Basil Johnston’s Indian School Days is the poignant autobiographical account of Native American students who were forced to attend St. Peter Claver’s Indian Residential School, later called the Garnier Residential School, in Ontario, Canada. The school eventually came to be called “Spanish,” after the village in which it was located. It was a name that, according to Johnston, was synonymous with “penitentiary, reformatory, exile, dungeon, whippings, kicks, slaps, all rolled into one.” The young students, many of whom arrived already damaged from orphanhood or exile from family and friends, met with little understanding or compassion from their instructors, an ascetic group of Jesuits who had been trained to disavow the world of emotions and feelings.
This excerpt, “A Day in the Life of Spanish,” examines the monotony of life lived according to a rigid schedule, the never-ending struggle against hunger, and the dauntless courage of a group of Native American boys who practiced their own distinctive brand of resistance.
A member of the Ojibway nation, Basil Johnston is a writer and a linguist. Two of his books, Ojibway Heritage and Ojibway Ceremonies, deal with Ojibway mythology and culture. He lectures in the Department of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
6:15 A.M. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! I WAS NEARLY CLANGED OUT of my wits and out of bed at the same time. Never had anything—not wind, not thunder—awakened me with quite the same shock and fright.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Come on! Up! Up! Up! What’s the hold-up? Not want to get up? Come on, Pius! What’s wrong, Henry? You no like get up?”
Clang! Clang! Clang! Up and down the aisles between the beds Father Buck walked, swinging the bell as if he wanted to shake it from its handle.
“You deaf? You no can hear? Hmmm? You like sleep? No?” Father Buck asked as he stood beside Simon Martin’s bed. He rang the bell even harder. There was no sign of movement from the still form. “Soooo! you won’t get up, Simon!” And Father Buck seized one side of the mattress and lifted and overturned Simon, bedding and mattress together. Simon stirred.
“Ah! Come on, Father,” Simon complained, articulating the expression in current usage at the school for “All right! Knock it off. Enough’s enough.”
Simon sat up, rubbing his eyes. He was taking far too much time to please the young scholastic.
“You! You want see Father Hawkins?” Father Buck asked.
Not wishing to see Father Hawkins, S.J., Simon got up—as slowly as he dared.
From the other end of the dormitory came a muffled and disrespectful challenge. “Whyn’tcha pick on someone your own size, Father?”
The reaction was instantaneous. “Who says this? Who says this?” demanded Father Buck, red in the face and redder still in the ears.
While Father’s attention was elsewhere, Simon, now remarkably wide awake, stuck out his tongue and shook his fist at Father Buck, much to the delight and amusement of the boys in the immediate vicinity. Father Buck, guessing Simon’s conduct behind his back, spun around, but Simon, knowing the tactics of adults in games of this kind and having considerable skill in outwitting the enemy, was instantly transformed into a groggy sleepy boy, all angelic innocence, struggling to replace his rebellious mattress, sheets and blankets back on his bed.
Meanwhile, during Simon’s mutinous behaviour and irreverent charade, most of the boys, some fully awake others partly awake, and a few in a trance-like state, carried on as if nothing unusual were taking place, folding their pajamas, tucking them under the pillow and then rolling back the top sheet and blanket to air the bed. Not until they had performed these steps did anyone proceed to the washstand.
Clank! Clank! Clank! went the washbasins as they were flipped right side up on the bottom of a long shallow sink that resembled a cattle-feeding trough. To the clatter of basins was added a hiss as water gushed from many spigots into basins or streamed over toothbrushes that were then thrust into little round tins of tooth powder. Clank! Hiss! Gargle! Scrub-a-dub! Scrape! Choo-choo-choo! were the only sounds heard from the washing area.
Occasionally there was a complaint. “Come on, hurry up!” Lawrence Bisto or some other student would growl. “Ain’t got all day.” And, to lend force to the demand, he would prod the laggard.
“Hold your horses! Can’t you see I ain’t finished. What’s a matter, you blind?” the laggard would retort, his tone of voice signalling that he was prepared to fight.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Line up!”
Two serpentine columns of listless boys formed.
“Okay! Quietly!”
But though tongues were quiet, boots beat down on the metal stairs, so that stairs, windows and railings rattled and reverberated from the bottom of the stairwell to the ceiling on the third floor.
In the recreation hall downstairs the boys either stood around in knots or sat slouched on the top board that served as a bench as well as a lid for the boxes that were built into the wall. But as I was to learn later, the boys were not really waiting in the commonly understood sense of the word “wait.” Though they may have appeared to be waiting, the boys were in reality exercising a form of quiet disobedience directed against bells, priests, school and, in the abstract, all authority, civil and religious.
Since the boys could not openly defy authority either by walking out of the school and marching north or south on Highway 17 or by flatly refusing to follow an order, they turned to the only means available to them: passive resistance, which took the form of dawdling.
Only once in my eight years of residence did I witness the phenomenon of boys racing to line up and then maintaining the strictest monastic silence when no bell had rung. As well as I can remember, the incident occurred in the following manner:
“Ice cream!” someone yelled.
“Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!” was repeated a dozen times across the playground.
Well, the announcement “ice cream” uttered either by La Marr (Antoine Lafrance) or Neeyauss (Angus Pitwaniquot) had the same effect as the cry of “Fire!” except that in this instance it operated in reverse. As the magic words “ice cream” went echoing from mouth to mouth across the yard, bats, baseballs and scoreboards were abandoned and 130 boys rushed to line up in front of the veranda, where goodies such as ice cream and candies were often distributed to mark some special feast or event.
Prefects, too, clutching the hems of their soutanes, sprinted across the yard in pursuit of the boys.
Panting and flushed with impotent rage, Father Buck demanded to know: “Who says this?” Back and forth in front of the twelve rows of boys, every one of whom was anticipating the issue of ice cream, strode Father Buck, looking darkly into the faces of the boys as if he could discern the look of guilt. He paused directly in front of Donald Fox and Joe Coocoo, two of our fellow inmates, already well known for their habitual disregard for rules, regulations, laws and the Ten Commandments. He peered into their faces.
“You!” Father Buck snapped at Donald Fox. “Did you say this?”
Donald was deeply pained. In his most aggrieved tone he said, “Not me, Father. Honest to God. You always blaming me for nothing.”
Father Buck continued to stare at Donald, dumbfounded that Donald should deny his guilt. Only Donald would sabotage a ball game and circulate false rumours. But before the young scholastic could do anything rash, such as sending Donald to Father Hawkins for a thrashing, Father Buck’s fellow teachers, Father Kehl and Father Mayhew, moved to his side. After a brief whispered consultation and a quick glance at his watch, Father Buck commanded, “You go back and play, until this bell rings.”
6:45 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
Boys shuffled into lines as slowly as they dared without having their names inscribed in the prefects’ little black books. It would have been easier to line up immediately without waiting for the bell, but that would have been seen as surrender.
Father Buck must have imagined himself a commander and we his soldiers as he stood in front and stared us into silence. Even when there was silence all around, he still felt constrained to command it. “Quiet!” It was not until he had obtained a sepulchral silence that he nodded to his colleague, Father Kehl, to open the door. “Okay! And no talking.”
Our route from the recreation hall to the chapel was not direct, through the first corridor, but round about outside, along the south side of the building. We trod it in hail, sleet, blizzard and deluge. Had there been fire and brimstone, we would have walked in that as well.
At the word “okay,” the teams proceeded outside, where they converged into two columns, with the youngest and smallest in front and the oldest and biggest boys at the back. When the two columns shuffled to a halt in the left aisle, they stood at reverent attention.
“Clap,” snapped the clapper in Father Kehl’s hand. Down on one knee we dropped in united genuflection, remaining in that position until the clapper clapped a second time in signal for us to rise and to stand once more at attention. Only after one more clap did we slide into our assigned places in the pews.
Moments later, under the heavy escort of Miss Strain and Miss Chabot and wearing pretty hats and dresses, the girls from St. Joseph’s entered the chapel in much the same way as we had done except in one particular. Their movements, pace, halting, genuflecting, rising and entering the pews from the right aisle were regulated not by a wooden clapper but by the clapping of the hands of female prefects who glowered and frowned just as severely as our own keepers, in an effort to make sure the girls did not cast lustful glances at the boys or receive similar glances.
When mass was over, we were ushered out with the same order and precision as we had entered…clack! clack! clack! We went directly back upstairs to make our beds according to a pattern more than likely of Jesuit invention. The dormitory, even though the beds had received a thorough airing, was rank with the smell of piss from the “pisskers’ section.” Once the beds were made we were led downstairs.
7:25 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
For once the prefect did not have to yell to bring about peace and order. The older boys, anxious to eat, assumed the role of enforcement officers, delivering what were called “rabbit punches” to those who persisted in talking, as samples of what was to come if the talker did not at once desist.
Silently we filed into the refectory, which, from the state of the furnishings and settings, was a more appropriate term than “dining room.” There were sixteen long tables of an uncertain green flanked by benches of the same green. On each table were eight place settings, consisting of a tin pie plate, a tablespoon and a chipped granite cup. In the middle were two platters of porridge, which, owing to its indifferent preparation, was referred to as “mush” by the boys; there were also a box containing sixteen slices of bread, a round dish bearing eight spoons of lard (Fluffo brand), and a huge jug of milk. It was mush, mush, mush, sometimes lumpy, sometimes watery, with monotonous regularity every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The boys would have vastly preferred the Boston baked beans that, along with a spoonful of butter, were served on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
Not until we had said grace—“Bless this mush,” some boys said in secret, “I hope it doesn’t kill us”—could we begin. But no matter how indifferent the quality, no boy, to my recollection, ever refused his portion of mush. During the meal there was little conversation except for the occasional “Pass the mush” or “Pass the milk” and the clatter of spoons, which served as knives and forks as well.
7:55 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
After grace of thanksgiving, it was outside to the recreation hall. Except for the lucky ones in Grades 1, 2 and 3, everyone went to his assigned place of work. The seniors, in Grades 6, 7 and 8, went to their permanent occupations: to the barn, to tend horses, cows, sheep, pigs and all their products; to the chicken coop, to look after chickens; to the tailor shop, shoe shop, electrical shop, carpentry shop, blacksmith shop, mill or plumber’s shack. These were jobs of standing and responsibility in the adolescent community. The other boys, from grades that had no status, waited outside the storeroom for the issue of mops, pails, sponges, soap, rags, brooms, dustpans, dust-bane and other janitorial paraphernalia for performing the menial tasks of washing, sweeping, mopping, dusting, polishing toilets, corridors, refectory, chapels, kitchen, dormitory, scullery, every conceivable area.
“Johnston! Number forty-three!”
“Yes, Father.”
“I have special job for you,” Father said, handing me a mop, pail, soap and a peculiar, curved oval brush such as I had never before seen. Up to this time in my life the hardest and most detestable forms of work that I had performed were reluctantly carrying either wood or water for my mother. I really didn’t want to work but, if work I must, it was better to begin with something special rather than with some plebeian labour.
“Come with me!”
Father Buck led me directly to the toilets, which were so vile with the reek of human waste that I nearly choked and disgorged my mush. Even Father Buck, who must have been aged about twenty-three or twenty-four, gasped as he issued his instructions: “Wash the bowls with this and the walls with this, and the urinals with this, and the floors with this, no?…And make clean and smell good…no? I come back.” I thought that Father Buck staggered slightly as he went out and breathed deeply to cleanse his lungs.
I too had to go out to avoid being overcome. While I stood outside breathing in oxygen, I developed a stratagem for cleaning up the toilets without collapsing. For self-preservation the job had to be done in stages. Flush the toilets, run outside. Wash the bowls, run outside. Hold breath, wash urinals, run outside. Hold breath, wash partitions, run outside. Spread sawdust on the floor, run outside. Sweep up sawdust, run outside. The toilets may not have completely lost their miasma of dung as I swept up the last pile of sawdust, but they at least looked vastly cleaner. I staggered out, inhaling huge quantities of the “breath of life,” and waited, proud of my labours…almost. “Ach-tung! You finish this, already?” Father asked as if he were astounded.
“Yes,” I replied with a considerable burst of pride.
“Well! We shall see.”
Father Buck didn’t have to go into the lavatory to reach the conclusion that, “They not smell good.” I was going to say that the smell was stuck in the walls, in the ceiling, on the floor, in the corners, everywhere, but I didn’t get a chance. Father entered the lavatory and went directly into a compartment. Inside, he bent down in order to run his finger in the back of and under the bowl. He showed me a black fingertip.
“Sooooo! You like this fight but no like it work. Then you work extra week in these toilets until you learn it like work or until you learn it meaning of clean.”
It was back to work.
8:50 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Put it away tools.”
From every part of the institution and the grounds boys scurried back to the recreation hall with their equipment.
8:55 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
Line up again. According to the system then in operation half the senior boys went to class, while the other half went to work not only to practise a trade but also to provide the labour needed to run the institution. In the afternoon the seniors switched shifts. The younger boys went to classes the entire day.
“Number forty-three!”
There was no answer.
“Number forty-three!” A little louder.
Silence.
“You! Johnston!”
“Yes, Father!”
“You are number forty-three! Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“You answer, when I call forty-three!”
“Yes, Father.”
“Now, you go with this Grade 5 to Father Mayhew’s class.”
“But Father, I’m supposed to be in Grade 6. I was in Grade 5 last year.”
“Sooooo! You like it fight, you no like it work, and you like it argue!…sooooo!” And Father Buck fished out of his cassock pocket a black book in which he scribbled something while looking severely at me. “Soooo, you say you in Grade 6. That’s what they all say. Now you be quiet. And no more trouble. You go with this Grade 5.”
On the way upstairs, Ovilla Trudeau commented with a snicker, “You didn’t think you’d get away with that, did you?”
“What’s that teacher’s name? I can’t understand dat pries’.”
“Father Mayhew.”
After the Lord’s Prayer I went directly to the teacher’s desk.
“Father. Someone made a mistake. I’m supposed to be in Grade 6. I passed Grade 5 already. I tol’ Father Buck, but he won’t believe me.”
Father Mayhew just looked at me. “I’m told you’re in Grade 5. There’s nothing that you can do about it.”
But my appointment to Grade 5, as I learned years later, was not a product of misunderstanding but a coldly calculated decision made “for my own good.” For if I had been allowed to proceed to Grade 6 as I should have been, it would have disrupted the entire promotion and graduation schedule that decreed that all boys committed to a residential school remain in the institution until age sixteen, or until their parents, if living together, arranged an early parole. If I had progressed at my normal rate through the elementary school I would have been ready for “entrance examinations” by age twelve. According to the administration it would not have been appropriate or in the best interests of society to release me or any one of my colleagues prior to age sixteen. The only solution was to have a boy repeat grades until Grade 8 and age sixteen were synchronized. I was not the only one to be so penalized.
Hence I was mired in Grade 5, forced to listen to dull and boring lessons rendered even duller and more boring by my sense of unjust treatment. What unspeakable fate I might have suffered had it not been for a collection of Tom Swift books and other volumes of doubtful merit, it is hard to say. That Father Mayhew turned a blind eye to my reading in class helped enormously; he didn’t seem to mind as long as I didn’t disturb the class and passed the tests. The only time I paid attention was during the reading of The Song of Hiawatha, whose Indian words Father Mayhew mangled and garbled. Inspired by the success of Hiawatha, Father Mayhew next tried to inflict Winnie the Pooh and Anne of Green Gables on us, but we denounced them as insipid so frequently that eventually Father Mayhew stopped reading them.
11:55 A.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
Father Mayhew closed his book, looking relieved that the morning had finally come to an end. Wearily he made his way to the door, which he opened. Protocol decreed that he had to wait for Brother O’Keeffe to dismiss his class, the seniors, first. Only after Brother O’Keeffe and the seniors had gone out did Father Mayhew issue the order: “Okay!” As he did so, he stepped back to avoid being trampled by a rush of boys who leaped over desks and shoved one another in their anxiety to get out of the classroom. Moments later the “little shots” came down.
12:00 noon. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Line up! Shut up!” The command need not have been shouted, but it was nevertheless bellowed, in the belief that a shout always obtained quicker compliance.
“Shshshshsh.”
For dinner there was barley soup with other ingredients, including chunks of fat and gristle, floating about in it. Finding a chunk of fat in one’s soup was like receiving a gift of manna, for it could be used to garnish the two slices of bread that came with the meal if one had lacked the foresight or the prudence to hide a chunk of lard from breakfast for one’s dinner needs by sticking the lard under the table. Barley soup, pea soup (not the French or Quebec variety), green and yellow, vegetable soup, onion soup, for dinner and supper. Barley soup prepared in a hundred different combinations. “Barley soup! Don’t that cook have no imagination?” Barley soup in the fall. “Hope they run outa that stuff pretty soon.” Barley soup in the spring. “How much o’ this stuff they plant, anyways? Hope a plague o’ locusts eat all the barley this summer.” Besides the soup there was a large jug of green tea diluted with milk. Clatter, clatter. “Pass the tea.” Shuffle, scrape.
12:30 P.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
After grace, except for the team scheduled to clean the refectory and wash dishes that week, everyone congregated near “the store” for the issue of baseball equipment before proceeding to one of the three baseball diamonds to play until 1:10, the seniors to the diamond hard by the chicken coop, the intermediates to the diamond near the horse barn and the juniors to the diamond near the windmill.
The only ones excluded from playing were the dishwashers, and the team not scheduled to play that day. The latter was required to provide umpiring, score-keeping and cheering services. Otherwise, there was no exemption for anyone. Cripples like Sam Paul were expected to, and did, derive as much fun and benefit from baseball, softball, touch football, basketball and hockey as Benjamin Buzwa and Eddie Coocoo; the stiff-jointed, like Reuben Bisto and David Jocko, were required to pursue fly balls or give chase to grounders with as much diligence if not grace as the more agile, like Steve Lazore and Tony Angus.
1:10 P.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
This bell was harsher and therefore even more resented than the previous bells, for it put an end to forty minutes of relative freedom and distraction from sorrows. Hence bases, balls, bats, gloves and score-cards were collected—slowly—and returned to “the store” without haste. For the seniors, or the “big shots,” as the intermediates sometimes referred to them, it was time to change shifts; for the rest of us, it was back to the dreary classroom with its dreary lessons…or to look out over the Spanish River, across the far portage at Little Detroit and beyond, into the dim shapes and shadows of the past or the physically distant, of mother and father and grandmother, of sisters and brothers and friends, of aunts and uncles and their friends, of happiness and freedom and affection…somewhere beyond Little Detroit…as distant as the stars.
4:15 P.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
By now our sole preoccupation, as hunger displaced the shapes and shadows, was food. On our way downstairs one of our colleagues expressed our collective fear: “If I starve to death, it’s going to be their fault; we never have enough but they have lots for themselves.”
In the recreation hall a line formed bearing in the direction of the refectory, in front of whose doors was set one of the refectory tables. Behind this makeshift counter were two boys, one of whom was lopping off the green tops of carrots with a large butcher knife which he handled like a machete, while the other distributed two raw carrots to each customer. “Collation” they called this lunch. Today it was carrots; tomorrow it would be a wedge of raw cabbage; the day after, a turnip, raw like everything else. As each boy received his ration he was directed to take his collation outside. Despite its lofty name, collation was regarded as little better than animal fodder. Nevertheless, every boy ate the fodder to stave off starvation.
Collation was intended, I guess, not only to allay hunger pains, but also to restore flagging energies. It was our first real period of leisure in a day that had begun at 6:15 A.M., but if anyone hoped for or expected an extended period of idleness, as I then did, he was soon set straight by the sight of the accursed bell in Father Buck’s hand.
“Hey! Father!” an anonymous voice called out. “How come you not eating carrots like us?” To which there was no answer.
4:30 P.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Time for work, boys.”
For me it was back to the lavatory. But with the five compartments or stalls in continuous occupation, as if most of the boys had suddenly been afflicted with a particularly virulent strain of diarrhea, I could not easily carry out Father Buck’s instruction to “clean good.” Even a lineup of boys outside commanding the occupants to “Hurry up! Ain’t got all day!” could not make the incumbents accelerate the defecatory process. Sometimes threats worked. “Wait till you come out.” Or, if threats and exhortations did not work, there was always “the drench,” carried out by means of a wet rag squeezed over the top of the stall onto the incumbent. But this method of encouraging haste in the patrons only made my job worse.
4:55 P.M. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Line up!…Quiet.”
After quiet was established the prefects counted heads in each line by waggling a pencil and mouthing numbers.
“Where’s Shaggy [Joe Missabe]?”
“Helping Brother Grubb.”
“Where’s Cabootch?”
“Working for Brother Van der Moor.”
The young priest made a notation in his little black book, frowning in worry as he did so. Later, he would check the work schedule and consult the brothers to verify the information given him. Woe betide the student who gave false information; double woe betide the absentee.
“All right! Upstairs, and no talking.” Father Buck hated talking.
5:00 P.M. As we filed into the study hall, there was Brother Manseau from Asbestos, Quebec, standing to one side of the doorway, greeting the boys by name—or names. “Ah, Ti Phonse! Ti Bar Poot! Moustaffa! Monsieur le Snowball! Ti Blue!” Brother Manseau was of medium height, almost but not quite dark enough to be regarded as swarthy, with a light five o’clock shadow beclouding his face. His hair was grey and frizzy, swept back from his temples and from a point of recession at about the middle of his head, something like Harpo Marx’s hair.
To the boys, Brother J. B. Manseau was B. J. or “Beedjmauss” or “Beedj,” from a reversal of his initials, which stood for “Jean-Baptiste.” The “Beedj-mauss” also represented a play on words, which, if pronounced with the proper accent and inflection, would mean in our tribal language (Anishinaubae or Ojibway), “He comes reeking of the smell of smoke,” a reference to Brother Manseau’s pipe-smoking habit. He did not seem to mind “Hey Beedj!”, just as he never seemed to mind too much a thumbtack on his seat. To my knowledge he never sent a boy to see Father Hawkins for punishment.
When he had settled down, Brother Manseau reminded us not to disturb him and, as an afterthought, gave us a verbal abstract of the book that he was then reading, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, by Jules Verne. After recommending that we read it, he warned us, “Now I don’t want anybody to disturb me; I don’t care what you do but don’t bother me, otherwise, I kick his ass.” And though Beedj had one short leg, he could deliver a mean kick, especially with the discarded Mountie’s riding boots that he wore.
No one wanted his ass kicked, or to serve “jug” on Thursday; everyone settled down to do homework, draw, snooze or read, leaving Beedj-mauss to read his book undisturbed.
5:55 P.M. Father Buck slipped into the study hall almost as noiselessly as a ghost. He nodded for Brother Manseau to close his book, and Brother Manseau promptly disappeared. Believing that study was now over, many of us, in imitation of Brother Manseau, closed our books and put them away.
“STUDY IS NOT OVER! PUT THESE BOOKS BACK! AND NOT PUT AWAY TILL I TELL YOU!”
Father Buck looked at his watch. Not until the malefactors had reopened their books and resumed study, or appeared to do so, did the prefect dismiss us. Everything was by the clock, by the book, by regulations.
“Downstairs!”
6:00 P.M. Not one second before the minute or the hour would Father ring that bell, Clang! Clang! Clang! Clangity-clang! “Hurry up! Shshshsh!” There was silence, almost absolute except for the scuffle of boots and the odd sniffle and cough. This is the way it should have been, the way that it was intended to be, the way that would have gratified and edified the prefects and the way that would have pleased Father Buck.
Father Buck nodded, as he always did, to his colleague, Father Kehl, to open the door. In we filed and, for the next twenty minutes or a little longer, gave ourselves wholeheartedly to pea soup, bread, lard and green tea from Java. In quantity served there was just enough food to blunt the sharp edge of hunger for three or four hours, never enough to dispel hunger completely until the next meal. Every crumb was eaten, and the last morsel of bread was used to sponge up any residue of soup that might still be clinging to the sides or to the bottom of the plates, thereby leaving the plates clean and dry, the way puppies lick their dishes clean. There was the same quantity for every boy, regardless of size or need. Yet not even the “little shots,” whose ingestive capacities were considerably less than those of their elders and who therefore should have required and received less, were ever heard to extol a meal with “I’m full.” “I’m full” was an expression alien in our world and to our experience.
Never having the luxury of a second serving or an extra slice, the boys formed a healthy regard for food that bordered on reverence that shaped their eating habits. If they could not glut themselves, they could at least prolong the eating by carnally indulging in every morsel of food. To eat with such carnality may have constituted a sin, but we never considered it as such. Meals became rituals almost as solemn as religious services in their intensity, the only sounds the clatter of spoons on plates and mugs and the muted “Pass the mush” or “You owe me a slice”; “When you going to pay me that lard you owe me?” “I’m so hungry right now, can you wait till tomorrow?”
As deliberate as the boys were at table, few could match the solemnity or the sensuousness with which “That’s the Kind” (Jim Wemigwans) presided over his meal. During the entire course of supper “That’s the Kind” broke his bread, one pinch at a time, as one might nip petals off a bloom; each pinch was then deposited with delicacy on his tongue. Our colleague ate every morsel, be it barley, green beans, peas, onions, potatoes—every spoonful of every meal—with as much deliberation and relish as if it were manna or ambrosia…or his last meal prior to execution.
6:30 to 7:30 P.M. If the prefects had not prearranged some event—swimming, a short walk, a choir practice, a game, a play practice—the hour was relatively free for the boys to do what they felt like doing. But it was during this free time that mischief and misdeeds were perpetrated and fights most often broke out. Hence, it was to forestall the commission of mischief and to reduce the number of fights that the administration planned each day—each hour—so that there was as little free time as possible.
Now such fights as did break out from time to time were in the main instigated merely to infuse some excitement into the monotony of institutional life, a monotony that may have suited the clergy, but was not to the liking of the boys.
Like many other pursuits and diversions in the school, fights were conducted according to certain customs and codes. They never broke out amid the shouts and accusations that usually precede fights, nor did one aggressor, as from ambush, spring upon his victim to deliver the coup de grace with one blow. Nor yet was a fight conducted to the finish. Not allowed during the course of a fight were kicking, biting, hitting an opponent from behind or striking an opponent while he was on the ground. No one was allowed to interfere on behalf of a friend or brother; every boy was expected to fight his own battles. Fights were to be fair and square.
By custom, the challenger, usually one of the intermediates anxious to prove his worth or to avenge some wrong, would deliberately seek out his foe with a wood chip or a flat stone on his shoulder, placed there either by his own hand or by that of someone else. In the school, “walking around with a chip on his shoulder” was not merely an expression but a literal reality. Some challengers, not satisfied with the obvious meaning of the act, issued a dare in addition: “Betcha too scairt to knock it off.”
But no one was “too scairt” ever to refuse such a challenge, even if he knew from previous experience that he could never win in the proverbial “hundred years.” For among the boys it had long been established that refusal was a sign of cowardice, and boys would sooner suffer a black eye, a bloodied nose or puffed lips than bear a reputation of being “yellow.” Hence, it was a matter of honour for the challenged to rise to the dare and, with as much scorn and deliberation as he could muster, knock the chip off the challenger’s shoulder. And there was no greater sign of contempt than, in knocking the chip off the shoulder, to brush the cheek of the challenger at the same time; to do so was comparable to a slap on the cheek with a pair of white gloves. In more formal fights, if there could be such things as more formal or less formal fights, a “second” would retrieve the chip and hand it to the challenged, who in his turn placed the object on his shoulder to make certain that the challenge was no bluff.
“Fight! Fight!” resounded throughout the recreation hall as the adversaries stood up to square off like boxers. The words were magnetic, at once drawing an audience, prefects included, who formed a ring around the contestants.
It was Eugene Keeshig and Michael Taylor, two senior students (Grade 6) who could never see eye to eye on anything. They circled each other like professional boxers.
All of a sudden there was a “pow, pow, pow,” and the next moment Mike was on the ground, stricken by three blows delivered with lightning speed by Eugene, who had launched himself forward with the suddenness of a panther. Eugene now stepped back to allow his opponent to get back on his feet. Once Mike was upright the fight resumed, arms flailing and fists driving forward like pistons, with some grunts and growls. The skirmish was spirited but brief. Down went Michael who, in a kneeling position, held up one hand as a sign of submission; with the other he held his nose to stanch the flow of blood.
The fight was over in five minutes, but not the feud. Mike would never yield to anyone—or to anything, for that matter. In his ongoing feud with Eugene and Charlie Shoot, Mike took many lumps in living up to the basic principles of survival at the school: “taking it like a man” and “toughing it out.”
Sometimes in the cold dreary evenings of October and November, when the weather was too inclement for playing outside, the call “mushpot” rang out. Instantly, all the boys, including those well settled on the pottie, suspended their operations to answer the summons. No fireman or soldier responded to a call more quickly. No one wanted to be “it,” “mushpot.” Hence, when the cry was uttered, everyone scrambled for a place in the circle—seniors, intermediates and juniors, all except the babies.
The last to arrive, the one who was “it,” fashioned a mushpot from an old rag or a handful of toilet tissue soaked in water, the soggier the better. With the dripping mushpot, the boy who was “it” ran around the perimeter of the circle proposing to plant the soggy object behind somebody. This was difficult to accomplish, because the boys in the circle kept a watchful eye on “it.” For if one of the players failed to notice the mushpot behind him by the time “it” came back around, “it” was entitled by tradition to bash the victim over the head with the mushpot and to kick him “in de hass” at the same time. The boy so walloped now became “it.” However, if the intended victim noticed the “plant” behind him, he instantly took up the mushpot and gave chase and, if he overtook the planter, was allowed by the rules to wallop him over the head with the mushpot, causing “it” to continue to be “it.” Some mushpots couldn’t take it. As well as being mushpots, they were soreheads.
“Come on, Father! You ring that bell too soon…jis’ when we were having fun. You don’ want us to have fun.”
Bells and whistles, gongs and clappers represent everything connected with sound management—order, authority, discipline, efficiency, system, organization, schedule, regimentation, conformity—and may in themselves be necessary and desirable. But they also symbolize conditions, harmony and states that must be established in order to have efficient management: obedience, conformity, dependence, subservience, uniformity, docility, surrender. In the end it is the individual who must be made to conform, who must be made to bend to the will of another.
And because prefects were our constant attendants and super-intendents, regulating our time and motions, scheduling our comings and goings, supervising our work and play, keeping surveillance over deeds and words, enforcing the rules and maintaining discipline with the help of two instruments of control and oppression—bells and the black book—we came to dislike and to distrust these young men. Most were in their early twenties and had completed their novitiate of four years’ study at Guelph, Ontario. Regardless of their dispositions or their attitudes toward us, they were the archenemies, simply because they held the upper hand both by virtue of their calling and by the exercise of threats. If one of our fellow inmates grew too contumacious even for the strap there was always the “reform school.”
While most of these young novices (referred to as first, second or third prefects) superintended our lives by the book, a few possessed a degree of compassion. But even they were helpless to show their sympathy in a tangible way, for the prefects, too, were under the close and keen observation of the Father Superior and “the Minister,” the administrator of the school. During their regency, the prefects, sometimes called “scholastics” by the priests, had to demonstrate that they had the stuff to be Jesuits.
Once one of the boys, after being warned to “Shut up!,” continued to whisper, or perhaps just uttered one more word, which, if left unsaid, would have rendered his entire message meaningless. It must have been a very important word to risk its utterance in the presence of Father Buck. Anyway, the prefect flew into a rage and struck the offender on the head with the bell. At least, it appeared as if Father Buck had clouted the offender with the bell, for he struck our colleague with the same hand in which he held the bell—not hard enough to draw blood but forcefully enough to raise a contusion and to elicit an “Eeeeeyow!” and cause the victim to clutch his head in pain.
Even before the outcry had subsided, the senior boys at the back—Renee Cada, Tom White, Louis Mitchell, Jim Coocoo, John Latour and Louis Francis—protested: “Come on, Father! That’s going too far.” They wrenched the bell from Father Buck’s hand and threatened to knock him on the head to “See how you’d like it….”
The boy who had seized the bell raised his hand as if to strike…but, instead of bringing it down on Father Buck’s head, returned the instrument to the disconcerted young prefect, whose face turned from ash to crimson and then back again. Had our colleague carried out his threat, he would most likely have been committed to the nearest reformatory, and also excommunicated from the church. There was a hushed silence throughout the recreation hall, both at the moment the bell was suspended over the prefect’s head and afterward.
Father Buck opened the door in silence. What saved the senior boys then and other boys on other occasions from retribution was the prefect’s own uneasiness about his superiors. Of course, we knew nothing of the prefects’ fears.
9:00 P.M. At that hour we were dismissed from study (the babies having gone to bed at 7:30) to retire to the dormitory where everyone—or nearly everyone—loitered around the washing area, either brushing his teeth or washing…or just pretending to wash. Anything to waste time. While many boys dallied near and around the trough, others made their way to the infirmary, there to linger and to have their pains, bruises, aches and cuts attended to by Brother Laflamme.
9:25 P.M. The lights were switched on and off in a radical departure from bell clanging as a signal for all the boys to return to their bedsides.
“Kneel down and say your prayers.”
We prayed, imploring God to allow us release from Spanish the very next day.
9:30 P.M. “All right! Get in bed…and no noise!”
The lights went out. The only illumination in the dormitory came from two night lights glowing red like coals at either end of the ceiling of the huge sleeping quarters. In the silence and the darkness it was a time for remembrance and reflection. But thoughts of family and home did not yield much comfort and strength; instead such memories as one had served to inflame the feelings of alienation and abandonment and to fan the flames of resentment. Soon the silence was broken by the sobs and whimpers of boys who gave way to misery and sadness, dejection and melancholy, heartache and gloom.
Besides the sobs and whimpers, which would come to an end by the finish of a boy’s first week at the school, there were the muted fall of footsteps and the faint motion of the phantom form of the prefect as he patrolled the dormitory.
“Shut up!”
But the dormitory was not always given to either golden or angelic silence or to the frigid winds that blew in through the open windows or to maudlin whimperings. More often there were muted whispers commingled with muffled giggles from the various regions of the dormitory. Sometimes one boy would cup his hand under his armpit and bring his arm down abruptly to produce a most obscene backfire, such as one would hear in a horse barn produced by an overwrought horse. Within moments there would be similar eruptions all over the dormitory.
For the prefects, who had a highly developed sense of law and regulation and of what was proper and improper, these night watches must have been harrowing. They were ever on the prowl to quell sobs, whispers or whatever disturbed the silence. They dashed from one side to the other in a vain attempt to catch the guilty party by asking for a confession. “Who makes thees noise?” For all the good their investigations did, they might as well have tried to quell spring peepers in a pond in May.
But there were times when Father Buck and Father Kehl brought the harassment on themselves.
Late at night they would sometimes confer in hushed but excited tones.
“Father! Did you hear the news today? The Fatherland sunk two hundred thousand tons of these enemy ships. Heil Hitler.”
There was always someone awake, someone to hear, someone to whisper aloud, “Nazi”; and the word “Nazi” echoed and re-echoed throughout the dormitory.
“Who says thees?”
“Nazi,” in the north corner.
“Who says thees?”
“Nazi,” in the south end.
“Who says thees?”
“Nazi.”
Eventually the two prefects would have to terminate the search and punish everyone by making us all stand stock still by our bedsides for half an hour.
Then to prevent being understood they spoke in German, with even worse results.
Eventually they stopped talking to one another in the dormitory; and finally they learned that it was better to grit their teeth and to bear whatever names the boys called them. And in due time, the boys too desisted in their practice of calling names.
For some, sleep, the friend of the weary and troubled, came soon; for others, later.
Though some days were eventful and were memorable for some reason, most passed by as the seconds, the minutes and the hours mark the passage of time, in work, study, prayer and proper play. Were it not for the spirit of the boys, every day would have passed according to plan and schedule, and there would have been no story.
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6:15 |
Rise | ||
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6:45—7:25 |
Mass | ||
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7:30—8:00 |
Breakfast | ||
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8:05—8:55 |
Work | ||
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9:00—11:55 |
Class/work | ||
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12:00—12:25 |
Dinner | ||
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12:30—1:10 |
Sports/games/rehearsal | ||
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1:15—4:15 |
Class/work | ||
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4:15—4:30 |
Collation | ||
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4:30—4:55 |
Work/chores | ||
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5:00—5:55 |
Study | ||
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6:00—6:25 |
Supper | ||
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6:30—7:25 |
Sports/games/rehearsal | ||
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7:30—10:00 |
Study and prepare for bed |