The St. George’s Anglican school at Lytton, British Columbia, opened in the 1902–03 school year. From its opening until the end of the 1930s, the school was in a constant state of crisis. Almost every one of the problematic issues previously described in this volume was manifested at this school. For the entire forty-year period, relations between the school and the First Nations people were cool at best, and, as a result, the school had difficulty in recruiting students. Inspectors, students, and parents all raised issues about the quality of education, overwork, poor health, inadequate diet, sanitation, building maintenance, fire safety, discipline, truancy, sexual impropriety, and conflicts between staff members. While not unique, the problems of this school serve as an example of the inevitable outcomes of a poorly managed, underfunded, and misdirected system in action.
Like the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, St. George’s was an initiative of the British-based New England Company (NEC). The school’s founding principal was George Ditcham, an Anglican clergyman by training.1 From the outset of its establishment, the Lytton school had recruiting problems. In 1903, the school, which could accommodate forty boys, had only twelve students.2 Three years later, enrolment had increased to twenty-nine.3 It was only by 1908 that Principal Ditcham could boast of a full enrolment, but this was achieved in part by revising the school’s capacity downward to thirty-five.4 Part of the problem might have come from Ditcham’s own attitude towards Aboriginal people. In one annual report, he wrote, “There has been no serious trouble with the morality of the school and the conduct has been excellent when one considers the natural deformities of these Indians.”5 Six years later, he wrote, “Some improvement is noticeable in truthfulness and honesty, and the boys are fairly well-behaved and obedient, though they need constant supervision.”6
Parental discontent mounted through the decade. In 1910, fifty parents and band representatives met with Indian Affairs inspector W. E. Ditchburn to express their frustration with conditions at the Lytton school. According to Ditchburn, the parents felt the students were worked too hard, did not get enough class time, were subject to beatings by a principal who could not control his temper, and were not receiving proper medical attention.
Inspector Ditchburn concluded that Principal Ditcham was “not the proper person to act as Principal of an institution for the education and moral training of Indians.” The inspector assembled the following list of Ditcham’s failings as principal:
1)He has evidently neglected the health of some of his pupils by keeping them at the school too long before sending them to the hospital.
2)That he has admitted that as the pupils under his tuition become older they become vicious in habits and have no respect for him. This undoubtedly demonstrates a lack of ability on his part to conceive of a proper method of training Indian children.
3)That he evidently has not the sympathy of the Indians at heart, and believes more in the lash than moral suasion.
4)That he has a hasty temper which he is unable to control at times when punishing his pupils, and it is a well known fact amongst those who have a good deal to do with Indians that as soon as a person loses his temper with them so does he lose their respect and confidence.
So great was the hostility towards the school that there were only ten pupils in residence, all “small boys ranging in age from 9 to 13 years.” The principal of the nearby girls’ Anglican residential school at Yale said that Lytton’s bad reputation was making it difficult for her to recruit students. Ditcham had gone through five teachers in eight years, leading parents to ask, “If Mr. Ditcham cannot keep teachers there, how does he expect to retain pupils.” In light of all these issues, Inspector Ditchburn recommended that the New England Company be asked to replace Ditcham.7 A month later, the NEC announced that Ditcham would be replaced.8 In his final annual report to Indian Affairs, Principal Ditcham wrote, “There are only five small boys at school—some finished and others absconded, some from the school, some from Lytton hospital—one followed the other like cattle, and as the expense was too great for constables to bring them back and hold them at school, they are still away.”9
Ditcham’s successor, Leonard Dawson, was later described as a “strict disciplinarian.” In a scathing assessment of Dawson, Indian Affairs education official Martin Benson wrote in 1916:
The desertions from the Lytton Industrial School are of frequent occurrence, as many as eight or ten boys being absent at one time. This shows an unsatisfactory state of affairs, which could be prevented if proper discipline were maintained. A case occurred last January were [sic] the constable found a boy at the railway station waiting to steal a ride to Kamloops. He took him in charge and he was returned to the school. It appears that this boy was given permission to go to Kamloops for the purpose of enlisting for overseas service. He was under military age and physically unfit and should not have been allowed to leave the school, especially as he would have had to beat his way on the train. This boy was insufficiently clad and would have most likely frozen to death if he had boarded the freight train and proceeded on his journey.10
Louis Laronde, who was appointed principal in 1920, described Dawson’s administration as one of “repression, with such paraphernalia as hand-cuffs, leg-irons, stocks, convicts’ haircuts and prison cells.”11 Although Laronde’s tenure may have ended this era of “repression,” the memories of the system remained. In 1942, a former student told the school’s new principal about the use of shackles during the Dawson era. Over twenty years later, he had a vivid memory of how two runaway girls had been “chained together and driven home in front of the Principal. They used the shackles to chain runnaways [sic] to the bed. They also had stocks in the playgrounds. And they were used.”12
Laronde’s period in office was short-lived. In the spring of 1921, he fled the school after several female students accused him of indecent conduct. An Anglican Church official investigated the charges and noted, “Some filthy literature which I threw in the fire in disgust should not be in any decent man’s possession.”13
Laronde’s replacement was Rev. A. R. Lett. At the time of Lett’s appointment, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott wrote, “He has had practical experience in farming. He is just now in charge of a rural parish. As far as one can judge from all the facts and recommendations, he seems to fill all the needs of the case.”14
He was mistaken.
In 1927, the district health inspector, Dr. P. M. Wilson, passed a harsh judgment on the Lytton school. The dormitories were overcrowded, inadequately ventilated, and poorly lit. The water supply was so poor that the plumbing regularly became plugged. The heating system did not meet requirements during the colder months. “The laundry, I do not consider fit for any person to work in.” The floor was collapsing, and the wind blew through the walls and windows. “The children working in the building are cold, while breathing in damp, steamy air.” Wilson attributed the development of seven cases of tuberculosis to the faulty conditions in the school, and threatened to condemn the building “if some move is not made to better conditions before the beginning of the next term.”
Wilson added, “The Principal is doing the very best he can under existing circumstances, and it is only, I think, the fact that he has hesitated in adding expense to the Department that he has carried on to this period. Furthermore he has intimated his resignation if conditions are not changed.”15
That same year, the Canadian government purchased the school from the New England Company. Under the agreement of sale, the NEC was to continue to provide funding to the school, which would operate as an Anglican institution. As Scott later explained the arrangement, “The Department does not dictate concerning engagements or dismissals. However, if an employee on the staff was found incompetent, the Department would insist on his removal.”16 One of the provisions of the agreement was that the school principal would “be a clergyman of the Church of England.”17
A new school building was opened in 1928,18 but problems soon reappeared. In February 1934, Principal Lett announced his intention of resigning.19 He felt that his position in the school and community had been undermined by S. E. Higgs, a fellow Anglican missionary. According to Lett, Higgs initially had attempted to take over the direction of the school. Lett reprimanded him for this and then asked Higgs to conduct missionary work with former students. Lett said Higgs seized the opportunity to blacken Lett’s reputation with the First Nations people, going so far “as to publish an article purporting to have come from the old boys of the school but which was written by himself.” Lett, who had suffered a breakdown in the spring of 1933, said he was “living on nerve pills.”20 Lett also believed the local Indian agent was not sufficiently supportive. In a letter to Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Harold McGill, he wrote that, in the past two years, he had recruited twenty-two students, while the Indian agent had recruited only two. As a result, the school was short seventeen students, even though there were school-aged children on the reserves who were not enrolled in school. When the Anglican hierarchy backed Lett in his conflict with Higgs, Lett withdrew his resignation.21 The Indian agent, A. Strang, attributed the recruiting problem to conditions at the school. Truancy, he said, was high and often unreported. In 1934, he informed the departmental secretary that “the children had been continually running away.” He added that he had recently “located and brought back three truants from the Merritt Agency although their absence had not been reported.22
Indian Affairs inspector G. H. Barry reported that same year that “there has been a great falling off in school morale.”23 In October, the boys’ matron and the woman in charge of the laundry had had a dispute in front of the students. The matron resigned.24 Far more serious was the punishment that the boys’ supervisor, Alfred Batcheler, had administered to a runaway boy, Peter Martin. According to Martin, the supervisor:
Blindfolded me and told me to open my mouth as he wanted to give me a chocolate. Instead of a chocolate he poured a spoonful of mustard into my mouth. He then grabbed me by the legs and held me [sic] head down in a pail of water (ice cold) and poured a cup of cold water down my back, and then he put me on a stretcher and held me up in the air and told me to jump.
The matter was investigated by acting Indian agent Robert Howe, who discovered that the “facts were not denied at the School,” although Batcheler admitted “it was a very foolish thing to have done.” Howe thought that parents would use it “as an excuse for not sending their children to the school.”25 Not surprisingly, Indian Affairs now considered requesting Lett’s resignation.
Many parents felt that the students were poorly clothed, poorly fed, and poorly treated. Inspector Barry said he believed that the first two allegations about food and clothing were not true, but that he still had to complete his investigation into the treatment of the students. But, despite his concerns about student treatment, Barry recommended that, in the face of this resistance, “all available Indian children should be forced to attend” the school. He recognized, however, that “in a few cases it may be necessary to secure convictions which would result in the sending of certain boys” to school.26
At the end of October 1934, three staff members were dismissed: Marjorie Bird, the intermediate teacher; Helen Dalgleish, the laundry matron; and Alfred Batcheler, the boys’ supervisor. In a letter to Indian Affairs, Bird complained that she was being let go without cause, adding, “Because the Indians are agitating to get rid of Mr. Lett he tries to pacify them by telling them all that he is dismissing the old staff and making a clean sweep of the school. It will do no good if we are all dismissed, as long as he remains.”27 Deputy Minister McGill backed Lett’s decision, describing him as “a very capable administrator.”28
Health conditions at the school were disastrous in the winter of 1936–37. In that year, 152 students were sick with a combination of measles and whooping cough. This was followed by an influenza attack that affected 170 students, 11 staff members, and 4 emergency nurses.29 Thirteen children died.30 In a letter to the parents of the children who died, Lett wrote, “Your children are just gone before and are patiently waiting for you and as their arms were flung around your neck and shoulders here, so they will greet you in your last and everlasting home. Do not fail them. Remember their joys and smiles and ask God to give you grace to go to them.”31
According to school inspector Barry, the high death rate left the school with a “very bad name among the Indians.”32 In 1938, Barry recommended that Lett be dismissed because of his inability to control the students or regain the respect of the parents.33 However, Indian Commissioner D. M. MacKay concluded that Lett had made sufficient improvement to justify his being allowed to continue in office.34 It was another mistaken decision.
In January 1941, Barry prepared a summary of his reports on the Lytton school since 1937. He had called the washrooms “filthy” (twice in 1937) and had described them as “swimming in water” (1938), had found the floors “very dirty” (1938), and had recommended “more attention be paid to the daily cleaning of the school” (1940). The door from the “intermediate boys’ dormitory to the fire escape was locked,” and the key kept in a place “where smoke and possibly flames might be expected to be with the shaft involved” (1940). The heating of two of the primary classrooms was so poor, he thought it would be “the cause of illness” (1937) and remained “very unsatisfactory” (1938). In 1937, Barry concluded that Principal Lett viewed the local Indian agent as being “perfectly useless,” and the agent, Mr. Strang, held a similar view of Lett. In that year, Barry also commented that the principal did not spend enough time recruiting students for the school, although he noted that he was “not popular with the Indians.” Barry also thought the Indian agent did not visit the school frequently enough, and the principal felt that the agent was neglecting to enrol at least twenty children at the school. The conflicts went unresolved for years.
Some of Barry’s harshest criticisms were reserved for Lett’s treatment of the staff. In 1938, he wrote, the principal
engages the most unsuitable persons as supervisors, particularly on the girls’ side of the school. Sooner or later there is a row of some sort and the girl leaves and later seeks an interview with either the Indian Commissioner or myself. It is impossible to get discontented ex-members of the staff of the St. George’s school to put their complaints in writing. If they would only do this we could deal with the matters complained of at the school.
Barry believed that older students were not getting enough class work, and that runaways were not always reported to the local Indian agent. He also said the boys were out of control, the principal was too often absent, and the boys’ supervisor might have been making “too great a use of corporal punishment.” It was, he added, “most difficult to regulate the punishment of children in a school where the Principal fails in the general administration and control of his own staff.”
Not surprisingly, from 1937 onward, Barry called for a change of principal. In light of some improvement in 1940, he relented and said he was not prepared to insist on a change “at the present time.” But, conditions soon deteriorated further. Barry ended his 1941 report with the note that “Mr. Lett is not professionally qualified to supervise the actual subject matter taught to the children.”35 Lett was not replaced until 1942. The newly appointed principal, C. F. Hives, wrote to Ottawa about the challenges he faced, warning, “After years and years of mal-administration, please don’t look for definite results too quickly from St. George’s.”36
The fact that the federal government was prepared to accept four decades of “mal-administration” of the Lytton school is emblematic of the residential school system’s failings during this period. The Lytton school, it should be emphasized, was not a remote, hastily constructed mission school that operated without scrutiny. It was built in the early twentieth century, and a new school was constructed in the 1920s. Senior Indian Affairs officials received regular reports on the problems with the operation of the school, which the department owned after 1928. Throughout this period, parents, with very good reason, were unwilling to send their children to this school. The government used coercion to get the children into the school—and then failed to protect them from neglect, disease, overwork, and abuse. This was the residential school system in operation.