Fort Pelly SD 163

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There are separate listings for the Roman Catholic church schools near Kamsack at Keeseekoose First Nation, (Treaty 4), but these refer to the same institution. Fort Pelly school was established by Rev. Jules Decorby in 1895 on the Fort Pelly Trail, about two miles (3.22 kms) west of the St. Philips Mission. The government began paying per capita grants to the school in 1905. Fort Pelly closed in 1913 due to the ill health of its second principal, Father Ruelle, low enrolment, and poor conditions. The second Indian Residential School, St. Philips, (1928 – 1969), was built in 1927. At it’s peak, the school had 132 resident students in the 1964/65 school year.
Father Jules Decorby had worked in First Nations communities of the region starting in 1880, founding the Fort Pelly Mission in 1895. In 1902, Father Decorby relocated the mission to the midpoint between Fort Pelly and Kamsack. According to the Historic Society of Saint Boniface, “In 1901, the Oblates presented a request to the Indian commissioner for Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to open a residential school near the Keesekoose Reservation. The first boarding school was built there with logs daubed with mortar. It had two stories and measured 45 by 40 feet. Two years later, grants started to arrive from the Canadian government, which provided the institution with a more adequate budget. Initially, teaching was done by lay people: Miss Ouimet, Miss Bédard, and also Miss Ouimet’s replacement Loulou Atwater. In 1905, 5 Sisters of Saint Andrew (Sisters of the Cross) took over teaching. In 1906, the mission began to be called the St Philip Neri Mission and became the region’s post office. In 1908, the Sisters of the Cross left the mission. In 1909, Archbishop Langevin called on the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who accepted the responsibility of teaching in Fort Pelley’s school in 1910. They only stayed for three years, leaving the mission in 1913. Between 1913 and 1928, the mission ran a day school with teaching provided by lay people approved by the Oblates (L1051 .M27R 31-33). In 1913, nineteen students were attending. The Oblates believed it would be easy to maintain the school with a minimum of 30 or 35 students. In 1928, the day school was closed in favour of a new residential school. Its construction had begun the year before. On March 9th, the Missionary Oblates returned to St Philip and the school opened its doors to 45 students on the 16th of April. In 1961, the building of a new residential school began, which was inaugurated on May 16th, 1962. According the 1966-1967 report from the Oblates, there was a total of 345 Indigenous students in grades 1 through 8, at the Pelly Indian agency, of which 95 were boarders and 207 were day pupils at St Philip’s, 28 were day pupils at Whitesand, and approximately 20 were day pupils at Key school. June of 1969 saw the closure of St Philip’s Residential School, which was run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The principals of the school from 1925 to 1969, the period when the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate ran the school, were Conrad Brouillet (1925-1934), Alphonse Paradis (1935-1942), Paul-Émile Tétrault (1942-1947), Adéodat Ruest (1947-1953), Jean Lambert (1953-1955), Raymond Beauregard (1955-1957), Léonard Charron (1957-1963) and Edmond Turenne (1963-1969)”
Survivor Stories:
William Whitehawk interview, 18 Feb. 1992, Kamsack, recalled priests who were sexually active, in two cases with schoolboys, and in one with Indian women on the reserve near St. Philip’s school. At the Community Hearing in Key First Nation, Saskatchewan, in 2012, Survivor Wilfred Whitehawk told us he was glad that he disclosed his abuse. “I don’t regret it because it taught me something. It taught me to talk about truth, about me, to be honest about who I am…. I am very proud of who I am today. It took me a long time, but I’m there. And what I have, my values and belief systems are mine and no one is going to impose theirs on me. And no one today is going to take advantage of me, man or woman, the government or the RCMP, because I have a voice today. I can speak for me and no one can take that away.
Elaine Durocher found the first day at the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, to be overwhelming. “As soon we entered the residential school, the abuse started right away. We were stripped, taken up to a dormitory, stripped. Our hair was sprayed.… They put oxfords on our feet, ’cause I know my feet hurt. They put dresses on us. And were made, we were always praying, we were always on our knees. We were told we were little, stupid savages, and that they had to educate us.”
Durocher felt that she received no meaningful education at the school. Rather, she learned the tools for a life on the fringes of society in the sex trade. “They were there to discipline you, teach you, beat you, rape you, molest you, but I never got an education. I knew how to run. I knew how to manipulate. Once I knew that I could get money for touching, and this may sound bad, but once I knew that I could touch a man’s penis for candy, that set the pace for when I was a teenager, and I could pull tricks as a prostitute. That’s what the residential school taught me. It taught me how to lie, how to manipulate, how to exchange sexual favours for cash, meals, whatever, the case may be.”
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