In 1897, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson concluded that most of the industrial schools in Manitoba and the North-West Territories had been poorly sited and poorly constructed. Instead of schools being located close to good farmland, one found “hay and grazing land some miles away from the school, water supply altogether inadequate, no timber or wood land.” Overcoming such errors would require investments in expensive equipment and the purchase of fuel. In addition, considerable time was lost in hauling hay from distant fields. School sites often were poorly drained, with little attention paid to “ordinary sanitation laws.” Buildings had been “hurriedly constructed of poor materials, badly laid out, without due provision for lighting, heating or ventilation.”1 Benson’s was a sweeping condemnation of past decisions. Yet, the coming years would not see much improvement. Little money was provided for needed renovations. As a result, the problems that Benson identified would only fester as buildings deteriorated. The risk of fire, illness, and disease would mount. Government architects and builders did not appear to learn from the past: new buildings constructed after 1897 continued to exhibit many of the same flaws that Benson identified. Problems with water supply, sanitation, and heating occurred again and again. During the Depression of the 1930s, when the per capita funding rates were cut, there was even less money available for maintenance, and buildings continued to deteriorate. As the previous chapter on health made clear, it was recognized by the late nineteenth century that susceptibility to disease was largely determined by housing quality, particularly ventilation, crowding, and sanitation. Government and church failure to build and maintain adequate residential school facilities must be seen as a significant contributing factor to the health problems that plagued the schools during this period.
In photographs, residential schools often appear to be imposing structures. The industrial schools usually were constructed with federal government approval, and often were designed by government architects. For example, in the 1890s, the Department of Public Works had set out a detailed set of specifications for the construction of the school in Red Deer, North-West Territories.2 But, while they were substantial-looking buildings, looks can deceive. As Martin Benson said after the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, was rebuilt, “The new building is a very handsome structure but the out-buildings are not at all in keeping with it and certainly want renovating, as a survey of the present premises presents a showy front and a shabby back.”3 The Anglican Rupert’s Land school in Middlechurch, Manitoba, was a striking-looking three-storey brick building. But, shortly after the school opened in 1890, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land laid the following complaints about the school’s construction before Indian Affairs Minister Edgar Dewdney.
•The attic, which was intended to sleep forty students, was “useless for this purpose.” Among its other limitations, it was impossible to get bedsteads up the narrow staircase.
•The basement floor had not been cemented.
•The eavestroughs were incomplete.
•The water tank was too small, and would be useless in a fire.
•There was not an adequate separation between the girls’ and boys’ dormitories.
Because of construction defects, the school could accommodate only forty students, as opposed to the anticipated eighty, creating a funding crisis for the school.4
In some cases, particularly in the system’s early years, the churches built boarding schools on their own and then sought government funding. Overall, however, the government could not escape responsibility for the quality of the residential school buildings that operated in Canada. By the late 1890s, it was not uncommon for the government’s chief architect to review the building plans of boarding schools as well as industrial schools.5 Government architects often selected school sites, designed new schools, and drew up the plans and specifications for additions and renovations to the schools.6
Despite this level of government oversight, new buildings exhibited the flaws of the past. In 1922, the Lejac school, the last industrial school to be built in Canada, opened at Fraser Lake in British Columbia. The government had approved the design and issued the tenders for the construction of the building—which, according to Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott, was “shorn of all luxuries and is completely economical.”7 The school was built under the supervision of a government-appointed inspector of construction.8 But when the Indian Affairs superintendent of education, Russell Ferrier, inspected the school during its first year of operation, he had to report that the water system was out of order, the lighting was insufficient, and the staff was too small. And there were not enough washrooms and lavatories.9
In 1925, Principal J. F. Woodsworth reported to Ottawa that the roof of the newly opened United Church school in Edmonton, Alberta, leaked badly during heavy rains. Beds in the girls’ dormitory were soaked, pails of water in staff rooms filled rapidly, and furnishings were drenched. The windows were so poorly made and fitted that “all winter the wind came in making some of the rooms almost unfit for occupation, and this in spite of heavy fires going all the time.”10
The Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia opened in 1930. Indian Affairs’ own architect designed the building, and the government issued the tenders and supervised the construction of the school.11 It had been open only a few months when Principal J. P. Mackey reported that “with a driving rain storm, there is a considerable leakage of water on every floor on the front of the building.” The water was damaging the plaster and seeping into the basement, which had an improperly finished floor. The pump house was not working, and the kitchen chimney did not provide sufficient draft to allow the cook to prepare meals.12 Two years later, the principal was complaining that the building was still leaking, the plaster was continuing to come down, and plans to paint interior walls had been largely abandoned as a waste of time and money.13
The problems with poorly built buildings went unaddressed. The inadequacy of the per capita grant meant that due to limited spending on maintenance, older problems got worse and new ones kept emerging. In 1907, Inspector John Semmens reported that the Methodist school at Norway House was in such a dilapidated condition that it was a danger to the students. Benson commented that the money provided for repairs “appears to have been thrown away.” The Indian commissioner recommended that the school be closed before winter. Methodist Church official T. Ferrier said:
The cellar and basements are in tumble-down condition with about a foot of water in each, and the only relief is in bailing it out with pails or pumping it out. There is no drain and it is in a most unsanitary condition. The furnaces are placed in these dilapidated basements, which are merely holes in the ground, and the way they are installed makes it impossible to heat the buildings.14
In 1908, when the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school was less than twenty years old, Principal P. Claessen was petitioning for a new building. He described the building as “insanitary” [sic] and “ruinous.” There was “insufficient air capacity and want of ventilation in some rooms, state of decay on the ground floor and foundations in the boy’s [sic] building, irregular and insufficient heating.” The problem, he wrote, had been confirmed by medical experts.15 He renewed his appeal the following year, adding that “the very foundations in some parts are rotten and giving away.”16 The year after that, the principal reported that the school consisted of twenty buildings that he described as “old and some damaged beyond repair by long use and weather,” and that were “scattered in a very disorderly way, at the southern corner of the school property.” Much of the boys’ industrial training consisted of the “incessant repairing” of these buildings.17 A new building was not built until 1915.18
Sixteen years later, Indian Affairs official G. H. Barry conducted an inspection of the Kuper Island school and concluded that the toilets were too few in number and the washrooms were poorly ventilated. Even with twice-daily cleaning, “there is quite a smell.”19 When he returned three years later, there were still too few toilets and only a “very limited number” of them were in working order. Addressing this issue was “a very urgent matter,” he wrote.20 In 1935, the Indian agent reported that the floors of the boys’ and girls’ playrooms were “completely gone,” since the supporting sills had rotted away; the stove and oven needed replacing; and the upstairs walls needed resurfacing.21 In 1936, the principal was informed that, due to a cut in Indian Affairs funding, roofing repairs would have to be limited to “the work that is absolutely necessary.”22
To Inspector F. H. Paget, the Regina, Saskatchewan, school in 1908 looked “more like a deserted place than a government institution.” The building was old, the floors worn, the plaster broken, and the paint worn off. Neither the children nor the dormitories appeared neat and tidy.23 There was no money for paint or bedspreads, or for replacing mattresses whose springs had sprung. According to a local Presbyterian minister, E. A. Green, the girls, having no playroom, were obliged to play in the dormitories; the blackboards were “a disgrace and largely useless”; and the school was underfunded, compared to Catholic and Methodist schools.24 By the following year, it was apparent that outbuildings were on the verge of collapse. But, no repairs were to be made until the future of the school was determined.25
Inspector Paget had even harsher words for the schools on the Blood Reserve in Alberta. He described the boys’ dormitory at the Anglican school as “an old log building of two stories with low ceilings, unplastered and quite unfit for the purpose it is being used for. It was without exception the worst building I was in on my travels and no time should be lost in replacing it.” Of the Catholic school, he wrote, “The roof leaks and requires repairs, ventilation is deficient and there are no outside fire-escapes but plenty of staircases.”26 Sixteen years later, the building was still standing—and it was in even worse condition. Because Paget had condemned it in 1908, no significant repairs had been carried out since then.27 It was not until 1927 that new Catholic and Anglican schools were built near Cardston to serve the Blood Reserve. A government inspector described the buildings as “first class,” but noted that “the rain seeps through the brick work at both schools.”28 By 1929, faults with the two schools were all too apparent. At the Anglican school, corrosion was blocking the water pipes, and a girls’ fire escape was needed. The roof had no eaves, and rainwater was leaking into the walls. A government inspector wrote that “the interior of the school will be ruined if this continues.” In heavy rains, water continued to soak through the walls, staining the plaster in both schools.29
In the Indian Affairs annual report of 1909, Jennie Cunningham, the principal of the school at File Hills, Saskatchewan, noted, “For the past 2 years 10 boys have slept in a tent both winter and summer.”30 It was to take another two years before an addition was constructed.31
In 1914, Indian agent Blewett gave the following description of the Presbyterian school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan: “Dormitories fair, play rooms dirty, water closets dirty. Many pupils dirty and poorly clad. Miss Gilmour’s retirement from this school seems to have started it on the down grade and now it is not fit for children to stay in under its present conditions.” In commenting on the report, Martin Benson noted that the school seemed to be going from “bad to worse.”32
Church officials were well aware of the problems. In 1922, T. B. R. Westgate, the field secretary for the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, inspected the Anglican schools on the Peigan and Blood reserves and concluded they were both in need of replacement. At Peigan, the heating was inadequate, the chimney threatened to collapse, and the bedding needed to be replaced. The Blood Reserve school buildings were “in almost every way unequal to the purpose for which they exist.”33 In 1923, Westgate reported on the dismal conditions at three more schools. The boys’ school at Alert Bay, British Columbia, was “old, leaky, drafty and rests on timbers which in places have almost completely rotted away.” The Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, school buildings were “old, unsafe, antiquated in design, and incapable in every way of accommodating the number of children awaiting admission.”34 The school buildings at Whitefish Lake, Alberta, were “very poor and do not measure to the standards required by your Department.”35 Conditions at these schools did not improve. In January 1931, the Alert Bay principal wrote that because “no action has yet been taken to remedy existing drainage and flood conditions,” heavy rains had once more led to flooding of the boiler room.36 By the fall of that year, the principal was still unable to get funding to waterproof the school’s outside walls.37 In 1936, the Anglican Lord Bishop of Athabasca described the Whitefish Lake and Wabasca, Alberta, schools as being “in deplorable condition.”38 The following year, Indian agent N. P. L’Heureux wrote that although the Anglican school at Wabasca had undergone repairs, the buildings remained “unfit for anybody to live there.”39
Conditions worsened during the Depression. In 1928, conditions were so bad at the school in Mission, British Columbia, that Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott recommended closing the school until a new one could be built.40 In the face of church opposition, he relented, and temporary classrooms were constructed.41 By the fall of 1930, the building still had not been replaced, and the school’s new principal, Father T. J. Fahlman, described the living conditions as “deplorable.”42 In December 1930, Inspector George Pragnell wrote that he dreaded “the possibility of fire” at the school, and recommended the installation of rope fire escapes in the boys’ dormitory.43
In March 1931, Indian agent A. O’N. Daunt drew the department’s attention to “the absolute necessity of a new School at Mission. Years have gone by since it was first promised.” He pointed out that if the government had not promised to build a new school, the church would have carried out more extensive repairs. Daunt concluded, “I absolutely refuse to assume responsibility for anything that may happen to the School and pupils in the future.”44 He had promised to say no more on the issue, but, a month later, reported that due to poor weatherproofing, “the wind blows in one wall and out the other, and wreaths of snow may be seen along the walls, and for that matter may be felt around ones [sic] neck in bed.”45 In 1933, Inspector Pragnell reminded the department that the Mission school was “a very old building, and not at all easy to keep in good order.”46
Later that year, with no support from the federal government, the Oblates constructed a new building at Mission. It accommodated an ice plant, dairy, technical classrooms, kitchen and its storeroom, dining room, and a dormitory.47 The project was funded in part by a significant “bequest of one of its earliest graduates.”48 On the basis of this work, federal officials decided it was no longer necessary for them to build a new school at Mission.49 Yet, the school’s problems were not over. As the 1930s drew to an end, it became apparent that the water supply was contaminated.50 Harold McGill, the director of the Indian Affairs Branch, originally stated that there were no funds in the budget to redress the problem.51 Eventually, money was found to rebuild the reservoir by the end of the year.52
In 1935, Roman Catholic Archbishop Sinnott found the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school to be “not only inadequate to meet the needs of the Reserve, but it is in a most disgraceful, not to say disgusting, condition.” It needed either significant repair or replacement.53 Two years later, when the Gladstone, Manitoba, Board of Trade heard that the school might be condemned and the school relocated, its secretary treasurer, V. A. Vincent, wrote to Indian Affairs, asking whether the new school could be located near Gladstone, since the town “has not been the recipient of any form of Government building.”54
Mount Elgin principal Oliver Strapp submitted a lengthy assessment of needed repairs in 1937. The pupils’ bathroom, which had been set up on an emergency basis several years earlier, lacked appropriate ventilation; the dining room and the boys’ reading room were in need of replastering; the walls in the boys’ recreation room leaked when it rained; all the dormitories needed a proper ventilation system installed; the stairways were in poor condition; the roof needed repair; and the building’s ornamental towers swayed in high winds and contributed to the cracking of interior plaster.55
At the end of the 1930s, it was discovered that the joists and crossbeams holding up the floor of the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school were sinking. The local Indian agent had concluded that the situation was “urgent and dangerous.”56 The Pine Creek school had been constructed in 1899 without government involvement.57 In 1939, inspectors attributed many of its problems to poor construction. The age of the building and the number of defects led a government architect to conclude that the building did not merit repair. Even measures that would halt the deterioration of the building would be expensive.58 The government authorized its repair anyway, instead of building a new school.59
Problems with sanitation and water supply were constant and demonstrated the lack of planning that characterized the establishment of the residential schools. In 1904, Indian Commissioner David Laird echoed Martin Benson’s 1897 comments on the poor location of many schools when he wrote that the sites for the boarding schools seemed “to have been selected without proper regard for either water-supply or drainage. I need not mention any school in particular, but I have urged improvement in several cases in regard to fire-protection.”60
Findings of poor sanitation are common in reports on the nineteenth-century schools. In 1892, J. W. Butler of the McDougall Orphanage in Morley, in what is now Alberta, informed the head of the Methodist Missionary Society, A. Sutherland, that the “school accommodation” was inadequate. There was a pressing need for “lavatories and bath rooms for boys and girls.”61 The following year, an inspector described the sewer at the Presbyterian school in Kamsack as “a menace to the health of all occupants of the building.” He recommended that the sewer be removed as well as the soil beneath it, as it had been contaminated by leakage.62 Dr. M. M. Seymour reported that an 1897 test of the drinking water at the Qu’Appelle school in what is now Saskatchewan was “contaminated with organic matter… that is to say excreta and the water should be condemned for drinking purposes.” The conclusion vindicated Seymour’s long-standing criticism that the “present arrangement of closets and disposal of sewage is contaminating the soil in the vicinity of the wells.”63
Matters were not much better at the Red Deer school. In 1896, Principal C. E. Somerset reported:
The water supply is very poor, there being only a small well holding about twenty gallons, which is pumped dry about three times a day. We have also two large tanks to catch water from the roof. Our supply being so small, water has to be drawn from the river in a tank, causing great labour and loss of time.64
It was not until 1901 that Somerset was able to report, “Our water-supply is now very satisfactory. By the aid of our steam-pump we have all we need from the Red Deer river.”65
In his 1897 report, Martin Benson also commented on the poor quality of the toilet systems installed in the industrial schools. He wrote that the Brandon, Manitoba, school principal was “constantly complaining of foul air arising from these closets.” He recommended that they be replaced with outdoor “earth closets” that could be reached by a covered walkway in winter.66 Because few schools had showers, Benson said, he had seen “eight or ten boys run through the same water in an ordinary bath tub, water being scarce but very dirty at the last.”67
The problem was not limited to the West or to the nineteenth century. A 1901 analysis showed that one of four water samples at the Mount Elgin school in Muncey was “distinctly objectionable and probably dangerous.” The problem likely arose from the fact that the ground over the tile pipes through which the water was pumped was covered with manure that was being used to fertilize the ground.68 Benson pointed out in 1902 that at Mount Elgin, the boys had no “bathing facilities except the water of the Thames in summer and washtubs in winter, taking their morning wash at the pump.” He also recommended that baths for the girls be placed in the laundry.69 In the previous year, the principal of the Battleford school reported, “Our main well having failed us, we are connecting the water system in the school with a good spring some little distance away on the premises, a spring from which we have been hauling our supply of water for some time past; the water is of very good quality, and the supply plentiful.”70
According to Presbyterian minister E. A. Henry at the Regina school in 1908, “every spoonful of water for a large building had to be carried in pails from a distant well.” As a result, it was sometimes not possible to bathe the students.71 In 1915, the principal of the Birtle, Manitoba, school pointed to the inadequacy of the school water supply.72 The Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school sewage system was “entirely unsatisfactory” and in need of immediate repair in 1927.73
There were ongoing problems with the sanitation system at the Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario. A 1927 report noted that the “toilet outside the building is most unsanitary and too close to the school.”74 By 1932, the Ontario health department was complaining that sewage from the school was polluting Lake of the Woods.75 Two students were hospitalized and twenty-four more became sick from an outbreak of intestinal influenza at the school in 1939. Indian agent Frank Edwards linked the outbreak to the problems with the sewage disposal system, which, he said, was overflowing into the lake.76 The following year, Edwards reported that the disposal system was not working, and the water from the taps in the playroom and dining room “is not good.”77
In June 1927 in Kamloops, British Columbia, at the request of Principal J. McGuire, the medical health officer, M. G. Archibald, conducted an inspection of the school. He reported that the younger boys’ recreation room—which was located in the former laundry—was “most inadequate and most unsanitary.” The wooden floors were water-soaked, as was the ground over which the room was built. He suggested the room had contributed to “numerous infections, colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia during the past winter.” The older boys’ dormitories were “scarcely an improvement, being “cold in winter and absolutely unsuitable for the purposes for which they were intended.” The washroom was “decidedly dilapidated and unsanitary.” He saved his strongest language for the outside toilets, which were “in a tumble-down, rotten condition; the soil about them is saturated with sewerage and the stench from them is unbearable. These toilets are a distinct menace to the health of the children and not at all in keeping with appointments of a modern school.” He recommended they be destroyed at once.78
McGuire hoped to use the report to pressure Indian Affairs into paying for improvements at the school. In passing it on to the local inspector of Indian agencies, he noted: “We may consider ourselves extremely fortunate that we have succeeded in carrying out these investigations without the news spreading among the Indians. The nearest approach to it was when Joe Jules, during the cold weather, removed his boy from school.”79
By 1930, the government was forced to consider rebuilding the school at Sandy Bay. It had no permanent water supply and, according to Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham, “there is no chance of carrying out farming” at the school location.80 Four years later, the Sandy Bay principal said the water situation was urgent. During the winter, the school had used a sleigh to haul water from the nearby lake. He reported: “This spring we are still more embarrassed than ever as we haven’t even our usual quantity of rain water. We have had so far only one barrel-full of water from our roof, which I may say was far from being fit to drink.” As a result, three tanks of water had to be hauled from the lake on a daily basis. He asked the department to provide a truck, a tank, and a pump, as a stopgap.81
The heating systems were often as inefficient as the sanitary systems. Sister Félician gave this description of the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school in the 1890s:
In vain did we run around to keep warm; we shivered and our teeth chattered uncontrollably. The refectory was the coldest. The stove roared until we thought the chimney was on fire, yet the room remained icy. The meat, coffee, everything was frozen, and Sister Saint-Fabian had to summon all her strength to cut the beef steak which was like rock. In cooling, the dishes stuck to the table. The nights were frigid.82
In 1897, at the Presbyterian school in Kamsack in what is now Saskatchewan, the teacher wore a fur coat in the classroom, water in a jug remained frozen all day, and a sewing machine could not be operated because the room was too cold.83 In 1899, the newly appointed Brandon school principal, T. Ferrier, complained that the school’s heating system
has been so tampered with and mutilated that it exists no longer in its original form. The projection of the main building is heated by two additional furnaces, which have so many disconnected pipes and broken doors, disordered draughts and dilapidated grates, that it is impossible for the circulation of air to take place.84
The Calgary school had opened in December 1896.85 According to Principal George Hogbin, much of the exterior originally had been simply boarded over with “shiplap” (wooden sheathing). By 1904, it had been lathed and plastered, making it possible “to keep the building fairly warm, which before had been practically impossible.” The baths were moved from the basement to the top floor and students no longer “had to climb the whole height of the building past every door to the exterior, in order to reach their dormitories.”86 But heating problems persisted. In 1906, Hogbin reported that classroom work was “regularly carried on during the winter, that is, whenever the temperature of the schoolroom will allow. Owing to the defects repeatedly reported in our heating system it is occasionally found that the school-room is so cold as absolutely to forbid its use.”87
The school principal in Regina concluded in 1904:
Our heating system is several degrees short of perfection. We burned last year very little short of three hundred tons of soft coal. Even at that we were none too warm. The long rambling shape of the building makes it very difficult to heat by the hot-air system, especially during the stormy days, of which we had many last winter.88
In 1908, due to a coal shortage, the school had to be heated with straw, leaving a covering of fine straw ash throughout the building.89
The boiler at the Birtle school in Manitoba was in such poor repair in 1927 that it could not push the temperature above 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) in the winter. There was no hot-water supply. According to the principal, H. B. Currie, “Every bit of hot water required for bathing 90 pupils and the Staff has to be carried from the kitchen up to the bath rooms, up one or two flights of stairs, in buckets.”90
Not all schools were in a state of collapse. In 1908, as he was deploring the condition of the schools in Regina and on the Blood Reserve in Alberta, Inspector Paget judged the buildings at the Battleford school in Saskatchewan (run by the Anglican Church) to be in good repair, clean, and neat. He found the Brandon school (operated by the Methodists) to be “excellently conducted,” its buildings “scrupulously clean and tidy.”91 And, in a 1920 report, W. M. Graham, after criticizing the management of the Gleichen school in Alberta, commented that the school at Hobbema, Alberta, while old, was “spotlessly clean.” The St. Albert, Alberta, school was “wonderful,” “the finest Indian Institution I was ever in, large, airy and well lighted. The beds and bedding could not be better. There was no crowding, and the food was good and wholesome.” Similarly, the Cluny, Alberta, school was “large, airy and well lighted.… There was nothing in the whole Institution that a person looking for trouble, could find fault with.”92
Although there are many more examples of positive assessments of specific schools, the most telling assessment of the overall quality of the residential school buildings in Canada can be found in a lengthy memorandum that Welfare and Training superintendent R. A. Hoey wrote in 1940. Hoey estimated that, by then, Canada had invested $10 million in residential schools.93 Since he started with Indian Affairs in December 1936, there had never been “the funds necessary to undertake the repairs required at a majority of our residential schools.” As a result, many government and church-owned schools were “in a somewhat dilapidated condition” and had “become acute fire hazards.” He laid responsibility for the “condition of our schools, generally,” on their “faulty construction.” This construction, he said, had failed to meet “the minimum standards in the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions for the education of children.”
He pointed out that poor brickwork at schools at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, and Alert Bay, British Columbia, meant that the walls constantly leaked rainwater. Both school buildings had been in operation for only a decade. The foundation of the ten-year-old school at Birtle was sinking. Faulty eavestroughing was causing the north wall to buckle at the Presbyterian school in Kenora. The roof of the twelve-year-old Lytton, British Columbia, school leaked and was in need of repair. Over the previous three years, the department had made improvements to the water supply at nine schools. There were, however, “still a large number of schools where the water supply is wholly inadequate.” He noted critical shortages at the Chapleau school in Ontario, and the Brandon and Sandy Bay schools in Manitoba.
Hoey’s roll call of disaster continued: the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school needed a new sewage plant; the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school had been on the verge of collapse and still needed substantial repair; the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school was “one of the most dilapidated and insanitary schools we have at present”; the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school was “in poor state of repair,” as were the Wabasca, Whitefish Lake, and Sturgeon Lake schools in Alberta; the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Brocket, Alberta, were so strangely constructed that they swayed and rocked in a high wind; and the ramshackle Squamish, British Columbia, school was “an acute fire hazard.”
The location of some schools defied logic. After noting that the Elkhorn school in Manitoba had been closed during the First World War, Hoey commented that “it is difficult to understand at this date why it was ever re-opened.” Most of the students at the school in southwestern Manitoba came from the North, and “the cost of transportation is quite substantial.” The school principal at Edmonton, Alberta, J. F. Woodsworth, was deemed to be “one of our best principals,” but, even though he was allowed to recruit students from the British Columbia coast, he had not been able in recent years to fill a school “that cost more to erect than any other in our entire system.”
Hoey recommended that the government close twelve schools: in Manitoba, Portage la Prairie and Pine Creek; in Saskatchewan, Round Lake and Delmas; in Alberta, Wabasca, Whitefish Lake, Sturgeon Lake, and two in Brocket; in British Columbia, Kitimaat, Port Simpson, and Squamish. He further recommended that the government transfer funding of the St. Paul’s Hostel in the Yukon, where the majority of the students was Métis, to the Yukon administration, saying, “This is not an Indian Residential School in any sense: there is not at this date a single Indian student in attendance.” He wanted to replace the schools whose closing he recommended with at least twenty-five day-school classrooms. This policy of school closures is one that Hoey would continue to advocate into the 1940s.94
Superintendent Hoey apologized for the length of the memorandum, explaining that “I have felt very keenly, however, owing to the condition of our residential schools since I entered the Department, and my inability to keep these schools in a proper state of repair and efficiency.”95
Perhaps the most chilling revelation in the memorandum is Hoey’s statement that he was “personally of the belief that no residential school should be built in the future—either new or designed for replacement—other than those of fireproof construction throughout.”96 The fact that fireproofing was not already an established building standard is an indictment of government policy—particularly in light of the long history of fires at residential schools.