. R. McDonald, 14 December 1906. [MER-000196]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 2, Gordon J.
Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 July 1912. [MER-000433]
49. 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. [AGA-001516-0000]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 1, R. W.
Greatwood to Indian Affairs, 11 April 1930. [PLD-003278-0001]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 2, H. E. P. Mannto Commissioner, RCMP, 6 February 1934. [PLD-003316-0001]
52. TRC, NRA, Untitled document, purportedly Chronologie Dépuis Leur Fondations, École Blue
Quills (Daily Journal from their Founding, Grey Nuns at Blue Quills) 1931–1936, entry for 1
May 1932. [GNA-000404]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 1, pg. 1/1,
“Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report,” 11 February 1935, C. Graham. [CRS-001237-0001]

886 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Frank Puckina or Edwards,” 15 September 1939. [PLP000374]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 1, Constable G.
J. Mitchell, 9 September 1931. [MRS-045402-0001]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, “RCMP’s
Report on Truant,” Constable R. D. Toews, 23 June 1936. [SBR-110621-0001]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, “RCMP’s
Report on Truant,” Constable R. D. Toews, 25 September 1936. [SBR-110628-0004]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, “RCMP’s
Report on Truant,” Constable R. D. Toews, 23 October 1936. [SBR-110630-0001]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, Constable R.
D. Toews, 8 May 1937. [SBR-110645-0001]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. Waddy, 24
November 1928. [DRS-000564]
61. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E487402016, volume 5, Gordon’s Student Residence, 28-31, Indian Agent to W. M. Graham, 27
September 1928. [IRC-047119]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6253, file 575-5, part 5, A. G.
Hamilton to Indian Affairs, November 4 1935. [BIR-000208]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton to Mr. Phelan, 30 December 1936. [BIR-000221]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, A. G. Smith toA. G. Hamilton, 8 March 1937. [BIR-000222]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6371, file 764-1, part 1, M.
Christianson to W. M. Graham, 28 October 1927. [PUL-001008]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 1/18-24, volume 1 (locator #X-46-4), Duncan C.
Scott to J. E. Pugh, 2 December 1927. [NCA-014241]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1543, W. M. Graham to J. E. Pugh, 12
December 1928. [MRY-010970]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1543, Indian Agent to W. M. Graham,
14 December 1928. [MRY-010971]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: [name redacted], Fisher River, Manitoba,” 12 March
1936. [BRS-000247-0003]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, J. A. Doyle to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 April 1936. [BRS-000243]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, Moses
McKay to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 March 1936. [BRS-000244](Letter redacted in database,name revealed in document unredacted [BRS-000244].)
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Harry Royal, Runaway Indian boy,” 23 March 1936;[BRS-000246-0003] “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Archie Hall et al. Runaway
from Indian Residential school Brandon, Manitoba,” 18 October 1936. [BRS-000241-0001]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Wallace Hahawahi, Delinquent,” 28 October 1936; [BRS-

Notes • 887
000240-0004] “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Peter Ryder et al, Truants from
Indian School Brandon, Manitoba,” 29 October 1936. [BRS-000240-0003]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Wallace Hahawahi, Delinquent,” 28 October 1936. [BRS000240-0004]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Kenneth Thompson, Runaway Boy,” 28 October 1936.
[BRS-000240-0001]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 9, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Peter Ryder Runaway Boy,” 28 October 1936. [BRS000240-0002]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, undated, received 25 May 1937. [SRS-006072]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Stephen Paul,” 27 May 1937. [SRS-006074-0001]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Stephen Paul – alias Leo Francis,” 4 June 1937. [SRS006076-0001]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 June 1937. [SRS-008112]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 16 July 1937; [SRS-006077] J. P. Mackey to Secretary, IndianAffairs, 27 July 1937. [SRS-006079]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Noel Julian, Indian School, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia,”
6 January 1938. [SRS-006083-0001]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Leo Torry (Indian) Shubenacadie, N.S.,” 23 May 1938.
[SRS-007900-0002]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2,
Shubenacadie School to Neil A. MacDougall, 16 September 1938; [SRS-005109] “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Gregory Denny, Truancy,” 24 September 1938. [SRS007914-0001]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Steven LaBobe,” 15 October 1938. [SRS-006090-0001]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Gregory Denny, Truancy,” 24 September 1938. [SRS007914-0001] For crowding at Shubenacadie, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 4, P. Phelan to N. A. McDougall, 20 September 1937.
[SRS-007149]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Gregory Denny,” 7 October 1938. [SRS-007915-0001]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Gregory Denny, Truancy Indian school,” 15 October
1938. [SRS-006090-0002]

888 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Gregory Denny, Truancy Indian School,” 31 October
1938. [SRS-006091-0001]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re: Noel Julian, Truancy, Indian School,” 14 November
1938. [SRS-007925-0001]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Richard Poulette, Indian,” 14 November 1938. [SRS006092-0002]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Noel Julian, Truancy, Indian School,” 17 November
1938. [SRS-006094-0001]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Noel Julian, Truancy, Indian, School,” 21 December
1938. [SRS-006095-0001]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Sam Augustine, Truancy, Indian Residential School,”
14 March 1939; [SRS-006086-0001] “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Joe Julian,
Truancy Indian Residential School, 14 March 1939”; [SRS-006086-0002] J. P. Mackey to Neil A.
MacDougall, 21 March 1939. [SRS-000289]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to W. J. Cameron, 21 March 1939. [SRS-007977]
96. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 139.
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: Peter Labobe – Truancy,” 25 March 1939. [SRS-0079780001]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 April 1939. [SRS-007980]
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Re: Wallace LeBillois,” 9 April 1939; [SRS-007982-0003] “Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Re: Leo Toney, 9 April 1939; [SRS-006098-0001] “Police Dog Made
Good,” Peace River Northern Gazette, not dated.
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 2, A. J. Vale to T.
J. Godfrey, 8 March 1937. [CRS-001293-0001]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, pg. 1/1, A.
J. Vale to the Secretary, Welfare and Training Division, Indian Affairs, 10 May 1939.[CRS001312]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
A. J. Vale, 3 June 1939. [CRS-001314]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, A. J. Vale to T.
J. Godfrey, 9 November 1939. [CRS-001330-0001]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 3, A. J. Vale to
Secretary, Welfare and Training Division, Indian Affairs, 14 June 1939. [CRS-001316]
105. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives–Victoria Call No. Add MS-1267, volume 41 Kuper
Island Industrial School, 1890-1891, 1905-1909 British Columbia Archives–Victoria, Cowichan
Agency, Report for the Kuper Island Industrial School for the Quarter Ended October 1, [1907Notes • 889
from context], 38–39; [KUP-800002] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume1347, P Claessen to W.R. Robertson, W.R., Indian Agent, Duncan, 24 April 1908. [KUP-091185]
For his last name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume. 1347, Reel
C-13916, Kuper Island Industrial School, Kuper Island, British Columbia, Ex. Pupils, March
31st, 1919. [KUP-004250]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3921, file 116818-1B, J. F.
Woodsworth to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1918. [EDM-000956]
107. St. Boniface Historical Society, Archives Deschâtelets, L 235 M27L 115, Geelen to Rév. Père, 9August 1928.
108. St. Boniface Historical Society, Archives Deschâtelets, L 541 M27L 266, Brachet to père
provincial, 20 October 1928.
109. Winnipeg Free Press, “Find Body of Indian Girl, Long Missing,” 17 April 1930.
110. Winnipeg Free Press, “Missing Birtle Girl Is Not Yet Found,” 28 March 1930.
111. Winnipeg Free Press, “Find Body of Indian Girl, Long Missing,” 17 April 1930.
112. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. 1991-7020, box 3, file4, “Minutes of the Council Executive, Presbyterian Church in Canada,” 21 October 1930. [BIR001548]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. G.
Tweddell to W. M. Graham, 6 May 1931. [DRS-000588]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, “Re: Percy Ochapowace – Death of, Ochapowace Indian
Reserve, Saskatchewan.” H. S. Casswell, 19 January 1935; [RLS-000365-0003] J. P. B. Ostrander
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 January 1935. [RLS-000365-0001]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 January 1935. [RLS-000365-0001]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. B. Ostrander, 28 January 1935. [RLS-000365-0004]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Garnet Neff toT. G. Murphy, 26 January 1935; [RLS-000366-0001] RG29, volume 2917, file 851-1-A673, part 1,
Memorandum to Mr. McLean, 13 January 1914. [NPC-603178]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, T. G. Murphy
to Garnet Neff, 6 February 1935. [RLS-000367-0001]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Garnet Neff toT. G. Murphy, 20 February 1935. [RLS-000369-0001]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, G. C. Neff to
Minister of Justice, Ottawa, 8 March 1935. [RLS-000374-0001]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Minster ofJustice to Garnett C. Neff, 25 March 1935; [RLS-000376-0001] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, G. C. Neff to Honourable Minister of Justice,
Ottawa, 15 March 1935 [RLS-000374-0001]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, R. H. Moore
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 January 1937. [LEJ-004083-0000]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, C. Pitts to R.
H. Moore, 6 January 1937. [LEJ-004083-0002]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, “TheGovernment of British Columbia, Inquisition,” 4 January 1937. [LEJ-004083-0001]

890 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-23, part 1, R. H. Moore
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 January 1937. [LEJ-004083-0000]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1209, file 985/2, part 1, March
1937–September 1971, “LeJac Indian Residential School Inquiry, March 2 and 3, 1937.” [LEJ005220-0002]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, D. M. McKay
to J. W. McGill, 25 March 1937. [LEJ-000765]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2,“Memorandum of an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of Andrew
Gordon,” R. W. Frayling, 11 March 1939; [GDC-028479] RG10, volume 11553, file 312-11,“Indian Boy Frozen on Bush Trail,” Regina Leader-Post, 16 March 1939. [GDC-009281]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2, Lenton Tooley
to R. W. Frayling, 14 March 1939. [GDC-028481]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 312-11 ACE, volume 9151, R. W. Frayling
to J. W. Waddy, 14 March 1939. [GDC-009318-0002]
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 312-11 ACE, volume 9151, R. W. Frayling
to J. W. Waddy, 13 March 1939. [GDC-009318-0002]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9151, file 312-11 ACE, “Royal
Mounted Police Report, Re Andrew Gordon (Juvenile), Deceased,” 16 March 1939. [GDC009280-0001]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG1O, volume 9151, file 312-11 ACE, R. W. Frayling
to R. A. Hoey, 17 March 1939. [GDC-009318-0001]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2,“Memorandum of an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of Andrew
Gordon,” 11 March 1939. [GDC-028479]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11553, file 312-11, Thomas Robertson
to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 20 March 1939. [GDC-009282-0000]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2, Thomas
Robertson to R. A. Hoey, 1 April 1939. [GDC-028489]
137. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, document file source unknown, R. A. Hoey to R. W.
Frayling, 8 April 1939. [GDC-009307]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309,
file 654-1, part 3, M. Christianson to R. A. Hoey, December 8 1944. [GDC-017334]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11553, file 312-11, “Memorandum of
an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of Andrew Gordon, Instructions.”[GDC-009282-0001]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11553, file 312-11, Indian Agent to R.
W. Frayling, 15 March 1939. [GDC-000572]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2,“Memorandum of an inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death of Andrew
Gordon.” 11 March 1939. [GDC-028479]

Notes • 891

Separating children from parents: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C 8773, “Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
2. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
3. Mountain Horse, My People the Bloods, 15–16.
4. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 39–40.
5. Ford, Smoke from Their Fires, 93–94.
6. Kennedy, Recollections of an Assiniboine chief, 54.
7. Calf Robe, Siksika, 7.
8. Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 39.
9. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 31.
10. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 33.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, 104.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6194, file 463-1, part 1, G. A. Poitras
to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 20 March 1908. [FFR-000118]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Public
Archives Canada, Rev. S. R. McVitty, “Helping the Indian: How it Is Done at Mount Elgin
Industrial Institute, The Christian Guardian, 21 May 1913. [MER-000376]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, Microfilm reel C-13916, W.
Lemmens to W. R. Robertson, 10 February 1915. [KUP-004240]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Hayter Reedto Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 31 March 1891. [CRW-000012]
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 77.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 396.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 98.
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3804, file 50774-10, Alex McGibbon
to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 28 February 1889. [PLD-009066]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 20 May 1891. [PLD-009429]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, E. Dewdney to J.
Hugonnard, 13 April 1891. [PLD-009425]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, J. Hugonnard to E.
Dewdney, 5 May 1891. [PLD-009435]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, Hayter Reed to
Deputy Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 20 May 1891. [PLD-009429]
24. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, T. Clarke to the IndianCommissioner, 30 June 1891; P. J. Williams, 7 July 1891.
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, F. W. Jacobs to
A. Macrae, 9 April 1906. [MER-000345-0001]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, T. T. George to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 May 1906. [MER-000349]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Inspector
Semmens to Indian Affairs, 22 January 1917. [CJC-000837]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8777, E. Elliott to D. C. Scott, 20 October 1919; [KUP-003829] J. D. McLean to E. Elliott, 17
November 1919; [KUP-003832] E. Elliott, 1 December 1919. [KUP-003833]

892 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
29. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 2, Mr. Paget to Mr. Ferrier,
21 August 1928. [CJC-001354]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to W. C. Richardson, 14 March 1935. [AEMR-010735]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to E. H. Lockhart, 1 April 1935. [AEMR-010737]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-10, part 1, “Statementof Ruben Kesepapamotao.” [WFL-071166]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C 8773, “Rules and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [200.4.00007A]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, J. A. Macrae toW. W. Shepherd, 10 April 1901. [MER-000311]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Name missing
to Indian Affairs, 13 April 1901. [MER-000312]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, L.
Vankoughnet to E. Dewdney, 6 June 1889. [100.00097]
37. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, Bishop of Rupert’s
Land to E. Dewdney, 23 January 1891.
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, L.
Vankoughnet to E. Dewdney, 6 June 1889. [100.00097]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 1, “Extract for
Indian Agents from Regulations of the Shingwauk Home March 1886.” [SWK-001288]
40. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, Bishop of Rupert’s
Land to E. Dewdney, 23 January 1891.
41. TRC, RBS, RG10, volume 3764, file 32725-2, H. Reed to Deputy Superintendent General ofIndian Affairs, 24 February 1891.
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, 14 May 1889. [TAY-003820-0001]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1594, Commissioner to Indian Agent,
Duck Lake, 12 February 1897. [SMD-001113]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1, Martin
Benson to Deputy Superintendent General, 13 May 1904. [TAY-003533]
45. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 425.
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2762, file 151711, Th. Couture to C. L.
D. Sims, 26 August 1908. [AGA-001388-0001]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2762, file 151711, C. L. D. Sims to
Secretary, Indian Affairs. [AGA-001388-0000]
48. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, S. Steward to
H. McKay, 21 October 1915. [RLS-000078]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6206, file 468-5, part 4, S. R. McVitty
to Duncan Campbell Scott, 16 October 1922. [MER-000682]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 2, Duncan
Campbell Scott to S. R. McVitty, 10 October 1922. [MER-001368]

Notes • 893
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, No document file source, no document location,
Russell T. Ferrier to Church Authorities, Principals, and Department Representatives, 20 May
1925. [GMA-001254-0000]
53. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1 (4), R. Ferrier to D. C. Scott, 31
March 1925.
54. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1076, volume 1, J. A. J. McKenna to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 October 1909. [SBR-000324]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 1, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police re. William Thomas Beaulieu, 5 September 1932. [SBR-110541]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6303, file 651-1, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 August 1933. [MRS-001403] In the correspondence,
Chatelain’s name is spelled Chatelaine. For correct spelling, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 1, P. Chatelain to Harold McGill, 23June 1934. [MRS-045444]
57. Graham, Mush Hole, 430.
58. Graham, Mush Hole, 361.
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1014, N. C. D. Dubois to Mr.
Macdonald, 3 September 1930. [THR-000189]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-37, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to G. H. Gooderham, 26 October 1931. [SRS-000649]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 5, Henry Ellis
to J. T. Hill, 29 May 1933. [PAR-003611-0001]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 5, J. T. Hill to
Indian Affairs, 27 July 1935. [PAR-003600-0000]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, A. A. Johnston to L.
Thomas Cantley, 18 July 1933. [SRS-000071-0002]
64. 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]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, 1897–1908, “Application for
Admission,” 6 June 1900. [SAR-070003-0000]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 4, 1926–1933,
Microfilm reel C-8768, “Inspection Report Stuart Lake Agency,” G. S. Pragnell, 15 June 1932.
[LEJ-004506]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6347, file 751-10, part 1, Joseph Angin
to J. D. Sutherland, 25 April 1934. [NCA-013939]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6347, file 751-10, part 1, J. D.
Sutherland to Joseph Angin, 9 May 1934. [NCA-013940]
69. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75103, series 3:2, box 56, file 1, R. A. Hoey to Church Authorities, Principals, Department
Representatives, 30 March 1937. [AAC-090379]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
P. Chatelain, 29 September 1937. [MRS-045559]
71. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75103, series 3:2, box 56, file 1, R. A. Hoey to Church Authorities, Principals, Department
Representatives, 30 March 1937. [AAC-090379]

894 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Charles
Hudson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 June 1936. [NCA-013788]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, George Paul
to Thomas A. Crerar, 9 June 1937. [NCA-013809-0002]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Charles
Hudson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 June 1936. [NCA-013788]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. D.
Sutherland to Charles Hudson, 29 June 1936. [NCA-013789]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Philip
Phelan to Chas. Hudson, 24 June 1937; [SRS-004003] RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, J.
P. Mackey to C. A. Spinney, 29 August 1938. [NCA-014107]
77. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Mary Hammond to Dearsister, 27 June 1936. (A letter that was sent to Indian Affairs, accompanying Mary Hammond’s
letter, can be found at TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 26510, part 1, Mrs. Charles Toney to Indian Affairs, 11 July 1936. [SRS-007599]).
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Toney to Indian Agent, 26 June 1936. [SRS-007594-0001]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, B. W. Skinner
to Indian Affairs, 1 July 1936. [SRS-007594-0000]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. D.
Sutherland to B. W. Skinner, 6 July 1936. [SRS-007596]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2,
Shubenacadie School to John H. Langley, 4 July 1937. [SRS-007673]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Frank Thomas, 31 August 1937. [SRS-008135-0003]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, H. S. Everett
to Mr. McCutcheon, 4 September 1937. [SRS-008135-0001]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Mr. McCutcheon, 8 September 1937. [SRS-006080-0002]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, P. Phelan to
R. L. McCutcheon, 20 September 1937. [SRS-007828]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Indian Affairs, 13 October 1937. [SRS-004240-0000]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 2, Philip Phelan
to S. E. Darres, 27 May 1938. [SRS-005532]
88. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6056, P. Phelan to C. Spinney, 21 December
1938.
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, C. A. Spinney
to Philip Phelan, 1 January 1939. [SRS-004230]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 2, 1936–1939, H. Graham
to Reverend J. Geurts, 24 June 1937. [KUP-004462]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 12333, box 19, part 2, 1936–1939, H. Graham
to Reverend J. Geurts, 28 June 1937. [KUP-004460]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, 1936–1956, volume 1, J. E. Pugh, 31
May 1938. [PUL-001305]

Notes • 895
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6374, file 764-10, part 1, PARC, Philip
Phelan to J. E. Pugh, 7 September 1939; [PUL-009410] J. E. Pugh to Philip Phelan, 9 September
1939. [PUL-071135]

Suppressing Aboriginal languages: 1867–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422, E. Dewdney toThomas Clarke, 31 July 1883. [120.06668]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 1, 8773, “Rules
and Regulations, Kootenay Industrial School.” [AEMR-011621A]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3818, file 57799, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 14 May 1889. [MER-000066]
4. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3647, file 8128, A. J. Macrae, 18 December 1886,
54.
5. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3836, file 68557, H. Reed, Suggestions for theGovernment of Indian schools, 27 January 1890.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 248–249.
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, xxii–xxiii.
8. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:1, box 48, file 3, Assistant-Deputy to S. P. Matheson, 25 November 1910. [AAC-090237]
9. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, Shubenacadie Residential SchoolStudent Files, Registers, “Programme of Studies for Indian Schools” in Indian Affairs Daily
Register, Copy dated “April 1930 to June 1935.” [AEMR-010740]
10. Wilson, Missionary Work, 165–166.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 24.
12. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 128.
13. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 102.
14. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1888, 147.
15. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, Hayter Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 4 August 1890.
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1890, 118.
17. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-1, J. Hugonnard to Lieutenant
Governor, 18 October 1884.
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, J. Hugonnard to E.
Dewdney, 22 January 1886. [PLD-009186-0001]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, Hayter Reed toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 25 January 1886. [PLD-009186-0000]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 27 February 1886. [PLD-009190]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General of Indian Affairs, 24 July 1886. [PLD-009194]
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1886, 140.
23. Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School,” 21–22.
24. Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School,” 79.
25. Kennedy, “Qu’Appelle Industrial School,” 105.

896 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
26. Long, “John Horden,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=6166 (accessed
3 February 2013); Anglican Church of Canada, “Bishop Horden Memorial School,” http://
www.anglican.ca/relationships/histories/bishop-horden (accessed 18 March 2014).
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 527.
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 428.
29. TRC, NRA, No document location, Soeurs Grises de Montreal, Prov. S. Albert Archives, L22
N01 Doc 1, Moccasin Telegram, volume II, number 1, September 1938, 19-20. [GNA-000506]
30. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 13.
31. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives Acts of Canonical Visitation, 1883–1966, Stacks 2L, Acte Généralde Visite des Missions Indiennes du Nord-Ouest Canadien par le T.R.P. Théodore Labouré,
O.M.I., Supérieur Géneral, Rome Maison Générale, 45. [OMI-034614]
32. TRC, NRA, Dechatelets Archives, Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 4, “Réunion du comité des missions
indiennes des peres Oblats, Ottawa, le 12 october 1939.” [OMI-033064]
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 120.
34. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 264.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 166.
36. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 393.
37. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 135.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 91–92; Fox, “Failure of Red
Deer Industrial School,” 17.
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, “Re: File Hills
Indian Residential School,” n.d. [FHR-000170]
40. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 282.
41. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 381.
42. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 170.
43. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 171.
44. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 258–259.
45. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 98.
46. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 149.
47. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 263.
48. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 265.
49. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 345.
50. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 355.
51. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 302.
52. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 339.
53. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 362.
54. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 457.
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Inspector
Semmens to Indian Affairs, 22 January 1917. [CJC-000837]
56. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/235-076, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on the Sandy Bay Indian School,” A. A. Herriot, 13 June
1923. [NCA-000994-0001]
57. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5075, volume 1, “Inspector’s Report on the Pine Creek Indian Schools,” J. S. Peach, 20 March
1924. [PCR-003001]

Notes • 897
58. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5076, volume 1, Russell T. Ferrier to O. Chagnon, 23 May 1929. [SBR-000344]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, “Extract from Inspector’s Report on the Kootenay Residential
School, October 10 and 11, 1924,” R. H. Cairns. [EGN-008030]
60. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 449.
61. Wasylow, “History of Battleford Industrial School,” 454.
62. Graham, Mush Hole, 430.
63. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 68.
64. Graham, Mush Hole, 368.
65. Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Transcript Disc # 182, Mary Englund interviewed by
Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, PABC No. 3868.
66. Graham, Mush Hole, 449.
67. Graham, Mush Hole, 360.
68. Sapp, I Heard the Drums, 8–9.
69. Choquette, Oblate Assault, 220.
70. For an example, see: Erickson, “Repositioning the Missionary,” 132.
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Historic Docs
– IRS OICs 1894 and 1908, 1911 contract, Catholic Bishops to R. Rogers, 24 November 1911.
[UCA-080785]
72. TRC, NRA, Accession No. 705, Tape 1, Track 1, no date, 000431. [OMS-000283]
73. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 144.
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6362, file 759-1, part 1, 1895–1934,
Microfilm reel 8715, Emile J. Legal to Indian Commissioner, Winnipeg, 9 March 1899. [SAC000023]
75. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Pedley, 5 November 1912. [BVL-000776]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Montagnan of
Île-à-la-Crosse to Great Master in Charge of Schools, 22 July 1913. [BVL-000781-0000]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, Assistant
Deputy and Secretary to O. Charlebois, 18 November 1915. [BVL-000790]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-9807, Deputy Superintendent General to C. Cahill, 1 March 1917. [AEMR-013531]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2,“Memorandum for File,” Russell T. Ferrier, 17 March 1922. [PLD-007242]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705. Russell T. Ferrier to W. M. Graham, 14 November 1921. [CFT-000150]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, W. M. Graham to R. T. Ferrier, 26 November 1921. [CFT-000160]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6348, file 752-1, part 1, 1894–1936,
Microfilm reel 8705, G. H. Gooderham to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Department ofIndian Affairs, December 1921. [CFT-000154]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6362, file 759-1, part 1, 1895–1934,
Microfilm reel 8715, J. L. Levern to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 April 1923. [SAC-000085]

898 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
85. TRC, NRA, Sisters of Charity [Grey Nuns] Edmonton Archives – Alberta, file L55-B03, Brocket
Historique, 1907–1935, Russell T. Ferrier to J. L. Levern, 5 November 1923. [SAC-800068]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 773/23-5-003, part 1,
Russell T. Ferrier to E. Ruaux, 5 November 1923. [RCA-011021]
87. TRC, NRA, Grey Nuns Archives, St. Boniface, Manitoba, M6/04/02, M. de Bretagne toReverend Mother Grey Nuns, 8 March 1938. [GNB-000095]

Separating children from their traditions: 1867–1939
1. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-2, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 14 February 1884.
2. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-2, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 14 February 1884.
3. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-2, Hayter Reed to Deputy
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 23 December 1884.
4. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-2, E. Dewdney toSuperintendent General, Indian Affairs, 14 February 1884.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3858, file 81812, to Hayter Reed, 29
August 1891. [120.06695]
6. 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.
[AGA-001516-0000]
7. Statutes of Canada, 1919–1920, chapter 50, section 1, subsection 1, reproduced in Venne,
Indian Acts, 178.
8. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 1, Control 27-9, Harold W. McGill to Superintendent-General, 25 March 1935. [NCA008249-0001]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, Bishop Albert
to Hayter Reed, 21 January 1896. [THR-000100]
10. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 86.158C, box 2,
file 2, Red Deer Industrial School Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC Docs Toronto, Arthur Barner to A.
Sutherland and T. Ferrier, 4 May 1909. [UCA-080255-0008]
11. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 5, file72, R. B. Heron to R. P. McKay 1 April 1905. [RIS-000203]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Glen
Campbell to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 23 October 1912. [AEMR-120216]
13. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 62.
14. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, file 1026.M27G 211,
Principal of the Cowessess School to Duncan Campbell Scott, 30 September 1922. [MRS006049]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6379, file 768-10, part 1, Bishop Guy
to Harold McGill, 12 November 1935. [MAR-071121]
16. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS-75-103, series
2-15, box 28, file 4, Middleton, S. H. to Secretary Indian Residential School Commission, 11
February 1931. [AAC-084068-00001]

Notes • 899
17. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 1, Report of the Indian and Eskimo Commission to the Executive
Committee MSCC for the year ended June 30, 1938. [AAC-083306]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 5 May 1931. [MRS-045396]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, David Poniki
and Maggie Smoker, 24 January 1939. [MRS-045587-0001]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, V. de
Varennes to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 January 1939. [MRS-045587-0000]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 2, Philip Phelan
to V. de Varennes, 28 January 1939. [MRS-046037]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6334, file 661-10, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Secretary, 24 September 1934. [RLS-000670-0000]
23. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 1, Control 27-9, Harold McGill to Superintendent-General, 25 March 1935. [NCA008249-0001]
24. Edwards, Paper Talk, 89–96; Winegard, King and Kanata, 64.
25. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, xxxi.
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, xxxiv.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 161.
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 154–155.
29. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 177.
30. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 204.
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 206.
32. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 87–106; McMillan and Yellowhorn, First Peoples, 208–210.
33. Bolt, Thomas Crosby, 35, 63; Usher, William Duncan, 85.
34. LaViolette, Struggle for Survival, 41–42; Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 16–17, 95.
35. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 35–36.
36. Austin G. McKitrick, “Chief Piapot and the Sundance,” 1921, Glenbow-Alberta Institute,
Archives, M4252, Austin G. McKitrick Papers, 5, quoted in Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 103;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1891, 238.
37. Albert Lacombe, quoted in Anthony Looy, “The Indian Agent and His Role in the
Administration of the North-West Superintendency, 1876–1893,” PhD diss., Queen’s
University, 1977, 295, quoted in Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 104.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 158.
39. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1882, 50.
40. Statutes of Canada 1895, chapter 35, sections 6 and 7, amending An Act respecting Indians,
Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, chapter 43, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 158–159.
41. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 53–54, 95–96.
42. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 44.
43. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 54.
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, A. W.
Vowell to W. H. Lomas, 3 February 1897. [KUP-004265]
45. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 54.
46. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 49.
47. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 108–109.

900 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
48. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 111–112.
49. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 347.
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, J. H. McIllrae
to The Comptroller, North-West Mounted Police, 4 February 1902; [FHR-000741] Tobias,“Payipwat,” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=6989 (accessed 13
February 2013).
51. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 26–39, 46–49; Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 127–143.
52. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 137.
53. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 115–122.
54. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 170–171.
55. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 170.
56. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 120.
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3825, file 60511-1, J. Hugonard to
Indian Commissioner, 23 November 1903. [RCA-011007-0001]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3825, file 60511-1, A. Sutherland,
James Woodsworth, T. Ferrier to Indian Commissioner, 25 November 1903. [RCA-0110070002]
59. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 94–95.
60. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 91.
61. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 1990, 97; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 10020, Index item 64, Matheson Blue Books, Instructions to Indian Agents, 1913.
[AEMR-251111A]
62. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 97–98. For Corker’s position at the school, see: Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1913, 434, and Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1914, 148, 150.
63. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 99.
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931, FA 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, Billy August to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1914. [AST200020]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931, FA 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, John Ross to Dr. Grant, 24 December 1914. [AST-200036-0001]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931, FA 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, Charles Cox to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 11 January
1915. [AST-200032]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931, FA 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, W. E. Ditchburn to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 12 February 1915. [AST200031]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, “Extract, report of Inspector Markle on the Blood RC Bdg School,” 6 February 1917.
[MRY-001526]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6342, file 750-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8699, J. A. Markle to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 2 March 1917. [MRY-001528]

Notes • 901
70. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 101–102.
71. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 111–112.
72. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 116.
73. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 117–118.
74. Cole and Chaikin, Iron Hand, 122–123.
75. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 25.
76. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 75.
77. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 74.
78. Callahan, “On Our Way to Healing,” 75.
79. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 338.
80. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 122.
81. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 69.
82. Moran, Stoney Creek Woman, 73.
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 1,“Memorandum of the Convention of the Catholic Principals of Indian Residential Schools
held at Lebret, Saskatchewan,” August 28 and 29, 1924. [200.4.00016]
84. Raibmon, “New Understanding.”
85. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 20,
file 252, 1935 UCC Commission on Indian Education – United Church Archives – Toronto,“Report of Commission on Indian Education, Appointed by the Board of Home Missions and
The Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canada, 1935.” [UCA-081639]
86. 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]

Separating the sexes, arranging marriages,
establishing colonies: 1867–1939
1. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 149.
2. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 10, 104, 115.
3. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 30–31, 104.
4. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 143.
5. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 129.
6. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 115.
7. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 149.
8. Carter, Importance of Being Monogamous, 161–163.
9. Graham, Mush Hole, 7.
10. MacLean, “Ojibwa Participation,” 114–115.
11. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 24–27.
12. Wilson, Missionary Work, 118, 215.
13. Gresko, “Paul Durieu,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/durieu_paul_12E.html (accessed 31
August 2014). McNally gives the opening as 1862, McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 67.
14. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 May 1883), 1377.
15. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 May 1883), 1377.

902 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-3, L. Vankoughnet toJohn A. Macdonald, 10 January 1884, 10. [PLD-007553]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3674, file 11422-1, E. Dewdney to L.
Vankoughnet, 18 November 1884. [PLD-009651]
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1885, 138.
19. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 130.
20. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 102
21. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 130.
22. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 195.
23. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1884, 23.
24. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 299.
25. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 148–149.
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 44.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1898, 338.
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, “Report on the
Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Schools,” 30 August 1895. [TAY-003821-0000]
29. Bacchi, Liberation Deferred?, 87.
30. Hall, Girl and the Game, 29.
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 391.
32. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
33. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 438.
34. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 257.
35. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1899, 395.
36. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 379.
37. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 68.
38. For examples of controlling sexuality, see, for example: TRC, NRA, The United Church of
Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6, file 99, W. McWhinney to D.
Farquharson, 8 July 1907. [CRW-000172] For policy on arranging marriage, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, A. E. Forget to Indian
Agent, Touchwood Hills, 31 January 1896. [MDD-000851]
39. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6,
file 99, W. McWhinney to D. Farquharson, 8 July 1907. [CRW-000172]
40. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 66.
41. Graham, Mush Hole, 371.
42. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
43. United Church Archives – Winnipeg, Andrew Baird Papers, E 1467-1469, J. Ansdell Macrae to
Baird December 26, 1891, quoted in Hildebrand, “Staff Perspectives,” 133.
44. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3882, Pratt to L. Lewis, 27 June 1938.
[OGP-030214]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, “Extractfrom Agent Blewett’s report on the Pelly Agency, dated June 3, 1907.” [CRW-000021]
46. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 6,
file 99, W. McWhinney to J. Farquharson, 8 July 1907. [CRW-000172] For date of McWhinney’s
appointment, see: The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C,
box 4, file 45, D. Laird to R. P. McKay, 3 January 1903. [CRW-000188]

Notes • 903
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Pelly– Crowstand Boarding School, W. G. Blewett to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs,
10 October 1911; [IRC-048000] RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Pelly – CrowstandBoarding School, W. G. Blewett to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 July 1914. [IRC-048001]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Pelly –Crowstand Boarding School, W. McWhinney to Grant, 15 August 1914. [IRC-048003]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-13, volume 3918, Microfilm Reel
C-10161, file 116.659-1, 1892–1920, Spec. Claims Kamloops Agency: General Correspondence
Pertaining to Kamloops Industrial School, J. W. Mackay to A. W. Vowell, 6 April 1892. [KAM009633]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6334, file 662-1, part 1, W. G. Blewett
to the Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 December 1909. [SPR-001936]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, Glen
Campbell to Duncan Campbell Scott, 1 February 1915. [BIR-000033]
52. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, David Iverach to Rev. A. S.
Grant, 7 July 1915. [BIR-000041]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to Andrew Grant, 19 June 1915. [BIR-000039]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, A. Paull to W.
E. Ditchburn, 21 August 1922. [ABR-000750]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, H. B. Currie to
C. A. Cox, 9 September 1922. [ABR-000069]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869- 1, part 1, Frank Devlin
to A. W. Vowell, 21 March 1895. [COQ-000299]
57. Criminal Code, 1892, Statutes of Canada 1892, chapter 29, “A History of Canadian
Sexual Assault Legislation, 1900–2000,” http://www.constancebackhouse.ca/fileadmin/
website/1892.htm#22 (accessed 3 May 2013); TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, “Report to W. R. Robertson,” 28 October 1912; [KUP-091283]
RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, Microfilm reel C-8777, 1888–1917, W. E. Ditchburn to
Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 31 October 1912. [KUP-005601]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, Report to W.
R. Robertson, 28 October 1912; [KUP-091283] RG10, volume 6455, file 885-1, part 1, Microfilm
reel C-8777, 1888–1917, W. E. Ditchburn to Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 31
October 1912. [KUP-005601]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, “Report
re: Indians breaking into School on Cowessess Reserve, Complaint of Mr. E. Taylor, Indian
Agent,” Sergeant C. Richardson, 31 July 1919; [RLS-000123-0003] H. McKay to E. Taylor, 27
August 1919. [RLS-000123-0005]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, H. McKay to
E. Taylor, 27 August 1919. [RLS-000123-0005]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Duncan Campbell Scott, 2 October 1919. [RLS-000123-0001]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, PARC, C. A.
Arthur to W. M. Graham, 20 May 1924. [CYP-005109-0001]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, RG10, volume 6369, file 763-1, part 1, PARC, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 July 1924. [CYP-005115]

904 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, “Crime Report
Re: Wabbie Scott (Indian Boy), Brandon Man. Breaking and Entering,” 9 November 1926.
[BRS-000217]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, R. H.
Nicholson to the Officer Commanding, RCMP, Wininipeg, 4 November 1926. [BRS-000216]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, T. Ferrier to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 2 November 1926. [BRS-000215]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, T. Ferrier to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1926. [BRS-000219]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6353, file 754-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8709, P. Moulin to Dear Sir, 8 January 1933. [ERM-000244]
69. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 151.
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Shannon, part C, Shannon 9, 1913, FA 10-79, Perm.
volume 11141, NAC Ottawa, W. E. Ditchburn to W. M. Halliday, 31 January 1913. [MIK014393]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, T. Roy
McLeod to E. L. Stone, 13 December 1939. [MER-003271]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, A. G.
Hamilton, 10 July 1939. [IRC-048018]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, C. W. Jackson
to H. W. McGIll, 22 February 1940. [CJC-000665]
74. Canada, House of Commons Debates (22 May 1888), 1681.
75. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6816, file 486-2-5, part 1, H. Reed to J.
Hugonnard, 13 June 1890.
76. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 151.
77. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 193–194.
78. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1897, 284.
79. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1902, 411.
80. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 360.
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1347, Microfilm reel C-13916, P.
Claessen to W. R. Robertson, 17 August 1909. [KUP-004235]
82. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 420.
83. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 500.
84. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6816, file 486-2-5, part 1, Extract from letter from
J. W. Tims, 2 August 1894.
85. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6816, file 486-2-5, Magnus Begg to A. Forget, 4August 1894.
86. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3881, file 934189, M. Begg to A. Forget, 23
February 1895,
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6318, file 657-1, part 1, A. E. Forget toIndian Agent, Touchwood Hills, 31 January 1896. [MDD-000851]
88. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, xxxviii.
89. Miss Paul, “Indian Work,” http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_04348_49/6?r=0&s=1; Mrs.
Redner, “Indian Work,” http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_04348_51/7?r=0&s=1; Miss
Clarke, “Indian Work,” http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_04348_59/3?r=0&s=1; Hareand Barman, Good Intentions, 194.

Notes • 905
90. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3559, file 74, part 6, J. Hugonnard to the IndianCommissioner, 4 August 1898.
91. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3559, file 74, part 6, J. P. Wright to the IndianCommissioner, 10 August 1898. Betsy.4.jpg.
92. Library and Archives Canada, volume 3559, file 74, part 7, Muscowpetung Reserve Indian
agent to Indian Commissioner 9 July 1900.
93. Library and Archives Canada, volume 3559, file 74, part 7, Indian Commissioner to Indian
Agent, Muscowpetung Agency, 12 July 1900.
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1629, A. J. McNeill to Tims, 10
December 1901. [SAR-000422]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10416, Shannon Box 56-C, 1909–
1910, Frank Pedley to Sir, 2 July 1909. [AEMR-200904]
96. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 170.
97. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6816, file 486-2-5, part 1, Extract Presbytery ofWinnipeg, Committee on Indian Work, R. J. MacPherson, 9 September 1922.
98. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6816, file 486-2-6, part 1, A. S. Williams to D. C.
Scott, 14 December 1922. Memo to Scott, 14 December 1922.jpg.
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8701, W. E. Gullion to W. M. Graham, 1 January 1927. [BQL-001708]
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-1, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8701, W. M. Graham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 11 January 1927. [BQL-001707]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6363, file 759-10, part 1, 1927–1941,
Microfilm reel C-8717, J. L. Levern to Russell Ferrier, 20 July 1929. [SAC-071007]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6326, file 659-10, part 1, J. E. Pratt toPhilip Phelan, 15 June 1936. [ORC-006021]
103. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 83.050C, box 144-21, “Statement of Policy re Indian
Residential Schools,” June 1936. [UCC-050004]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10416, Shannon Box 56-C, 1909–
1910, Frank Pedley to Sir, 2 July 1909. [AEMR-200904]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-1, volume 1347, Microfilm reel
C-13916, Cowichan Agency – Incoming Correspondence re Kuper Island Industrial School,
1907–1920, J. T. James, signed form, 16 November 1909. [KUP-022234-0000]
106. Carter, “Demonstrating Success,” 157–166.
107. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 157.
108. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 187.
109. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 13.
110. Abbott, Administration of Indian Affairs, 51–56.
111. Carter, “Demonstrating Success,” 171–172.
112. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 35.
113. Brass I Walk in Two Worlds, 36.
114. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 45.
115. Ahenakew, Voices of the Plains Cree, 130–131.
116. Carter, “Demonstrating Success,” 165, 176.
117. Library and Archives Canada, No document location, no document file number, “Remarks
and Observations suggested by the recent visit of the Indians of the Lebret District by Mr.
Robertson,” Guy de Bretagne, 10 December 1936. [OBG-003334]

906 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
118. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1914, xxiii.
119. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1921, 28.
120. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1925, 14.
121. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1936, 21–22.
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10411, Shannon Box 37, 1930–31, G.
C. Laight to Russell T. Ferrier, 10 March 1931. [SAL-002007]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11552, file 312-11, part 2, Russell T.
Ferrier to Indian Agents and Principals of Residential Schools, 14 May 1932. [AEMR-177217]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10411, Shannon Box 38, part A, 1937–
1938, R. A. Hoey to principals of Indian Residential Schools, 15 May 1937. [AEMR-200910]

The Lytton school: 1902–1939
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6465, file 888-9, part 1, Public
Archives, G. Ditcham to A. W. Vowell, 21 March 1903. [GRG-002833] For evidence ofDitcham’s being an Anglican minister, see reference to: “Rev. George Ditcham,” in TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, C. A. Webb to
F. D. McLean, 28 January 1911. [GRG-022006] For documentation on the Anglican Churchconnection of the Lytton school, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume7185, file 1/25-1-7-1 v.1, H, D. C. Scott to Buskard, 12 February 1932. [GRG-006462]
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 437.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 460.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1908, 432–433.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 420.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1910, 500.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, FA 10-1, volume 1312, Microfilm reel C-13908,
British Columbia Superintendency, Inspector of Indian Agencies – Letterbooks [Indexed],
1910/07–1911/11, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, W. E. Ditchburn to Secretary, IndianAffairs, [day illegible] December 1910. [GRG-062005]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, J. D.
McLean to Secretary, New England Company, 30 January 1911. [GRG-022007]
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1911, 576.
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, Martin
Benson to D. C. Scott, 28 May 1916. [GRG-022034]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, L. Laronde
to D. C. Scott, 5 January 1921. [GRG-022091]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6463, file 888-1, part 6, C. F. Hives to
R. A. Hoey, 21 June 1942. [GRG-022621]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, F. Ball, 24
April 1921. [GRG-022130-0000]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3221, file 540514, part 1, D. C. Scott toErnest Mathews, 6 October 1921. [TAY-002438]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, P. M. Wilson
to H. Graham, 23 February 1927. [GRG-001605]

Notes • 907
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1 v.1, H, D. C.
Scott to Buskard, 12 February 1932. [GRG-006462]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, Public
Archives, Memorandum to Dr. McGill, 21 February 1934. [GRG-001623]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 3, D. C. Scott toW. E. Ditchburn, 16 April 1928. [GRG-001728]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, A. R. Lett to H.
W. McGill, 12 February 1934. [GRG-001621]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, A. R. Lett toRoper, 29 February 1934; [GRG-022248] RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 3, S. E. Higgs to D.
C. Scott, 17 February 1931. [GRG-001811]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, A. R. Lett toH. W. McGill, 21 March 1934. [GRG-022249]
22. TRC, NRA, File location to be determined, no file identification information available, A.
Strang to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 4 December 1934. [GRG-028051]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 4, Lytton Agency – St.
George’s Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1938, FA 10-17, “Extract From
Report of Inspector Barry With Reference to His Visit to St. George’s Indian Residential Schoolon September 26, and 27 and October 25, 1934, Re: Alfred Cecil Batcheler, Boys’ Supervisor.”[GRG-200848]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 4, Lytton Agency – St.
George’s Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1938, FA 10-17, “Extract From
Report of Inspector Barry With Reference to His Visit to St. George’s Indian Residential Schoolon September 26, and 27 and October 25, 1934, Re: Miss H. Dalgleish.” [GRG-200847]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 4, Lytton Agency – St.
George’s Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1938, FA 10-17, “Extract From
Report of Inspector Barry With Reference to His Visit to St. George’s Indian Residential Schoolon September 26, and 27 and October 25, 1934, Re: Alfred Cecil Batcheler, Boys’ Supervisor.”[GRG-200848]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 888-1, part 4, Lytton Agency – St. George’s
Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1938, FA 10-17, Perm. volume 6462,
Gerald H. Barry to C. C. Perry, 17 October 1934. [GRG-200851-0000]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 4, Lytton Agency – St.
George’s Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1938, FA 10-17, Marjorie Bird
to Indian Affairs, 30 October 1934; [GRG-200852] Helen Dalgleish to unknown, 1 November
1934; [GRG-200854] A. C. Batcheler to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 November 1934. [GRG200855]
28. TRC, NRA, Document location to be determined, no file identification information available,
H. McGill to Superintendent General, 21 November 1934. [GRG-028052]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, A. R. Lett toParents and Friends, June 1937. [GRG-022262]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, C. C. Perry to
Indian Affairs, 6 May 1937. [GRG-001611]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, A. R. Lett toParents and Friends, June 1937. [GRG-022262]

908 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
32. 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]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, volume 5, H. W.
McGill to Major D. M. MacKay, 13 December 1938. [TAY-001678]
34. TRC, NRA, File location to be determined, no file identification information available, D. M.
MacKay to H. T. McGill, 14 January 1939. [GRG-028059]
35. 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]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6463, file 888-1, part 6, C. F. Hives to
R. A. Hoey, 21 June 1942. [GRG-022621]

Parents respond and resist: 1867–1939
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1889, 131.
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 4, A. Ogletree to
Deputy Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 23 July 1926. [ELK-000331]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 4, J. D. McLean
to A. Ogletree, 27 July 1926. [ELK-000332]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6467, file 889-1, part 1, 12/1894–
11/1933, Vancouver Agency – Squamish Residential School – General Administration, FA 1017, Microfilm reel C-8785, NAC Ottawa, A. W. Vowell to the Secretary, Department of IndianAffairs, 5 April 1905. [SQU-000423]
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 189.
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6345, file 751-5, part 1, 1896–1902,
Microfilm reel C-8701, H. Grandin to Indian Commissioner, Regina, 14 April 1897. [BQL007306]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, G.
Donckele to W. R. Robertson, 23 July 1906. [KUP-004276]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, “Report ofInspector Semmens on the Cecilia Jaffrey [sic] Boarding School,” 22 January 1917. [IRC048048]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Chief Kesik,
Chief Redsky, and three others to McKenzie, 28 March 1917. [CJC-000006-0002]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to J. H. Edmison, 29 March 1917. [CJC-000839]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, J. H. Edmison
to J. D. McLean, 2 April 1917. [CJC-000841]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, The Assistant
Deputy and Secretary to Reverend Sir, 1 February 1917. [CJC-000838]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, “Report of
the Commission of Presbytery appointed to investigate conditions at ‘Cecilia Jeffries [sic]Boarding School,’” 26 February 1918. [CJC-000847-0001]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461- 1, part 1, “Report of
the Commission of Presbytery appointed to investigate conditions at ‘Cecilia Jeffries [sic]Boarding School,’” 26 February 1918. [CJC-000847-0001]

Notes • 909
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, “Report of
the Commission of Presbytery appointed to investigate conditions at ‘Cecilia Jeffries [sic]Boarding School,’” 26 February 1918. [CJC-000847-0001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, “Extract from
report on meeting Chief of Pine Creek Band,” A. Ogletree, Indian Agent, 16 June 1917. [PCR010082]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6264, file 579-1, part 1, Chief William
Mann and two others, to the Minister, Indian Affairs, 28 February 1923. [FAR-000016]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6264, file 579-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to William Mann, 6 March 1923. [FAR-000017]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6191, file 462-1, part 1, Andrew
Saunders, Statutory Declaration, 6 January 1922. [CRS-001004-0006]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, “Hungry, Run
Indian Home” [only partial headline in copy], Evelyn Johnson, Toronto Sunday World, 18
November 1923. [TAY-000099-0001]
21. Strong-Boag and Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe, 47.
22. Strong-Boag and Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe, 52–58.
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 1, “Extract from
Inspector’s Report on the Mohawk Institute, 7 November 1923,” T. W. Standing. [TAY-002641]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 2, Mr. Paget to
Mr. Ferrier, 21 August 1928. [CJC-001354]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 1, A. G. Smith
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 29 December 1936. [BIR-002631]
26. TRC, CAR, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 1, Philip Phelan
to A. G. Smith, 5 January 1937. [46a-RG10-Vol-6254-575-10 pt1]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, Chief Dan L.
Francis to Schools Branch, 27 August 1930. [SRS-000185]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, W. Prince toSecretary, Indian Affairs, 5 September 1930. [IRC-041257]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to W. S. Prince, 10 September 1930. [SRS-000067]
30. Smith, “Loft, Fred,” 344–345.
31. Cuthand, “Native Peoples,” 382–383; Kulchyski, “Considerable Unrest,” 100.
32. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 155.
33. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 156.

The staff experience: 1867–1939
1. Davin, Report on industrial schools, 12, 15.
2. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-3, The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools. No. III, The Teacher. [AAC090142]

910 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
3. United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Archive accession information: Fonds, 3282:
John Chantler McDougall Fonds, 1986.291C, box 1, file 8, Mrs. J. McDougall, “Founding of the
McDougall Orphanage and Training School,” Historical Sketch, no date.
4. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 31.
5. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 348; Clifford, “His Dominion,” 315–326; Woodsworth, Strangers
Within Our Gates; Connor, The Foreigner; Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, xx;
Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 10–11.
6. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 306.
7. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 113–119.
8. Methodist Magazine 1 (1875): 146, quoted in Bolt, Thomas Crosby, 103; Semple, Lord’s
Dominion, 272.
9. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 84.
10. Report of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, 1903, 58, quoted in
Porter, “Anglican Church,” 106.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 342–343; TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, Public Archives Canada,
S. R. McVitty, “Helping the Indian: How it is Done at Mount Elgin Industrial Institute,” The
Christian Guardian, 31 May 1913; [MER-0376] RG10, volume 1347, Microfilm reel C-13916, W.
Lemmens to W. R. Robertson, 10 February 1915. [KUP-004240]
12. Algoma Missionary News (April 1877): 14, quoted in Wilson, “Note on Shingwauk Industrial
Home,” 69.
13. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 26.
14. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 118.
15. TRC, CAR, United Church Archives, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Board of Foreign
Missions, Records Pertaining to Missions to Aboriginal People in Manitoba and the North
West, 79.199C, box 4, file 42, C1003 document 11, Maggie Nicoll to Dr. Mackay, 13 October
1902. [13d-c001003-d0011-001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6057, file 265-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Father MacNeil, 5 October 1936. [SRS-000280-0003]
17. “The Most Northerly Residential School in the British Empire,” Northern Lights (February1933): 8, quoted in Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, xx; TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, file 881-1, part 1, Stuart Lake Agency – Lejac Residential School – General
Administration, 1905–1934 F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6443, Microfilm reel C-8767, A. K. O.
Ockoniy to W. Allan, 14 June 1922. [LEJ-200235-0001]
18. Annual Address of Mrs. Bompas, President Delivered at Dawson, Y.T. August 13, 1906, 7,
quoted in Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 133.
19. United Church Archives, Mission to the Aboriginal Peoples in Manitoba and the Northwest,
box 1, file 5, Report by H. McKay, 17 March 1885, quoted in Bush, Western Challenge, 87.
20. Bush, Western Challenge, 27.
21. Fisher, Contact and Conflict, 185–188; Usher, William Duncan, 126; Whitehead,“Introduction” to Coccola, They Call Me Father, 44–47.
22. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 40.
23. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 89.
24. Whitehead, “Introduction” to Coccola, They Call Me Father, 3.
25. Coccola, They Call Me Father, 90.

Notes • 911
26. Stocken, Among the Blackfoot, 1–2.
27. Stocken, Among the Blackfoot, 21.
28. Stocken, Among the Blackfoot, 17, 30–32.
29. Stocken, Among the Blackfoot, 17.
30. Kelm, “Introduction” to Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, xi, xxvi.
31. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 5.
32. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 27–30.
33. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada Archives, Diocese of the Arctic, M96-7, box 188, “File8, Collected Material – Bessie Quirt, Articles written by Bessie re: Shingle Point and Fort
George,” “RE: First Eskimo Residential School (Anglican) – Shingle Point. Story One – Fifty
Years Ago – August 1929–1979.” [39b-c000985-d0004-001]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Public Archives,
David Laird to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 28 December 1899; [EDM-009798] RG18, volume 295,
file 271-05, 1900–1905 NAC, J. R. Huddle to Officer Commanding, 19 July 1900. [EDM-002395]
35. Titley, “Red Deer Industrial School,” 59–60; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG18,
volume 295, file 271-05, 1900–1905, NAC, J. R. Huddle to Officer Commanding, 19 July 1900.
[EDM-002395]
36. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Yukon Fonds, Yukon Archives, file No. 11, volume 3, Dawson
City Hostel, 1922–1934. Anglican Church – Diocese of Yukon Records, COR 252, [box 4] series
1–1A, C. F. Johnson to I. O. Stringer, 5 January 1929. [DAW-000251-0023]
37. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Yukon Fonds, Yukon Archives, file No. 11, volume 3, Dawson
City Hostel, 1922–1934. Anglican Church – Diocese of Yukon Records, COR 252, [box 4] series
1–1A, C. F. Johnson to I. O. Stringer, 17 April 1929. [DAW-000251-0028]
38. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 182.
39. Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Eighth Census of Canada: Religion: Population No.
A-5, Table 2, 289, 296.
40. Hayes, Anglicans in Canada, 28–30.
41. Constitution of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, quoted in Porter,“Anglican Church,” 51.
42. Porter, “Anglican Church,” 52–53.
43. Hayes, Anglicans in Canada, 31–34.
44. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, “Agreement between Board of Management of the Missionary Societyof the Church of England and Authorities of the Diocese,” 1920. [AAC-090249]
45. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS75-103, B16, Minutesof Meeting of the Indian and Eskimo Commission held on Thursday, 21 April 1921. [AAC085125]
46. Seager, “Sydney Gould,” 87–102.
47. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 56, file 3, T. B. R. Westgate to Principals and Staff Agents, Indian and Eskimo
Residential Schools, M.S.C.C., 28 November 1938. [AAC-092080]
48. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75103, Series Minutes, Extract from Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada
Executive Committee minutes, 21 September 1920; [AAC-092898] Library and Archives
Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 1506, file 600-1-1, part 2-A, Education – Schools – N.W.T.

912 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission[General and Policy File], August 1946–May 1948, F.A. 85-4, R. A. Gibson to T. B. R. Westgate, 2August 1946. [RCN-007273]
49. Cambridge University Library, Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Autobiography draftsof Thomas Westgate, RCMS 179, Index description to Autobiography drafts of Thomas
Westgate, http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%20
179 (accessed 19 June 2013); University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library Special
Collections, XCMSACC – Church Missionary Society Unofficial Papers, Accession 491:
Papers of Thomas Westgate, http://calmview.bham.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.
Catalog&id=XCMSACC%2f491 (accessed 16 May 2014).
50. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 277–279.
51. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 285.
52. For Woodsworth as father of J. S. and J. F. (Joe) Woodsworth, see: Mills, Fool for Christ, 1–9, 36.
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-3A, part 1, “Statementof Enrolment and Average Attendance at Schools Conducted Under the Auspices of the
Methodist Church during the year 1924–1925”; [NHU-000721-0001] RG10, volume 6041, file160-7, part 1, “List of Indian Residential Schools Under the Mandate of the United Church
showing the average attendance for the year ended March 31st, 1927.” [AEMR-120377A] Forsemi-residential nature of Morley school, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada –Ottawa, 757-1 part 1, volume 6355, 1886–1927, NAC, T. Ferrier to The Secretary, Department
of Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 27 October 1922. [MOR-004744] For 1926 opening of Morley school,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 757-1 part 1, volume 6355, 1886–1927,
NAC, R. Pringle to the Assistant Deputy and Secretary, Indian Affairs, 28 August 1926. [MOR004797]
54. Brouwer, New Women for God, 22; Bush, Western Challenge, 16.
55. Brouwer, New Women for God, 24.
56. Bush, Western Challenge, 9–10, 16.
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-7, part 1, J. H. Edmison
to D. C. Scott, 7 July 1927; List of Indian Residential Schools Under the Mandate of the United
Church showing the average attendance for the year ended March 31st, 1927. [RLS-001003,
AEMR-120377A]
58. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 7,
file 129, R. P. M. to T. Ferrier, 27 April 1910; [RIS-000491] RG10, Library and Archives Canada –Ottawa, volume 6281, file 604-3, part 1, “Department of Indian Affairs, Teachers’ Salaries, For
Quarter Ended 31 March 1916.” [CRW-000229]
59. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives. Acc. 83.050C, series 2,
section 1, box 12, file 40. John A. Cormie to J. H. Edmison, 19 April 1926. [UCC-050639]
60. Owen, “Hedged in by Contrivances,” 38.
61. United Church of Canada Archives, United Church of Canada Board of Home Missions fonds,“Description,” http://uccdigitalcollections.ca/collections/show/2 (accessed 24 June 2013).
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-7, part 1, 1926–1940,
Microfilm reel C-8153, “Report of the Following Institutions Under the Management of theBoard of Home Missions for the United Church of Canada For the Year Ending March 31st
1927,” 39. [AEMR-200208]
63. Bush, Western Challenge, 95.
64. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 55.
65. McPherson, “Head, Heart, and Purse,” 148–150.

Notes • 913
66. TRC, CAR, United Church Archives, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Board of Foreign
Missions, Records Pertaining to Missions to Aboriginal People in Manitoba and the North
West, 79.199C, box 3, file 29, (C0990), Austin McKitrick to Dr. R. P. MacKay, 30 September
1901, quoted in Hildebrand, “Staff Perspectives,” 170. [13d-c000990-d0017-001]
67. TRC, CAR, United Church Central Archives, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Board of
Foreign Missions, Records Pertaining to Missions to Aboriginal People in Manitoba and theNorth West, 79.199C, box 8, file 146. C1101. W. W. McLaren to Dr. Farquharson, 2 May 1912.
[13d-c001101-d0001-001]
68. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 201.
69. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 20.
70. Hare and Barman, Good Intentions, xviii. For examples, see: Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate
Sisters; Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God; Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle; Butcher,Letters of Margaret Butcher; Duchaussois, Grey Nuns.
71. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 14.
72. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 15.
73. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 16.
74. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 4–5.
75. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 19.
76. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 17, 19.
77. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 21.
78. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 193–194.
79. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 23.
80. Annual Report of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada, 1886–87,
125, quoted in Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 27.
81. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 28.
82. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 190–192.
83. Mrs. H. L. Platt, The Story of the Years: A History of the Women’s Missionary Society of the
Methodist Church of Canada 1881–1906 (Toronto, 1908–1917), 1:34, quoted in Gagan,
Sensitive Independence, 192.
84. McPherson, “Head, Heart, and Purse,” 147.
85. Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 19.
86. Missionary Society of the Church in Canada, Board of Management, Minutes 15–16 October
1912, 26–27, quoted in Porter, “Anglican Church,” 77.
87. Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 21.
88. “Another call for nurses,” Letter Leaflet (May 1920): 224–225, quoted in Rutherdale, Womenand White Man’s God, 22.
89. Brouwer, New Women for God, 25–27.
90. Grant, “Two-Thirds of the Revenue,” 101–102.
91. Grant, “Two-Thirds of the Revenue,” 106.
92. Grant, “Two-Thirds of the Revenue,” 101–102.
93. Brouwer, New Women for God, 30.
94. Women’s Foreign Mission Society, Eighth Annual Report, 1884, 3–4, quoted in Brouwer, New
Women for God, 30.
95. Grant, “Two-Thirds of the Revenue,” 100.
96. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 7,
file 129, R. P. MacKay to C. C. Nisbet, 9 March 1910. [RIS-000488]

914 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
97. McPherson, “Head, Heart, and Purse,” 162–163.
98. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 22.
99. Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 17–19.
100. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 32.
101. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 36–39.
102. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 59–60.
103. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 63, 68.
104. McConnell, “Canadian Deaconess,” 90.
105. Knox College, “Knox College mourns the death of Ewart Principal The Rev. Dr. Irene Dickson,”
http://www.knox.utoronto.ca/knox-college-mourns-the-death-of-ewart-principal-the-revdr-irene-dickson/ (accessed 15 July 2013).
106. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 183.
107. Moser, “Reminiscences of West Coast,” 154.
108. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 14–54.
109. Blanchin, “Oblates of Mary Immaculate,” http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Oblates_
of_Mary_Immaculate (accessed 20 June 2013).
110. Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 96.
111. McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 289.
112. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 178, 184–189.
113. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Joseph Guy to D. C. Scott, 1
October 1924. [OBG-000364]
114. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 1-2, “Extraits des proces verbaux desreunions de la Commission Oblate des Ouevres Indiennes,” 17 January 1936; [OMI-033062]
McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 289.
115. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 242.
116. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 182–183.
117. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 4–12, 132–139; Choquette, Canada’s Religions, 83–84,
201; McCarthy, From the Great River, 156; Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 9; Huel, Proclaiming
the Gospel, 165–166, 171; Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 5. TRC, NRA, Provincial
Archives – Alberta, Acc. 78.204/5, Vital Grandin to Mother Ste. Marie, 27 September 1890;[ORC-000775] No document location, no document file source, Victor Rassier to Gerald
Murphy, 15 September 1930; [BVT-000239] No document location, no document file source,
M. Agatha, to Gerald Murray, 26 May 1931. [BVT-000260] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-3, part 1, H. B. Rayner to W. M. Graham, 26 August 1931.
[SBR-000879-0001]
118. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 141.
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, D. C. Scott toJ. McGuire, 24 February 1926. [KAM-000176]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9126, file 302-11, “Thunderchild
Indian Residential School, R/C, Delmas, Saskatchewan, Cost of Operation Fiscal Year ending
March 31st, 1934.” [THR-000290-0004]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8840, file 506/16-2-019, part 1,“Statement #3, Winnipeg, October 23rd, 1935, Re: Fort Alexander, R.C. Indian Residential
School, Cost of Operation.” [FAR-004024-0003] For Oblate Sisters at Fort Alexander, see:Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 132, 154.

Notes • 915
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8842, file 657/16-2, part 1,“Muscowequan Residential School, Lestock, Saskatchewan,” 17 September 1935. [MDD006500-0003]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8845, file 963/16-2, part 1, “Re:
Kamloops Residential School, Roman Catholic,” 3 July 1936. [KAM-002000]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-3, part 1, H. B. Rayner
to W. M. Graham, 16 October 1929. [SBR-000877-0000]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-3, part 1, H. B. Rayner
to W. M. Graham, 26 August 1931. [SBR-000879-0001]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6276, file 584-3, part 1, Russell T.
Ferrier to W. M. Graham, 8 September 1931. [SBR-001190]
127. Jesuit Archives, Toronto, Méry to Keane, 4 March 1935, quoted in Shanahan, Jesuit Residential
School, 109–110.
128. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 189.
129. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 50–64.
130. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 101.
131. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 4–12, 26.
132. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 34, 39, 94.
133. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 15.
134. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 94.
135. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 62–66.
136. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 100.
137. Bruno-Jofre, Missionary Oblate Sisters, 132–139.
138. See, for example: Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle; Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher;
Duchaussois, Grey Nuns; Hare and Barman, Good Intentions.
139. Whitehead, “Introduction” to Coccola, They Call Me Father, 12.
140. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 25.
141. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, “Industrial School, Battleford,
Duties of the Governess.”
142. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 255.
143. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1893, 255–256.
144. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 140.
145. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-3, “The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools, No. III, The Teacher.” [AAC090142]
146. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-2, “The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools, No. II, The Matron-inCharge.” [AAC-090141]
147. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, “The Indian And Eskimo Commission of the Missionary Society of the
Church of England in Canada, ‘An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy Positions on

916 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools’” [From date of cover letter, 1922]. [AAC090240]
148. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, “The Indian And Eskimo Commission of the Missionary Society of
the Church of England in Canada, ‘An Introduction to the Outline of the Duties of the Cook”[From date of cover letter, 1922]. [AAC-090241]
149. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:2, box 55, file 5, “The Indian And Eskimo Commission of the Missionary Society of
the Church of England in Canada, ‘Introduction to the Outline of the Duties of the Teacher,”[From date of cover letter, 1922]. [AAC-090244]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121607, Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs to A. E. Forget, Assistant Commissioner of IndianAffairs, NWT, 18 January 1895. [RIS-000385-0000]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3819, file 58418, J. Hugonnard to
Hayter Reed, 11 May 1889. [PLD-009475] Hugonnard continued to oppose pay cuts in coming
years. See: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3675, file 11422-4, J.
Hugonnard to E. Dewdney, 5 May 1891. [PLD-009435]
152. Library and Archives Canada, Hayter Reed Fonds. MG 29-E106 Personnel, A-G, volume 18.
John Ashby to Hayter Reed, 11 June 1889.
153. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2100, file 17960, part 2, A. Sutherland to
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 31 March 1887.
154. United Church Archives, A. Sutherland Papers, Outgoing Correspondence, July 1891–1898,
box 24-1, A. Sutherland to Superintendent General, 31 October 1893, quoted in Fox, “Failureof Red Deer,” 44.
155. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 27.
156. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 400.
157. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 422.
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, H.
Graham to D. C. Scott, 2 May 1921. [GRG-022142]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121/607, “List of Officers atfollowing Industrial Schools showing salaries as proposed to be reduced by the Department.”[PLD-008587]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3938, file 121/607, “List of Officers atfollowing Industrial Schools showing salaries as proposed to be reduced by the Department.”[PLD-008587]
161. Phillips and Phillips, Women and Work, 1–31.
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8845, file 961/16-2, part 1, Kuper
Island Residential School, Roman Catholic, Kuper Island, Cost of Operations August 1, 1935
to July 31, 1936; [KUP-003365-0004] RG10, volume 8845, file 963/16-2, part 1, July 3, 1936,
Re: Kamloops Residential School, Roman Catholic; [KAM-002000] RG10, volume 8840, file511/16-2-015, Statement No. 2, Re: Brandon Residential School, Cost of Operations andSalaries, 1936; [BRS-001427-0003 RG10, volume 8843, file 709/16-2-001, part 1, Re: Edmonton
Residential School, (United) Alberta (cover page torn) 20 March 1936. [EDM-000358]
163. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/23-5—
010, 1894–1966, volume 1 DRSRO, Morley Residential School (United) Alberta, “List of Staff,
Occupations & Salaries as at November 18th, 1932.” [MOR-001042]

Notes • 917
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 886-24, part 1, Skeena River Agency – Crosby
Girls Residential School [Port Simpson] – Audit Reports 1935–1948, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume6458, Microfilm reel C-8779; Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa. “Crosby Girls’ Home,
United Church of Canada, Cost of Operations for Fiscal Year 1934–35.” [PSM-200049-0003]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8846, Microfilm reel
C-9735, 987/16-2-018, part 1, New Westminster Agency – Financial Report on the Squamish
Indian Residential School, 1935–1959, NAC Ottawa, “Squamish Residential School, Roman
Catholic, North Vancouver, Cost of Operations – September 1, 1935 to July 31, 1936.” [SQU000265-0004]
166. Shack, Two-Thirds Minority, 52.
167. Charyk, Little White Schoolhouse, 203, 205, 206, 210.
168. Johns, “History of St Peter’s,” 27.
169. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 426.
170. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, 375.
171. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1905, 349.
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 2, A. R. Lett to D.
C. Scott, 15 October 1924. [GRG-001513]
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6321, file 658-5, part 3, T. B. R.
Westgate to Duncan Campbell Scott, 29 November 1926. [PAR-015165]
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6343, file 750-5, part 3, E. Ruaux to D.
C. Scott, 3 June 1929; [MRY-009738] Duncan C. Scott to E. Ruaux, 8 June 1929. [MRY-009739]
175. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B32 1300, Provincial Edmonton to
Duncan C. Scott, 26 March 1930. [OGP-070171]
176. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B32 1300, Duncan C. Scott to Reverend
U. Langlois, 2 April 1930. [OGP-070172]
177. Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, 134.
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-7, part 1, 1926–1940,
Microfilm reel C-8153, Kenneth Beaton to Russell Ferrier, 31 January 1931. [MOR-000849]
179. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 2,
file 20, Thomas Hart to R. P. MacKay, 20 December 1900. [RIS-000437]
180. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 3, file 37,
H. T. to R. P. MacKay, 30 May 1902. [RIS-000532]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 1, Assistant
Secretary, Indian Affairs to A. W. Vowell, 15 October 1909; [ABR-007009] R. P. MacKay to D.
C. Scott, 25 February, 1910; [ABR-007006] RG10, volume 6273, file 583-1, part 1, W. A. Hendry
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 19 August 1931; [PLP-000963] The United Church of Canada
Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 7, file 129, R. P. MacKay to W. A. Hendry, 21
June 1910. [RIS-000492]
182. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 228–236.
183. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives Acts of Canonical Visitation, 1883–1966, Stacks 2L, “ActeGénéral de Visite des Missions Indiennes du Nord-Ouest Canadien par le T.R.P. Théodore
Labouré, O.M.I., Supérieur Géneral, Rome Maison Générale,” 78–80. [OMI-034614]
184. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1896, 366.
185. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box
7, file 131, Executive of the Foreign Mission Committee of the Synods of Manitoba andSaskatchewan (Presbyterian Church), “Minutes” 20 February 1911. [RIS-000474]

918 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
186. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-3, “The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools, No. III, The Teacher.” [AAC090142]
187. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 31.
188. Cameron, New North, 79.
189. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 23 March 1936.
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6028, file 118-7-1, part 1, E. B. Glass
to Dr. Sutherland, 4 September 1896. [WFL-000648-0002]
191. Duchaussois, Grey Nuns, 90–116.
192. Duchaussois, Grey Nuns, 116.
193. Duchaussois, Grey Nuns, 116.
194. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 2, file
20, Alex Skene to Mr. McKay, 1 December 1900; [RIS-000436] Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, R. G. Howes to Deputy Superintendent General, 25
May 1903; [MER-000331] RG10, volume 3927, file 116836-1A, Frank Pedley to W. M. Graham,
16 January 1905; [RIS-000090] RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 1, Microfilm reel C-8786,
A. W. Vowell to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 10 October 1906; [MIS-004766] RG10, volume6320, file 658-1, part 1, W. Sibbald to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 28 August 1916; [PAR-003569]
RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 1, M. Kalmes to Duncan C. Scott, 13 February 1917;[PLD-000005] RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, R. S. McKenzie to Assistant Deputy andSecretary, 23 October 1918; [CJC-000870] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3933,
file 117657-1, A. Naessens to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 7 January 1919; INAC – Resolution
Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-02016, volume 4, T. J. Davies to Mr.
Moore, 25 November 1925; [GDC-002528] RG10, volume 6300, file 650-1, part 1, O. Charlebois
to Duncan Scott, 28 October 1930; [BVL-000005] RG10, volume 6303, file 651-1, part 1, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. P. B. Ostrander, 3 July 1933; [MRS-001401] RG10, volume 6334, file 662-1, part2, A. F. MacKenzie to W. Murison, 14 February 1935. [SPR-000465] For Atwater’s initials, see:
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, 179.
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1346, Microfilm reel C-13916, G.
Donckele to W. R. Robertson, 1 January 1907; [KUP-004280] RG10, FA 10-1, volume 1346,
Microfilm reel C-13916, Cowichan Agency – Incoming Correspondence re Kuper Island
Industrial School, 1891–1907, P. Claessen to W. R. Robertson, 5 June 1907. [KUP-022198] For
A. J. McLeod’s initials, see: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900,
383.
196. Kelm, “Introduction” to Butcher, Letters of Margaret Butcher, xx.
197. Hare and Barman, “Good Intentions,” 168, 205, 206, 216.
198. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 114, 133.
199. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 18 November 1933.
200. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 5.

Notes • 919
201. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 5–12.
202. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 92.
203. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, EGN007951, F. J. C. Ball to D. C. Scott, 5 May 1921. [GRG-022150-0000]
204. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, David Iverach
to A. S. Grant, 7 July 1915. [BIR-000041]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, “Memo for file,” R. H. Cairns, 25 March 1924. [EGN-007951]
206. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, J. Waddy, 24
November 1928. [DRS-000564]
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Harold McGill, 22 March 1933. [DRS-000612]
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, Duncan C.
Scott to T. B. R. Westgate, 30 June 1931. [SWK-001540]
209. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, Alice Davies
to R. Ferrier, 16 April 1932. [SWK-001513]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, A. F.
MacKenzie to T. B. R. Westgate, 26 April 1932. [SWK-001514]
211. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Minutes of the Meetingsof Indian Residential School Commission MSCC, 02/35-05/38, pg. 1902–2256, Accession GS
75-103, series 2:15[a], box 19, “Minutes of Meeting of Indian & Eskimo Residential School
Commission, MSCC, Held on Tuesday, April 5th, 1938.” [AGS-000569]
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6430, file 876-1, part 1, West Coast
Agency – Ahousaht Residential School – General Administration, 1901–1931 F.A. 10-17,
Microfilm reel C-8759, W. R. Woods to Dr. Young, 5 November 1929. [AST-200068-0001]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, W. G.
Tweddell to W. M. Graham, 6 May 1931. [DRS-000588]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, T. B. R.
Westgate to the Secretary, Department of Indian Affairs, 11 December 1931. [DRS-000592]
215. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 189–190.
216. Rutherdale, Women and White Man’s God, 23–25, 63.
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 883-1, part 1, Bella Coola Agency – Kitamaat
Boarding School – General Administration, 1906–1932, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6451,
Microfilm reel C-8773, Library and Archives Canada, L. Spotton to C. G. Young, 28 February
1930. [KMT-095721]
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6377, file 767-1, part 1, M.
Christianson to H. W. McGill, 2 August 1933. [JON-000073]
219. Fast, “Amelia Le Soeur (Yeomans),” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.
php?BioId=41653 (accessed 26 May 2013).
220. Yeomans, His Healing Power, 3–11.
221. Opp, “Lord for the Body,” 92, 197.
222. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1900, 109.
223. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1901, 80. (Charlotte Amelia’s
name is mistakenly given as Annie in the annual report.)

920 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
224. Opp, “Lord for the Body,” 197.
225. Opp, “Lord for the Body,” 197; Brown, “Frances Nickawa,” 267.
226. Fast, “Amelia Le Soeur (Yeomans),” http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.
php?BioId=41653 (accessed 26 May 2013).
227. Opp, “Lord for the Body,” 197.
228. Methodist Church of Canada, British Columbia Conference, Port Simpson District,
Ministerial Sessions, 1893, 188, quoted in Bolt, Thomas Crosby, 63.
229. Gagan, Sensitive Independence, 198–200.
230. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1907, 426.
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6479, file 940-1, part 1, J. Hawksley,“Report on the Carcross Indian Residential School,” 9 July 1929. [CAR-011233-0001]
232. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 3,
file 29, Neil Gilmour to Dr. McKay, 12 September 1901. [CRW-000158]
233. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 3,
file 29, Neil Gilmour to R. P. MacKay, 19 September 1901. [CRW-000160]
234. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box
2, file 13, Andrew Baird to R. P. MacKay, 12 January 1898; box 3, file 31, Neil Gilmour to R. P.
MacKay, 25 November 1901. [RIS-000438, CRW-000317]
235. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 3,
file 30, Neil Gilmour to R. P. MacKay, 7 October 1901. [CRW-000320]
236. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 3,
file 33, Neil Gilmour to R. P. MacKay, 1 January 1902. [CRW-000232]
237. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 4,
file 43, [Illegible] to MacKay, 27 November 1902. [CRW-000107]
238. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 8,
file 136, James Farquharson to R. P. MacKay, 29 July 1911; [CRW-000274] Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6027, file 117-1-1, part 1, Martin Benson to D. C. Scott, 11 November
1914. [CRW-000057]
239. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file320/1143, Wabasca – School – [St. John’s Indian School] 1933–1937, Archival Acc.
PR1970.0387/2212, Archival Box 60, Field Secretary, M.S.C.C. to K. L. Sandercock, 20 July
1933. [JON-800137]
240. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file320/1143, Wabasca – School – [St. John’s Indian School] 1933–1937, Archival Acc.
PR1970.0387/2212, Archival box 60, K. L. Sandercock to Lord Bishop of Athabaska, 6September 1933; [JON-800138] file A320/1144, Wabasca [Official Correspondence of Bishop
Sovereign], 1936–43. Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/2213, Archival Box 60, Secretary of theCommission to C. N. Middleton, 21 March 1940. [JON-800186]
241. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,3b–4b.
242. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of the Arctic, General Synod Archives, file18-3c, Rev. J. Harold Webster, 1937–1941, [Coppermine] 07/35–07/41, Accession M96-7, series
2:1, J. H. Webster to Trevor Jones, 20 January 1940. [AGS-000220]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 1, J. K. Irwin to
Indian Affairs, 22 October 1926. [GDC-006528]

Notes • 921
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to J. K. Irwin, 29 October 1926. [GDC-006529]
245. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-1, “The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools, No. I, The Principal. [AAC090140]
246. Bush, Western Challenge, 100.
247. United Church of Canada Archive accession information: Fonds 3292: Joseph Albert George
Lousley Fonds. 1986.301C /TR File 1, typescript manuscript, reminiscences of Norway House,
1902–1916, Chapter: “God Does Provide for Physical Needs,” 2–3.
248. United Church of Canada Archives, Fonds 3204, John Semmens Fonds, 1986.213C, box 1, file
3, John Semmens, personal history, typescript, n.d., 60.
249. United Church of Canada Archives, Fonds 3204, John Semmens Fonds, 1986.213C, box 1, file
3, John Semmens, personal history, typescript, n.d., 60.
250. Semmens, Under Northern Lights, 62.
251. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 14–19.
252. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 11.
253. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 31, 33–34, 38.
254. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 69, 107.
255. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,9a.
256. Johns, “History of St Peter’s Mission,” 27.
257. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 2, Duncan C.
Scott to Ernest Mathews, 24 June 1929. [TAY-000131]
258. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6270, file 582-1, part 1, Deputy
Minister to P. Bousquet, 25 June 1903. [PCR-010034]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6197, file 465-1, part 1, J. D. McLean
to P. Bousquet, 30 November 1906. [KNR-000623]
260. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1076, volume 1, Chas. Cahill to Indian Affairs, 28 August 1912. [SBR-000328]
261. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1076, volume 1, J. D. McLean to Chas. Cahill, 23 September 1913. [SBR-000329]
262. Huel, Proclaiming the Gospel, 154–155.
263. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6264, file 579-1, part 1, J. Magnan to
Russell Ferrier, 1 October 1927. [FAR-000019]
264. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1933, 52.
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6001, file 1-1-1, part 4, “List of Indian
Residential School Principals,” 31 July 1936. [PLD-007300]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 501/25-1-075, volume 1, [illegible] to R. A. Hoey,
18 September 1937. [PCR-000143]
267. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada Archives, Diocese of the Arctic, M96-7, box 188, “File8, Collected Material – Bessie Quirt, Articles written by Bessie re: Shingle Point and Fort
George” “RE: First Eskimo Residential School (Anglican) – Shingle Point. Story One – Fifty
Years Ago – August 1929–1979.” Library and Archives Canada, RG919-10, part 1, Fort Norman922 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Agency – Aklavik Church of England Residential School – Admissions and Discharges, 1936–
1946 F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6477, Microfilm reel C-8792, H. S. Shepherd to Philip Phelan,
30 March 1939; [ASU-001138] RG29, volume 2906, file 851-1-A486, part 3, H. S. Shepherd
to P. E. Moore, 14 January 1948; [NPC-603247] RG10, volume 10728, file 484/25-2-467, part
1, H. S. Shepherd to J. L. Whitey, 17 November 1952; Anglican Church of Canada, General
Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 22, file 2, “Minutes of a Meetingof the Sub-Executive Committee MSCC,” 8th September 1954; [MFI-001074 AAC-090761]
Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives GS 75-103, series 2-15, box 22, “Reportof the Superintendent, Indian School Administration, to the M.S.C.C. Board of Management,
Toronto, November 16th, 1954.” [GDC-007201]
268. Semmens, Under Northern Lights, 63.
269. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1906, 2:52–56.
270. Grant, “Two-Thirds of the Revenue,” 108–109.
271. Bush, Western Challenge, 112.
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, W. M. Graham
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 10 July 1911. [FHR-000039]
273. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, A. Sutherland to
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 3 January 1895. [EDM-003966]274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Frank Pedley to C.
E. Somerset, 3 June 1903. [EDM-003973]
275. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, Public Archives, C.
E. Somerset to A. Sutherland, 8 April 1903. [EDM-009826]
276. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer,” 83–84; Titley, “Red Deer Industrial School,” 63.
277. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer,” 84–88, 97; Titley, “Red Deer Industrial School,” 63.
278. Fox, “Failure of Red Deer,” 102; Titley, “Red Deer Industrial School,” 64.
279. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Presbyterian Church in Canada Foreign Mission Fonds,
Records Pertaining to the Missions to Aboriginal People in Western Canada, box 4, #52,
Wasley Harris to R. P. MacKay, 27 August 1903.[RIS-000147]
280. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3920, file 116818, A. Sutherland to
Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, 3 January 1895. [EDM-003966]
281. Semmens, Under Northern Lights, 60.
282. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 1, G. H.
Wheatley to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 21 October 1913. [BIR-000029]
283. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 1, ThomasAppleby to Minister, Indian Affairs, 29 April 1880. [SWK-001896]
284. E. F. Wilson to the Reverend Daniel Wilson, 8 October 1884, quoted in Nock, “Chapter in the
Amateur Period,” 254.
285. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3924, file 116823, Edward F. Wilson to
Superintendent General, 28 April 1891. [ELK-000053]
286. Nock, “Chapter in the Amateur Period,” 159.
287. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. Scannell to W. M. Duke, 27
March 1939. [ABV-000582]
288. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. M. D. Gillen to Oblate
Provincial, 27 July 1936. [OMS-000550]
289. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Thomas Girard to Father
Scannell, 29 September 1936. [OMS-000552]

Notes • 923
290. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6468, file 890-1, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to J. Scannell, 1 December 1936. [MIS-001569]
291. TRC, NRA, The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 7,
file 130, W. McWhinney to Dr. MacKay, 4 January 1911. [CRW-000140]
292. Titley, Indian Commissioners, 190–193.
293. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, W. M. Graham
to D. C. Scott, 27 October 1919. [PLD-007202]
294. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6327, file 660-1, part 2, J. B. Beys to
Duncan C. Scott, 24 November 1919. [PLD-007206]
295. United Church of Canada Archive accession information: Fonds 3292: Joseph Albert George
Lousley Fonds, 1986.301C /TR file 1, typescript manuscript, reminiscences of Norway House,
1902–1916, n.d., Chapter “Life at Norway House – 1902–1916,” 1.
296. United Church of Canada Archives, Accession No. 1993.064C /TR 1996.064C 1997.149C Fonds
3471, Frances M. Walbridge Fonds, 1939–1974, Frances Walbridge to Ann, 15 September
1939.
297. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 9:08, box 131, file 5-3, The Indian Residential School Commission of the Missionary
Society of the Church of England in Canada, An Outline of the Duties of Those Who Occupy
Positions on the Staff at the Society’s Indian Residential Schools, No. II, The Matron-inCharge. [AAC-090142]
298. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 2, M.
Christianson to Indian Affairs, 2 March 1932. [DRS-000594]
299. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1393, Inspector of Indian Agencies
to Reverend Grant, 28 December 1914. [FHR-001519] (The document is misdated insummation.)
300. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 5, file 72, R. B. Heronto R. P. MacKay, 17 April 1905. [RIS-000211]
301. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 3, E. G.
Newnham to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 6 June 1933; [AGS-000488] Anglican Church of
Canada, General Synod Archives IERSC Minutes, 01/33-10/34, pg. 1654–1877, Accession GS75-103, series 2:15[a], box 18, “Minutes of meeting of Indian Residential School Commission,
M.S.C.C. held on Tuesday, July 18, 1933.” [MIK-000314]
302. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3931, file 117377-1C, “Complaint
against school board: St Paul Industrial School Teachers’ Petition,” The Telegram, 5 December
1901. [2058145]
303. TRC, RBS, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3931, file 117377-1C, McManus to
Smart, 3 April 1902. [2058145]
304. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,
10a–10b.
305. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,
15a.
306. Hare and Barman, Good Intentions, 177–182.
307. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 278.

924 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
308. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3925, file 116823-1A, “Elkhorn
Mourns Loss,” Elkhorn Mercury, 27 April 1916. [ELK-000242]
309. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, 179.
310. TRC, NRA, (Anglican), Alberta, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 773/16-2-004,
1935–1967, volume 1, CR-HQ, “Audit, Blood Residential School,” T. G. Willis, 10 March 1938.
[PUL-002756]
311. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 43.
312. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 109, 116.
313. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 1, W. Sibbald to
Indian Affairs, 9 October 1916. [PAR-000928]
314. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 97.
315. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 159–160.
316. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 167.
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 2, “Extract from
Inspector Barry’s Report regarding his visit to the Alberni Indian Residential School on April
26th 1932.” [ABR-200757]
318. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1, Frank
Edwards, 9 February 1924. [CJC-000881]
319. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 1,“Memorandum for File,” 19 September 1924. [CJC-000884]
320. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 2, Frank
Edwards to Assistant Deputy and Secretary, 12 February 1927. [CJC-001340]
321. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 1,
T. B. R. Westgate to Secretary Indian Affairs, 21 April 1925. [OLD-000336]
322. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3928, file 117004-1, “Report of Dr. P.
M. Bryce on Old Suns School,”10 October 1907. [OLD-008148-0001]
323. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 69.
324. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 89–91.
325. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 91.
326. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 15 January 1935.
327. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 27 April 1935.
328. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 8 March 1935.
329. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Diocese of the Arctic, M96-7, box 188,
“File 8, Collected Material – Bessie Quirt, Articles written by Bessie re: Shingle Point and Fort
George,” “RE: Shingle Point Eskimo School, Story No 3 – Single Women Survive the Arctic.”
330. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 13.
331. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Accessions M82-12 Louise Topping
fonds. – 1937. Short story titled “Hope,” n.d., 15.
332. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 156.
333. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 163–164.
334. Gresko, “Gender and Mission,” 163.

Notes • 925
335. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 2, 1910–1934,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, “Extract from Inspector’s Report on the Kootenay Residential
School, October 10 and 11, 1924,” R. H. Cairns. [EGN-008030]
336. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, 1915–1936, J.
McGuire to D. C. Scott, 8 April 1926. [KAM-001241]
337. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, M. Gabriel to
D. C. Scott, 17 May 1926. [KAM-000180]
338. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Mary Gabriel to Father Welsh, 26
February 1927. [OMS-000440]
339. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8845, file 963/16-2, part 1, July 3,
1936, “Re: Kamloops Residential School, Roman Catholic.” [KAM-002000]
340. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 2, 1915–1936, D.
C. Scott to J. Welch, 5 October 1927; [KAM-001246] Mary Gabriel to D. Scott, 26 October 1927.
[KAM-000186]
341. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Mary Gabriel to Father Welsh, 26
February 1927. [OMS-000440]
342. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file, Mary Gabriel to J. Welch, 19 June 1928.
[OMS-000451]
343. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file, Mary Gabriel to J. Welch, 27 June 1928.
[OMS-000453]
344. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file, Mary Gabriel to J. Welch, 11 July 1929.
[OMS-000463]
345. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file, A. H. Fleury to Mary Mark, 22 November
1940. [OMS-000596]
346. Archives of the Sisters of Providence, J. Smith, to Mother Bernard du Sacré-Coeur, 12 June
1924, quoted in McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 93.
347. Archives of the Sisters of Providence, Sister Rustica to J. Welch, 21 September 1927, quoted in
McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 93.
348. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 94.
349. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 95.
350. Sister 1992-68, conversation with Sister Margaret McGovern, July 1992, quoted in McGovern,“Perspective on the Oblates,” 96.
351. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 104.
352. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 99.
353. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 100–101.
354. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 105.
355. McGovern, “Perspective on the Oblates,” 106–107.
356. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, A. Naessens to
D. C. Scott, 30 July 1929. [THR-000174]
357. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-1, part 1, D. C. Scott toJ. B. Beys, 19 October 1929. [THR-000176]
358. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220/1323, J. B. Beys to D. C. Scott, 25
October 1929. [THR-000392]
359. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9126, file 302-11, “Annual School
Report by S. L. Macdonald,” 31 March 1934. [THR-000291]

926 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
360. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, Acc. 78.204/5, Vital Grandin to Mother Ste. Marie, 27
September 1890. [ORC-000775]
361. Library and Archives Canada, C-10118, RG10, volume 3676, file 11422-5, Extract from
Inspector Wadsworth’s Report, Battleford Industrial School, 25 October 1884.
362. United Church Archives, Methodist Church (Canada) Missionary Society Fonds,
Correspondence of the General Secretaries, 6 Book 22, A. Sutherland to E. S. Rupert, 6 May
1896.
363. Quoted in Symington, Canadian Indian, 228. For Tobias’s history at the Mohawk Institute,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, C. M.
Turnell, 18 September 1915. [TAY-003557]
364. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Scott, 19 August 1914. [DRS-000483]
365. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6267, file 580-1, part 1, Martin
Benson to Mr. Scott, 27 August 1917. [DRS-000507-0000]
366. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, part 1, H, F. Ball, 24
April 1921. [GRG-022130-0000]
367. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1930, 17.
368. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 2, “Successful
Graduates.” [TAY-004294-0002]
369. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2006, file 7825-1A, “Report on the
Mohawk Institute and Six Nations Board Schools,” 30 August 1895, 43. [TAY-003821-0000]
370. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, C. M.
Turnell to unknown, 21 June 1915; [TAY-003555] Gordon J. Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs,
29 June 1920; [TAY-003598] “Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario, Statement of Salaries,” 18
August 1920. [TAY-003603]
371. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, Gordon J.
Smith to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 2 December 1920. [TAY-003630-0000]
372. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2771, file 154845, part 1A, T. W.
Standing to unknown, 12 March 1921. [TAY-005407-0001]
373. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 2, A. F.
MacKenzie to H. W. Snell, 7 May 1936. [TAY-003085-0002]
374. Graham, Mush Hole, 356.
375. Graham, Mush Hole, 370.
376. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1903, 402.
377. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada Archives, Acc. No. 1979.199C, box 5, file 60, J. A. Sinclair
to R. P. MacKay, 26 April 1904. [RIS-000306]
378. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, J. Doyle to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 September 1932. [BRS-000234]
379. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/235-065, volume 1. Inspector’s Report Brandon Indian Residential School, 14 December 1932.
[BRS-001408-0001]
380. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1894, 151.
381. Moine, My Life in a Residential School, n.p.
382. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,10b.

Notes • 927
383. Bush, Western Challenge, 106–107.
384. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 1, R. P. MacKay
to Frank Pedley, 19 September 1912. [FHR-000059]
385. TRC, CAR, United Church Archives, Mission to the Aboriginal Peoples in Manitoba
and the Northwest, 79.199, box 8, file 154 C1109, McLaren to MacKay, 16 April 1913.
[13d-c001109-d0015-001]
386. For Elsie McLaren’s enrolment in Brandon school, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 2, J. A. Doyle to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14
September 1932. [BRS-000234] For Harry Meadows as teacher, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-60, part 1, H. Meadows to Teachers of Indian
Schools Indian Department Officials Traders, 1 February 1937; [120.08396] H. Meadows, to
R. A. Hoey, 30 March 1937. [120.08401] For the story of Elsie McLaren and Harry Meadows,
see: Lea Meadows, “Residential Schools Generate Anger but Also Pride,” Calgary Herald, 30
July 2012, http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=c65c20fe-ce76-471096d9-ab50ab51c30c.
387. Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 115; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1896, 347.
388. Watech, Payepot and His People, 44.
389. TRC, NRA, Accession No. 705, tape 1, track 1, no date. [OMS-000283]
390. Buck, Doctor Rode Side-Saddle, 142–143, 170.
391. Brass, I Walk in Two Worlds, 27.
392. Graham, Mush Hole, 367.
393. Graham, Mush Hole, 445. For Strapp’s first name, see: 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]
394. United Church of Canada Archives, Accession No. 1993.064C /TR 1996.064C 1997.149C Fonds
3471, Frances M. Walbridge Fonds, 1939–1974, Frances Walbridge to Ann, 15 September
1939.
395. United Church of Canada Archives, Accession No. 1993.064C /TR 1996.064C 1997.149C Fonds
3471, Frances M. Walbridge Fonds, 1939–1974, Frances Walbridge to Ann, 15 September
1939.
396. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–
1986), M88-4, box 1, Adelaide Butler to Dollie Butler, 27 April 1935.
397. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, Mary A.
Johnson to Frank Pedley, 7 March 1912. [MFI-000157]
398. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6203, file 467-1, part 1, S. Stewart to J.
G. Anderson, 11 October 1912. [MFI-000163]
399. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file location, A. C. Ockoniy, 28 June 1922.
[PRC-000038]
400. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Lucy L. Affleck to Dr. Barner, 3
October 1929. [UCB-005108]
401. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Lucy L. Affleck to Dr. Barner, 11November 1929. [UCB-005109]
402. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Lucy Affleck
to Mr. Graham, 15 November 1929. [RLS-000293-0001]

928 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
403. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Mr. Graham, 11 September 1929. [RLS-000282-0001]
404. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Mr. Graham, 11 September 1929; [RLS-000282-0001] RG10, volume 6333, file661-6, part 1, “Inspector’s Report on Round Lake Indian Residential School, 23 October 1929.”[RLS-000286]
405. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 1, R. J. Ross to Russell
T. Ferrier, 10 December 1928; [RLS-000267] RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, G. Dorey to
R. A. Hoey, 8 May 1939. [RLS-000401]
406. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1887, 26.
407. Algoma Missionary News and Shingwauk Journal (April 1877), (November 1877): 35, quoted
in Wilson, “‘No Blanket to be Worn,’” 74.
408. Nock, “Edward Francis Wilson,” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wilson_edward_
francis_14E.html (accessed 22 June 2013); Nock, “Aboriginals and Their Influence,” 168–170.
409. “Paper No. Four,” The Canadian Indian 1, 9 (June 1891), quoted in Haig-Brown and Nock,
With Good Intentions, 329.
410. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1892, 138; Nock, “Aboriginals andTheir Influence,” 159.
411. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 86.158C, box 2,
file 2, Red Deer Industrial School Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC Docs Toronto, Arthur Barner to Dr.
Sutherland and T. Ferrier, 4 May 1909. [UCA-080255-0008]
412. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, R. B. Heron toRegina Presbytery, May 1923. [AEMR-016371]
413. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-4, part 1, “Resolutionsof Indian Workers Association of the Presbyterian Church for Saskatchewan and Manitoba,”
1911. [CRW-000285-0002]
414. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives Acts of Canonical Visitation, 1883–1966, Stacks 2L, “ActeGénéral de Visite des Missions Indiennes du Nord-Ouest Canadien par le Théodore Labouré,
O.M.I., Supérieur Géneral, Rome Maison Générale,” 1936, 49. [OMI-034614]
415. Archives of the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, Yellowknife, Martin File, VII, G. Breynat to
M. Martin, 14 November 1945, quoted in Carney, “Residential Schooling,” 129.
416. Carney, “Residential Schooling,” 129.
417. Bishop Gabriel Breynat, “Canada’s Blackest Blot,” Toronto Star Weekly, May 28, 1938, quoted
in Fumoleau, As Long as This Land, 379.
418. Carney, “Residential Schooling,” 129–130.
419. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 4, Minutes of the Committee of the
Indian Missions of the Oblate Fathers, 12 October 1939. [OMI-033064]
420. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,22a.
421. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor
Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with the peoples of Northern Canada,” n.d.,22a.

Bibliography

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 inadministration 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.”930 • 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 (lacar) Archival Records Container (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 Schools Settlement Agreement. The collection of records was later continued
by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, based on 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.

Bibliography • 931
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 endnotes 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.

4. Other Collections
R14698-0-8-E (formerly MG 29 – E106), Hayter Reed fonds.
R7693-0-0-E (formerly MG 27- IID15), Clifford Sifton fonds

5. Other Archives
Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives
Accessions M82-12, Louise Topping fonds. 1937.

932 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
M79-6, Trevor Jones fonds, Trevor Jones: “The Jones Journals: Living and working with thepeoples of Northern Canada.”
Adelaide Jane Butler Fonds (1890–1986).
Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of the Arctic
M96-7, Box 188, “File 8, Collected Material – Bessie Quirt, Articles written by Bessie re: Shingle
Point and Fort George” “RE: Shingle Point Eskimo School, Story No 3 – Single Women Survive
the Arctic.”

Oblates of Mary Immaculate Lacombe Canada, Grandin Province Archives
Acc. 71.200, box 132, file 5737, Louis Guillaume to Father Provincial, 12 April 1942, 8741485_001_
EN_St Pauls – Metis material (R0997091).

University of Regina, oUR SpaceInterview with Mary Englund 1, conducted by Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, Tape Number#IH-BC.79.
Interview with Mary Englund 2, conducted by Margaret Whitehead, 31 July 1980, Tape Number#IH-BC.79.

La Société historique de Saint-Boniface/St. Boniface Historical Society
Fonds Soeurs Grises du Manitoba.

United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto
Marion Steele Noble Laing Fonds, 1898–1912, Fonds 3558, Accession Number: 2000.135C /TR, J.
W. Russell to Minine Steele, 1898.
John Chantler McDougall Fonds, 1874–1928, Fonds 3282.
Joseph Albert George Lousley Fonds, 1943–[c. 1948], Fonds 3292 Accession Number: 1986.301C /TR File 1, typescript manuscript, reminiscences of Norway House, 1902–1916.
Fonds 3471, Frances M. Walbridge Fonds, 1939–1974.
Fonds 3204, John Semmens Fonds, c.1921

Bibliography • 933

University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library Special Collections
Papers of Thomas Westgate, XCMSACC – Church Missionary Society Unofficial Papers,
Accession Number: 491.

Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library
Autobiography drafts of Thomas Westgate, RCMS 179.

6. Government Publications
Audette, L.A. Report on The Commission, under Part II of the Inquiries Act, to investigate andreport the circumstances in connection with the alleged flogging of Indian pupils recently at
Shubenacadie, in The Province of Nova Scotia. 17 September 1934.
Australia. “‘Bringing them home,’ National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.” Sidney: Commonwealth of Australia,
1997. www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report (accessed 21 October 2013).
Bennett, B. Study of Passes for Indians to Leave their Reserves. Prepared for the Treaties andHistorical Research Centre, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. October 1974.
Bryce, P.H. Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories. Ottawa:
Government Printing Bureau, 1907.
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Fact Sheet – The Brant tract
and the Toronto Purchase specific claims.” 2010. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/
eng/1100100016064/1100100016065 (accessed 11 November 2014).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Historical Legislation.” http://www.
aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100010193/1100100010194 (accessed 3 July 2014).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Treaty No.6.” http://www.aadncaandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100028710/1100100028783 (accessed 11 November 2014).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Treaty Texts.” http://www.aadncaandc.gc.ca/eng/1370373165583/1370373202340 (accessed 28 January 2014).
Canada. Bank of Canada. “Inflation Calculator.” http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/ (accessed 22 December 2013).
Canada. Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Eighth Census of Canada. 1941. Ottawa: King’s
Printer, 1945.Canada. Elections Canada. A History of the Vote in Canada. Ottawa: Office of
the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 2007.
Canada. Parliament. “The Parliament Buildings.” http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/Parliament/
Publications/ParliamentBuildings/ParlBlgs-e.asp (accessed 13 January 2013).
Canada. Parliament. Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons
appointed to examine and consider the Indian Act. Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence,
1946–1948.
Canada. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 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).

934 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Canada. Veterans Affairs. “Orders and Decorations.” http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/cmdp/mainmenu/group01 (accessed 5 July 2013).Coates, Kenneth, andWilliam R. Morrison. Treaty Research Report—Treaty Five. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/
eng/1100100028695 (accessed 12 February 2012).
Daugherty, Wayne E. Treaty Research Report —Treaty One and Treaty Two (1871). Ottawa:
Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Self-Government, Indian and Northern Affairs
Canada, 1983. http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/STAGING/textetext/tre1-2_1100100028661_eng.pdf (accessed 20 January 2014).
Daugherty, Wayne E. Treaty Research Report —Treaty Three (1873). Ottawa: Treaties andHistorical Research Centre, Self-Government, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1986.
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100028671/1100100028673 (accessed 3 July2014).
Davin, Nicholas Flood. Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds. Report
produced for the Minister of the Interior. Ottawa: 1879.
Farrell, Edward. The Congress on Tuberculosis Held in Berlin Germany, on May 24th, 25th, and26th, 1899, Report of the Proceedings. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1899.
Leslie, John, and Ron Maguire. The Historical Development of the Indian Act. 2nd edition.
Ottawa: Treaties and Research Centre, Research Branch, Department of Indian andNorthern Affairs, 1978.
Moore, Robert G., John Leslie, and Ron Maguire. The Historical Development of the Indian Act.
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Canada, 1978.
Moss, Wendy, with Elaine Gardner-O’Toole. “Aboriginal People: History of Discriminatory
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Powell, James. A History of the Canadian Dollar. Ottawa: Public Works, 2005.
Ryerson, Egerton. “Report on Industrial Schools, 26 May 1847.” In Statistics Respecting Indian
Schools. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1898.

7. Legislation
An Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians, the better management of Indianaffairs, and to extend the provisions of the Act, 31st Victoria, Chapter 42. Statutesof Canada 1869, c. 6 (32–33 Vict.)
An Act to amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians (the Indian Act), Statutes of Canada
1876, c. 18.

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Great Britain. Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory Order (Order of Her Majesty in Council
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8. Legal Cases
Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), Supreme Court of Canada,
3 March 2013. http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12888/index.
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