IN THE FIVE YEARS THAT I attended school in Lejac, some things were harder, some easier to bear.
When the first of May came, when the ice was off the lake and the buds on the trees had turned into clean green leaves, I would say to myself, “Soon I will be going back to my village.”
And as the hot days of summer dwindled away, I would know that my time in the village was nearly over for another year, and every morning when I opened my eyes, I would think, “I don’t know how I can go back to Lejac.”
I was growing up.
In earlier years, when I had to go back to school, there was always a terrible fear that I would never see my family again . . . that this time, I was being taken away forever. And in the summers, when I was younger, it never occurred to me that one day a wagon or truck would come for me and I would have to leave my family again. Summer seemed endless in those days and I could not imagine that it would ever end.
Later, as I grew older, the awful fear of losing my family and my village was gone; even as the truck drove into the village to collect the students, I knew that I would see my parents again in ten months. But I also learned that summer was not endless, and that one day I would have to climb into a vehicle and again be taken away.
In the five years that I attended Lejac, it never became easier to leave home.
School life did not change. Year after year, there was the work, the punishments, the boredom, the terrible food, the changing from work clothes to uniform to play clothes and then into uniform and work clothes again.
Even then, I knew that there were also some good things about school. I could now speak English, and I was making what the teachers called excellent progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I had also learned other, more practical things: sewing, cooking, and the other domestic skills which the nuns and missionaries hoped would turn girls like me into good farmers’ wives. Sister Superior gave me singing lessons each day, and while the lessons were going on, I was as happy as I could be away from my village.
And sometimes there was a break in the routine. Two or three times each year, on a warm day, the students would walk to Robinson Point on the shore of Fraser Lake. How we looked forward to these breaks! At Robinson Point we would swim and have a picnic. Those days were highlights in the year. The sun was hot, the water cool, and the freedom to run and jump and shout, especially for the girls, left us feeling happy for days afterwards.
Sometimes on feast days there would be stew and bread spread with butter, instead of boiled barley or porridge or beans. The stew was rich with meat and carrots and potatoes, and on those days, I would think that I had never tasted such delicious food.
One time in the fall, I remember, an old lady, Mrs. Francois, was fishing for whitefish in Fraser Lake, just below Lejac. She caught many more fish than she could use. She smoked several dozen of them and sold them to Father Coccola, who was principal of Lejac at the time. The nuns had never cooked smoked fish, so the older Native girls made dinner that day—they had cooked smoked fish many times in the summer on their own reserves. They split the whitefish in half and baked the pieces in the oven. Each of us was served half a fish and a potato.
For many days after this treat, we followed Father Coccola around, asking him, “Father, when will you buy more fish?”
Father Coccola always replied, “When I have some money!”
Sad to say, he never did have money for such a treat again.
One of the chores I was assigned in later years which I both liked and dreaded was going for the mail. Mr. and Mrs. Allan, who operated the post office, lived across the boys’ playground in a small building. Mr. Allan was an engineer and his wife taught music in our school. I had to pick up the mail each day, and I would have enjoyed my daily visit with what was to me contact with the outside world except for one thing—I had to cross the boys’ playground both going to the post office and coming back again. How I dreaded the jeers and calls from the boys! “Felix is your boyfriend!” or “Ernie loves Mary!” or “Johnny wants to kiss you!”
I would run like a rabbit across the playground, trying to shut my ears to those teasing voices. I would make my visit with Mr. and Mrs. Allan last as long as I could; I knew that those same boys would be waiting for me on my return trip to the school. The last thing I wanted was to be close enough to boys to listen to their teasing!
It was impossible, even in the summer, to forget Lejac. Delegations of parents went to the chief each August and asked him, “Why do our children have to go away from us in September? Why can’t we have a day school here?”
The chief would say, “Tell me what is the matter with Lejac? Why are you coming to me every summer with this request?”
“We miss our children,” the parents would say. “They go away for ten months, and when they come back, they have grown so much we hardly know them. They are forgetting their Carrier language. The boys are not learning how to hunt and trap and set a net for fish—no, they are learning how to milk a cow and plow a field! They are supposed to go to Lejac to be educated, but they are not in the classrooms. They are in the fields or the barns, and the girls are too much in the sewing room or the kitchen. The work is too hard for them. It is said by many that the teachers are not really teachers at all. They are not trained as the teachers are in the school in Vanderhoof. And if our children complain or run away, they are whipped. This is not the Carrier way.”
“Stop! Stop!” the chief would say. “I will talk to Father Coccola. I will talk to the government man.”
A few days later, the chief would meet with the villagers again. And he would say, “The government man says he gives $125 each year for every student. This is given to the school and the government man says he has no more money to give.”
The Natives would say, “Give us the $125 for each student and we will have our own day school. Then our children will be with us and they will learn the Carrier ways.”
The chief would continue, “Father Coccola says that if the children stayed here, they would not go to school. They would go with their parents to the hunting grounds and the traplines.”
“No! No! We would send our children to school!”
“And Father Coccola says that it is very hard to run the school when parents do not support it. He says the first principal, Father Allard, suffered a nervous breakdown and had to leave. And the second principal, Father Wolfe, only stayed a few months. Now we have Father Coccola. He says the students are forbidden to speak Carrier because, if they were allowed, they would never learn to speak English. He says that the students are only punished when they do very bad things—when they steal or lie or when they run away. He says they must be punished when they try to run away, be-cause what they do is very dangerous. They could get lost and die, or they could freeze to death. He says the school is very poor and that is why it does not have teachers who are trained. He says the nuns work very hard. He says everyone must work hard so that things will get better. And that is what Father Coccola says.”
Each summer we heard this same talk. And each September, I went back to Lejac, and when I arrived there, I found that nothing had changed.
There was the principal, Father Coccola, whom we hardly ever saw except in chapel. There were the same nuns, some of them young and sorry for the homesick youngsters, some of them old and tired and cross. There was the same serge to be made into uniforms, the same porridge to be eaten, the same whippings to be witnessed, the same rush to change clothes, the same prayers to be said, the same silence at bedtime.
And for me, there was always the same longing to be at home with my family.