CHAPTER 7

The federal government rethinks its northern policy

Two factors distinguish the federal government’s residential school policy for Inuit and northern First Nations people from earlier residential school policies in the South. The first was the relatively late start and rapid implementation of these schools. It was not until 1955 that the federal government took the lead in developing an extensive residential school program in the North. Before this time the federal government had limited itself to providing some financial aid to church-run residential schools. In the 1950s there were eight such church-run schools: four along the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories, one in Carcross and two in Whitehorse in the Yukon, and one in Lower Post in northern British Columbia. The second distinguishing feature of this policy was the dramatic increase in the number of Inuit children in residential institutions. As late as 1949, only 111 Inuit were receiving full-time schooling in the North. Twelve were attending a federal day school in Kuujjuaq (Fort Chimo) in northern Québec, eight were at the Anglican residential school at Fort George, Québec, and ninety-one were at the two residential schools in Aklavik, Northwest Territories.1

Before the 1940s northern Canada remained relatively unimportant to the federal government’s principal goal of expanding and protecting the Canadian state. While Hudson’s Bay Company personnel, Anglican and Catholic missionaries, and a few interested scientists and explorers had visited and lived in the North since the late nineteenth century, the government’s main representatives in the North before the Second World War were members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).² The government had no concrete policy about how the vast region north of the sixtieth parallel (from the Yukon to northern Québec) should be governed and administered. This lack of policy meant that unlike Aboriginal peoples in most of Canada, northern Aboriginal peoples received little attention and assistance from Ottawa before the 1940s.³ In the 1930s the federal government refused to accept any responsibility for the welfare of Inuit in Québec, arguing that since they were not “Indians,” they were a provincial responsibility. In 1939 the Supreme Court of Canada resolved this issue in favour of Québec, ruling that Inuit were “Indians” and that therefore, under the British North America Act, their well-being throughout the country was a responsibility of the federal government.4

The combination of the Second World War and the Cold War changed Canada’s role in the North. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American military created a system of airfields connecting Edmonton to Alaska. This was followed by the construction of the Alaska Highway between northern British Columbia and Alaska, via the Yukon Territory. Completed in two years, this road, like the fur trade routes of the nineteenth century, brought both new opportunities and new stresses, including disease, to northern Aboriginal populations.⁵ The American military also had a presence in the eastern Arctic. During the early 1940s, American forces built and maintained airfields or weather stations at a variety of northern locations including Kuujjuaq, Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay), Churchill, and Coral Harbour (on Southampton Island). The Canadian military had limited involvement in or control over these American projects.⁶ The United States also funded the construction of the Canadian Oil Pipeline (commonly referred to as the Canol Pipeline). After tremendous cost overruns the pipeline was closed in 1945, thirteen months after it opened. Its legacy was a scarred and littered landscape.⁷ In line with its pre-war northern policy, the Canadian government seemed uninterested in regulating American intrusion into the North. The American presence continued after the end of the war. As the tensions of the Cold War increased, the Americans, with Canadian help, repositioned their defence systems in the North. Instead of bolstering defences in the western Arctic, military strategists turned their attention to defending southern Canada and the United States from air attacks originating in the Soviet Union via the North Pole. Between 1945 and the 1950s, the American and Canadian militaries built a series of weather stations and air defence stations in the North. More significantly, beginning in 1955, three lines of radar stations were constructed, the Distant Early Warning system being the most significant. Known as the DEW Line, and stretching from Alaska across northern Canada to Greenland, those radar stations became sites of contact between the Inuit and the relatively isolated military personnel.⁸

The increased military presence in the North pushed the Canadian government to recognize its responsibility to the Inuit. As a federal government report observed in 1955, the war brought the problems of the northern peoples more “forcefully to the attention of the Government and of the country as a whole.”⁹ These concerns for the Inuit, along with Canada’s growing concern for military defence and its interest in the natural resources of the North, led to a wave of postwar government activity. The symbolic start of this new era of bureaucratic control was Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s announcement in 1953 that his government would create, for the first time, a government department, Northern Affairs and National Resources, under the direction of Jean Lesage. The department was charged with creating a coherent and consciously centralized policy to modernize the North and its people.

Politically the North was, in essence, an internal Canadian colony. In the Northwest Territories, for example, executive power was vested in a southern-based commissioner appointed by Ottawa who, between 1921 and 1963, was the deputy minister of the federal department that administered federally owned natural resources. Over the years these were the departments of the Interior (1921 to 1936), Mines and Resources (1936 to 1945), Resources and Development (1945 to 1953), and Northern Affairs and National Resources (1953 to 1966). The commissioner was a powerful departmental official and the territorial staff were his direct subordinates. The commissioner presided over the Council of the Northwest Territories.

Until 1951 the council members were all federal government appointees, drawn from the upper ranks of the federal civil service. Their meetings were held in Ottawa. In 1951 the government allowed for the election of three councillors from constituencies in the Mackenzie River Valley. The government continued to appoint the remaining five council members. Further elective seats were added in 1966, including the first members for Inuit constituencies. Administrative and legislative functions were slowly being transferred from Ottawa to the North: in the western Arctic, a small administrative office in Fort Smith (1921) and a town council in Yellowknife (1940) added a thin layer of local government, and eventually the seat of government moved from Ottawa to Yellowknife in 1967, although the head of government of the Northwest Territories was still an appointed commissioner, with his deputy commissioner, and two assistant commissioners, both former RCMP officers. The year 1975 was the last in which appointed members sat in the Legislative Assembly. However, the appointed commissioner still held on to the key executive functions of the territory— government, finance, and personnel—until the mid-1980s. These gradual changes followed the move of the government from Ottawa to Yellowknife in 1967. Even today the Northwest Territories is still in the transition phase of assuming control from the federal government of its own non-renewable resources. Nunavut still does not have full authority over its natural resources.

The Yukon was also governed for many decades by an appointed commissioner and a council that contained a mix of appointed and elected members. The equivalent of a territorial cabinet was established in 1969, but the majority of members were appointed members of the council. It was not until 1979, when the Yukon introduced political parties into its territorial governance model (replacing the no-party consensus system that still exists in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut), that the commissioner’s role was transformed into one similar to that of a provincial lieutenant-governor, and the first majority party in the legislature was granted authority to form the territorial cabinet.10

A new policy for the Northwest Territories

The change in policy for the North, particularly for the Northwest Territories, was heralded in a series of articles between the spring of 1953 and the spring of 1955 in the Beaver, a magazine published by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Because the government presence in the eastern Arctic, the homeland of most of Canada’s Inuit, had been limited up to that point, these articles highlighted the differing opinions about the degree to which Inuit should undergo cultural change.11 Featuring work by anthropologists, missionaries, and fur traders, and concluding with an article by Jean Lesage himself, the series presented case studies on “the dilemma confronting western man in his dealings with primitive peoples,” each of which was designed to “contribute to the discussion at present taking place in this country involving the fast moving developments in Canada’s own northland.”¹² The series reveals that there was significant tension among these writers about the fate of “primitive” peoples, and the Inuit in particular, in the face of the expanding frontier of modernity. Although all contributors agreed that “primitive” peoples, as they were then described, inevitably changed during their interactions with modern societies and economies, and that this change was generally a positive development, there was considerable disagreement about the degree to which such groups could or should be allowed to retain their cultural practices and their cultural identity.

In general the anthropologists writing in the series, including Margaret Mead in an article on the South Pacific, argued that the integration of “primitive people” into modern society needed to be rapid and complete. For Mead and others like her, the “primitive culture” and identification with that culture should and would be completely absorbed by the “dominant” modern culture, through intermarriage, government education schemes, or participation in the modern economy.¹³

Donald Marsh, the Anglican Bishop of the Arctic, explained that what the government needed to do in the North was create a system of education that would “provide the Eskimos with an education whereby they may be prepared to meet the white man’s ways, and at the same time be able to live in [a] native fashion.”¹⁴

In the last article in the series, Jean Lesage attempted to balance the need to modernize the North with the value of protecting Inuit culture. Lesage had spent the summer of 1954 visiting the North, assessing the desirability of extending education to the Inuit and First Nations in the region and the possible ways of doing so.¹⁵

There were three central themes in Lesage’s article. First, it was for the benefit of both the Inuit and the Canadian nation that the North and the Inuit become integrated into modern Canada. “The objective of Government policy is relatively easy to define,” he wrote; “it is to give the Eskimos the same rights, privileges, opportunities, and responsibilities as all other Canadians; in short, to enable them to share fully the national life of Canada.”¹⁶ He dismissed the “sentimentalists” who argued that the “Eskimo be left alone lest he be spoiled.”17 Modernity could not be stopped: “It is pointless to consider whether the Eskimo was happier before the white man came, for the white man has come and time cannot be reversed.”¹⁸ Given the inevitability of these changes, Lesage argued, it was the government’s responsibility to help the Inuit “climb the ladder of civilization.”¹⁹ This project to modernize the Inuit and the North would not be a oneway process. Canada too, he argued, would reap the rewards of bringing modernity to the North: the re-educated Inuit would be a major asset to Canada’s northern expansion. “The development of these lands,” he explained, required “the assistance of their oldest residents.”²⁰

Second, modernizing the Inuit did not mean cultural assimilation. Lesage sought to modernize the Inuit while letting them retain their cultural identity and their cultural practices as Inuit. He argued that Inuit families should be told that adopting new technologies and sending their children to school would not “mean the loss of the identity of the Eskimos’ culture.”²¹ Lesage even argued that the delivery of these changes should rely, to some degree, on consultations with the Inuit themselves and, following the example of Greenland and Alaska, should place some decision-making powers in the hands of Inuit leaders.²² The overall thrust of Lesage’s proposal was to bring the Inuit into a modern Canada, while keeping their cultural identity intact: “The Eskimos do not have to be made over into white men,” Lesage explained.²³

Third, the article explained, the government would use three main vehicles, education, health care, and a “sound economy,” to integrate the North and the Inuit into Canadian modernity.²⁴ In real terms this meant setting up and staffing southern-style hospitals in the North, creating new economic opportunities that would supplement what he saw as a dangerous dependence on the trade of white fox fur, and erecting schools.²⁵ In discussing schooling, Lesage was somewhat vague on his exact goals. He wrote that there should be government schools near established populations; however, most importantly, he dismissed boarding or residential-style schools as inappropriate. “Boarding schools,” he wrote, “entail long separation both from parents and from the traditional ways of life, and can result in a student returning home ill fitted for the life he must lead.”²⁶ Instead of residential schooling, Lesage suggested the government might experiment with the use of “itinerant instruction,” featuring a teacher moving from camp to camp, supplemented by some kind of instruction using radios.²⁷

The 1955 annual report of the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources repeated many of the observations and arguments from Lesage’s Beaver article.²⁸ Like the article, the report emphasized the need to modernize how the Inuit economy operated; it explained the moral and economic imperative for Canada to act in the North (the government must “transform Canada’s Eskimo from a financial liability to a national asset”); and it emphasized that any changes brought to the Inuit should allow them to retain their cultural identity (“some of these new means need not significantly affect their traditional way of life”).²⁹ The only major difference between the report and the article was over the policy for education. Unlike the magazine article, the government report explained that “hostels” must be used to deliver education in the North.

Echoing Lesage’s phrase in the Beaver, the report recognized that “residential schools entail long separation from parents and the traditional ways of life, and can result in a student’s returning home ill-fitted for that life.”30 However, in the very next paragraph, the report explained that the government had already approved a policy of using day schools and residential hostels in the North.

The government early in 1955 approved an extensive program for the construction of schools and hostels to provide better education … for children in the Northwest Territories. This program is designed to prepare native children— both Indian and Eskimo—to meet the changing conditions of the times and to enable them, through knowledge and training, to take advantage of new employment opportunities. Since their nomadic or semi-nomadic lives make it impossible to provide continuity in their education except at centres where residential facilities are provided, the new program includes the provision of hostels. These schools and hostels will be constructed over a six-year period and will be located mainly in the Mackenzie Valley, where the need for them is most urgent. Provision will be made for construction of day schools and hostels at Fort McPherson, Fort Smith, Fort Simpson and Aklavik ... and at Frobisher Bay.³¹

There would be two main types of schools: “day schools,” teaching general education, and “vocational training schools,” to teach trades.

The schools will be attended by the Indian and Eskimo children resident in the hostels as well as by the children, of whatever race, whose homes are in the settlements. It is most important that segregation of race in education be avoided. The mingling of all children—whether Indian, Eskimo, part-blood or white—in common schools in their formation will have important social and psychological advantages in the north.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students might have been allowed to mix, but Protestant and Catholic students were to be kept separate from one another in this system. Under pressure from the churches, the government agreed to require that Catholic students be taught by Catholic teachers and Protestant students be taught by Protestant teachers. At Fort Smith, where most of the students were Catholic, it was agreed that from the outset all teachers up to Grade Nine, as well as the principal, should be Catholic. At Inuvik and Fort Simpson, the schools had two separate wings, one Catholic, one Protestant.³² Even though the teachers were federal government employees, complex rules were developed under which principals were to be of the same religion as the majority of students in a school. In large schools, vice-principals were appointed who were of the religion of the minority student group. Specialist teachers, such as science, vocational arts, or home economics teachers, were to be of the religion of the majority of students. If all the students in a class were Roman Catholic, the teacher could be a member of a religious order, wear the clothing appropriate to the order, and display religious pictures and emblems in the classroom. Catholic schoolbooks could be used where Protestant students were in the minority.33

Each of these schools was to have a hostel or boarding residence, built by the government but operated by the churches. Initially the residence at Yellowknife would be the exception. It was to be government-run and non-denominational.³⁴ The federal government had already begun to assume some responsibility for Inuit education. In 1949 it opened a school in Kuujjuaq, Québec. The following year it opened schools in the Northwest Territories in Tuktoyaktuk, Kugluktuk (Coppermine), Coral Harbour, and Kimmirut (Lake Harbour), and in Inukjuak (Port Harrison), Québec.³⁵ In 1955 Oblate Missionaries opened Turquetil Hall, a residence at Chesterfield Inlet on the western coast of Hudson Bay. The children attended a federal day school that was administered by the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns).³⁶

Responsibility for the education of northern First Nations children was transferred in April 1955 from the Indian Affairs Branch to Northern Affairs and National Resources. It was argued that “this centralized direction and control will result in a uniform and more effectively planned educational system. The Indian Affairs Branch will continue to administer its educational facilities for Indian children in the Yukon Territory.”³⁷ The most immediate result was the transfer of responsibility for the residential schools in the Northwest Territories from Indian Affairs to Northern Affairs.³⁸

In coming years, the Indian Affairs Branch played a more direct role in the supervision of residential schooling in the Yukon, while Northern Affairs directed schooling in the Northwest Territories. In 1955 Indian Affairs was a branch of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, while Northern Affairs was a branch of the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. With the creation of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in 1966, the two branches were brought together in a single department.³⁹

By 1958 much of the new education system was starting to take shape. That year the government reported:

School accommodation at Fort Smith was increased to 20 classrooms by the opening of a new 14-classroom federal school. A 200-pupil hostel was also opened. Federal school facilities at Fort McPherson were expanded from 3 to 6 classrooms and a new 100-pupil hostel was opened. The Hay River federal school was expanded to 9 classrooms. A new federal High and Vocational school with a staff of 15, and a 100-student hostel were opened at Yellowknife and the vocational training program previously conducted at Leduc, Alberta, was transferred there. The federal schools at Fort Simpson, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk were expanded from 2 to 3 classrooms. The school at Fort Good Hope was expanded from 1 to 2 classrooms. The school at Old Crow, Yukon Territory, was taken over as a new federal school by special arrangement with the Indian Affairs Branch.40

The construction of two residences in Inuvik was part of a larger Northern Affairs attempt to create a planned community in the North with southern urban amenities. Aklavik, in the Mackenzie River Delta, had been a federal government administrative centre for the region. But it was flood-prone. As a result, a new community, Inuvik, was to be constructed fifty-five kilometres to the east. There was little consultation with local residents, many of whom declined to relocate to the new community. Inuvik itself developed into a physically segregated community. The above-ground “utilidor” system, which carried water and waste in insulated steel tubes, did not, for example, reach the northwestern portion of the community, where most of the Aboriginal families lived.⁴¹

A more piecemeal approach was reported in the eastern Arctic, where non-Aboriginal populations were smaller, the hunting and trapping economy (boosted by government transfers) was still sustaining a largely dispersed population, and putting up new buildings was challenging because of costly ocean shipping and a short construction season. According to the same 1958 report:

In the Arctic region one-classroom federal schools were opened at Arctic Bay, Eskimo Village near Rankin Inlet, Resolute, and Spence Bay in the Northwest Territories, and at Povungnetuk [sic] in the province of Quebec. At Rankin Inlet the one-classroom mine school was replaced by a new 2-classroom federal school. The federal school at Baker Lake was enlarged to 2 classrooms. The staff of the 4-classroom school at Frobisher Bay was increased to 6. A new 2-classroom school was opened at Cambridge Bay. The school at Great Whale River was enlarged from 2 to 4 classrooms. Construction proceeded on new schools at Payne Bay and Fort Chimo in Quebec and at Eskimo Point in the Northwest Territories.⁴²

These developments brought dramatic changes to people’s lives, particularly in the eastern Arctic. Whereas in 1949 there were 111 Inuit children receiving full-time schooling in the North, by February 1959 the number had risen to 1,165.⁴³

In 1965 the federal government was planning a further expansion of the hostel system. There were plans for the construction of 200-bed facilities in both Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay) and Behchoko (Fort Rae), and for 100-bed facilities in Igloolik and Pangnirtung. In addition, the government planned for a sixty-bed facility at Fort Good Hope, a forty-four-bed facility at Deline (Fort Franklin), a forty-bed facility at Uluqsaqtuua (Holman Island), and a thirty-six-bed facility at Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet).⁴⁴ None of these facilities, however, were ever constructed.

Although it spoke of day schools, hostels, and vocational training centres, the 1955 policy initiated by Lesage would lead to the creation of two distinct types of residential schooling, the “large hostel” or “hall,” and the “small hostel.” According to the federal government the small hostel was for “8 to twelve children of elementary school age, normally supervised by an Eskimo or Indian couple.” The large hostel was to have “usually 100 or more beds, associated with large elementary or elementary-secondary schools, administered by a staff employed either by the contracting Church authorities or by the Federal Government on a continuing basis.”45

In practice, the large hostels came to be dominated by students in higher secondary grades and in vocational programs, while the small “family-type” residences were almost all out of use by 1970. In 1967–68, Indian Affairs and Northern Development’s annual report noted that the department’s architectural services branch had designed “for construction at various locations” a “new standard 12-pupil hostel.”⁴⁶

As the new hostels and day schools opened, the old residential schools closed. Fort Resolution closed in 1957.⁴⁷ The two residential schools in Aklavik closed in 1959 when the Inuvik hostels opened.⁴⁸ The Fort Providence school, which had opened in 1867, closed in 1960.⁴⁹ By 1963 seven new hostels had been constructed in the western Arctic with a combined capacity of approximately 1,100.⁵⁰ The Anglicans were to administer Stringer Hall in Inuvik, Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson, and Bompas Hall in Fort Simpson. The Roman Catholics were to administer Grollier Hall in Inuvik, Lapointe Hall in Fort Simpson, and Breynat Hall in Fort Smith.⁵¹ In addition, Turquetil Hall on Hudson Bay had a capacity of seventy students.⁵² In 1964 the Churchill Vocational Centre opened with an initial capacity of 160.⁵³ By 1969 the boarding system in the Northwest Territories would accommodate 1,331 students.⁵⁴

This was a significant departure from what senior bureaucrats had envisioned. Hugh Keenleyside, who became the deputy minister of Mines and Resources and commissioner of the Northwest Territories in 1947, had wished to see northern education delivered on a non-denominational basis. Church pressure on the governing Liberal Party had led to the compromise that was developed.⁵⁵

Some federal officials, such as W. E. Winter, the superintendent of schools for the Mackenzie Region, saw the church involvement as a betrayal of principle and took a strong stand. In 1957 he wrote a lengthy letter to his superiors outlining his objections. He started out by arguing that hostels should be “a last educational resort and be intended only for children who are so neglected or isolated that schooling would otherwise be impossible.” Those hostels that were established should, in his opinion, be operated by the government “and no religious distinction shown whatsoever in their operation.” His preferences, though, were for the establishment of government-run secular day schools wherever possible. For those children who lived in truly isolated conditions, he recommended that, rather than sending the children to hostels, the government should hire itinerant teachers. This would allow children to “live with their parents and still be taught.” He went on to oppose the decision to hire only Catholic teachers at Fort Smith, recommending that the churches be “divorced from all aspects of the organization and administration of this school.” He was also opposed to the policy of establishing separate Protestant and Anglican wings for the schools in Fort Simpson and Inuvik (at the time his letter was written, Inuvik was referred to simply as East Three, indicating its location on that branch of the Mackenzie River Delta). The concluding lines of his letter were harsh. He believed that the churches “must no longer retain their crippling and demoralizing influence on the educational program of the North.” If Northern Affairs did not proceed on the basis of the approach he outlined, Winter said, he could not continue in his position.56 When the government did not change its policy, Winter resigned.⁵⁷

The Yukon

Similar education policies were implemented in the Yukon. The territory was distinctive in the North for having a non-Aboriginal majority population, in large part because of the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s and later the wartime opening of the Alaska Highway, which connected Yukon with the South. With approximately half the territory’s population living in Whitehorse, services were concentrated there, especially after it replaced Dawson City as the capital in 1953. While Aboriginal people accounted for between 25% and 30% of the territorial population, the percentage was much higher in the outlying communities and remains so today.⁵⁸

As late as 1945 there were only six schools and fourteen teachers in the territory. They taught fewer than 450 students. During the 1940s there were two residential schools: the Anglican school at Carcross and the Baptist day school and residence in Whitehorse. In 1951, a Roman Catholic residential school opened in Lower Post, British Columbia, located on the Yukon–British Columbia border. It drew students from both northern British Columbia and the Yukon.⁵⁹

Before 1948 the territorial government left responsibility for students with status under the Indian Act to Indian Affairs. Aside from the residential schools, the Anglican Church operated day schools for First Nations students in Old Crow, Moosehide, and Mayo. Similar Roman Catholic day schools operated in Snag, Burwash Landing, Carmacks, and Ross River. By 1957 First Nations students accounted for only 79 of the 1,754 students attending territorially supported schools.

In 1956, an internal Northern Affairs and National Resources memorandum on education in the Yukon noted that Indian Affairs was considering constructing a hostel in a new subdivision in Whitehorse to replace the Baptist residential school. Northern Affairs official F. E. Cunningham recommended, “The children who are to be housed in this hostel should attend either the Whitehorse Public School, or the Whitehorse Roman Catholic School. We think it of the utmost importance that there be no segregation in classrooms of Indian and non-Indian children.” The memorandum further proposed that “during the next five years education in grades 9 through 12 should be provided only at Whitehorse.”60 That same year Catholic Bishop J. L. Coudert lobbied Ottawa for support in establishing a Roman Catholic hostel in Whitehorse. It was felt that students leaving the Lower Post school, which went only to Grade Eight, lacked the training they needed “to compete with their white neighbours.” While living in the proposed Catholic hostel in Whitehorse, they could study at “the vocational training schools, which the government of the Yukon proposes to establish.”⁶¹

The major change came in 1960 with the opening of two hostels in Whitehorse. Students from these hostels attended public and private (Roman Catholic) schools in Whitehorse. The Yukon Hostel housed Protestant First Nations students, while the Whitehorse Hostel (later Coudert Hall) housed Catholic First Nations students. The initial enrolment at the Yukon Hostel was 86; by the 1965–66 school year it was 109. The initial enrolment at the Whitehorse Hostel was forty-five; by the 1965–66 school year it was sixty-seven.

The opening of the two hostels in Whitehorse was coupled with the closing of the Baptist school and residence in that community. However, the Carcross and Lower Post schools remained in operation. In the 1965–66 school year, the Carcross school had 110 students in Grades One to Four, while the Lower Post school had 152 pupils in Grades One to Six. After graduating from these schools, students were transferred to either Watson Lake or Whitehorse. With the opening of new territorial-run day schools, G. R. Cameron, the commissioner for the Yukon, thought that it was only a matter of time before the Carcross school closed. The expansion of the number of territorial day schools had already led to the closure of the church-run day schools in the territory, and by 1965 there were 489 First Nations students attending territorial-run day schools (176 students would have been living in the two Whitehorse residences).⁶²

While the hostels in the Northwest Territories were operated under the authority of Northern Affairs and the department stressed that they were open to all schoolaged children in the territories, the Yukon hostels were under the authority of Indian Affairs and admission was more restricted. In 1961 Indian Affairs informed the Yukon Department of Welfare that it would accept up to six to ten non-Indian students, providing either the territory or Northern Affairs subsidized the spaces.⁶³

By 1960 the system that had been proposed in 1955 was in place. It would be administered by the federal government for the following nine years. At the end of that period, the federal government transferred responsibility for First Nations education in the Yukon to the Yukon territorial government and responsibility for the hostels in the Northwest Territories to the Northwest Territories government. The transfer to territorial control lead to the gradual dismantling of the hostel system in the North. Most of the small hostels were no longer in operation by the 1970s. The large hostels, however, remained in place.