Northern Ontario abuses prominent in Truth and Reconciliation report

The following article is sourced from statements of more than 6,750 people to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, as summarized in The Survivors Speak, a 260-page report issued this week by the commission as part of its final report on residential school abuses.

In cases where individuals are named, the commission advises that such persons have either provided express consent, or have been identified through admission, public disclosure or legal proceedings.

The following are verbatim excerpts dealing with Northern Ontario abuses, selected by SooToday mostly from The Survivors Speak.

Some material is similarly excerpted from Honouring the Truth, Reconciling the Future, a 388-page executive summary of the commission's final report.

SooToday cautions that some descriptions in this article are graphic and may be disturbing to some readers, particularly those who are themselves survivors of abuse.

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Forced separation

For many students, the trip to residential school began with the arrival of an official letter. When Josephine Eshkibok was eight years old, a priest came to her home in northern Ontario and presented her mother with a letter. “My mother opened the letter and I could see her face; I could see her face, it was kind of sad but mad too. She said to me, ‘I have to let you go,’ she told us. So we had to, go to, go to school at Spanish Residential School.”

William Antoine grew up speaking Ojibway on the Sheshewaning Reserve in Ontario. When he was seven, he was taken to the Spanish, Ontario, boys’ school. "I was in Grade 1, the work that was given to me I didn’t know anything about and, and the teacher was speaking English to me and I didn’t understand what he was saying. That’s why it was so hard; I didn’t understand English very much. I understand a little bit, at that time, but I did not understand what he told me. And he would get mad at me and angry at me because I couldn’t do my work."

On her first night at the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school, Shirley Williams recalled, “no sooner did we have the, the lights off, and in our, our beds, I could hear people sniffling, and I knew they were crying. I think the loneliness swept in and for me, too, and but I slept at least, you know, but I think I woke up every hour and that, but I did, but I did go to sleep finally.”

Rachel Chakasim said that at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school: "I saw violence for the first time. I would see kids getting hit. Sometimes in the classrooms, a yardstick was being used to hit. A nun would hit us. Even though our hair was short as it is, the nuns would grab us by the hair, and throw us on the floor of the classroom.... We never knew such fear before. It was very scary. I witness as other children were being mistreated.

Some parents wanted their children to gain the knowledge they believed was needed to protect their community and culture. When Shirley Williams’s father took her to catch the bus to the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school, he bought her an ice cream and gave her four instructions: “One was remember who you are. Do not forget your language. Whatever they do to you in there, be strong. And the fourth one, learn about the Indian Act, and come back and teach me. So with those four things, he said that ‘you don’t know why I’m telling you this, but some day you will understand.’”

Positives

Like many other schools, the Spanish boys’ school had regular movie nights. William Antoine said that “the best thing that we all liked was the movies. They had movies on Sunday, on Sunday night; and oh that was the one thing that we looked forward to, back then, it was the movies.”

Orval Commanda recalled that sports played a positive role in his life at the Spanish, Ontario, boys’ school, and that the opportunity to play sports was used as an incentive to get the students to do their school work. "So anyway in, when I came here, in ’52, there was a lot of sports going on, and, and I was into sports, you know. I played hockey, and basketball, and at the time they played softball, like, and also played pool, because I started playing pool when I was seven years old.... And I liked playing sports. You know if you wanted to be on a hockey team, you had to have your work done, you know?"

William Antoine was one of the students who credited Jesuit Father Maurice for the extensive sports program at the Spanish school. "The one thing I liked over there was the sports. Oh, there’s, there’s any sport you wanted to play. You know, there’s basketball in the fall of the year, you know. And then hockey, you know, in the winter time. And, summer time there was softball, baseball, lacrosse. Lacrosse was my, my favourite sport; I really loved that sport and I was good at it too. A little ball you threw around to get in the net, yeah. I really liked that sport. And I was good at running; you know I was fast, I was skinny. You know I was pretty agile, that’s why I loved that sport. Under Father Maurice, there were also sports banquets to honour student and team accomplishments, and annual field days. You know, running, jumping, pole vaulting, high jumping, and shot put. All those games, you know we played those games and that was a real fun time, fun day you know. It was for one day and it was all day; and, and whoever won, well they got, they got, a medal of some kind and it showed that you, you know, you were, you were good at what you did, you know. So that was so, very rewarding."

Every fall, William Antoine had always pleaded with his parents not to send him back to the Spanish boys’ school. They had comforted him by telling him that he could quit when he turned sixteen. However, by the time he turned sixteen, he discovered he wanted to continue his education and he had no options for high school other than at the Spanish residential school. He said the school “was getting better. You know they didn’t bother you as much, they didn’t, you know, wasn’t as disciplined as they were when you were in the smaller grades. And, yeah, you had more free time to yourself.”

Cultural genocide

Rules against the use of Aboriginal languages were intended to force students to learn English (or French) as quickly as possible. These rules and the anxiety they caused remain among the most commonly cited elements of residential school experiences. Jacqueline Barney said that one of her report cards from the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, school complained that “Jackie still insists on speaking Cree.”

When he first went to the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, Peter Nakogee could speak no English. "That’s where I had the most difficulty in school because I didn’t understand English. My hand was hit because I wrote on my scribblers, the scribblers that were given on starting school, pencils, erasers, rulers and that, scribblers, and textbooks that were given. 'Write your names,' she said, so they don’t get lost. But I wrote on my scribblers in Cree syllabics. And so I got the nun really mad that I was writing in Cree. And then I only knew my name was Ministik from the first time I heard my name, my name was Ministik. So I was whipped again because I didn’t know my name was Peter Nakogee."

In 1967, the students attending the Shingwauk, Ontario, school put on a four-act play called Arrow to the Moon. One act used a dialogue between an Elder and a young man to contrast what were seen as the old and new ways open to Aboriginal people. Billy Diamond played the role of the young man, who concludes at the scene’s end: “The new ways show a way to work and live but the old ways have shown us how to die.” The performance was filmed and shown to the James Bay Cree, who refrained from making any public comment, but were shocked to discover the degree to which their children were being manipulated.

Disrespect

For high school, Roger Cromarty lived in the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie and attended local public schools. He recalled that he did not receive any guidance counselling. "We were all just shovelled into the technical program, technical school program, whether we wanted, we wanted to go in the technical stuff or not. Nobody asked us, or nobody showed us the vistas of going to the collegiate, and we were in a five-year program, or go into a technical program, which is a four-year. So, I end up being in a technical school, Sault Ste. Marie technical and commercial high school they called it."

Many principals and teachers had low expectations of their students. Wikwemikong, Ontario, principal R. Baudin wrote in 1883: “What we may 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 white brethren.”

Mollie Roy said that her years at the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school left her struggling with a sense of abandonment. "I think the thing about the school more than anything else is the feeling of abandonment. Why was, why was I there, and why didn’t you come to see me? Because all of us, with the exception of few, were just, parents were, like, ten miles down the road, ten miles, and the people wouldn’t even come. You know it’s not that my parents didn’t have a car. My dad worked at Denison, and made good money, and, like, there was no, you know, you’d wait and wait, and nobody showed up, and I think that’s the thing more than anything else that bothered me. It’s not the school, it’s the fact that I wasn’t wanted."

Rigid and regimental

Leona Agawa never felt comfortable in the classroom at the Spanish school. "For much of her time in school, she was frightened or intimidated. I could hear [the teacher] say my name, but I couldn’t hear her what, what she was asking me, and that happened all over. I, I just, I was just a person that couldn’t hear anybody talking to me, or asking me questions. My mind would go blank. So, I never did have any, really any schooling. I would hide behind a girl, or who’s ever behind, in front, I’d hide. And somebody would say, “Leona.” I’d hear my name, but I never got to answer. I stood up, never got to answer what they were saying when they sat me down. And I’d get a good slap after, after you, you leave there for not being nice in school."

For going to the washroom in the middle of the night at the Sault Ste. Marie residence, Diana Lariviere said, she was sent “down to the basement, and I was in the basement practically all night, scrubbing the cement floor, on my hands and knees, and that was my punishment for that night. Now it, it was a, a scary, a very frightening situation because of all the creaks and the noises that were going on in the basement.” .

Bernadette Nadjiwan said that at the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school, “I became acquainted with a regime of rules, which at first feel rigid and regimental.” She too remembered the bells. “It rang in the morning when we’d wake up, to wake us up, to get ready for school, the bell rang again, and to get ready for bed, even to go to classes. We were so well trained, and everyone was likened to a soldier.”

At the girls’ school in Spanish, Ontario, Josephine Eshkibok said, she spent much of her time doing chores. "We used to work ... one week in the dairy and one week in the chicken coop. And the housework, sewing room, laundry; so we had to do all that work. There was one day there I was doing, a lot of stairs because the school is so high; I did the stairs and I guess I didn’t do them right. I must have left some dust or something there in the corner. The teacher came there, said 'You didn’t do that right. Go back up there; start over again.' So I did."

Stella Marie Tookate never forgot being called to the principal’s office at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school. "There was a priest there, standing, and the sister standing, a nun. And then, they were two in the office. And at that time, I remember, they were strapping me five times - five times on my hands and five times the other hand. And that’s where, that’s where I stopped going to school because I was ... I showed my dad my hands at that time, and then he took me away from school. It was hard for me to continue my school at that time. It was hard to feel that stripes on my hands.... My hands were red at that time - painful. Sometimes, I could, I could tell, sometimes how I was feeling. I feel that pain sometimes. And I stopped going to school after that."

Joseph Wabano said that at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, the staff would hit students with a one-inch-thick board. “And there was a lot of times I got hit, me too, for some reason. They had a board, one by three, like one inch thick, and it was cut like that, they use it for the board, and that nun used to hit my head, wanted to hit my ears. She said, ‘I’m gonna hit your ears.’”

Ernest Barkman, who went to the Fort Albany school, said that, on one occasion, all the boys were punished for the actions of one student. “We all stood in rows (three or four rows, all the boys, and we had to stand there for an hour) one hour and we were told not to move, and if we moved we got hit, that’s one thing I remember.”

Stella Marie Tookate, who attended the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, said, “I didn’t enjoy myself when I was in school because I was too much abused. I didn’t learn anything; that’s what I was feeling.” Her words echo the experiences of

many former students.

Leona Agawa never felt comfortable in the classroom at the Spanish, Ontario, school. For much of her time in school, she was frightened or intimidated. “I’d hear my name, but I never got to answer. I stood up, never got to answer what they were saying when they sat me down. And I’d get a good slap after, after you, you leave there for not being nice in school.”

As a punishment, Nellie Trapper, who attended the Moose Factory, Ontario, school in the 1950s, was assigned to “scrubbing the stair, the stairwell with a toothbrush, me and this other girl. Like, I don’t remember what I did wrong, but that was something that I won’t forget. I remember sitting on the steps, and she, our supervisor was standing there, watching us.” Former students also spoke of how, in winter, they might be forced to stand or sit, inadequately clothed, in the snow as a form of punishment. It was not uncommon for residential school students, traumatized by being placed in such a harsh and alien environment, to wet their beds.

Bedwetting, left-handedmess

At the girls’ school in Spanish, Ontario, Josephine Eshkibok had trouble with bedwetting. “First time I wet the bed I had to stand in front of 125 girls; they’d be all going like this to me, ‘Shame on you.’”

Left-handed students were subjected to additional stresses. It was common in schools in Canada and Europe to force left-handed children to learn to write with their right hands. This can be attributed to both a superstitious distrust of left-handed people and the actual difficulty that left-handed people experience in writing languages that read from left to right.

Forcing children to change dominant hands has been associated with the onset of developmental problems, including stuttering. In residential schools, it appears the ban on left-handedness was strictly and harshly enforced. At the Spanish boys’ school, William Antoine was told that he had to write with his right hand. “The teacher I had was really, really, really mean; and, very strict. And every time I was using my left hand to write, he would hit me with the ruler. With the ruler, right, you know, not flat but, that way that really hurt my hand. And, you know, I couldn’t write. He’d tell me, ‘use your right hand,’ and I would.”.

Unfamiliar, poorly prepared food

In their home communities, many students had been raised on food that their parents had hunted, fished, or harvested. These meals were very different from the European diets served at the schools. This change in diet added to the students’ sense of disorientation. Daisy Diamond found the food at residential school to be unfamiliar and unpalatable. “When I was going to Shingwauk, the food didn’t taste very good, because we didn’t have our traditional food there, our moose meat, our bannock, and our berries.”

Even when traditional foods were prepared, the school cooks made them in ways that were, to the students, strange and unappetizing. Ellen Okimaw, who attended the Fort Albany Ontario, school, had vivid memories of poorly cooked fish being served at the schools. She said that when a First Nations man had provided the school with fish, the school cook had simply 'dumped the whole thing, and boiled them like that, just like that without cleaning them.'"

Bernard Sutherland recalled students at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school being forced to eat food that they had vomited up. “I saw in person how the children eat their vomit. When they happened to be sick. And they threw up while eating. And that when he threw up his food. The food is not thrown away. The one whose vomit he eats it.”

At the boys’ school in Spanish, Ontario, William Antoine remembered: "In the morning they would give you porridge; every morning, every morning. They call it 'mush' back then. It was like lumpy, you know, very lumpy. It didn’t taste very good ... but you had to eat it in order to, to have some food in you. You know you had to eat it so that’s, and you had to get used to it. You had to get used to, you know. We got bread with no butter, just dry bread. Got a little milk, you know."

At the Moose Factory school in Ontario, Nellie Trapper said, students “used to steal food, peanut butter, whatever’s cooking in a pot. There were big pots in there. I remember taking figs from that pot.”

Bernard Sutherland recalled students at the Fort Albany school being forced to eat food that they had vomited. “I saw in person how the children eat their vomit. When they happened to be sick. And they threw up while eating.” These abuses led in 1999 to the conviction of Anna Wesley, a former staff member of the Fort Albany school, on three charges of administering a noxious substance.

Physical abuse

Edmund Metatawabin spoke of how he and other students at the Fort Albany school had been punished by being placed in what students referred to as the “electric chair.” According to Metatawabin, this was a metal-framed chair with a wooden seat and back. After being buckled into the chair an electric current from a hand-cranked generator was run into their bodies. The chair had been constructed by Brother Goulet, the school’s electrician, and had apparently been initially used as an entertainment. It came, however, to be used as an instrument of punishment. Metatawabin said he had “sat on the electric chair three times.”

Simeon Nakoochee was another student who was put in the chair. "To them it’s, like, entertainment, like it was just, like, 'Who wants to get in?' There wasn’t, it was like a selection. I never wanted to get in that chair, you know. I saw that chair. I could even describe it, that thing too, you know. That thing just right out of my mind, I could, I could describe it, you know, what the, what the chair looked like, you know, what, what they use. Then they, well, I never volunteer, or raised my hand, you know, and I just, and then she called my name, the nun, you know, 'Just sit on that chair.' It was almost like a crack, you know. She wouldn’t let me get off there until, and then I, I probably cried after that, you know, and she wouldn’t let me get out after this. People thought it was, kids were laughing asking why I cry, you know." He said he thought the chair was later destroyed.

Joseph Wabano said that at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, the staff would hit students with a one-inch-thick board.

Sexual abuse

Given the power relations in a residential school, no sexual relationship between a staff member and student could be considered consensual. Many former students spoke of having been raped at school.

While some sexual abusers carefully recruited their victims, providing them with treats and small favours, others made use of threats and physical force. At the Fort Albany school, one of the lay brothers cornered Josephine Sutherland in the school garage. "I couldn’t call for help, I couldn’t. And he did awful things to me, and I was just a little girl, not even thirteen years old yet, and he did something to me that the experience as having a horrible pain. You know he got me from the back, and he was holding me down with his, covering my mouth, and, you know, and, and I couldn’t yell out. I was so stunned, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t."

Many students thought they were the only children being abused. Clara Quisess said she was abused by a staff person at the Fort Albany school. "There was no support, no one to tell that this is all happening in this building. A lot of girls must have experienced it, what the priest was doing and you’re not to tell anybody. I always hate that priest and then I had to live like that for two years, even though I didn’t want to. It’s like I had no choice, put myself in that situation. Him, putting his hand underneath my dress, feeling me up, I felt so disgusted. Even though I didn’t have no words for what I was feeling."

Bullying

Clara Quisess said that at the Fort Albany school in Ontario, older girls would threaten the younger ones with knives.

Clara Quisess felt that her vision problems led to her being bullied by other students at the Fort Albany school. "No one didn’t want to be my friend or didn’t want me to be part of the team because I’m being blamed because I participated in the beginning to do phys ed, play baseball and other stuff but I was getting the team, lose their team because it was my fault. 'You could have catched the ball, why didn’t you catch the ball?' So scared ’cause it hit my nose, landed on my face and they calling me, 'How stupid you are. You should, put up, raise up your glove and you could have catched that ball' rather than me hitting it on my face, but they don’t even know that I have a visual problem. When they found out I could, can’t see, they don’t want me to be a part of their team. Every time when there was outdoor games, I would go hide in the tall grasses ’cause I don’t want to be part. I have to hide there and I don’t want the sister to find me hiding. I don’t want them to put me in that team. I didn’t want her to tell me, 'You have to be on this team, you can’t go hide there.' I don’t want to be punished, but I don’t want to be part of th team either, I just want out.” She felt that the school staff members were equally hard on her.

"If I dropped something, 'You’re bad.' If I didn’t do something right, 'You’re bad.' That’s all I learned that I am bad. ’Cause I always grew up believing that I am bad. I was so helpless that I can’t even see that I try my best to see what they wanted me to see. 'Can you see this? How ’bout this? How ’bout that?' 'Can’t you see anything!' The nun is shouting at me, I can’t see and they’re telling me that 'Don’t pretend that you don’t see ’cause I know you can see!'"

Runaways

After 1894, children enrolled in a residential school (or who had been placed there by government order because it was felt that they were not being properly cared for by their parents) but who were refusing to show up at school were considered to be “truant.” Under the Indian Act and its regulations, they could be returned to the 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 often threatened with prosecution.

Boys who ran away from the Spanish school also were punished in front of their fellow students. William Antoine said, "What they did to them, they cut all their hair off. And ... they got all the boys to look at what is happening to this boy, what they were doing to him because he ran away. They cut all his hair off and they pulled, pulled his pants down and he was kneeling on the floor, and holding onto the chair. And they were, whipping him, with this big belt. I mean hard too. They were hitting him, for I don’t know how long. He, he started to cry after; it was hurting so bad eh. But I don’t know how many times they hit him, but they hit him lots of times. And those boys that got whipped that time, was, there was two of them, they, they couldn’t sit down for two months; that’s how bad it was. That’s how bad they got beat because they ran away. And that’s what the priest said, 'If any of you boys run away, that’s what you’re going to get.'"

Most runaway students headed for their home communities. Students knew they might be caught, returned, and punished. Still, they believed the effort to make it home and have a measure of freedom was worth it. In some cases, in fact, the schools failed to force runaways to return.

Marguerite Wabano, who was born in 1904, was the one of the oldest former students to provide a statement to the Commission. While she could recall little of her own time at the Fort Albany school, she had a strong memory of three boys who were never found when they ran away. “Yes they did run away for good. And they went missing for good. Yes and they didn’t talk to anybody though they saw them.”

Some students eluded capture. Instead of heading home, some went to work for local farmers and, as a result, were able to avoid their pursuers for considerable periods of time. Running away could be risky. At least thirty-three students died, usually due to exposure, after running away from school. In a significant number of cases, parents and Indian Affairs officials concluded that the deaths could have been prevented if school officials had mounted earlier and more effective searches and notified police officials and family members.

It was a common practice to shave the heads of students who ran away. William Antoine recalled that at the Spanish, Ontario, school, this was done in front of the other students. “They got all the boys to look at what is happening to this boy, what they were doing to him because he ran away. They cut all his hair off and they pulled, pulled his pants down and he was kneeling on the floor, and holding onto the chair.”

Fighting back

In an effort to bring their own residential schooling to an end, some students attempted to burn their schools down. There were at least 37 such attempts, two of which ended in student and staff deaths. For students, the most effective form of resistance was to run away. The principal of the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, school in the 1870s, E. F. Wilson, 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. They were found alive more than ten days later, stranded on an island in the North Channel of Lake Huron.

Mollie Roy recalled fighting when a teacher at the girls’ school in Spanish tried to punish her. The teacher "was tall, and she was mean, and she’d grab us by the cheeks, and just twist, just turn, and she’d do this every time. Well, I guess one day I was her victim, and that was the last time. She turned, she put her finger, and I bit on it, and bit it just about to the bone. There was blood pouring down. She was just freaking out. 'Let go.' And I kept shaking my head ... and that was the last time she ever touched anybody’s cheeks. But we’d have big marks on our cheeks all the time."

Death

At the Spanish, Ontario, school, the graves of staff members were marked with headstones that, in the case of former priests and nuns, provided name and date of birth and death. The burial spots of students were identified only by plain white crosses.

Often, the existing record lacks needed detail. For example, it was not uncommon for principals, in their annual reports, to state that a specific number of students had died in the previous year, but not to name them.

It was not until 1935 that Indian Affairs adopted a formal policy on how deaths at the schools were to be reported and investigated.

The general Indian Affairs policy was to hold the schools responsible for burial expenses when a student died at school. The school generally determined the location and nature of that burial.

Parental requests to have children’s bodies returned home for burial were generally refused as being too costly.

When Charles Hunter drowned in 1974 while attending the Fort Albany school, it was decided, without consultation with his parents, to bury him in Moosonee rather than send him home to Peawanuck near Hudson Bay. It was not until 2011, after significant public efforts made on his behalf by his sister Joyce, who had never got to meet her older brother, that Charles Hunter’s body was exhumed and returned to Peawanuck for a community burial. The costs were covered by funds that the Toronto Star raised from its readership.

Government evasion

The Commission.... was required to go to court for judicial guidance respecting Canada’s document-production obligations. At issue were records in the possession of the Government of Canada from the investigation of the Ontario Provincial Police into abuse at the Fort Albany, Ontario, residential school in Ontario (also known as the St. Anne’s school). The Commission had attempted to obtain the OPP documents from both the OPP and the federal government.

Although the OPP did not respond to the Commission’s overtures, it later took the position that it required judicial authorization to produce the records to the Commission, but it did not oppose disclosure. The Government of Canada, however, opposed production of the documents to both the Commission and to the lawyers for residential school Survivors. The government took the position that it was barred from producing the documents because they obtained the documents from the OPP subject to an undertaking that it would not, in turn, disclose the documents to any third party.

The Government of Canada further argued that it was not obliged to seek documents from third parties for disclosure to the Commission and that any disclosure to the Commission of the St. Anne’s records would amount to burdening the Government of Canada with this obligation.

On October 18, 2013, the Commission filed a request for directions as to whether the Government of Canada was obliged to disclose the records of the OPP investigation of St. Anne’s. After argument before the Honourable Justice Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on December 17 and 18, 2013, the court ordered Canada to produce its documents to the Commission.

Recognizing that Canada had only a subset of the opp investigation documents, the court went one step further and ordered that the OPP produce all the investigation records in its possession to the Commission.