CHAPTER  2

Operational policies and custodial care

The Working Group on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials recommended that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada prepare a report on residential school “Operational Policies and Custodial Care.” The working group’s Research Recommendations stated:

•This study will seek to understand the regulatory regime in which the schools operated with respect to the care of children including the provision of health services, policies on discipline, runaways, deaths and burials, as well as commentary on Departmental administration of regulations and church compliance with these regulations.

•This study will also examine the degree to which school administrators, church and departmental officials and the government in general were aware of the phenomenon of school deaths, disease and missing children.

Canada’s residential schools and residences for Aboriginal children operated for approximately 130 years. For most of that period, they were funded by Indian Affairs and operated under contract by a number of leading religious denominations. After 1969, the schools and residences in southern Canada were split into separate institutions, with the federal government taking more responsibility for the operation of both institutions. During this period, a number of First Nations authorities also assumed responsibility for the operation of some residences and schools. For certain periods of time, the schools in the Northwest Territories were funded by the Northern Affairs department rather than Indian Affairs. After 1969, the governments of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon were responsible for the operation of the residences and schools in their respective jurisdictions. Given both the time period involved and the number of different governments and government agencies involved, the regulatory regime that governed such issues as health, discipline, and runaways was subject to variation.

It should also be noted that the issues under examination—health policy, education policy, and child welfare—were, in the Canadian context, largely provincial responsibilities. For much of the history of the residential school system, provincial policies and regulations relating to these areas were not applied to residential schools. The federal government did not have its own general policies on institutional health care, education, or child welfare. As a result, it was left to Indian Affairs (or, in the North, Northern Affairs and, later, the territorial governments) to develop such policies as were needed. For most of the history of the residential school system, it is fair to say that formal regulation was minimal, reactive, and ineffective. It is also the case that the system failed to meet the minimum expectations of the day for the provision of custodial care. It must also be said that despite certain problems with reporting, senior government and church officials were well aware of the schools’ ongoing failure to provide adequate levels of custodial care.

Part 1: Regulatory tools

The government had a number of tools available with which to regulate residential schools. These included legislation, regulation, Orders-in-Council, contracts, letters of instructions, federal codes and guidelines, circulars, and policy directives.

Legislation, regulation, and Orders-in-Council all had the power of law. From 1911 onwards, contracts, based on a template developed in 1910, were signed by the government with church-based organizations for the operation of individual schools. Initially, the contracts applied only to church-run boarding schools, but in the 1920s, they came to be applied to all residential schools in Canada. They did not, however, apply to the system of hostels and day schools that was established in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon in the 1950s. Circulars and policy directives would be issued by Indian Affairs to school principals and Indian agents on a system-wide basis. Letters of instruction were generally issued to specific principals or Indian agents.

Legislation and regulation

The Canadian government never developed anything approaching the education acts and regulations by which provincial governments administered public schools. The key piece of legislation used in regulating the residential school system was the Indian Act. First adopted in 1876, this was a multi-purpose piece of legislation that both defined and strictly limited First Nations life in Canada. The Act contained no education-related provisions until 1884. The education provisions were, in general, four to five pages long and dealt mainly with issues related to attendance and truancy.

1884 Indian Act amendments

In 1884, the Indian Act was amended to give First Nations band councils the right to frame rules and regulations for “the attendance at school of children between the ages of six and fifteen years.”¹ This was the first reference to school attendance in the Indian Act. The 1884 Act made no mention of, or provision for, residential schools.

1894 Indian Act amendments

In 1894, the Indian Act was amended to authorize the government to make regulations “to secure the compulsory attendance of children at school.” These regulations could be applied to “the Indians of any province or of any named band.” The amendments also gave the government authority to establish “an industrial school or a boarding school for Indians” and to commit to these schools “children of Indian blood under the age of sixteen years.” Once committed, they could be kept there until they reached the age of eighteen.²

1894 Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children

Under the authority of the 1894 Indian Act amendments, the government adopted its first school-related regulations. According to the Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children, “All Indian children between the ages of seven and sixteen shall attend a day school on the reserve on which they reside for the full term during which the school is open each year.” Exemptions were allowed if the child was being instructed elsewhere, if the child was sick or otherwise unable to attend school, if there was no school within two miles (3.2 kilometres) for children under ten years old or within three miles (4.8 kilometres) for children over ten, if the child had been excused from attending school to assist in farm or domestic work at home, or if the child had already passed a high school entrance examination.

Indian agents were authorized to appoint truant officers, who would have “police powers.” The truant officers were to investigate cases of non-attendance, and could lay complaints against non-compliant parents with justices of the peace or Indian agents. Refusal to comply with the order of a truant officer was punishable by a fine of up to $2, ten days in jail, or both.³

If an Indian agent or justice of the peace thought that any “Indian child between six and sixteen years of age is not being properly cared for or educated, and that the parent, guardian or other person having charge or control of such child, is unfit or unwilling to provide for the child’s education,” he could issue an order to place the child “in an industrial or boarding school, in which there may be a vacancy for such child.” In Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, such an order could be issued without the need to give any notice to the “parent, guardian or other person having charge or control of such child.” In the rest of the country, prior notice was required and, if the parents requested, an inquiry could be held prior to the child’s committal. Under these orders, a child could be committed to residential school until the age of eighteen. This was the first government provision authorizing it to compel attendance at residential schools: it was limited only to those students who had been placed in the schools for what would now be described as “child-welfare reasons.” It did not apply to students who had been voluntarily placed in the schools by their parents.

If a child placed in school under these regulations left a residential school without permission, or failed to return at a promised time, school officials could obtain a warrant from an Indian agent or a justice of the peace authorizing them (or a police officer, truant officer, or employee of the school or Indian Affairs) to “search for and take such child back to the school in which it had been previously placed.” With a warrant, one could enter—by force, if need be—any house, building, or place named in the warrant and remove the child. Even without a warrant, Indian Affairs employees and constables had the authority to arrest a student in the act of escaping from a residential school and return the child to the school.

The regulations specifically identified twenty-three industrial residential schools and eighteen boarding schools. (The decision to list the specific schools created enforcement problems in later years as some schools closed, and new ones were not specifically listed in the regulations.)⁴

1895 regulation amendments

In 1895, the regulations were amended to make them more restrictive. Where they had previously authorized the search for, and return of, any student who had been placed in the school (that is, children who, Indian Affairs had concluded, were not “being properly cared for or educated”), they now allowed for the return to the school of all truant students, including those whose parents had voluntarily placed them in the school.⁵ Indian agents were instructed to use the authority of these new regulations to ensure that the schools were full. Orphans were to be recruited to fill vacancies and truants were to be returned to the schools.⁶ Parents were to be told that if they did not voluntarily enrol their children, they would be compelled to do so.⁷ First Nations leaders who opposed residential schooling could find themselves removed from office by the federal government.⁸

1908 Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children

A new set of regulations was adopted in 1908. The 1908 Regulations Relating to the Education of Indian Children stated, “All Indian children between the ages of six and fifteen shall attend a day school on the reserve on which they reside.” Truant officers were no longer granted “police powers” (it had been determined that the Indian Act did not provide the authority to grant such powers). Rather than listing the schools, the regulations stated that all boarding schools and industrial schools receiving per capita grants for the education of “Indian children” were designated as industrial and boarding schools for the purposes of the regulation. The rest of the provisions remained essentially unchanged.⁹

1920 Indian Act amendment

The education provisions of the Indian Act were completely rewritten in 1920. The amendments gave the federal government the authority to compel any First Nations student to attend either a day school or a residential school until the child turned fifteen. It authorized the appointment of truant officers. These officers were granted the powers of a “peace officer,” and could

enter any place where he has reason to believe there are Indian children between the ages of seven and fifteen years, and when requested by the Indian agent, a school teacher or the chief of a band shall examine into any case of truancy, shall warn the truants, their parents or guardians or the person with whom any Indian child resides, of the consequences of truancy.

Parents, guardians, or persons with whom a child was residing were subject to arrest, prosecution, fines, and jail if they did not return truant children to school. They could be tried by a justice of the peace or an Indian agent. Truant children could be arrested without warrant and returned to school.¹⁰

Since the education provisions in the 1920 Indian Act amendments were much more detailed, no regulations were adopted under it and previous regulations were no longer in force.¹¹

1930 Indian Act amendment

In 1930, the Indian Act was amended to increase the discharge age from fifteen to sixteen. The minister of Indian Affairs was allowed to order that a child be kept in school until he or she turned eighteen if it was thought “it would be detrimental to any particular Indian child to have it discharged from school on attaining the full age of sixteen years.”¹²

1933 Indian Act amendment

The Indian Act was amended in 1933 to appoint all Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) officers as truant officers.¹³ This appears to have been a formalization of a 1927 order that had appointed all rcmp officers as truant officers.¹⁴

1951 Indian Act

The 1951 Indian Act, the first major revision to the Act in decades, contained ten sections dealing with education. One section opened the door to shifting the responsibility for First Nations education to provincial governments; four sections dealt with attendance, truancy, and expulsion; three sections affirmed the rights of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches (making no mention of Aboriginal spirituality); one section outlined the minister’s authority; and the final section was simply a set of definitions. Residential schools remained one of the classes of schools that First Nations children could be compelled to attend.¹⁵ One new provision stated that a student who was suspended or expelled from school or who did not attend school regularly “shall be deemed to be a juvenile delinquent within the meaning of the Juvenile Delinquents Act, 1929.”¹⁶

1953 Regulations With Respect to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Discipline for Indian Residential Schools

A new set of regulations relating to residential schools was adopted after the 1951 revision of the Indian Act. The four-page document covered a broader range of topics than the previous regulations. It stipulated that residential schools would follow “the curriculum of the province or territory within the boundaries of which an Indian school is situated” and use the textbooks prescribed for that curriculum. By requiring that “every pupil in a residential school shall receive classroom instruction for the number of hours weekly as required by the curriculum,” it did away with the half-day system by which students had spent half a day in class and half a day at what was supposed to be vocational training, but was often closer to unpaid manual labour and chores associated with running the school facility. It did not, however, place any limits on the time that students might still be required to spend at chores outside the school day. Students were not to be enrolled, discharged, or suspended without the approval of Indian Affairs. The only condition under which students could be removed from the school without Indian Affairs’ approval was when the school principal was acting on medical advice. Regulation 10.4 required, “The principal shall take prompt action to effect the return to school of any truant pupil, and shall report promptly to the Superintendent, Indian Agency, every case of truancy.”

Grants were to be provided to pay for the initial journey to a school and the return journey upon discharge. Other grants for transportation required prior approval from Indian Affairs.

Item 13 of the regulations required the principal of every school to maintain standards acceptable to Indian Affairs in relation to:

(a) the adequacy in numbers and qualifications of the school staff;

(b) the number of pupils served by the school;

(c) diet and all phases of food preparation and service;

(d) clothing and bedding;

(e) dormitory accommodation;

(f) heating and ventilation;

(g) cleanliness, sanitation, water supply and laundry services;

(h) lighting;

(i) interior decoration;

(j) safety precautions;

(k) classroom instruction;

(l) recreational activities;

(m) counselling and guidance;

(n) home and school relationships;

(o) the maintenance of records;

(p) the accounting for funds, stock and equipment.

The standards were not defined. The principal was also responsible for:

(a) the maintenance and operation of the school buildings, grounds and equipment;

(b) the assignment of duties to the staff and the supervision of the performance thereof;

(c) the preparation and dissemination of rules relating to the functioning of the school;

(d) the provision and supervision of measures to ensure the health, safety, welfare and educational progress of the pupils;

(e) the submission of reports and returns required by the Superintendent;

(f) (the prompt submission of reports to the Regional Director of Family Allowances concerning the admission and discharge of pupils to and from the school;

(g) the prompt and accurate entry of receipts and expenditures in the Cash Receipt and Expenditure Book; and

(h) the practice of fire drill not less than once a month.

The position of the principal in relation to the students was also defined. He or she was to “assume the responsibilities of parent or guardian with respect to the welfare and discipline of the pupils under his charge.”

The principal was obliged to give Indian Affairs notice of intent to absent himself from his duties. All the staff members were responsible to the principal. Pupils were required to “conform to the rules for the conduct and behaviour of pupils while on or near the school premises or on any premises where any activity of the school is taking place.”¹⁷

Overall inadequacy of regulatory regime

It was recognized by those who worked within the system that the level of regulation was inadequate. In 1897, Indian Affairs education official Martin Benson wrote, “No regulations have been adopted or issued by the Department applicable to all its schools, as had been done by the Provincial Governments.”¹⁸ The situation did not improve over time. The education section of the 1951 Indian Act and the residential school regulations adopted in 1953 were each only four pages in length.¹⁹ For comparison, the Manitoba Public Schools Act of 1954 was ninety-one pages in length.²⁰ In addition to the Act, the Manitoba government had adopted nineteen education-related regulations.²¹

It is also apparent that many senior officials within the residential school system had little knowledge of the existing rules and regulations. The general secretary of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, which operated the Anglican residential schools in Canada, asked Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott in 1920, “Is corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes recognized, or permitted in the Indian Boarding schools?” He noted that whether or not it was permitted, he imagined that it was applied in every boarding school in the country.²² In 1922, an Indian agent in Hagersville, Ontario, wrote to headquarters, inquiring if there had been any changes in the regulations regarding education since the adoption of a set of education regulations in 1908. His question suggests he was completely unaware of major changes to the Indian Act regarding education that had supplanted previous regulations in 1920.²³

In 1926, J. K. Irwin, the newly appointed principal of the Gordon’s Reserve school in Saskatchewan, discovered upon taking office that he could not find any “laid down regulations as to the duties and powers of a Principal of an Indian Boarding School.” He wrote to the Indian Affairs department, asking for a copy of such regulations, since he wanted to know “exactly what I am to do and what powers I have.”²⁴ Departmental secretary J. D. McLean informed him that “there are no printed regulations concerning the duties and powers of the principal of an Indian residential school.” Irwin was told that he was “responsible to the Church and the Department for every phase of the activity” at the school. If he had any specific questions, he should refer them to Indian Affairs.²⁵ In 1928, when the principal of an Alberta boarding school requested a copy of the regulations concerning the education of Indian children, she was informed by the department’s senior education officer that “the only printed matter in this connection is the Indian Act, Section 9 to 11A inclusive.”²⁶

Orders-in-Council and contracts

The initial Canadian residential schools were church initiatives, with the federal government’s providing small per capita grants. These schools were generally referred to as “boarding schools.” Until the beginning of the 1890s, the boarding schools were funded at a rate of between $50 and $60 per student.²⁷ Boarding school rates increased slightly in 1892, and ranged from $50 to $72 per capita.²⁸ There is no record to suggest that the government placed any significant regulatory requirements on these schools.

Starting in 1883, the federal government began establishing a second type of residential school. These larger institutions were known as “industrial schools” and were intended as part of a broader policy of Canada’s colonization of northwestern North America. Their construction and operation were approved by Parliament, and, although each principal was a church appointee, the government covered all costs associated with the operation of these schools. The federal government also provided the principals (or the local bishop) with directions as to how the school was to be operated.

The 1892 Order-in-Council

In 1892, the federal government issued an Order-in-Council governing the funding operation of its industrial schools. The order converted the Qu’Appelle, Battleford, and High River schools to a per capita funding model. The conversion was in effect a significant reduction: the funding per student declined from $134.67 to $115.00 (Qu’Appelle), $175.45 to $140.00 (Battleford), and $185.55 to $130.00 (High River). Under the Order-in-Council, which applied to all industrial schools but not to the boarding schools, repair was to be a shared responsibility: the government was to supply the material; the churches, the labour. The government was to supply the books, maps, and globes. From the annual per capita grant, the churches were to pay for maintenance, salaries, and expenses. The government would also authorize the school’s pupilage (the number of students for whom the government was prepared to pay a grant).

The churches were obliged to follow “the rules of the Indian Department as laid down from time to time and to keep the schools at a certain standard of instruction, dietary and domestic comfort, and that the Inspectors and Officers of the Indian Department may at any time inspect and report upon the Institutions.” No child was to be admitted to the school without the department’s approval. The system was put into effect in July 1893.²⁹

This Order-in-Council is the first clear statement of government authority to regulate school conditions. It does not set out the standards: it simply asserts the government’s right to set and enforce standards. The government did not develop or enforce the standards referred to in the Order-in-Council.

The 1910 contract

During the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a concerted campaign organized by the leaders of Protestant missionary organizations in eastern Canada to dramatically reduce the number of residential schools. They were motivated by both the growing cost of the schools to the missionary organizations and the ongoing reports of poor health conditions in the schools. The campaign failed for a variety of reasons, including opposition from Catholic officials and Protestant missionaries in western Canada.³⁰ It did lead to the negotiation of a boarding school funding agreement between the government and the churches in November 1910. The contract provided both significant increases in the per capita grant and incentives to improve the quality of the boarding schools.³¹

At that time, per capita rates for boarding schools had not increased since 1891: they were $60 for schools in eastern Canada and $72 for schools in the West and North. The new agreement divided the country into Eastern, Western, and Northern divisions. There was a single per capita rate for the Northern Division schools of $125. In the Eastern Division, the rates could vary between $80 and $100, and in the West, they could vary between $100 and $125. On a percentage basis, the increases were substantial, ranging between 33% and 74%. Although they represented an increase, the new boarding school per capita rates were still below the per capita rates granted to industrial schools under the 1892 Order-in-Council. The average per capita grant under this system was $115.

The schools themselves were to be divided into three classes: A, B, and C. Class A schools were church-owned schools in good condition and would receive the maximum grant for their division. They had to have substantial buildings in a good state of repair, with a full basement, a stone or cement foundation, a plentiful supply of pure water throughout the building, a proper system of sanitation, hospital accommodation for students with infectious diseases or tuberculosis, modern ventilation, adequate space in both dormitories and classrooms for the number of students enrolled, modern heating, and a sufficient land base for farming and gardening. Class B schools were government-owned schools. They would have to meet the same requirements as Class A schools, but would receive only the minimum per capita grant for their division. Class C schools were church-owned schools that, while “sanitary and kept in a good state of repair,” did not meet all the requirements of a Class A school. These schools, which were required to have hospital accommodation, modern ventilation, adequate classroom and dormitory space, and an agricultural land base, would receive the minimum per capita grant. Schools that upgraded from Class C to A would receive an increase in funding. These were the first government-imposed standards for any residential schools.

The contract called for 500 cubic feet (14.1 cubic metres) of space per child in each dormitory. On a per-pupil basis, each classroom was to have 16 square feet (1.5 square metres) of floor space and 250 square feet (23.2 square metres) of air space. Under the provisions of the contract, the churches agreed to “support, maintain, and educate” a specific number of students. They were not to admit any child under the age of seven and needed Indian Affairs’ permission to keep a child who was over the age of eighteen. No child was to be admitted without the approval of Indian Affairs and a doctor’s examination (“where practicable”). “Half-breed” children could not be admitted unless a sufficient number of “Indian children” could not be obtained.

Students were to be given sufficient clothing, food, lodging, and accommodation for their “comfort and safety.” With certain exceptions, the churches were to provide tools and equipment. Students and their clothes were to be kept clean and verminfree, and the schools were to be free from flies, insects, and vermin.

Classes were to be held five days a week and “industrial exercises” six days a week. There could be no more than one month of vacation, which was to be taken between July 1 and October 1 each year. During that month, children were allowed to visit their homes, but Indian Affairs would “not pay any part of the transportation either going or returning.” The schools were instructed to observe the King’s Birthday, Victoria Day, Dominion Day, and Thanksgiving Day. The churches were to provide reports as required and allow Indian Affairs’ representatives to conduct “thorough and complete” inspections of the schools. Indian Affairs could also order the churches to make needed changes or alterations to the schools.

The contract placed only three obligations on Indian Affairs: to make quarterly payments based on the school’s enrolment; to provide medicine, schoolbooks, stationery, and school “appliances”; and, in the case of government-owned buildings, to maintain them in good repair and provide for sanitation and “sanitary appliances.” If the government believed a church was not adhering to the provisions of the contract, it could be cancelled with six months’ notice. ³²

The 1910 contract went into effect on April 11, 1911, and was intended to run for five years.³³ In the first few years after the contract was signed, the federal government spent $150,000 a year upgrading many of the Class C schools. However, this spending ended with the commencement of the First World War in 1914.³⁴ When the contract lapsed in 1916, it was not renegotiated.³⁵ Both the government and churches continued to operate as if the contract was still in effect, however, and, when new schools opened, it was used as the template for a new operating agreement between the church organization and the government. Although per capita rates would increase (and decrease) in coming years, the system established by the contract negotiated in 1910 remained in place until the late 1950s.

Letters of instruction

When the federal government established industrial schools at Battleford in 1883 and at Qu’Appelle and High River in 1884, it did not issue a set of uniform instructions to all three principals. Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney supplied Thomas Clarke with the directions for the operation of the Battleford industrial school in 1883.³⁶ The following year, Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet sent out directions to the principals of the newly opened Qu’Appelle and High River schools. Both sets of directions were brief and full of generalities.³⁷ In 1889, Vankoughnet sent Paul Durieu, the Bishop of New Westminster, an eight-page “digest of the views of the Department in respect to the manner in which” a number of new Oblate-run industrial schools in British Columbia were to be operated.³⁸ This document provided more detailed guidance than had been issued at the opening of the Battleford, Qu’Appelle, and High River schools, in that it touched—still in a general manner—on matters such as food, clothing, sanitation, and accommodation.³⁹ Policy was developed on a school-by-school basis, with no overarching set of guidelines. Newly appointed principals often were unaware of instructions that had been sent to their predecessors. It was not until 1894 that the department established a Schools Branch, which employed three people.⁴⁰

Health-related admission policies

Student health depended on the presence of policies that ensured that children with infectious diseases were not admitted to school.⁴¹ It was not until 1896 that Indian Commissioner A. E. Forget distributed health certification forms to all principals in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. He informed them:

It is felt that the standard of health required for admission to Boarding and Industrial schools should be raised and that a sufficient number of healthy recruits to keep your authorized enrolment to the maximum can be secured, thus reducing to a minimum the probability of being called upon to discharge a pupil on the grounds of health before his, or her, training is complete.

Principals were to send him a copy of the completed form when a student was admitted.⁴²

By 1909, the school application form for all residential schools instructed physicians who were inspecting potential students not to admit any “child suffering from scrofula [a term used to describe some forms of tuberculosis] or any form of tubercular disease.”⁴³ This is the first nationwide health form that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada located in its review of files. (The previously mentioned form that Forget distributed was limited to Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.) The 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches governing the operation of the schools required that students not be admitted to schools “until, where practicable, a physician, to be named by the Superintendent General, has reported that the child is in good health, and suitable as in inmate of said school.”⁴⁴

The certificate of health form in use by 1920 asked for the student’s age, height, weight, and defects (if any) of the limbs, eyesight, and hearing. The physician was also to state if there were any signs of scrofula or “other forms of tubercular disease,” describe any evidence of cutaneous (skin) disease, state whether the child was subject to fits, state whether the child had had smallpox, and report on whether the child had been vaccinated. The physician was also to provide a judgment on whether the child was “generally of sound and healthy constitution and fitted to enter an Indian school.” The certificate specifically instructed physicians: “No child suffering from scrofula or any form of tubercular disease is to be admitted to school; if in any special case it is thought that this rule should be relaxed, a report should be made to the Department setting forth the facts.”⁴⁵

In 1933, the form that physicians were to fill out after examining students was amended. It no longer included the instruction “No child suffering from scrofula or any form of tubercular disease is to be admitted to school.” This provision had been in the form since 1909.⁴⁶ Instead, it asked, “Has this child active tuberculosis in your opinion?” If the answer was yes, the doctor was to describe the infection. The presence or absence of trachoma and other communicable eye diseases, and syphilis, were also to be reported. The doctor was to describe any condition that would make the child unsuitable for residential school or of which the principal should have a warning.⁴⁷

Federal codes and guidelines

Building and fire codes

For much of their history, Canadian residential schools operated beyond the reach of fire regulations. Constitutionally, provincial governments had responsibility for establishing and enforcing building codes, but, prior to the 1970s, they delegated this responsibility to municipalities. The result was a multiplicity of codes—or, in some cases, a complete lack of regulation. Many residential schools were located in remote rural and northern locations that lacked municipal government, building codes, or fire inspectors. In 1941, the National Research Council (nrc) published a National Building Code. It was not until 1963 that the nrc developed a companion National Fire Code. Neither of these codes had legal standing. Instead, they were meant to be used by municipalities as a model for their building codes. It was only through a slow and uneven process that municipalities adopted these codes. In 1973, eight provinces took the responsibility for building codes away from the municipalities, issuing province-wide regulations based on the national building codes.⁴⁸

The Canada Food Rules

Indian Affairs never established a national dietary or nutritional standard for the residential schools that it operated. As noted, the 1892 Order-in-Council obliged the industrial schools to follow “the rules of the Indian Department as laid down from time to time and to keep the schools at a certain standard of instruction, dietary and domestic comfort.” The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was not able to locate any such Indian Affairs rules relating to food. Neither did it locate any reference to such rules. The 1910 contract required that boarding school students be given sufficient food for their “comfort and safety.” The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has not located any document that sets out the Indian Affairs definition of what constituted a sufficient diet. The Nutrition Division of the Department of Pensions and National Health published Canada’s Official Food Rules in 1942.⁴⁹ These were never more than guidelines, but they became the first national benchmark for the assessment of diets at Canada’s residential schools.

School inspection

The government had little ability to determine if the various policies and regulations described above were being implemented. In 1885, the federal government had entered into agreements with the provincial governments of Ontario, Québec, and the Maritimes to have provincial government inspectors inspect Indian Affairs residential and day schools in those provinces.⁵⁰ Schools often went years without inspection.⁵¹ It was not until 1922 that the federal government arranged to have all the residential and day schools in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta inspected by provincial school inspectors.⁵² As provincial government employees, they had no authority to order improvements.⁵³ Their inspections generally were limited to teaching- and classroom-related matters. Until 1946, when J. W. McKinnon was appointed as territorial school inspector, none of the schools in the Northwest Territories were subject to regular, professional inspection.⁵⁴

The federal government was well aware that the schools were not well regulated. When it negotiated a new funding formula with the churches in the 1950s, the federal government insisted on the inclusion of provisions giving it “a very substantial degree of control” over the operation of the schools. Such control was needed, the federal government argued, because “the standards in many of the church-operated schools had been scandalously low.”⁵⁵ Despite this, the federal control over the schools remained limited. When discussing the prospect of taking the schools from the churches in the 1960s, Indian Affairs Assistant Deputy Minister R. F. Battle noted, “At the present time, some principals feel under no obligation to support government policy.”⁵⁶

The preceding sections constitute a brief summary of the Indian Affairs policies in relation to custodial care. Not only was the system underregulated, but there was also little ability to enforce the existing regulations. These failures had significant impacts on student health. The failure to establish and enforce a proper dietary standard meant that students were undernourished for most of the system’s history. This undernourishment increased their vulnerability to infectious disease. The failure to enforce the regulation prohibiting the admission of infectious students contributed to healthy students’ being exposed to disease. Overcrowding increased infection rates within the schools. The failure to establish and enforce adequate regulation of disciplinary measures left students open to physical abuse. Such abuse undermined students’ health in a variety of ways, particularly by increasing stress levels. It also drove many students to take the potentially dangerous and sometimes deadly decision to run away from school. It was not until the 1970s that nationwide instructions were given as to steps that principals were to take when students ran away. The failure to have such a policy in place prior to that date contributed to a number of student deaths.

Part 2: Administration and compliance

The Working Group on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials recommended that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission assess the “Departmental administration of regulations and church compliance with these regulations.” The following sections address the administration in relation to those areas that directly and indirectly affected student health.

Nutrition

By the late nineteenth century, health officials were well aware of the close link between diet and health. A key element in most tuberculosis treatment, other than rest and fresh air, was the provision of nutritious meals—including large servings of milk.⁵⁷ Despite this, it was not until 1958 that residential school funding was increased to a level thought by the Nutrition Division to allow for the provision of meals that would be “fully adequate nutritionally.”⁵⁸ Neither were there any enforced standards. Instead, as with other aspects of the operation of the schools, there was a series of vague and partial instructions and recommendations.⁵⁹ For example, the 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches for the operation of the boarding schools obliged the schools to provide students with “subsistence … necessary to their personal comfort and safety.”⁶⁰ In 1942, the federal government set out a national dietary guideline for all Canadians, Canada’s Official Food Rules. These guidelines were updated in 1944, 1949, and 1961.⁶¹

Lack of appropriate funding and standards meant that, for decades, the schools provided students with inadequate diets. From the 1890s onwards, there were reports from both school and Indian Affairs staff on the inadequacy of school diets.⁶² Reports of this nature continued into the 1930s.⁶³ The staples were often hard to obtain at the schools, a fact that was well known in Ottawa. Milk, in particular, was often in short supply. Although milk was not part of a traditional Aboriginal diet, North American medical experts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries viewed it as an essential part of a child’s diet and a key component of the diet of anyone with, or at risk of developing, tuberculosis.⁶⁴ Residential school dairy herds were often inadequate in size and in poor health. As a result, milk for residential school students was limited— and possibly tubercular.⁶⁵

Even when the dairy herds were producing satisfactorily, the students did not always get the full benefit of the milk the school was producing. The cream was often separated from the milk. The skimmed milk was then served to the students, and the butter and cream were sold to the public to increase school revenue. In 1922, British Columbia Indian Affairs official R. Cairns wrote, “If I had my way I would banish every separator from these Industrial and Boarding Schools. The pupils need the butter fat so much.”⁶⁶

The memoirs of former students have stressed the poor quality and limited quantity of residential school food.⁶⁷ Students at the Mohawk Institute in southern Ontario came to refer to their school as the “Mush Hole” because of the porridge that was a breakfast staple.⁶⁸ The theft of food and the disciplining of students for stealing food were commonplace.⁶⁹ In at least one case, hungry students got in trouble with the law for stealing from local stores.⁷⁰ Runaways often said they had been motivated to leave by the poor quality of the food they received at the schools.⁷¹ Parents often took up their children’s complaints, at times refusing to send their children to schools if they believed the food was insufficient.⁷²

Despite the many negative reports, the government was never prepared to provide the detailed direction needed to improve the diet—in large measure because officials were aware of the fact that few improvements could be made without a corresponding improvement in funding. When faced with reports of poor diet at a Saskatchewan school, Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott simply instructed the Anglican Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada that “the children be provided with good, substantial and well cooked food.”⁷³ In preparation for the 1930 opening of the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school, Dr. E. L. Stone, the director of medical services for Indian Affairs, advised the principal “to feed your pupils better than you would think necessary. The healthiest schools are those in which the feeding is best.” He recommended plenty of whole milk, protein, and brown bread.⁷⁴ It was all good advice, but it was only advice and never converted into directives. This combination of vague instruction and inconsistent application characterized the government’s policy towards student diet throughout this period.

The root problem was Ottawa’s underfunding of the system, an underfunding that was at least initially based on a belief that children would be able to grow enough food to make the schools largely self-supporting. For some schools, economic self-sufficiency could be achieved only by cutting the students’ diet, or by selling food or food products that might otherwise have gone to them. Principals also drew attention to the link between low grants and poor diet.⁷⁵

Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney’s 1883 instruction to Battleford school principal Thomas Clarke, that “the strictest economy must be practised in all particulars,” certainly had implications for school food policy.⁷⁶ Twenty years later, Indian Affairs official Martin Benson wrote that “there is almost too much economy exercised at this school as regards the clothing and diet of the pupils,—this having been rendered necessary by the increased cost of supplies, fuel and labor and the difficulty of recruiting pupils.”⁷⁷ In the early 1930s, the federal government cut the school per capita grant by 15%. While grants remained low, food prices kept rising. In 1938, after the government’s reduction of the per capita grant by 15%, the Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential School Commission pointed out that from 1935 to 1938, the cost of flour had gone up 43%; rolled oats, 8%; tea, 24%; and sugar, 6%.⁷⁸

Residential school funding was cut again at the start of the Second World War. These cuts had the predictable negative impact on residential school diets. Parents, physicians, nutritionists, Indian Affairs agents, principals, and church officials all raised concerns over poor diets at schools during the war years.⁷⁹ Starting in 1944, the Canadian Red Cross surveyed the diets at a number of residential schools.⁸⁰ The studies identified deficiencies of vitamins and minerals in the diets. Kitchens were poorly equipped, staff was poorly trained, and government funding was inadequate.⁸¹

The churches recognized that school diets were deficient and sought additional government funding. The 1946 report of the Anglican Church’s Indian Work Investigation Commission into the condition of residential schools observed that a “physician associated with the Indian Department” had told them that he did not “consider that the diet given to the children is sufficiently varied or balanced. In view of the high incidence of tuberculosis; he recommended that the milk ration be increased.” The Anglicans recommended that the ration be increased at once, observing that, in some cases, it needed to be doubled or tripled. The report noted that at one Anglican school, the food was “unsufficient [sic] in quantity and extremely poor in quality.”⁸² At the hearing of the federal joint committee studying the Indian Act in 1947, the Protestant churches made it clear they were not receiving sufficient funds to feed students according to federal standards.⁸³ Aboriginal organizations appearing before the committee made the same point.⁸⁴

In 1946, the Nutrition Division of the federal Department of National Health and Welfare established a nutritional service for residential schools. As part of the service, nutritionists visited schools, assessed menus, and made recommendations for changes in diet and food preparation.⁸⁵ The service’s reports from 1946 and 1947 confirmed the conclusions of earlier studies: the diet was limited, the food was poorly prepared, and the funding was inadequate.⁸⁶ In addition, the government continued to receive critical reports on residential school diets from Indian Affairs field staff and school staff.⁸⁷ After two years of work, the head of the Nutrition Division informed Indian Affairs that there had been no improvement at the residential schools that the division had been visiting, and that little could be expected without an improvement in funding (along with other needed changes).⁸⁸

Into the mid-1950s, schools were still failing to feed students at a level consistent with the Canada Food Rules. A 1956 evaluation of the Norway House, Manitoba, school menu found that the quantities of citrus fruits, vegetables (other than potatoes), and eggs were “considerably lower” than recommended by the Canada Food Rules. The evaluation report stated that the older children were not receiving enough milk.⁸⁹ There were similar reports from other schools.⁹⁰

Until 1957, schools were expected to pay for feeding their students with the money from the per capita grant. In that year, the government adopted a new system, under which schools were to be reimbursed for their actual expenditures. However, to control costs, a food allowance was established that operated on a per capita basis.⁹¹ The food allowance came to be based on a Nutrition Division estimate of the amount of money that would be required for diets to be “fully adequate nutritionally.” The Nutrition Division also recommended the rates be adjusted annually in response to changes in costs, shipping, and the availability of wholesale food supplies.⁹²

As a result of the new food allowance, there were improvements in the meals being served to students.⁹³ Although, in many cases, the new allowance represented an increase in funding, principals found it difficult to adhere to the Canada Food Rules and stay within budget.⁹⁴ After initial delays, the general food allowance was applied to the hostels in northern Canada.⁹⁵ Because the allowance did not fully account for price differences, some facilities found it difficult to feed students adequate meals and stay within budget. There were reports from as late as 1969 of northern residences unable to buy enough food to satisfy student appetites.⁹⁶

Many of the problems that inspectors identified in the 1940s were still being reported in the 1970s. Food budgets were reported as being too low and meals were inadequate.⁹⁷ In some residences, there still was little or no menu planning.⁹⁸ It was difficult to recruit and keep qualified cooks.⁹⁹ Poor cooking methods in some schools decreased the nutrient value of some meals.¹⁰⁰ At some schools, cooks still struggled with poorly designed and poorly maintained kitchens.¹⁰¹ Despite these limits, in comparison with the reports from the 1940s and 1950s, it is clear that the dietary conditions at the schools had significantly improved by the 1970s.¹⁰²

The failure to establish and enforce dietary standards, coupled with chronic underfunding, meant that the long-term health and physical development of the students were compromised by an inadequate diet. Undernourished children were also far more likely to succumb to infectious illnesses, particularly tuberculosis, which was rampant in the schools for much of their history.

Building conditions

According to an 1897 report, most of the industrial schools that the federal government had established in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories had been poorly sited and poorly built. Indian Affairs official Martin Benson wrote that the buildings had been “hurriedly constructed of poor materials, badly laid out, without due provision for lighting, heating or ventilation.” In addition, drainage was poor and water and fuel supplies were inadequate.¹⁰³ Conditions were no better in the church-built boarding schools. In 1904, Indian Commissioner David Laird echoed Benson’s comments when he wrote that the sites for the boarding schools on the Prairies 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.”¹⁰⁴ Over the next four decades, there was little overall improvement. In 1940, R. A. Hoey, who had served as the Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training since 1936, wrote a lengthy assessment of the condition of existing residential schools. He concluded that many schools were “in a somewhat dilapidated condition” and had “become acute fire hazards.” He laid responsibility for the “condition of our schools, generally,” upon 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.”¹⁰⁵ Since there were no enforced federal or provincial building or fire codes at the time, it is likely that Hoey meant that the buildings, when they were constructed, did not meet the standards of the regularly accepted building practices of the day. This was the case even though it was not uncommon for the government’s chief architect to review the building plans of boarding schools and industrial schools.¹⁰⁶

Poorly constructed buildings were poorly maintained. Government and church officials regularly made negative reports on building quality. The following are examples.

•In 1907, it was reported that “the dangerous condition of the building” (the Norway House, Manitoba, school) was “a menace to the health of the pupils.”¹⁰⁷

•In 1908, Kuper Island, British Columbia, principal P. Claessen described his school as “insanitary [sic]” and “ruinous.”¹⁰⁸

•In 1908, the boys’ dormitory at the Anglican school on the Blood Reserve was described by an inspector as “without exception the worst building I was in on my travels and no time should be lost in replacing it.”¹⁰⁹ The building was not replaced for twenty years, until 1927.¹¹⁰

•In 1923, the boys’ school at Alert Bay, British Columbia, was described as “old, leaky, drafty and rests on timbers which in places have almost completely rotted away.”¹¹¹

•In 1930, the Mission, British Columbia, school was described as being in “deplorable” condition. The following year, the Indian agent pointed out that a new school building was desperately needed, and a 1933 inspection observed that the building was in poor repair.¹¹²

•In 1936, the Anglican school in Wabasca, Alberta, was described as “deplorable,” and, by the following year, an inspector said it was “unfit for anybody to live” in.¹¹³

The story of the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school illustrates the long decline that schools had undergone during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1939, it was discovered that the joist and cross beams holding up the floor of the school were sinking. The local Indian agent had concluded that the situation was “urgent and dangerous.”¹¹⁴ 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.¹¹⁵ However, instead of building a new school, the government authorized the repair of the school.¹¹⁶

There were specific reports of poor water supply or unsanitary sewage conditions at the Morley, Alberta, school in 1892; the Red Deer, Alberta, school in 1896; the Presbyterian school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, in 1893; the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school in 1897; the Brandon, Manitoba, school in 1897; the Muncey, Ontario, school in 1901; the Battleford, Saskatchewan, school in 1901; the Regina, Saskatchewan, school in 1908; the Birtle, Manitoba, school in 1915; the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school in 1927 and 1934; the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school in 1931 and 1934; and the Mission, British Columbia, school in 1938.¹¹⁷ These failings had documented health impacts. A report on conditions in the Kamloops, British Columbia, school in 1927 concluded that poor construction had contributed to “numerous infections, colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia during the past winter.”¹¹⁸ From 1927 to 1940, there were ongoing reports on the inadequacy of the sewage system at the Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario.¹¹⁹ Two students were hospitalized and twenty-four more became ill from an outbreak of intestinal influenza at the school in 1939.¹²⁰

Furnaces were often inadequate. There were stories of teachers wearing fur coats in class and of cups of coffee freezing in classrooms. ¹²¹ The boiler at the Birtle, Manitoba, school was in such poor repair in 1927 that it could not push the temperature above fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten degrees Celsius) in the winter.¹²² At Norway House in northern Manitoba, the furnace was so poor that a church official concluded that it was “impossible to heat the buildings.”¹²³

After surveying the legacy of inadequate investment in residential school buildings in 1940, R. A. Hoey recommended that the government close twelve schools. But most of them did not close for at least another ten years, and some not for another thirty-five years. In Manitoba, these included the Portage la Prairie school, which was not closed until 1975, and the Pine Creek school, which was closed in 1969. In Saskatchewan, the list of schools Hoey recommended be closed included Round Lake, which closed in 1950, and Thunderchild school in Delmas, which was destroyed by fire in 1948. In Alberta, the list included Wabasca, which was transferred to the Alberta government in 1966; Whitefish Lake, which was closed in 1950; Sturgeon Lake, which was closed in 1961; Sacred Heart in Brocket, which closed in 1961; and St. Cyprian in Brocket, which closed in 1961. In British Columbia, the list included Kitamaat, which closed in 1941; Port Simpson, which closed in 1948; and Squamish, which closed in 1959.¹²⁴

Although Hoey did succeed in closing some schools, there were still fifty-six in operation in southern Canada in 1969 when Indian Affairs took over full management of the system from the churches.¹²⁵ There had been some improvements in operational funding for the schools, but Indian Affairs refused to make significant capital investments in a system it intended to close. After 1969, Indian Affairs rapidly began to shut down the schools. But, in the intervening years, residential school students lived and studied for decades in aging and inadequate buildings, usually in crowded conditions.

Government and church officials continued to use the same damning words to describe the schools. In 1947, H. A. Alderwood of the Anglican Indian School Administration described the Chapleau, Ontario, school as “a disgrace” to both the government and the church.¹²⁶ A 1950 inspection found the plaster in the Presbyterian school in Kenora to be in a “deplorable state of repair,” the light was judged to be poor, and the sewage system appeared to be leaking.¹²⁷ In the fall of 1948, Indian Affairs official R. S. Davis similarly described the Brandon school as being in “a very deplorable state of repair.”¹²⁸ Indian Affairs inspector L. G. P. Waller pointed out in October 1951 that the heating system at the Desmarais, Alberta, school was “not entirely adequate.”¹²⁹ He returned to the subject in his December 1952 report, noting that “an improved heating system is imperative for the health of the pupils and the staff.” At the same time, he questioned the wisdom of putting a new heating system into the aging building, which might cost up to $100,000.¹³⁰

The buildings in the years after the Second World War were not only physically deteriorating, but they were also overcrowded. This crowding strained the schools’ sanitation systems and increased the spread of infectious illness. Overcrowding made the emptying of dormitories more difficult if a fire should break out. It was common for schools to enrol considerably more students than their authorized pupilage. In 1943, fifty-one of seventy-three schools had enrolments that exceeded their authorized pupilage.¹³¹ In 1955, forty-one of sixty-six schools enrolled more students than their pupilage allowed.¹³² Some schools were kept overcrowded as a matter of policy. A 1956 handbook for Roman Catholic principals and teachers stressed, “It is of the highest importance that all schools be maintained at or over the authorized number because, even at the present per capita rates, a reduction below the authorized figure means a loss in revenue.”¹³³

The problem continued through the late 1950s and into the 1960s. In 1958, the enrolment at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora was 157, while the authorized pupilage was 110.¹³⁴ Despite instructions to reduce enrolment, in 1959, the principal announced his intention to accept 188 students, leading to a confrontation with Indian Affairs.¹³⁵ By 1964, the Roman Catholic school at Cardston was running at double its originally intended capacity. It had been built to accommodate 100 students, but had 200 residential students and 200 day students.¹³⁶ In May 1967, at least three schools in British Columbia had taken in more than their allotted number of students. The Sechelt school, with a capacity of 88, had an enrolment of 126; the Fraser Lake school had a capacity of 110 and an enrolment of 181; and the Cariboo school had a rated capacity of 257 and an enrolment of 307.¹³⁷

Poor sanitation remained a threat to student health. An analysis of the Birtle, Manitoba, school’s water in 1940 showed a high level of colon bacilli. An order was placed for typhoid serum to treat the staff and students. It was discovered that the school’s chlorination plant was not working. Not only was it difficult to get repair specialists out to the school, but also the Indian agent worried that it would be difficult to recruit a school engineer who was familiar enough with the technology to properly maintain it.¹³⁸ In 1947, an Indian Affairs official wrote of the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school, “On the boys’ wing only one toilet was found in order, most of the others being in a filthy condition and running over into the dormitories.”¹³⁹

The antiquated sewage system at the school at Moose Factory, Ontario, led to a “serious outbreak of typhoid fever among the staff and the pupils” in 1947.¹⁴⁰ The problem remained unresolved. In 1950, it was necessary to hospitalize a number of students who had “developed rashes due to uncleanliness.”¹⁴¹ A federal health department official wrote in 1966 that sewage in Stuart Lake constituted a health hazard for students at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school.¹⁴² In the same year, raw sewage from the Assumption, Alberta, school was feared to be polluting the Gun River, placing families living downstream at risk.¹⁴³ In 1966, a medical health officer gave a notice to close the Roman Catholic school in The Pas, Manitoba, unless a sewage problem was dealt with immediately.¹⁴⁴ In 1968, there was an outbreak of intestinal illness at the McIntosh, Ontario, school because the treatment system was both inadequate and operated only intermittently.¹⁴⁵

Problems with water supply remained rampant.¹⁴⁶ Shortly after taking over as principal in Wabasca, Alberta, Eric Barrington reported in 1961 that the water at the school had, “to put it mildly, a flavour all its own, the colour is that of medium strong coffee also is very hard and discolours all receptacles it has the misfortune to touch.”¹⁴⁷

The Cariboo Union Board of Health declared the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school a public nuisance in June 1965. The school, which Indian Affairs had judged to have outlived its usefulness almost twenty years earlier in 1946, was dumping 40,000 gallons (151,416 litres) of raw sewage into the San Jose River on a daily basis. The board was threatening to have the school closed in two months if Indian Affairs did not have a promised sewage treatment plant in operation.¹⁴⁸

A 1958 inspection of the Fort Frances, Ontario, school concluded that the building, which dated back to the nineteenth century, was beyond repair and should be condemned.¹⁴⁹ An inspector concluded in 1960 that the wiring system at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school was “in very bad condition.” The lighting intensity was poor throughout the building, and a lack of outlets led to the “use of many extension cords which constitute a fire hazard.”¹⁵⁰ The following year, the school principal informed Indian Affairs that the residence was a “hazard and should be closed.” In cataloguing the major deficits, he wrote: “dormitories too small, plumbing fixtures absolutely worn out, lighting a fire hazard.”¹⁵¹ The heating system at the McIntosh, Ontario, school was so inadequate that during one fall in the early 1960s, classroom temperatures fluctuated between fifty and eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit (ten to twenty-nine degrees Celsius).¹⁵² In 1965, it was decided that the Roman Catholic school in Cluny, Alberta, was to be closed within five years. As a result, only emergency repairs were to be made to the building after that point.¹⁵³ (The school closed in 1968.)¹⁵⁴

A 1967 brief from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian Residences—which included principals of both Catholic and Protestant schools—concluded, “In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallen upon deaf ears.”¹⁵⁵

When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met with church and school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that only emergency repairs would be undertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close.¹⁵⁶ In 1971, G. LeBleu, the administrator of the Catholic residence in Kenora, pointed out to Indian Affairs that no major repairs had been carried out at the residence for the past six years and that, without major alterations, it would no longer be safe for children to live there. The needed improvements in water quality and fire safety would, he wrote, cost over $100,000.¹⁵⁷ The residence was closed the following year.¹⁵⁸ The decision to run these poorly constructed and poorly maintained schools into the ground is further evidence of the government’s failure to establish and meet appropriate building, maintenance, and sanitation standards for residential schools.

Poor sanitation placed the students at risk, while poor ventilation served to spread disease. Poor construction and lack of a proper water supply not only contributed to illness, but they also increased the risk of loss of life in a school fire. The failure to build and maintain adequate residential school facilities has to be seen as a significant contributing factor to the health problems, including the high death rates, that plagued the schools.

Health policies

As noted in the statistical analysis, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has identified 3,201 residential school student deaths on the Named and Unnamed death registers. Of these, 2,434 occurred prior to 1940, with 691 in the following sixty years (there were an additional 76 deaths from this period for which the exact date is not known). The residential school student death rate was dramatically higher than the death rate for the school-aged Canadian population for the period from 1926 to 1950. (It is likely dramatically higher in the previous period as well, but there are no comparable census figures.) For any given five-year period between 1926 and 1950, the residential school death rate was at least double the rate for the five- to fourteen-year-old cohort of the general population. For some periods, it was as much as 4.73 times higher. It is also clear from the statistical analysis that the major cause of death was tuberculosis. It accounted for 47% of the deaths for which there is a known cause. Those who survived tuberculosis were left in a weakened condition and susceptible to contracting influenza, measles, diphtheria, and smallpox.

For these reasons, the discussion of custodial care in relation to health care will focus on the Indian Affairs response to tuberculosis in the residential schools.

The background to the tuberculosis crisis in the schools

Tuberculosis is a communicable disease that most frequently attacks the lungs in what is termed “pulmonary tuberculosis.” It can also attack the organs, the digestive tract, the lymph nodes in the neck (a condition often referred to as “scrofula”), the bones, the joints, and the skin. A person infected with pulmonary tuberculosis expels tuberculosis bacteria when they sneeze, cough, or spit. The infection spreads when a non-infected person breathes in the bacteria. As a result, infection rates are high in overcrowded and poorly ventilated households. Eating meat or drinking milk from tubercular cattle can also spread the disease.

In most cases, the immune system is able to contain and often kill the bacteria, although the illness can surface later in life. If the immune system is not able to contain the disease, it can spread throughout the body. The symptoms of the disease may not become apparent for years. For this reason, it is common to refer to “active” and “latent” tuberculosis. Not all latent cases become active.

Until the late nineteenth century, there was no clear understanding of the disease’s origins or how it spread. It was not until 1882 that German researcher Robert Koch published his research demonstrating the existence of tuberculosis bacteria that spread the disease.¹⁵⁹ In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tuberculosis was the dominant cause of death in Europe and North America. Poor nutrition, poor housing, and overwork were interlinked; death and death rates were highest among the poor and the institutionalized.¹⁶⁰ Adequate diet, ventilation, and care were identified by the 1880s as essential in the care of tubercular patients.¹⁶¹ Failures to provide well-constructed, well-ventilated buildings with adequate sanitation systems, coupled with the failure to provide adequate diets, contributed directly to the tuber-culosis death rate.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, it became increasingly common to send individuals diagnosed with tuberculosis to specialized institutions referred to as “sanatoria.”¹⁶² The regime in these institutions varied, but improved diet, rest, and fresh air were common elements of treatment. This regime would not cure tuberculosis, but in many cases, patients were able to recover to the point where they could leave the sanatorium and return to daily life. Sanatoria provided an additional benefit by isolating people with active tuberculosis from the general population.¹⁶³ The first Canadian sanatorium opened in Muskoka, Ontario, in 1897.¹⁶⁴ The federal government declined to play a direct role in treating and preventing tuberculosis, leaving responsibility to the provinces and voluntary agencies. As a result, services for all Canadians were often inadequate and delivered on a haphazard basis.¹⁶⁵

A combination of the isolation of tubercular patients in sanatoria, the impact of improved sanitation, and rising living standards led to an increase in general resistance to the bacteria and a decline in the tuberculosis death rate in Europe and North America. This decline started even before scientists had determined that the disease was caused by a communicable bacterium, and it continued into the twentieth century—although the prevalence and rate of decline varied for different groups in society.¹⁶⁶ The first effective tuberculosis antibiotic, streptomycin, was not developed until 1943. Its effectiveness was limited by the tuberculosis bacteria’s ability to develop resistance to the drug. However, the introduction of para-aminosalicylic salts (pas) and isonicotinic hydrazide (inh) (alternately, isoniazid) into the treatment process in the late 1940s created an effective chemical treatment of the disease. Patients who had been diagnosed as being near death began recovering. Although the death rate dropped, the demands on the health-care system increased, since the new drugs were part of a hospital-based treatment.¹⁶⁷ The new drugs also meant that certain surgical treatments could be administered more safely.¹⁶⁸

The European colonization of North America disrupted Aboriginal economies and communities, dramatically increasing Aboriginal peoples’ vulnerability to tuberculosis. This phenomenon was particularly apparent on the Canadian Prairies in the 1880s. The disappearance of the buffalo and the forced settlement of people in cramped housing on reserves with no sanitation systems created a health crisis. On the Qu’Appelle Reserve, the tuberculosis death rates reached 9,000 deaths per 100,000 people in 1886. This is one of the highest tuberculosis death rates ever recorded. It is forty-five times the peak death rates for the cities of Montreal and Toronto (200 deaths per 100,000 people), which were reached in 1880.¹⁶⁹

The federal government was well aware of this crisis. In some situations, the government deliberately contributed to its existence. For example, it withheld food relief from bands and individuals if people left the reserve without permission, did not engage in agricultural pursuits, or refused to enrol their children in residential schools.¹⁷⁰ In many cases, the attempts of First Nations people to make the transition to agriculture were frustrated because government equipment and supplies were inadequate, late in arriving, and often insufficient. Those who raised grain crops faced starvation because of the lack of milling equipment. Those who abandoned a hunting lifestyle found that they could not afford adequate clothing for farming. As a result, they had to leave their farm work to return to the hunt.¹⁷¹ Indian agents were regularly instructed to provide relief only “to very poor, aged or sick Indians” and only in extreme cases. Sugar, soap, and tea were not to be provided except in cases of illness. Agents were to exercise the “strictest economy” and ensure that aid was not given to “those not in need or deserving of it.”¹⁷²

In 1904, Dr. Peter Bryce was appointed to the newly created position of chief medical officer of the Department of the Interior and Indian Affairs.¹⁷³ He was one of the country’s leading public-health authorities, having served as the secretary of the Ontario Board of Health, president of the American Public Health Association, and as a member of the Canadian Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis.¹⁷⁴ Bryce’s 1906 annual report outlined the extent of the Aboriginal health crisis. Bryce observed that “the Indian population of Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population, and in some provinces more than three times.” He identified tuberculosis as the prevalent cause of death, and described a cycle of disease in which infants and children were infected at home and sent to residential schools, where they infected other children. The children infected in the schools were “sent home when too ill to remain at school, or because of being a danger to the other scholars, and have conveyed the disease to houses previously free.”¹⁷⁵ The problem had been identified, but, in coming years, little was done to relieve it. In 1930, Dr. E. L. Stone, a subsequent Indian Affairs chief medical officer, referred to the First Nations tuberculosis epidemic as the “most acute public health problem in Canada at the present time.” Stone also recognized that the government’s response was inadequate. “At the present time it is being found necessary to refuse applications for sanatorium treatment due to lack of funds for maintenance.”¹⁷⁶

Throughout the 1930s, the First Nations death rate from tuberculosis never fell below 600 deaths per 100,000, while the death rate for the overall Canadian population fell from 79.8 per 100,000 in 1930 to 53.6 per 100,000 in 1939.¹⁷⁷ In western Canada, the differences in the health conditions of First Nations people and the rest of the population could be starkly measured by the tuberculosis death rates. In 1934, First Nations people made up 2.2% of the Manitoba population, but accounted for 31% of the tuberculosis deaths. In Saskatchewan, the comparable figures were 1.6% of population and 27% of deaths; in Alberta, they were 2.1% and 34%, respectively; and in British Columbia, they were 3.7% and 35%, respectively.¹⁷⁸ In 1930, Stone had proposed that the government undertake an ambitious anti-tuberculosis program among First Nations people that would see it spending an additional $100,000 a year on prevention and treatment for ten years.¹⁷⁹ Instead, in coming years, the government actually cut what it was spending on First Nations health, including tuberculosis care and prevention.¹⁸⁰ It also cut relief payments to Aboriginal people, thereby increasing their vulnerability to tuberculosis.¹⁸¹ As late as 1937, the federal government was proposing cuts in funding to tuberculosis services to First Nations people.¹⁸²

There would be no significant improvement in the First Nations tuberculosis death rate until after the Second World War. In 1943, the First Nations tuberculosis death rate was 662.6 per 100,000; by 1957, it was 42.0 per 100,000.¹⁸³ By 1960, tuberculosis had been dislodged from its position as the primary cause of death among First Nations people, falling to eighth position.¹⁸⁴ An Inuit tuberculosis crisis was identified in the 1950s. The Inuit tuberculosis death rate hit 569 per 100,000 in 1952; it fell to 84 per 100,000 in 1960.¹⁸⁵

The tuberculosis crisis in Canada’s residential schools has to be seen as part of the broader tuberculosis crisis in the Aboriginal population in Canada. As Peter Bryce observed in 1906, generations of Aboriginal children were being raised in communities with high levels of tuberculosis. This all but guaranteed that large numbers of children infected with tuberculosis would report for admission to residential school each fall. This was a known and predictable problem, but it was one that the government and the churches failed to address by the medical standards of the day.¹⁸⁶

The tuberculosis crisis in the schools

As noted, prior to the 1940s, there was no effective cure for tuberculosis. It was, however, widely recognized that a number of measures had the potential to moderate symptoms and cause active infection to return to an inactive or latent stage. These measures included rest, a healthy diet, good ventilation in sanitary living quarters, and access to adequate medical attention. These conditions were also central to preventing latent tuberculosis from becoming active. Healthy students could be protected from infection if tubercular children were not admitted to the schools.

For much of their history, schools were not prepared to identify and treat sick children, or to prevent infection from spreading to healthy children. Policies were developed on a disjointed basis and implementation was fragmentary. A uniform policy on the medical examination of new students was slow to emerge and was poorly enforced. Treatment was inadequate, and crowding ensured that infections became general throughout the student body, since there were few sick wards or infirmaries. Principals were often unwilling to follow government policies, either because they opposed any measure that might limit enrolment, or because they simply lacked the funds to do so. Students who came to the schools healthy went home sick, thus completing the tubercular infection of the community. In this diseased environment, other deadly and disabling sicknesses were also able to flourish.

From the outset, many schools provided only limited medical attention. When Dr. M. M. Seymour applied for the position of medical attendant to the Qu’Appelle school in 1885, Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney did not accept him, claiming there was no “necessity for a doctor.” According to Dewdney, Indian Affairs had “sent out a supply of medicines to the Industrial Schools with full instructions as to their use.” He said, “The Sisters, in connection with the Institution, are somewhat expert in attending on the sick.”¹⁸⁷ While the Qu’Appelle school had access to a medical attendant by 1887, three years later, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land was complaining of the government’s unwillingness to pay for a medical attendant for the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school.¹⁸⁸ It was not until January 1892 that Indian Affairs instructed its physicians who had been contracted to provide medical services on nearby reserves to extend those services to the school.¹⁸⁹ In British Columbia, a doctor visited the Cranbrook school in the Kootenays only at the request of the Indian agent.¹⁹⁰

Many of the early schools did not have infirmaries. In 1893, Indian Affairs inspector T. P. Wadsworth reported that at the nine-year-old Qu’Appelle school, the “want of an infirmary is still very much felt.” The previous year, he had managed to contain an out-break of chicken pox only by keeping the infected students quarantined in the school garret.¹⁹¹ Those infirmaries that did exist were often primitive. On an 1891 visit to the Battleford school, Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed concluded that the hospital ward was in such poor shape that they had been obliged to remove the children in it to the staff sitting-room. According to Reed, “The noise, as well as the bad smells, come from the lavatory underneath.”¹⁹² There were also reports of inadequate isolation facilities at the Regina, Saskatchewan, school (1901); the Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1921); the Mission, British Columbia, school (1924); and the Muncey, Ontario, school (1935).¹⁹³ When diphtheria broke out at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1909, the nine students who fell ill were placed in a “large isolated house.”¹⁹⁴

The 1918 global influenza epidemic left four children dead at the Red Deer, Alberta, school. When the influenza epidemic subsided, Principal J. F. Woodsworth complained to Indian Affairs:

For sickness, conditions at this school are nothing less than criminal. We have no isolation ward and no hospital equipment of any kind. The dead, the dying, and the sick and the convalescent, were all together. I think that as soon as possible the Department should put this school in shape to fulfil its function as an educational institution. At present it is a disgrace.¹⁹⁵

The Red Deer school was not a small, church-founded, mission school. It was an industrial school that had been established by the Methodists with the full co-operation and support of the federal government in 1893. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, school officials had been lobbying, with little or no success, for improvements in facilities to care for sick children.¹⁹⁶

Even though the 1910 contract with the federal government required all schools to have hospital accommodation to prevent the spread of infectious disease, many schools continued to be in need of a proper infirmary. Dr. F. L. Corbett’s report of a 1920 inspection of five southern Alberta schools noted that at the Gleichen school, diseased students were not kept separate from healthy students, and many conditions, such as scabies, simply went unattended. He also observed that “it is a constant experience that Indian children being taken ill with tuberculosis diseases while in the schools, and sent home, make remarkable recoveries in the open air life of the tent.”

He said that if the principles of the sanatorium were incorporated in school design, the result would be “gratifying” and tuberculosis would be “reduced to a minimum.”¹⁹⁷

At the Chapleau, Ontario, school, there was no facility for separating sick from healthy children, and neither was there one at the Shoal Lake, Ontario, school in 1915.¹⁹⁸ In 1921, sick and healthy children at the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school were being housed together, as was also the case at the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school two years later.¹⁹⁹ The Roman Catholic principals petitioned the federal government in 1924 for the establishment of sick rooms at each school, under the supervision of a competent nurse. At the same time, they objected to the sanitary inspection of the schools by government-appointed nurses, since they recommended changes “leading to the transformation of our schools into hospitals or sanatoriums.”²⁰⁰ There were also regular reports that schools could not afford to hire needed nursing staff.²⁰¹

In other cases, sick children were not being treated at all. In 1915, Indian Affairs official J. D. McLean wrote to the Indian agent at Chapleau, Ontario, about “several children afflicted with eczema who had apparently not been receiving treatment” at the Chapleau school. The agent was instructed to arrange for treatment and regular medical inspections of the school.²⁰² In 1922, Indian Affairs Superintendent of Indian Education Russell Ferrier worried that Chapleau principal George Prewer was “somewhat slow to call in medical attention,” although he acknowledged that Prewer was “fairly well qualified to look after minor ailments.”²⁰³ Indian Affairs instructed the principal: “Call upon the services of the Medical Officer without hesitation.”²⁰⁴

While there were improvements, Indian Affairs officials continued to be concerned about the quality of care provided by school infirmaries at the end of the 1950s.²⁰⁵ Complaints from principals make it clear that even into the late 1960s, there were still severe limitations on the range of health services being provided to residential school students.²⁰⁶

Not surprisingly, cases of tuberculosis were diagnosed in the early years in the schools. In 1886, at the height of the tuberculosis epidemic on the Qu’Appelle Reserve, five children died at the residential school. Principal Joseph Hugonnard said the deaths were not due to contagious disease. However, since he believed that tuberculosis was hereditary rather than contagious, it is possible that the five deaths were, in fact, due to tuberculosis.²⁰⁷ By 1896, various medical advisors had informed Indian Affairs that tuberculosis was contagious, that schools should have facilities that would allow students with tuberculosis to be isolated, that the ventilation in the schools was of such poor quality that it increased the risk of infection, that student health would improve with improvements in diet, and that it was essential the unhealthy students be screened out during the admission process.²⁰⁸ This advice was in keeping with medical thinking of the day, and, if it had been acted upon, likely would have served to improve student health. However, it was largely ignored.

As early as 1903, observers, including Indian Affairs officials and physicians, came to conclude that conditions in Aboriginal communities, even communities with high levels of tuberculosis, might be healthier than conditions in residential schools. They also recognized that treating children in tent hospitals and ensuring that they had access to fresh air was not that different from life in many Aboriginal communities.²⁰⁹

In 1907, 1908, and 1909, Indian Affairs health officials conducted three sets of inspections in western Canada. These reports all identified serious health problems in the schools and were accompanied by wide-ranging recommendations. Dr. Peter Bryce’s 1907 inspection of thirty-five residential schools in the three prairie provinces is the most well known of these studies. He was highly critical of the poor quality of the ventilation in the buildings, which, he thought, contributed to high infection rates. He also thought local physicians and school staff underestimated the dangers of tuberculosis.²¹⁰ Based on information provided to him by school principals on the condition of present and former students, he wrote that “of a total of 1,537 pupils reported upon nearly 25 per cent are dead.”²¹¹ Bryce’s 1907 report received considerable attention in the national media of the day.²¹²

Three options

In the first decade of the twentieth century, there were three options presented to the government and churches to address the tuberculosis crisis. The was to close the schools, allowing the children to be raised in their homes and educated in on-reserve day schools. The second was to treat most children as likely tuberculosis sufferers and turn the schools into sanatoria. A third was to institute a strict system of medical screening to ensure that no child infected with tuberculosis was admitted to the schools. None of these measures could have succeeded without increased federal government investment in measures to improve the housing, clothing, and diet of Aboriginal children.

The health crisis in the residential schools—which was largely a tuberculosis crisis—was so severe that, during the first decade of the twentieth century, the first two options were considered but eventually abandoned. Samuel Blake, a leading figure in the Anglican Church, led the near-successful campaign to close a large number of the schools. Blake was spurred into action by both the high death rates in the schools and the amount of money the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada was spending on the schools.²¹³ At his prodding, the Protestant missionary societies agreed to a plan that would have seen them replace most of their residential schools in western Canada with government-funded, church-run day schools.²¹⁴ The plan was dropped in 1908 in the face of opposition from Protestant missionaries based in the West, and Roman Catholic unwillingness to close their residential schools. Indian Affairs minister Frank Oliver made it clear he would not pursue a residential school policy that did not have the support of the churches.²¹⁵

The other option was to turn the schools into government-run sanatoria. As early as 1904, there were proposals to use at least one of the residential schools as a sanatorium for students who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis.²¹⁶ Similar proposals were made in subsequent years. In 1906, Dr. Bryce wrote that sanatorium care was required to reduce infection and increase chances of recovery among First Nations children. Due to the high infection rate in First Nations communities, he recommended the construction of regional “tent” sanatoria.²¹⁷ This idea was not out of step with general views on how to address tuberculosis, particularly among low-income populations.²¹⁸ Such tent hospitals were constructed at residential schools in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.²¹⁹ In addition, there were calls from business and medical groups to establish sanatoria in each province in which industrial schools were located.²²⁰

In his 1907 report, Bryce recommended that for locations where local hospitals did not exist, “a small tent hospital be attached to the school, wherein tuberculized and scrofulous patients may receive necessary treatment and where, instead of being sent home to die, they may in most cases, when dealt with early, be nursed back to health without jeopardizing the health of the other pupils.”²²¹ By 1909, Bryce had concluded that the rate of tuberculosis infection in the First Nations community across the Prairies was so severe that it was appropriate to consider each student as “a case of probable tuberculosis—in a word a patient.” He recommended that the residential schools be converted into sanatoria and placed under his medical—as opposed to church—authority.²²²

There are three points that need to be borne in mind about Bryce’s proposal. First, it would not have reduced the number of Aboriginal children who were being separated from their homes and communities. Instead of living in highly regimented residential schools, they would have been living in highly regimented sanatoria. For example, Bryce included a significant student work component in his proposal. He expected that “squads of the stronger children would be organized to assist in the indoor and outdoor work, wholly from the standpoint of their physical ability.”²²³ Second, sanatoria would amount to an advance over the schools only if there was an increase in funding to allow for significant renovations and improvements in diet and clothing (particularly for cold weather). Third, sanatoria care did not cure tuberculosis: improvements in care would have brought the death rates down, but they would not have eliminated them. For comparison from 1904 to 1929, of the 6,695 patients admitted to the Toronto Free Hospital for the Consumptive Poor (a Toronto tuberculosis sanatorium for the indigent), 45% had died. Of those who survived their first thirty days in the sanatorium, only 38% were judged to have benefited from their treatment.²²⁴

Bryce’s proposal was rejected by Indian Affairs for the same reasons that Blake’s was: the government was not prepared to challenge the churches. Duncan Campbell Scott, who had become the Indian Affairs superintendent of education in 1909, wrote that “the Churches would not be willing to give up their share of the joint control.”²²⁵

Rather than turning the schools into sanatoria, Scott thought, the government needed to “carry out some common sense reforms to remove the imputation that the Department is careless of the interests of these children.” His list of reforms included the denial of school admission for any children who were “tubercular”; the construction of open-air dormitories; an improved diet; an increase in the per capita grant to $100; and the negotiation of a contract with the churches that would set out expectations regarding sanitation, diet, and exercise.²²⁶

Many of these measures were included in the 1910 contract that Scott negotiated on behalf of the federal government with the churches. That agreement required that all schools have “hospital accommodation for the isolation of pupils with infectious diseases or tuberculosis” and a “modern system of ventilation in dormitories and class-rooms and sufficient air space in dormitories and class-rooms for the number of pupils accommodated.” Class A schools, which received a higher level of funding, were also to have “a pure and plentiful water-supply distributed throughout the building, … a proper system of sanitary water closets, drainage, and disposal of sewage,” and “modern heating apparatus, hot water, steam or hot air.” Students were not to be admitted “until, where practicable, a physician, to be named by the Superintendent General, has reported that the child is in good health and suitable as an inmate of said school.” Most significantly, the contract raised the per capita rates for all the boarding schools. The rate for some of the schools in central Ontario was increased from $60 to $80 (a 33.3% increase). In the West, the minimum increase was from $72 to $100 (a 52% increase). The rate for schools in the Northern Division (200 miles—322 kilometres—or more from a railway) went from $72 to $125 (a 74% increase). The government committed itself to providing the schools with medicine and maintaining government-owned buildings that were “in good condition and repair and provide for proper sanitation and sanitary appliances.”²²⁷

The 1910 contract did improve conditions in many schools: certainly, the increase in the per capita grant allowed for improvements in clothing and diets. However, as noted above, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 meant that the government was not able to fully implement its intention to renovate many of the boarding schools. Wartime inflation also severely reduced the value of the funding increases. By the 1920s, many of the schools were continuing to struggle financially. Financial problems led inevitably to further crowding, poor building conditions, increased demands for student labour, decreases in the quality of the diet, poor-quality clothing, and reduced access to medical attention. Conditions were further exacerbated by repeated budget cuts during the Great Depression of the 1930s and again during the Second World War. As a result, the churches could rarely meet the various health and building-condition requirements in the contract. For its part, the government did not enforce them, since it was unwilling to provide the money needed to bring the schools into compliance.

The 1910 contract could work as an effective response to tuberculosis in the schools only if students who were infected with the disease were either denied admission or were discharged once diagnosed. The government was slow in developing a clear national policy on this issue and largely ineffective in enforcing it once it finally was in place.

The government was also slow to develop a health-related admissions policy. The instructions that Indian Commissioner Edgar Dewdney issued to Battleford school principal Thomas Clarke in 1883 did not include any health-related advice. Neither did they require that students undergo a medical inspection before being admitted to the school. Indeed, the recommendation that the school give preference to “orphans and children without any person to look after them” increased the likelihood that the early recruits would be of poor health.²²⁸ The following year, Clarke reported that a student had died in May of that year “from internal injuries received previous to his entering the school.” Clarke recommended that in the future, students “should be examined by a medical officer before they are received into the school.”²²⁹ Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet’s instructions for the opening of the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school in 1889 stated: “All pupils admitted should be free from disease, and an apartment light and airy, and as far removed from the other rooms as possible, should be set apart for any who may fall sick.”²³⁰ This was not, however, a system-wide instruction.

The government continued to ignore opportunities to issue a system-wide instruction. The 1892 Order-in-Council that established the per capita funding model for all industrial schools required that schools maintain “dietary and domestic comfort.” The only restriction on admission was a requirement that no child be admitted without the approval of the Indian commissioner. It did not stipulate that there be medical examinations for all students prior to admission.²³¹

It was not until 1896 that Indian Commissioner A. E. Forget distributed health certification forms to all principals in Manitoba and the North-West Territories.²³² Because of difficulties in recruitment, principals continued to accept children who were ill. It was only in 1900 that Middlechurch, Manitoba, principal James Dagg could report, “Owing to the great number of applications for admission, we were enabled to discharge every case of scrofula and consumption we had in the school, thus making the health of our pupils excellent.”²³³ In 1901, when responding to a request to transfer a boy with scrofulous sores from the Roman Catholic school on the Blood Reserve to a hospital in Calgary, Indian Affairs education official Martin Benson wrote that “if the Department’s instructions were properly followed out, no scrofulous pupils would be admitted to such schools.”²³⁴

In 1907, some principals were asserting their right to take in tubercular children. The principal of the Anglican school at Brocket, Alberta, W. R. Haynes, wrote that the local doctor did not admit any child “who has any signs of the dread disease [tuberculosis].” But he recognized that if “every pupil were rejected on the grounds of tuberculosis in their families, I am afraid you might as well close the schools altogether.”²³⁵ In 1907, Qu’Appelle principal Hugonnard argued that many students with scrofula had “no better place to be sent” than his school.²³⁶ A 1908 inspection of five Alberta schools concluded that 80% of the students at all five schools had tuberculosis of the lungs. At two schools, the infection rate was 100%.²³⁷

By 1909, the school application form for all residential schools instructed physicians who were inspecting potential students not to admit any “child suffering from scrofula or any form of tubercular disease.”²³⁸ As noted above, the 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches governing the operation of the schools required that students not be admitted to schools “until, where practicable, a physician, to be named by the Superintendent General, has reported that the child is in good health and suitable as an inmate of said school.”²³⁹

From the start, the churches objected to the provision. As early as 1910, High River, Alberta, principal J. Riou was questioning the fairness of this requirement for medical screening. He asked, “Is this examination required in white schools?”²⁴⁰ Some principals were also reluctant to discharge students with active tuberculosis. Qu’Appelle school principal G. Leonard refused to carry out a local physician’s instructions to send tubercular students to a local sanatorium in 1922, claiming they would be “better off at the school than in the sanatorium.”²⁴¹

Not all physicians were capable of identifying tuberculosis. In 1911, Indian Affairs secretary J. D. McLean acknowledged, “If the medical attendant does not exercise great care and is not possessed of considerable experience in detecting the presence of tuberculosis, it may be quite possible that he is passing pupils who could not possibly be admitted under the restrictions laid down by the admission forms.”²⁴² In 1914, McLean instructed the Indian agent responsible for the Chapleau school to ensure that the doctor who examined prospective students took “care to see that they are in good health and show no traces of tuberculosis.”²⁴³ The following year, three tubercular students at the school had to be removed to a hospital.²⁴⁴

The schools continued to admit and retain tubercular students into the 1930s. The following are some examples from this period.

•In 1930, 88.30% of students at the Roman Catholic and Anglican schools on the Blood Reserve in Alberta tested positive for tuberculosis infection.²⁴⁵ In 1937, the figure was 84.03%.²⁴⁶

•In 1933, C. C. Perry, the assistant Indian commissioner for British Columbia, reported that if the “physically unfit were eliminated from the [Cranbrook] School on medical examination, the School would have to be closed.”²⁴⁷

•Seven of fourteen students admitted to the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school in 1933 had active tuberculosis.²⁴⁸

•Budget cutting meant that in 1934, doctors did not have access to the most effective technologies, such as x-rays, in examining students.²⁴⁹

•In 1935, the doctor charged with examining students for admission to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school declined to carry out a general examination of the students.²⁵⁰ He stated that if he were to “apply the standards of health to them that is applied to children of the white schools, that I should have to discharge 90% of them and there would be no school left.”²⁵¹

•Roman Catholic Bishop Guy opposed sending tubercular students at the Qu’Appelle school to the Qu’Appelle Sanatorium in 1935.²⁵²

•A 1935 United Church report showed that four of five children entering the Chilliwack, British Columbia, and Brandon, Manitoba, schools had “some evidence of t.b.—either active or quiescent.”²⁵³

•In 1936, a doctor inquiring into the death of a student due to tubercular meningitis at the Kamloops, British Columbia, school concluded that the “child was no doubt developing the disease before admission to the school.”²⁵⁴

•In 1937, missionaries were recruiting students and having them admitted to the Fraser Lake school without first receiving authorization from the Indian agent.²⁵⁵

•In 1937, Cluny, Alberta, principal J. Riou opposed sending all active tubercular cases to the local Anglican hospital.²⁵⁶ This opposition continued into 1938.²⁵⁷

Into the 1950s, at some schools, these examinations were perfunctory, ineffective, or non-existent. Responsibility for this failure appears to have been shared between Indian Affairs and the churches. The death of a student from tubercular meningitis at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, prompted the principal to complain in 1946 that the boy had been admitted by the Indian agent, even though the boy had previously been diagnosed as having active tuberculosis.²⁵⁸ The hospitalization of 13 of the 100 students attending the Kuper Island school with tuberculosis during the 1947–48 school year led local Indian Affairs official R. H. Moore to comment that the method of medical examinations was “ineffective from the point of detecting any latent disease.”²⁵⁹ In 1951, the principal of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school admitted thirteen students without either seeking the department’s approval or having them examined by a doctor.²⁶⁰ The flawed examination system meant that students with other infectious illnesses and serious health problems were also being admitted to the schools. In 1949, P. E. Moore, who was at that time acting superintendent of medical services for Indian Affairs, wrote that the congenital syphilis a student was suffering from had not been detected by his pre-admission medical examination for the Fraser Lake school.²⁶¹

An ongoing problem in the Northwest Territories in the first half of the twentieth century was the absence of any medical examinations prior to school admissions. In 1916, three children, who had been recently transferred from Fort Good Hope to Fort Resolution, became ill shortly after their arrival at the school. They had been admitted without having undergone the required medical inspection on the grounds “that they were orphans and had to be provided for in some way.” Two of them died, leading Indian Affairs official H. J. Bury to recommend that “the regulation covering the admission of children to these boarding schools be more rigidly enforced.”²⁶² After a tour of the western Arctic in 1944, Dr. George Wherrett, one of Canada’s leading public health physicians of the period, concluded, “Only in the minority of instances, however, is there a regular examination of all children on admission and no x-ray surveys are carried out. In some schools, immunization and vaccination are practised; in others, not at all.”²⁶³ In the intervening years, there had been numerous cases of students’ being admitted without examination or being admitted with contagious illnesses.²⁶⁴ As late as 1951, students were being admitted to the Baptist hostel in Whitehorse without a doctor’s examination.²⁶⁵

At the outset of this discussion, it was noted that the government had three policy options: close the schools, turn the schools into sanatoria, or exclude infected children from admission. On paper, it chose the last option. However, as the preceding examples make clear, it never effectively attempted to screen out infected children. As a result, the residential schools amplified rather than reduced the Aboriginal tuberculosis crisis.

Positive initiatives

The work of the Qu’Appelle Indian Demonstration Health Unit in the 1930s shows that when appropriate polices were put in place, it was possible to reduce the level of tuberculosis in residential schools. The health unit ensured that students at the Qu’Appelle and File Hills residential schools were given a tuberculin skin test. Students judged to be in a contagious condition were discharged. In 1926, before the health unit was established, 92% of the students at these two schools had tested positive for tuberculosis. By 1933, the percentage of students testing positive for tuberculosis, although still very high, had dropped by more than 30%, to below 60%, in the two schools.²⁶⁶

Given these results, Dr. George Ferguson, the director of medical services for the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League and medical director of the Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium, recommended that Indian Affairs extend the unit’s work to the rest of the province. His specific plan called for the testing of all residential school dairy herds, x-ray testing of all First Nations students at the start of each school year, and the conversion of a residential school into a sanatorium dedicated to the education and treatment of children who either had active tuberculosis or were infectious.²⁶⁷ Indian Affairs health official E. L. Stone believed the churches would not be willing to have one of the existing schools transformed into a sanatorium. Neither would they be happy with the establishment of single, government-run sanatoria. If there were to be sanatoria, there would be objections to “the Department putting Protestant children in a Roman Catholic institution, or vice versa.”²⁶⁸ As in 1909, the federal government continued to give greater priority to the views of the churches than to the health needs of Aboriginal children.

It was not until the fall of 1938 that the federal government significantly expanded the number of students being tested for tuberculosis and the sophistication of the technology being used to test them.²⁶⁹ The goal was to remove children with active tuberculosis from the schools.²⁷⁰ The fact that this was still the government’s priority demonstrates the ineffectiveness of medical examinations in the past. Throughout the 1940s, annual tuberculosis clinics continued to be held at many schools in an effort to identify and remove students with active tuberculosis.²⁷¹ These measures had significant impact. For example, the 1945 survey of the Edmonton school reported that “for the second year in succession, there are no cases requiring sanatorium treatment.”²⁷² Such services were not always available, and the results of that lack were predictable. In June 1947, it was reported that there were six students at the McIntosh, Ontario, school who required sanatorium treatment. Two of the cases were described as appearing to be “of long standing.” In raising the issue with the Ontario Tuberculosis Control Division, Dr. D. C. Marlatt of the Fort William Sanatorium indicated that there was a need to x-ray students at both the Sioux Lookout and McIntosh schools.²⁷³

Once active cases were identified, it was not always possible, even in the 1940s, for officials to find places for students in local sanatoria.²⁷⁴ Two students from the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school were hospitalized with tuberculosis in January 1943. In reporting on other cases, Dr. Gordon L. Bell wrote that he thought that in theory, “minimal cases” could be treated at the school if they received “rest and extra rations and reasonable supervision.” This seemed unlikely, however, since the school was “extremely short of staff and the registered nurse on their staff has far more work to do than any woman could be expected to perform efficiently.” Bell agreed to allow such students to stay in the school temporarily, but wished to monitor their progress, since he felt the supervision they received at the school left “much to be desired.”²⁷⁵ Some residential schools were viewed as being possible treatment facilities for children with tuberculosis. In the case of one girl who was diagnosed with tuberculosis in northwestern Ontario in 1943, it was felt that her case was not so serious as to require sanatorium treatment. Instead, a doctor recommended that, because other members of her family had active tuberculosis, it would be best if she were placed in a residential school.²⁷⁶

As discussed in the statistical analysis, the tuberculosis death rate in the schools remained high until the beginning of the 1950s. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada identified from the available records eighteen tuberculosis deaths among residential school students in the 1946 school year. Eight tuberculosis deaths were detected for the following year. The figure was down to two for 1951.²⁷⁷

This improvement is due to both enhanced vaccination programs and the introduction of effective treatment for tuberculosis. In 1947, the federal government began to vaccinate “the Indian children of British Columbia” with the bacillus Calmette– Guérin (bcg). Initially, the focus was on children in residential schools, but the program was broadened to include newborns and students in day schools.²⁷⁸ Similar programs were initiated and carried out in other provinces. Students at the Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school were vaccinated with bcg in 1948, leading to a low number of students who tested positive for tuberculosis in 1949.²⁷⁹ By the mid-1950s, Indian Health Services had adopted a bcg vaccination policy for the control of tuber-culosis among the First Nations population in Saskatchewan. The goal was to vaccinate all First Nations newborn infants. Starting in the 1955–56 school year, all students were to be given a tuberculin school test to detect the presence of the bacteria. Those who tested negative were to be vaccinated.²⁸⁰ Campaigns of this nature had a significant impact. A 1957 survey of the Roman Catholic school at Cardston, Alberta, showed that of 229 students, 195 had no evidence of tuberculosis, and neither were there any reported cases of active tuberculosis.²⁸¹

The presence of tuberculosis in the schools continued to decline. In 1964, 93% of the kindergarten class at the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, school tested negative for tuberculosis.²⁸² The disease was not, however, non-existent. In 1964, a “minimal active case” of tuberculosis was reported at the Birtle, Manitoba, school. There was also a case of reactivated tuberculosis at the Assiniboia school in Winnipeg. In this case, the student had been admitted to the school without an initial medical examination. Both students were placed in the Ninette, Manitoba, sanatorium.²⁸³

Residential school students were still being diagnosed with, and treated for, tuber-culosis in 1970.²⁸⁴ Treatment practice was changing considerably, sanatoria were being closed, and tubercular patients were being treated in general hospitals and in their own communities on a walk-in basis. The number of young people being treated at the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton had declined to the point in 1970 that consideration was given to re-evaluating the need for the in-hospital school program for patients.²⁸⁵ In 1972, there were still an annual tuberculin test, bcg vaccination, and an x-ray program being undertaken at student residences in Saskatchewan.²⁸⁶ In 1973, 4,934 First Nations and Inuit people were vaccinated with bcg and an additional 2,072 persons were revaccinated. In that same year, 345 new tuberculosis cases were identified among First Nations and Inuit people. Of these, 134 were nineteen years of age and younger.²⁸⁷

In summation, it can be said that by failing to treat each child as a potential patient, the schools had managed to turn an increasing number of them into actual patients. The “common sense” approach that Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott had adopted when he rejected Dr. Peter Bryce’s proposal to turn the schools into sanatoria had pleased the government because it was not costly, and it had pleased the churches because it left them in control of the schools and the students. It is clear evidence that the government never had put in place a proper screening process, or developed facilities for providing students who developed tuberculosis with proper treatment. The prevention of disease and the treatment of sick Aboriginal children were a shameful failure that contributed to thousands of deaths and undermined the health of generations of Aboriginal people.

As early as 1899, Indian Commissioner David Laird had boasted of the schools’ “stringent” medical examination. As a result, he wrote, “no alarm need now be felt in regard to the health of pupils attending industrial and boarding schools, and all who come in contact with Indians should strive to disabuse their minds as to the danger.”²⁸⁸ Dr. Peter Bryce had stressed the need to improve the screening process, to discharge infectious students, and to improve treatment. Dr. Lafferty had also called on the government to restrict admissions and discharge the infectious students. Dr. Grain made similar recommendations. Dr. Stone’s proposal of 1930 would have focused on reducing the number of infectious students in the schools and increasing treatment capacity. The work of the Qu’Appelle Health Unit demonstrated that these measures would have had a positive impact on student health. Reducing the infection of healthy students would have also reduced the spread of infection from the schools to the community.

The government failed to adopt these many measures recommended by medical professionals because they would have increased costs and because they would have been opposed by the churches or have been judged by them to be too costly. Instead, the government put in place inadequate policies as recommended by non-medical specialists. The policies that were put in place were not enforced. The schools could have helped children increase their resistance to tuberculosis by providing them with sanitary, well-ventilated living quarters, an adequate diet, warm clothing, and sufficient rest. Instead, the residential schools regularly failed to provide the healthy living conditions, nutritious food, sufficient clothing, and physical regime that would prevent students from getting sick in the first place, and would allow those who were infected a fighting chance at recovery and survival.

Fire hazard

The early residential schools were often poorly constructed and located in isolated locations, far from any fire departments. Many were of wood-frame construction. The wood- and coal-burning stoves used to heat the buildings could throw off sparks that could result in a blaze. Heat was transmitted from room to room by stovepipes that were themselves a potential source of fire. Most of the schools were far from any source of electricity and, for many years, they were lit by gas lamps.²⁸⁹ Poor wiring was often the cause of school fires. For example, an electrical short-circuit started a fire that destroyed the rebuilt Qu’Appelle school in 1932.²⁹⁰

The fire risk was severe. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has determined that, at a minimum, fifty-three schools were destroyed by fire. There were at least 170 additional recorded fires. It was suspected or proven that 37 of these 223 fires were deliberately set. (For details, see appendices 2 through 5.)

A minimum of forty students died in residential school fires. The 1905 fire at Saint-Paul-des-Métis, in what is now Alberta, claimed one life; the 1927 fire at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school claimed twenty; the 1930 fire at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school claimed twelve students and one staff person; and the 1963 fire at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school claimed the lives of four students.²⁹¹ In addition, in three incidents (Middlechurch, Manitoba, 1895; Beauval, Saskatchewan, 1909; and Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, 1924), students died of burns when garbage-disposal fires set their clothing on fire.²⁹² It also appears that a girl from the Ahousaht, British Columbia, school died of fire-related injuries in 1916.²⁹³

It would be a mistake to think that the risk of fire was confined to the early years of the residential school system. In 1940, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, wrote a highly critical assessment of the condition of the country’s residential schools. According to him, the schools had been poorly built, often failing to meet “the minimum standards in the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions for the education of children.” Not surprisingly, many were “acute fire hazards.” He wanted to see many of them replaced, preferably with day schools. He recommended that any new residential school should be “of fireproof construction throughout.”²⁹⁴

In the ten-year period after Hoey wrote this memorandum, ten schools were destroyed by fire.²⁹⁵ It is in large measure a testament to the work of the school staff and the students that none of these fires resulted in any loss of life.²⁹⁶ Other schools were closed before they could burn down. The Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, which Hoey described as “one of our worst fire hazards,” was closed in 1946.²⁹⁷ In May of 1950, the Saskatchewan fire commissioner’s office concluded that no changes could be made that would “make the [Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school] a reasonably safe place to house these children.”²⁹⁸ The government closed the school a month later.²⁹⁹ A series of fires contributed to the closing of the Chapleau, Ontario, school in 1948.³⁰⁰

Although some of these schools were replaced, the replacements were not always of fireproof construction. For example, the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school, which replaced the schools destroyed by fire in Onion Lake and Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, in the 1940s, was “temporarily” housed for decades in an abandoned army camp. The school that developed in this location had one of the largest enrolments of any residential school (550 students in 1953, for example), yet was viewed as a fire hazard for most of its history.³⁰¹

The regulatory context

The risk of fire in large public buildings was well established in North America by the early twentieth century. A 1907 fire at a non-residential school in Montreal, for example, had left sixteen students and one teacher dead.³⁰² Similar fires in the United States had led to the adoption of laws requiring schools to have enclosed exterior fire escapes, fireproof basements, and unimpeded exits that opened outwards.³⁰³ By the early twentieth century, there was also recognition that student safety was best ensured by improved building techniques, including the use of fire-resistant materials. Many also argued that public schools should not be more than two storeys in height, effectively alleviating the difficulty in evacuating students from the building in case of fire.³⁰⁴

Although they were only guidelines, the National Building Code of 1941 and the National Fire Code of 1963 were used as a basis to assess conditions in residential schools and to make recommendations for improvements. By the late 1950s, the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office, a branch of the federal government, examined all the preliminary designs on buildings prepared by the Department of Public Works, and approved final working drawings.³⁰⁵

Limited and piecemeal policy

Indian Affairs was slow to develop adequate fire-protection policies for residential schools and ineffective in enforcing them. The instructions that Indian Affairs did issue were often directed only to specific regions, as opposed to the country as a whole, and were vague in their wording.³⁰⁶

The 1910 contract between the federal government and the churches required that residential schools be kept in good repair, and placed a limit on the number of students who could be housed in a dormitory. It did not have specific fire-safety requirements.

A 1908 directive requiring that “all dormitory, school-room, interior hall, and exterior doors should open outwards” to ensure that “the building may be emptied quickly and without danger of blockade in case of fire” was issued only to the principals in prairie schools.³⁰⁷ This did not become a national expectation until 1927. A circular informing principals that fire-escape doors should open outward was issued a week after a fire claimed twenty lives at the Beauval school.³⁰⁸ It was not until 1932 that a circular insisted that fire escapes be “efficient, kept in repair, free from snow or ice and unlocked exits to them must open out.”³⁰⁹ Similar instructions were issued in February 1938 and in February 1942.³¹⁰

Dangerous practices

These limited policy directives did little to alter the conditions in the schools. Throughout their history, residential schools were poorly constructed and maintained, and had inadequate fire protection, fire alarms, and fire exits. The policy prohibiting the locking of fire exits and dormitories was violated with impunity. Overcrowding further increased the risk of death or injury in the event of a fire.³¹¹

Poor construction, poor maintenance

Government inspectors regularly described buildings as being “fire traps.” For example, the term was applied to the Birtle, Manitoba, school in 1901; the Mission, British Columbia, school in 1928; the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, school in 1928; the Hobbema, Alberta, school in 1930; the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school in 1932 and 1933; the Ahousaht, British Columbia, school, in 1937; the Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, school, in 1941; the Moose Factory, Ontario, school in 1954; the Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, school in 1957; and the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Brocket, Alberta, in 1959.³¹² The term fire trap was replaced by fire hazard by the 1960s. For example, a 1968 inspection report described the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school as a “fire hazard and a potential threat to the lives of the children still living in it.”³¹³ The Roman Catholic school in Onion Lake was termed a “fire hazard” in 1974.³¹⁴

Limited firefighting capacity

The high risk of fire was coupled with poor water supply at many schools. For example, deficiencies in water supply were reported at Sarcee (T’suu Tina), Alberta, in 1896; Fraser Lake, British Columbia, in 1923; Edmonton, Alberta, in 1924; Port Simpson, British Columbia, in 1937; and Ahousaht, British Columbia, in 1939.³¹⁵ The firefighting equipment at schools across the country was regularly reported as being poorly maintained or unsuitable until the end of the 1930s. Examples of schools with inadequate firefighting equipment were Gleichen, Alberta, in 1921; Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, in 1927; Edmonton, Alberta, in 1925; Williams Lake, British Columbia, in 1932; and Fort Alexander, Manitoba, in 1935.³¹⁶

This problem was not unique to the early years of the system. Inadequate water supply and firefighting equipment were noted at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1940; Sioux Lookout, Ontario, in 1940; Cranbrook, British Columbia, in 1941 and 1945; Fort Alexander, Manitoba, in 1941; Brantford, Ontario, in 1946; Edmonton, Alberta, in 1946 and 1949; Whitefish Lake, Alberta, in 1946 and 1948; Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1951 and 1954; Kamsack, Saskatchewan, in 1955; Lower Post, British Columbia, in 1956; Fort George, Québec, in 1956; the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Cardston, Alberta, in 1957; Kuper Island, British Columbia, in 1958; and McIntosh, Ontario, in 1958.³¹⁷

Fire alarms

Problems with the effectiveness of fire alarms were identified at Birtle, Manitoba, in 1943; Hobbema, Alberta, in 1944; Brantford, Ontario, in 1946; Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1953; Kamsack, Saskatchewan, in 1955; and Calais, Alberta, in 1959.³¹⁸

Inadequate fire escapes

An effective fire-escape system was one that allowed students to exit a school building quickly and safely in an emergency. From the point of view of a residential school principal, such a system had two potential drawbacks. First, a fire escape that allowed students to leave the school quickly during a fire could also be used by a student or students who simply wished to run away from the school.³¹⁹ Second, an exterior staircase from a dormitory to the ground ran both ways. Boys could climb up such a staircase to gain access to the girls’ dormitory (and vice versa). As a result, principals resisted the installation of outside fire escapes.³²⁰ When they were finally obliged to install them, they often chose dangerous and frightening pole-style escapes that students were expected to slide down in the event of fire.³²¹

Deficiencies in fire escapes were reported at schools in Squamish, British Columbia, in 1923; Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, in 1923; Muncey, Ontario, in 1924; Mission, British Columbia, in 1926 and 1930; Kenora, Ontario, in 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1938; Birtle, Manitoba, in 1927; Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, in 1927; Cranbrook, British Columbia, in 1927, 1938, and 1939; Brocket, Alberta, in 1927; Round Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1929 and 1938; Whitefish Lake, Alberta, in 1929; Hobbema, Alberta, in 1930; File Hills, Saskatchewan, in 1932; Fraser Lake, British Columbia, in 1932, 1938, and 1939; Christie, British Columbia, in 1934; Cluny, Alberta, in 1935; Delmas, Saskatchewan, in 1937; Sandy Bay, Manitoba, in 1938; Grayson, Saskatchewan, in 1938; Hobbema, Alberta, in 1938; Sioux Lookout, Ontario, in 1938; and Lytton, British Columbia, in 1939.³²²

Again, this problem was not restricted to the system’s early years. Inadequate fire escapes were reported at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, in 1946; Christie, British Columbia, in 1946; Brantford, Ontario, in 1946; the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1947; Whitefish Lake, Alberta, in 1948; Moose Factory, Ontario, in 1950; Fort Frances, Ontario, in 1950; the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1950; Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1951; Kamsack, Saskatchewan, in 1955; Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, in 1957; the Anglican and the Catholic schools in Cardston, Alberta, in 1957; Joussard, Alberta, in 1958; McIntosh, Ontario, in 1958; and Calais, Alberta, in 1959.³²³ Typical of many inspection reports was the 1938 observation that the poor condition of the plaster walls throughout the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school meant that “should fire break out it would be drawn up through the walls and ceilings through the places where the plaster is missing, and run under the floors all over the building before anyone would be aware.”³²⁴ An inspection report on the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, concluded, “We cannot get away from the fact that this building, of wooden structure inside, would allow a fire to spread very rapidly and with the number of children and supervisors, particularly on the second and third floors, there is every possibility that if fire did take place unnoticed, loss of life could very likely happen.”³²⁵ Despite this, many of the problems remained unaddressed for decades.³²⁶ The federal government often was slow to respond to recommendations to improve conditions. In 1950, the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal described the fire exits at the Moose Factory school as being “extraordinarily unsatisfactory—if a fire started in the night in the building I could foresee only a shocking sacrifice of life.”³²⁷ In 1954, Anglican Church representative Henry Cook complained that at the Moose Factory school, “one door allows for exit and the windows do not open to allow escape by that means if one wishes to jump to the ground.”³²⁸

Locking fire-escape doors

To prevent students from using fire-escape doors in ways deemed improper, many principals kept the doors locked. There are examples of this practice from Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1908; Brocket, Alberta, in 1925; Fort Alexander, Manitoba, in 1930; Sandy Bay, Manitoba, in 1931; The Pas, Manitoba, in 1931; Morley, Alberta, in 1935; Elkhorn, Manitoba, in 1937; and Port Simpson, British Columbia, in 1938.³²⁹

The Indian commissioner for the Prairies, W. M. Graham, described the practice as “almost criminal” in 1925.³³⁰ Six years later, he recommended that the principal of The Pas school be removed from office for locking the fire exits. Not only did the principal continue in office, but he also continued to lock the fire exits.³³¹

As noted earlier, Indian Affairs issued circulars in 1932, 1938, and 1942, instructing principals and Indian agents that fire exits were to be kept unlocked.³³² Despite these instructions, there are reports of locked exits and dormitories at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1940, as well as at the schools in Birtle, Manitoba, in 1945; Morley, Alberta, in 1946; Alert Bay, British Columbia, in 1947 and 1961; Chapleau, Ontario, in 1948; Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, in 1949 and 1955; Fort Frances, Ontario, in 1952; Grayson, Saskatchewan, in 1952; Beauval, Saskatchewan, in 1952 and 1956; Alberni, British Columbia, in 1960; Assiniboia in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1962; Brandon, Manitoba, in 1970; Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, in 1973; Hobbema, Alberta, in 1975 and 1981; and the Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, residence in 1976.³³³

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to identify any case where significant action was taken against principals who locked fire-escape doors. The continuous violation of a clear and often-stated government policy reflects the unwillingness of the federal government to enforce its own regulations, and the willingness of school authorities to defy them.

Failure to eliminate pole fire escapes

The major problems with many school fire escapes were identified in a 1949 memorandum by the chief of the Engineering and Construction Division, Department of Mines and Resources. The memorandum noted that in many residential schools, the fire escapes could be reached only through the windows, with sills often four feet (1.2 metres) above the floor. For small children, simply getting over the windowsill could present a problem. Once out the window, the children would usually have to go down an iron pole. This was “impracticable for small children.” The memorandum said that steel stairs did not offer a solution for situations where “small children must descend several stories under winter conditions.” These uncovered escapes could become blocked with snow or covered with ice. It was recommended that schools install either fully enclosed and accessible fire-escape towers that would contain stairways, or enclosed steel chutes.³³⁴ This report could have served as the basis for improvement, but the problems it identified often went unaddressed. There were reports from across the country about the inadequacy of pole-type fire escapes, with particular attention drawn to the fact that small children were frightened to use them.³³⁵ It was not until May 1954—nine years after an Indian Affairs inspector first called for the replacement of the pole fire escapes—at the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school that a new fire escape with steel steps and handrail was installed.³³⁶ In 1946, Indian Affairs official J. H. Leyland wrote of the pole-type escapes at the Edmonton school:

It is difficult to imagine any person and especially small children, being able to safely make their escape from the building in the event of fire by means of this type of escape. One hundred and thirty children in night attire would, in my opinion, never be able to evacuate the building by means such as are available.³³⁷

They were not replaced until 1954.³³⁸ It took seven years to have the pole fire escape at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school replaced after an inspector wrote in 1949 that “it is very doubtful if these poles would be of any use in case of emergency.”³³⁹ Five years passed between the time an inspector condemned the fire escapes at the Sioux Lookout school in 1952 and the time they were replaced.³⁴⁰

In 1966, seventeen years after the chief of the Engineering and Construction Division, Department of Mines and Resources, called for an end to the use of pole fire escapes, a fire inspector recommended replacement of one on the west side of the Catholic school in Kenora. A 1968 inspection concluded that the pole-type fire escape was insufficient, given the large number of students living in the dormitories. Its replacement was described as an “urgent matter.”³⁴¹ It is not clear from the record if the pole was ever replaced. However, the fact that the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office was recommending “changes in the fire escape system” was cited by Indian Affairs official W. McKim as one of the department’s reasons for deciding to close the school in 1972.³⁴²

Indian Affairs issued instructions in 1907 that there be a system of fire drills, and in 1927, it required that they be held monthly.³⁴³ Not all schools complied with the policy. In 1937, Inspector G. H. Barry reported on the “great trouble” he was having in getting the principal of the Port Simpson school “to train the children in Fire Drill.”³⁴⁴ Problems with inadequate and infrequent fire drills were reported at the Mohawk Institute in 1946 and 1959.³⁴⁵

Continued fire risk in an era of prosperity

The fire risk in residential schools increased dramatically during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the wartime austerity of the 1940s. During those years, little was spent on maintenance, and poorly built schools continued to deteriorate. As previously noted, ten schools burned down between 1940 and 1950. However, school fire safety still did not improve significantly during the period of economic prosperity that followed the end of the Second World War. During this period, Indian Affairs focused its investment on expanding the number of day schools rather than on residential school maintenance and upkeep. When, in 1958, extensive renovations were called for to the main building at the Fort Alexander residential school, the local Indian Affairs official was instructed “not to spend any more money than is absolutely necessary to reduce the hazards in event of fire,” since it was expected the school would close in the near future.³⁴⁶ A 1960 report from the British Columbia Office of the Fire Marshal concluded that the Mission school was overcrowded, and had inadequate fire escapes and limited fire-fighting equipment. School buildings, some of which dated back to 1885, were assessed as being fire hazards.³⁴⁷

Beginning in the 1950s, federal and provincial fire marshals began to pay increasing attention to the residential schools. They judged the schools to be overcrowded fire traps. The standard recommendation was the installation of expensive sprinkler systems.³⁴⁸ In 1950, none of the residential schools had sprinkler systems.³⁴⁹ Indian Affairs officials generally opposed the installation of such systems in existing schools. In many cases, schools were allowed to stay in operation if they installed smoke and heat detectors and reduced enrolment. These compromises were also based on an understanding that the school would be closing in a few years.³⁵⁰

By the 1960s, the fire risk in some schools was so severe that the only solution was to close the school. A 1967 inspection of the Fort Vermilion, Alberta, school made a number of recommendations for improvement. However, the inspector concluded that “due to its age and the combustible nature of the construction materials, even a minor fire could prove disastrous. The building is also structurally unsound and therefore it is the opinion of the writer that serious consideration should be given to discontinuing its use.”³⁵¹ The residence closed at the end of the 1967–68 school year.³⁵² In December 1968, the Joussard, Alberta, school required $125,000 in repairs to bring it up to fire code. The director of education, R. F. Davey, recommended that it be closed at the end of June 1969.³⁵³ The residence closed at the end of the 1968–69 school year.³⁵⁴ In 1969, Indian Affairs believed it could avoid making $45,000 worth of repairs if it closed the Assumption, Alberta, school at the end of the following school year.³⁵⁵ The residence closed three years later, in 1973.³⁵⁶ In March 1969, Indian Affairs was faced with the prospect of making repairs costing $80,000 to the Morley, Alberta, school to rectify issues identified by the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office.³⁵⁷ Rather than being repaired, the residence building was closed at the end of June that year.³⁵⁸ School officials did not always support these closings. When Indian Affairs asserted that the Cluny, Alberta, school was being closed in 1968 to address concerns about fire hazards, Principal Adrian Charron said, “It’s the same hazard since 1911.”³⁵⁹

For those schools that remained in operation, conditions frequently remained dire. From 1970 onwards, when the federal government was attempting to close the system, the government and churches continued to be slow to implement recommended changes. Schools continued to operate in violation of building and fire codes. Fire-safety equipment often was not properly maintained. Tragedy was averted, but, as the following examples indicate, the government continued to run very high risks.

•None of the major fire-safety improvements called for by a March 1971 inspection of the Kamloops, British Columbia, school had been carried out by May 1972.³⁶⁰

•None of the major improvements called for by a 1970 inspection of the Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, school had been carried out by May 1974.³⁶¹

•A fire destroyed a teacher’s residence at Fort George, Québec, in 1975: water-pressure problems prevented fire-fighting equipment from being used for half an hour. ³⁶²

•Prefabricated classroom trailers installed at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school in 1975 did not comply with the National Building Code.³⁶³

•According to a 1975 inspection, the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school had inadequate fire escapes, a sprinkler system of questionable effectiveness, and firefighting equipment “in total disarray.”³⁶⁴

•In 1977, the Lestock, Saskatchewan, residence was, in the opinion of one inspector, so “drastically overcrowded” that in the case of fire, “we would no doubt have a panic situation which could lead to the loss of life.”³⁶⁵

•In 1979, the Cardston, Alberta, residence was judged to have a “lack of adequate exits,” a “lack of building fire protection,” and an “inadequate fire alarm system.” It was also located a “distance from the nearest fire department.”³⁶⁶

•In April 1980, the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, senior boys’ dormitory, which was estimated to be seventy-five to eighty years old, was in violation of national building and fire codes.³⁶⁷

•When a dormitory at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school caught fire in 1974, it was discovered that the alarm did not sound in the Portage la Prairie fire hall, where it was supposed to ring.³⁶⁸

•An electrical fire at the Mission, British Columbia, residence in 1980 was not detected until smoke drifted up through the building’s roof.³⁶⁹

•A 1981 inspection of the Christie student residence, in Tofino, British Columbia, revealed that smoke detectors were not located in all sleeping areas, and many of them were inoperative.³⁷⁰

In matters of fire safety, the government and churches failed on the levels of both policy and implementation. Poorly built and poorly maintained schools constituted serious fire hazards. Defective firefighting equipment exacerbated the risk, and schools were fitted with limited and dangerous fire escapes. Lack of access to safe fire escapes led to high death tolls in both the Beauval and Cross Lake fires.³⁷¹ The harsh discipline and jail-like nature of life in the schools meant that many students tried to run away. To prevent this, many schools deliberately ignored government instructions in relation to fire drills and fire escapes. These were not problems only of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. Well into the second half of the twentieth century, recommendations for improvements went unheeded, and dangerous and forbidden practices were widespread and entrenched. In the interests of cost containment, the Canadian government placed the lives of students and staff at risk for 130 years.

Discipline

The churches and religious orders that operated Canada’s residential schools had strong and interrelated conceptions of order, discipline, obedience, and sin. They believed that human beings were fallen, sinful creatures who had to earn salvation through mastery of their nature by obedience to God.³⁷² The approach to discipline used in schools was based in scripture: corporal punishment was a Biblically authorized way of not only keeping order, but also bringing children to the righteous path.³⁷³ In their use of corporal punishment, church leaders had the support of nineteenth-century educational bureaucrats such as Egerton Ryerson, who believed that opposition to corporal punishment was “contrary to Scripture.”³⁷⁴ Provincial governments provided teachers in public schools with only limited guidance as to how children were to be disciplined. The 1891 Ontario Education Act instructed teachers not to exceed measures that would be taken by a “kind, firm, and judicious parent.”³⁷⁵ Teachers who went beyond these boundaries could be charged with assault under the Criminal Code. Canadian courts had ruled that corporal punishment could not be unreasonable, exceed the severity of the offence, or be carried out with malice.³⁷⁶

Corporal punishment did not historically have this same level of acceptability among Aboriginal people. The large number of recorded parental complaints, coupled with the ongoing difficulty in recruiting students, is evidence of occasions where discipline imposed by the schools exceeded what would have been acceptable in either Aboriginal or European communities.³⁷⁷

Students were punished for not finishing their lessons, for bedwetting, talking out of turn, throwing rocks at the school fence, immorality, refusing to eat their meals, speaking their own languages, neglecting their chores, and theft (often of food).³⁷⁸ Harsh discipline often caused students to run away. In 1925, one boy ran away from The Pas, Manitoba, school after being flogged with a whip. His parents returned him to the school, where he was flogged once more and locked up. According to the chief of The Pas Band, P. Constant, the boy ran away one more time. “There are some white men and some Indians who saw the boy in the state he was in after his flogging, in fact, we were afraid that he would probably die some where as those who saw him say that he was nearly out of his mind.”³⁷⁹ Parents also believed that a boy at the Williams Lake school committed suicide in 1920 because the school disciplinarian was, in the words of the local Indian agent, “much too free with his cane.”³⁸⁰

The failure to provide a national discipline policy

There was a clear need for Indian Affairs to develop a discipline policy for the residential schools it was funding. Such a policy should have given instructions on whether and when corporal punishment could be used, who could administer such punishment, what sort of instruments could be used to administer such punishment, the parts of a student’s body that could be struck, and the limits on the number of blows that could be struck. It would also have required that the punishment be witnessed and recorded, and provide guidance, or restrictions, on a range of other known punishments including confinement, food deprivation, hair cutting, ear twisting, and various forms of public humiliation. Because there was no such general policy on these issues, instructions were provided on a case-by-case basis to individual schools.

The first—and only—nationwide discipline policy for residential schools that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been able to locate was issued in 1953. Prior to that date, there are references to a policy, but no apparent copies of such a policy document are to be found.

When new schools were established, Indian Affairs provided principals with general advice on the approach to be taken to discipline. For example, in 1899, Deputy Minister Lawrence Vankoughnet informed the Roman Catholic bishop responsible for residential schools in British Columbia that at the newly established school at Cranbrook, “obedience to rules and good behavior should be enforced, but corporal punishment should only be resorted to in extreme cases. In ordinary cases the penalty might be solitary confinement for such time as the offence may warrant, or deprivation of certain articles of food allowed to other pupils.”³⁸¹

Similar instructions were issued to Roman Catholic assistant principals in 1888, who were advised to avoid “using too rigorous means with regards to the most rebellious.” Among the punishments that were sanctioned were having a student stand in the corner, depriving students of recreation periods, and the denial of food (either a portion of a meal or the entire meal).³⁸²

In the absence of clear guidelines and directives, individual principals decided for themselves what was and was not appropriate. When principals or other key staff changed, the pattern of discipline could also change, resulting in inconsistency from school to school. Albert Lacombe, the principal of the High River school in what is now Alberta, wrote in the 1885 Indian Affairs annual report, “If we have not some system of coercion to enforce order, and at least a little school discipline, then I assure you it will be very hard to conduct the school with that measure of success which, it was hoped, would attend its establishment.”³⁸³ His successor, Charles Claude, wrote in 1887 that the “system of discipline is a military one and strictly carried out, no breach of the regulations remaining unpunished, but must say to the honour of our pupils that all, with few exceptions, observe perfectly the daily routine.”³⁸⁴

In the years to come, various senior Indian Affairs staff either gave instructions that such policies be issued, or stated that it was their intent to develop such a policy. However, as noted earlier, the Commission has not been able to locate any such policy.

Hayter Reed’s instruction of 1895

In 1895, after allegations that excessive discipline was being employed at the Red Deer school in what is now Alberta, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Hayter Reed wrote to the assistant Indian commissioner in Regina:

Instructions should be given, if not already sent, to the Principals of the various schools, that children are not to be whipped by anyone save the Principal, and even when such a course is necessary, great discretion should be used and they should not be struck on the head, or punished so severely that bodily harm might ensue. The practice of corporal punishment is considered unnecessary as a general measure of discipline and should only be resorted to for very grave offences and as a deterrent example.³⁸⁵

The fact that Reed, the former Indian commissioner for the Northwest Territories and Manitoba, was uncertain of the existence of regulations governing discipline and corporal punishment underscores the lack of official attention that had been paid to this issue.

Reed’s instructions were deficient in a number of ways. For example, they:

•contained no direction as to what other types of discipline were to be used

•did not define what constituted “grave offences”

•did not require a record of punishments to be kept

•did not require parents to be notified of punishment

•did not require more than one adult to be present

•did not stipulate whether it was acceptable for clothing to be removed prior to the administration of corporal punishment

•did not provide direction as to whether children were to be punished in front of other students

No limits were placed on the number of blows that could be administered, or on the instrument that was to be used in administering them. Reed’s admonition that children not be struck on the head may have given principals perceived licence to administer blows to any other part of the body.

Despite all these deficiencies, Reed’s letter did instruct the assistant Indian commissioner in Regina to draft a policy directive on discipline. The Regina-based Indian Commissioner’s office had authority for Indian Affairs in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories (which then included what are now Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the northern parts of Manitoba, Ontario, and Québec). Any directive from the assistant Indian commissioner in Regina would likely go only to schools—and, quite possibly, only the industrial schools—in that region. In other words, no directive would be sent to residential schools in the rest of the country.

But the directive Reed asked for may never have been sent. In its review of both government and church files, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not located any copy of such a document. More significantly, the directive was never referred to in any subsequent correspondence related to discipline that the Commission reviewed. This includes a considerable number of letters in which Indian Affairs officials are expressing displeasure with what they view as being overly harsh discipline in some schools.

For example, in 1896, Amédée Forget, the Indian commissioner for Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, suggested that in the face of repeated misbehaviour, Brandon principal John Semmens would be justified in depriving a student of a holiday, placing him on a “simple diet,” or, “as a last resort, unless the boy had great provocation, by corporal punishment.” This “should not be more severe than a strapping on the hand, which should be administered in the presence of the whole school, and after such a full explanation of the case as will leave no doubt in the mind of any one as to the justice and necessity of the course pursued.”³⁸⁶ In giving this advice, Forget made no reference to the directive that was supposed to have been sent out the year before.

Duncan Campbell Scott’s promised directive of 1922

In 1922, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott informed an Alberta principal:

I wish to intimate that the Department approves of corporal punishment, but we demand that it be of a certain type and within reason. In the near future a circular letter is being addressed to all principals, which will, I trust, clearly indicate the Department’s position and wishes concerning disciplinary methods.³⁸⁷

As in the case of previous references to various guideline documents related to discipline, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has also not been able to locate a copy of this promised circular in any of the records disclosed to us to date. Neither was any mention ever made of such a circular in any subsequent letters about discipline. The 1934 report of a judicial inquiry into complaints of excessive discipline at the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school, for example, makes no reference to any Indian Affairs policies or directives.³⁸⁸

R. A. Hoey and the 1937 circular on discipline

In 1937, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, informed the principal of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford that he was “personally, of the opinion that corporal punishment should only be administered by a member of the staff, in the presence of the Principal.” This, he said, was the practice in the “larger schools in Western Canada.” He went on to say that he had just learned that a “circular making provision for this was sent out to the principals of all residential schools a few years ago. I am enclosing herewith a copy of this resolution for your information and guidance.”

But he made no such enclosure. In a postscript to the letter, he wrote, “I am unable, at the moment, to discover the circular to which I refer, but I shall be glad to send it forward just as soon as it is recovered.”³⁸⁹ This is a point that bears repeating: in 1937, the most senior education official in the Indian Affairs branch could not put his hands on the department’s discipline policy. Given the vagueness of Hoey’s statement, it is not possible to determine the specific year that such a circular was supposed to have been sent out, or even if it might possibly have been the same implied circular to which Deputy Minister Scott had made reference fifteen years earlier. Hoey might not have been personally familiar with the document (if it actually existed), since he had joined Indian Affairs only at the end of 1936.³⁹⁰ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate a copy of any such document.

The correspondence on discipline from this period, which is of considerable volume, makes no reference to such a policy. For example, in 1940, Indian Affairs official G. H. Barry advised the principal of the Chilliwack, British Columbia, school that

it would be well in future to limit the infliction of corporal punishment by requiring that definite permission must first be obtained, either from him as Principal or in his absence from the Acting Principal of the School.

I would further advise that in future any such corporal punishment be given with a regulation school strap made of rubber. The actual strap used for years at this School was specially made for the purpose: is not part of a harness trace as suggested, but is, in my opinion, rather too thick, especially for punishment of the smaller boys.³⁹¹

At no point in his letter did Barry make reference to an existing policy document for direction. Either he was unaware of such a document or there was no such document in existence.

Bernard F. Neary’s 1947 memorandum

In 1947, Bernard F. Neary, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, drew up instructions regarding punishment, which he referred to in his memorandum as “capital punishment.” At the time, he noted, “I can find on file no instance of similar regulations having been prepared.”³⁹² Neary’s rules read as follows:

1) That corporal punishment will be used only where all other methods of disciplining a pupil have failed.

2) That corporal punishment will be administered only on the hands with a proper school strap (regulation 15” rubber).

3) That the maximum number of strokes on each hand in no instance exceed four in number for male pupils over fourteen years of age and in proportion for boys under that age.

4) That all such corporal punishment be administered in the presence of the principal or by the principal.

5) That a Corporal Punishment Register be maintained at the school containing the following headings:

a. Date

b. Reasons for punishment

c. By whom administered

d. Witness

e. Signature of pupil punished

6) That this Register be made available for inspection by all Indian Affairs Branch officials visiting the above.³⁹³

The rules had been drawn up in response to problems at the Morley, Alberta, school. Neary sent a copy of these rules to George Dorey, the secretary of the United Church’s Board of Home Missions. Dorey, in turn, sent the rules to the principal of the Morley school, along with a letter stating, “With regard to the suggestions in the Department’s letter about corporal punishment it would be my hope that you would see your way clear to adopting them completely.”³⁹⁴

Once again, Indian Affairs was responding in a piecemeal fashion. The rules were not sent directly to all principals but only to the head of one missionary association. He, in turn, did not instruct all his principals to abide by them. Instead, he simply urged one principal to do so. In addition, as would be noted by others, these rules were incomplete, applying, for instance, only to boys. They did not address other forms of punishment, such as the denial of meals or the cropping of hair.

To summarize:

•In 1895, the deputy minister of Indian Affairs was uncertain as to whether there was a policy on discipline. He then gave instructions that a policy be issued. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (trc) has been unable to locate such a policy, and there is no reference to such a policy in subsequent correspondence on the issue.

•In 1922, the deputy minister of Indian Affairs stated that a policy was forthcoming. The trc has been unable to locate such a policy, and there is no reference to such a policy in subsequent correspondence on the issue.

•In 1937, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs could not find a copy of the department’s policy on discipline.

•In 1947, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs could not find a copy of the department’s policy on discipline. He then issued a policy document to a specific principal and the head of the school branch of one of the four church organizations responsible for residential schools.

Given these facts, it is safe to say there was no such policy. Certainly, the principals were unaware of the existence of any such policy. The piecemeal approach is underscored by the fact that when disciplinary problems were identified at the Portage la Prairie school in 1949, Indian Affairs sent the principal a copy of the rules that had been sent to the Morley school two years earlier.³⁹⁵ The principal noted their omissions, saying that he assumed the department was leaving “all other methods” to the discretion of the principal, and pointing out that it was the custom in many schools to “‘bob’ the hair of any girl who runs away from school.”³⁹⁶

The failure to regulate is, at least in part, attributable to an unwillingness to confront the churches. Duncan Campbell Scott had concluded in 1913 that the Mohawk Institute’s disciplinary code was “too severe.” However, he felt “this has been in use so long in the Mohawk Institute that it is difficult to change it.” The best he could report to the minister of Indian Affairs was, “As time goes on it will be possible perhaps to relax it.”³⁹⁷ Twenty-four years later, in 1937, in a letter to the lawyer of parents who were complaining about the disciplining of their son at the Mohawk Institute, R. A. Hoey had to acknowledge:

There are few laws or regulations governing the administration of Indian residential schools, for the simple reason that these schools, without exception, are conducted in cooperation with the churches, with clergymen in charge. The clergymen who undertake this work are missionaries in a very real sense and, consequently, very much devoted to the care and guardianship of their pupils.

It was a weak rationale, applied after the fact, to mask the fact that the government had established and was funding a school system for which it failed to provide the appropriate level of policy direction.³⁹⁸

A policy at last: 1953

On April 14, 1953, Philip Phelan, the Indian Affairs superintendent of education, sent out a “statement of policy regarding school discipline, with particular reference to corporal punishment at Indian schools.” The key points read as follows:

Any form of punishment tending to humiliate a pupil is to be avoided. This policy applies alike to the use of sarcasm or to employment of practices calculated to produce distinctive changes in appearance or dress.

It is generally-approved practice for teachers to abstain from physical contacts with pupils whether in anger or affection. Children’s reports of such contacts have sometimes been so exaggerated as to make the teacher’s position untenable.

In any event there must be no corporal punishment of a pupil who is suspected to be suffering from any physical or mental ailment which corporal punishment may aggravate.

Before resorting to corporal punishment, the principal or the teacher in charge must be convinced that no other approved form of punishment will have the necessary punitive and corrective effects. The educator must be sure that the pupil was aware of doing wrong. The presence of such a factor as premeditation, deliberate repetition or heedlessness of consequences may sometimes justify a more serious view and the use of corporal punishment.

The principal or teacher in charge of a school will decide whether corporal punishment is to be used and will personally administer it in the presence of a witness at a time selected to avoid disturbing the school programme. The witness should be a staff member of the same sex as the pupil who is to be punished; the matron at a residential school should witness the corporal punishment of a girl. Only the strap as issued to the principal or teacher in charge will be used. It will be applied only to the palm of the hand.

In a special book reserved for the purpose a record will be kept of every occasion of corporal punishment. This record will show the date, the name of the pupil, a description of the offence, the number of strokes on either hand, and will be signed by the person who used the strap and by the witness.³⁹⁹

The rule relating to changes in appearance should have banned the cropping of hair. The other rules should have ensured that only the principal or the teacher in charge of the school administered corporal punishment. Corporal punishment was to take the form of a strapping on the palm of the hand, delivered in front of a witness of the same sex as the student being strapped. Since humiliation was to be avoided, students were not to be strapped in public. No limits were placed on the number of strokes that could be administered when a student was strapped.

These are the first disciplinary regulations developed by Indian Affairs that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is certain were widely distributed within the residential school system. They were, for example, included in the 1958 Indian Affairs field manual.⁴⁰⁰

However, these rules had no legal force. They were not included in the Regulations with respect to teaching, education, inspection, and discipline for Indian Residential Schools developed under the Indian Act in 1953. Those regulations had little to say about discipline. Principals were to assume the “responsibilities of parents or guardian with respect to the welfare and discipline of the pupils under his charge.” Students were to “conform to the rules for the conduct and behaviour of pupils while on or near the school premises or any premises where any activity of the school is taking place.”⁴⁰¹

The 1953 rules also appear to be the last system-wide document that Indian Affairs produced and distributed that placed limits on disciplinary measures to be employed in the schools.

Assessing administration and compliance of disciplinary regulations

Given that there were no national disciplinary regulations prior to 1953, it is not possible to assess or comment on the Working Group on Missing Children and Unmarked Burials’ instruction to analyze “Departmental administration of regulations and church compliance with these regulations” prior to 1953. For this reason, this section of the report is divided into two sections: pre- and post-1953.

The pre-1953 period

The degree and severity of punishment administered at Canadian residential schools were regularly viewed by the government’s own officials as being excessive. In some cases, the violations were so severe that principals and staff became the subject of criminal and civil court proceedings. In other cases, the government investigated and absolved the principals and school of excessive behaviour. The absence of any overall regulations, standards, or policies meant that government officials had to draw their own conclusions about whether discipline had been excessive, based on their own instincts and prejudices. Their judgment would also have been affected by the belief that decisions supporting parents’ complaints would serve only to weaken the authority of the system. Disciplinary policies were clearly in the hands of the schools, despite the fact that the 1910 contract provided the government with the authority to impose any regulations on the schools that it deemed necessary.

On the following occasions, Indian Affairs officials had drawn attention to what they viewed as being disciplinary excesses at residential schools.

•In 1895, Indian agent D. L. Clink decided not to return a runaway boy to the Red Deer, Alberta, industrial school. He wrote, “I felt if I left the boy he would be abused.” Clink wrote that the actions of one teacher “would not be tolerated in a white school for a single day in any part of Canada.”⁴⁰³

•In 1899, Indian Commissioner David Laird concluded that several children at the Middlechurch school in Manitoba had been “too severely punished.” The principal’s practice of strapping boys on the back was deemed “too suggestive of the old system of flogging criminals.”⁴⁰²

•Indian Affairs official Martin Benson wrote in 1914 that students at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, were being “disciplined to death.”⁴⁰⁴

•The principal of the Presbyterian school in Shoal Lake, Ontario, was advised by the local Indian agent to make less use of corporal punishment in 1914.⁴⁰⁵

•In 1922, Russell Ferrier, Indian Affairs’ superintendent of Indian education, described the disciplinary regime at the Chapleau, Ontario, school as “severe.”⁴⁰⁶

•In 1922, Indian Affairs instructed Chapleau principal George Prewer, “Give careful and thoughtful attention to the discipline problem of the school and assiduously avoid any corporal punishment that could be considered by outsiders as pitiless.”⁴⁰⁷

•In 1924, Indian agent J. W. Waddy reported that E. V. Bird, the principal of the Anglican school in The Pas, Manitoba, was “too severe in punishing the children at that place.”⁴⁰⁸

•In 1925, Indian agent J. W. Waddy reported that he had been told by a local man that a boy who ran away from the school at The Pas had been so badly beaten, he “was welted all around one leg, black and blue.” Waddy’s informant said that if the government did not take action, he would take up “the matter with the

•s.p.c.a. like he would if a dog was abused.” He also warned, “One of these times a pupil will starve to death in the bush after running away from school.”⁴⁰⁹

•In 1928, when commenting on the treatment of runaways from the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan, the local Indian agent noted that all but three of the boys had been “punished corporally but whether severely enough to check them remains to be seen.”⁴¹⁰

•In 1928, E. Ruaux, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, informed the father of a runaway boy that he would whip the boy, unless he was instructed not to by the local Indian agent. The agent complained to Ottawa that it was not fair for the principal to burden him with the decision, adding he preferred to “deal with the Indians strictly according to the Act.”⁴¹¹

•In 1928, Edwin Smith, a non-teaching staff member at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, challenged a student to a fight and then gave him a bloody nose.⁴¹²

•In 1934, E. Ruaux, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, attacked a boy who did not give him a sufficiently respectful answer when told to take his hands out of his pockets. In the scuffle, he gave the boy a bloody nose.⁴¹³ Ruaux remained in office until February 1937.⁴¹⁴

•In 1936, a police officer who returned a group of runaway boys to the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, was reported by school staff as saying “that when he was twelve years of age if he had been kept in as one of these boys had been, he would have gone farther away than the boys did.”⁴¹⁵

•In 1940, a staff member at the Presbyterian school in Kenora threw a stone at a boy and hit him in the head. He took this action because the boy had refused to obey an instruction to stop throwing stones.⁴¹⁶

•In 1940, a boy at the Coqualeetza Institute, in Chilliwack, British Columbia, was forced to take down his pants to receive a thrashing with a length of harness.⁴¹⁷

•In 1940, a supervisor at the St. Albert, Alberta, school put his hands around the throat of a runaway boy and lifted him into the air.⁴¹⁸ After an investigation, the staff member was dismissed.⁴¹⁹

•In 1945, at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, students who, in the words of the principal, had been involved in a “sex case” or had attempted to “jump trains” were strapped on their buttocks.⁴²⁰

Despite these known excesses in discipline, principals who were viewed as being excessively violent were allowed to remain in office. In 1924, Indian Commissioner W. M. Graham recommended to Deputy Minister Scott that E. V. Bird, the principal of The Pas school, be discharged, since “he is not fit to have charge of Indian children.”⁴²¹ Assistant Superintendent General J. D. McLean wrote to T. B. R. Westgate of the Anglican Church about a beating the same principal had given to one boy, saying that he concurred with Graham’s recommendation.⁴²² Despite this, Bird was not dismissed. In 1925, Graham once more recommended that Bird be fired after another complaint about a beating that had been administered to a student.⁴²³ The Anglican Church conducted an investigation. However, the investigator did not contact the individuals who had made the initial complaint about the beating.⁴²⁴ Principal Bird continued in office until 1927, three years after Graham had called for his dismissal.⁴²⁵

Principals also protected staff members who were known to be prone to lose their tempers when disciplining students. The disciplinarian at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school, T. H. Tuck, acknowledged in 1933 that he was “very quick-tempered & have at different times got after them perhaps a little too severely.”⁴²⁶ He was still at the school in 1935 and still being warned to control his temper.⁴²⁷ Local band officials complained about him in 1939.⁴²⁸ In 1941, Tuck left the Blue Quills school to take a position at the Fraser Lake school in British Columbia.⁴²⁹ Apparently, he ran into trouble there as well, and efforts were made to send him to the Mission, British Columbia, school. The principal of that school turned down the offer.⁴³⁰

Principals were often able to frustrate the efforts of Indian agents who found disciplinary practices in the school to be excessively harsh. When, in 1895, Indian agent D. L. Clink questioned Red Deer principal John Nelson about a report that a boy had been hit on the head with a stick, the principal told him to mind his own business, adding, “We run this school.” Nothing came of Clink’s recommendation that the staff member be brought up on criminal charges.⁴³¹

When he came upon an allegation that a boy had committed suicide as a result of the harsh discipline at the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school in 1920, Indian agent Arthur O’N. Daunt proceeded very cautiously. His letter to Indian Affairs makes it clear that he did not believe the school’s administration would co-operate with the government in any investigation into either the death or the alleged harshness of the disciplinarian. Instead, he suggested that the Indian Affairs doctor pretend to be carrying out a medical examination of all the students. The doctor could then report to Indian Affairs if any of the students were bruised or showed other signs of abuse.⁴³² Indian Affairs officials rejected this proposal and ordered him to investigate.⁴³³ By then, however, many of the students had gone home for their vacation. As a result, Daunt failed to carry out the inquiry into the suicide as instructed.⁴³⁴

In May 1934, Indian agent J. E. Pugh met with local Indian band officials who were angered by the bloody nose that Cardston Roman Catholic principal E. Ruaux had given a pupil. Ruaux’s reaction was to ask “what business do they [the chiefs] have in the government of his school?”⁴³⁵ Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Harold McGill advised Pugh that “it would be in the best interests of all parties concerned to allow the matter to drop.”⁴³⁶ In other cases, when Indian Affairs officials investigated complaints, they limited themselves to asking questions of staff members, without ever speaking to the students or their parents.⁴³⁷

There was also a strong belief among many government and school officials that physical force was required to intimidate residential school students. A government inspector wrote of the Red Deer school in 1902, “The boys have no respect for authority unless it is based on the personal strength of the particular officer exercising it. Each officer who is physically able punishes and disciplines his boys after his own methods.” In his view, the “officer who is not endowed with this physical capability is helpless.”⁴³⁸ An inspector of Indian agencies, A. G. Hamilton, wrote in the early 1930s that the only way to control the older boys at the Anglican school in The Pas would be if “a proper boys’ supervisor were secured, and he would need to be a real man, it would be a big step towards handling the children. This would also strengthen the authority of the other members, who at present find themselves unable to control the children.”⁴³⁹

Even the legal system appeared to be influenced by attitudes supporting the justification of severe corporal discipline. In his 1934 report on a mass whipping of nineteen boys at the Shubenacadie school, Justice L. A. Audette wrote that “punishment must be measured according to the gravity of the offence and not overlooking the complex intelligence of these boys who have all been brought up in the life of Indians.”⁴⁴⁰ Since “all human governments rest in the last resort upon physical paid [sic],” it was well for the students to “realize through experience this ineluctable fact.”⁴⁴¹ The thrashing was, in the judge’s view, not only a punishment, but also a benefit, an education into the foundations of civilization. Audette argued that the principal and school could not afford to look weak in the eyes of the students. “A weak punishment to these Indian pupils would have had no effect, would have been turned into derision and they would have laughed at it.”⁴⁴²

This fear of looking weak is one that recurs throughout the history of residential schools. In assessing whether an overly harsh principal should be removed from the Blue Quills, Alberta, school in 1932, Indian Affairs official Russell Ferrier wrote that since there had been “no recent difficulties,” he did not “believe it would be subversive of discipline on the reserve if Father Angin left quietly. The Indians could not feel that they have won any ‘Victory’, as they have not recently sent in any formal complaints.”⁴⁴³ The principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, E. W. Byers, complained bitterly in 1936 when the local Indian agent and provincial police officials raised concerns—in front of parents—about discipline at the school. According to Byers, “Indian children must be dealt with firmly, and if they once conceive the idea that the staff has no authority over them, then the discipline will get out of hand completely.”⁴⁴⁴ In this case, the local Indian agent, who had concerns about Byers’s behaviour, was instructed: “The principal is in the best position to decide what disciplinary measures are required.” The ability of Indian Affairs field staff to monitor school discipline was, once more, effectively undermined by department officials.⁴⁴⁵

The failure to provide policy on discipline, and the failure to act on situations of abuse when that discipline was excessive, had serious implications and lasting consequences.

Because there was no policy, there was no limit on what students could be hit with. It is clear from the record that, in administering corporal punishment, residential school principals did not limit themselves to the use of the kind of strap commonly known in public schools at the time. There are reports of staff using horse whips (often called “quirts”) to punish students. Birtle principal George McLaren was using “a small raw hide” in 1892 to punish runaways.⁴⁴⁶ In 1902, the principal of the Williams Lake school said that on approximately three occasions, he had used “a saddle whip or quirt to punish boys.”⁴⁴⁷ At the Anglican school on the Peigan Reserve in the early twentieth century, P. H. Gentleman used a quirt on students.⁴⁴⁸ In the 1930s, a quirt was also in use at the Blue Quills school.⁴⁴⁹ In 1934, students at the Shubenacadie school were thrashed on their bare backs with a seven-thonged strap that was made specially by the school carpenter to be used on this occasion.⁴⁵⁰ These punishments were not limited to the early twentieth century. In 1936, Chapleau school principal A. J. Vale sought to discharge a girl who had refused to drop her “stubborn” ways even after he had subjected her to “severe whipping and various methods of punishments, such as extra work instead of play, being sent to bed early and loss of extra privileges.”⁴⁵¹ In 1940, a student was thrashed with a length of harness trace.⁴⁵² Students were also punished by blows from bare hands and fists, metal rods, canes, belts, a shovel, a horseshoe, and even a knotted bootlace.⁴⁵³ In the cases of both the shovel and the horseshoe, school administrators resisted Indian Affairs’ requests that the staff members be dismissed. In one case, the staff member was dismissed, but Indian Affairs indicated that there would be no objection if he were rehired at another school.⁴⁵⁴

Because there was no policy, there were no limits on where students could be hit. Students at Shubenacadie and Cluny were whipped on their backs.⁴⁵⁵ Students at Williams Lake and The Pas were strapped on the legs.⁴⁵⁶ One girl at The Pas school was hit in the face with the strap.⁴⁵⁷ According to a staff member, this happened when the girl sought to pull her hand away from a blow.⁴⁵⁸ In 1940, a student at Chilliwack was strapped on bare buttocks.⁴⁵⁹

Because there was no policy, there was no limit on the number of blows or the degree of injury that could be inflicted. There are reports of corporal punishment so severe that it left students with bruises. These include reports from schools in Brantford in 1914, Cluny in 1921, The Pas in 1925, Shubenacadie in 1934, and Brantford in 1937.⁴⁶⁰ A judicial inquiry held into the mass flogging at the Shubenacadie school downplayed the fact that the punishment had left scars on the backs of some students. Justice L. A. Audette wrote that “flesh differs. Some skin or flesh has more or less resistance than others.”⁴⁶¹ Cluny principal J. Riou wrote in 1922 that he did not believe strapping fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys or girls to be “pitiless treatment,” even if it left “the boy or the girl marked.”⁴⁶²

Because there was no policy, there was no limit on the use of confinement as a punishment. Some schools had rooms specifically set aside to serve as what amounted to solitary confinement jail cells. In a report from the fall of 1892 on the Battleford school, Indian Affairs official Alex McGibbon wrote that a fellow Indian Affairs official had locked a boy in a cell. This was done against the wishes of the school principal.⁴⁶³ The Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie in 1889 had a “lockup” room to which students were sent as punishment.⁴⁶⁴ For “serious faults,” students at the Williams Lake school might be locked in a room for up to twelve days in 1902.⁴⁶⁵ In a 1907 report on the Mohawk Institute, the inspector for Indian agencies, J. G. Ramsden, wrote, “I cannot say that I was favourably impressed with the sight of two prison cells in the boys [sic] playhouse. I was informed, however, that these were for pupils who ran away from the institution, confinement being for a week at a time when pupils returned.”⁴⁶⁶ In the 1920s, the principal of the Roman Catholic school at Kenora was reported to have locked students in cupboards, the outhouses, and the basement as punishment. He said he had adopted these practices because the local Indian agent had recommended that he make less use of corporal punishment.⁴⁶⁷ At the Gordon’s Reserve school in the 1930s, students were confined as punishment in the infirmary.⁴⁶⁸ While they were locked up, students might not be allowed to see their parents if they visited the school.⁴⁶⁹ Into the 1950s, there are reports of students confined to specific punishment rooms. ⁴⁷⁰

Confined students often were fed restricted diets. It was reported in 1902 that girls at Williams Lake had been put on bread-and-water diets.⁴⁷¹ At the Mohawk Institute in 1914, a girl was put on a bread-and-water diet for three days.⁴⁷² Boys suspected of theft were put on bread and water at Shubenacadie in 1934, as were truants at the Gordon’s school in 1938.⁴⁷³

Because there was no policy, there were no limits on what could be done to students as punishment. It is important to recall that we are talking about students at school, not prisoners in jail. Yet, numerous residential school students were physically restrained. In some cases, their hands were tied behind their backs; they were chained to benches; they were shackled to their beds and chained to each other; and their hands and feet were tied together.⁴⁷⁴ In 1920, the newly appointed principal of the Lytton, British Columbia, school described his predecessor’s administration as one of “repression, with such paraphernalia as hand-cuffs, leg-irons, stocks, convicts’ haircuts and prison cells.”⁴⁷⁵ In 1934, a runaway student at the same school was blind-folded and forced to eat a spoonful of mustard. He was then held face-down in a pail of water.⁴⁷⁶

Many of the punishments were also coupled with humiliation. In addition to being strapped, runaways often had their hair cut short or shaved off.⁴⁷⁷ Students often had their ears twisted as punishment.⁴⁷⁸ In 1939, Carcross, Yukon, principal H. C. Grant informed Indian Affairs that some students had been “laid across the classroom desk in the presence of the whole school, clad only in their night attire, and strapped on a different part of their anatomy than their hands.”⁴⁷⁹ In 1952, two former staff members of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school reported that students were being spanked “for the benefit of the entire school.”⁴⁸⁰

On occasion, Indian Affairs officials expressed opposition to such punishments. In 1906, Indian Commissioner David Laird instructed the Indian agent responsible for the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, school that “ear twisting for punishment should be dropped.”⁴⁸¹ Indian Affairs departmental secretary T. R. L. MacInnes advised the Gordon’s principal in 1938 that, “while it is doubtful” cutting the girls’ hair “constitutes assault in a legal sense at the same time it is felt that you should adopt some other method of enforcing discipline.”⁴⁸² These letters are yet further evidence of the fact that there was no system-wide discipline policy to which Indian Affairs and school officials could refer. It also demonstrates the Indian Affairs habit of dealing with problems on a case-by-case basis. Laird could have sent a letter to all the schools over which he, as Indian commissioner, had authority on the Canadian Prairies. MacInnes could have given stronger direction and given it to all principals, not simply to the principal of a single school in Saskatchewan.

Punishment could take the form of an endurance test. At the Battleford school in 1892, students were made to stand alongside a fence for two hours as punishment. At the Sechelt, British Columbia, school in 1936, the school disciplinarian held extended physical drills, requiring boys to hop on one leg “for longer periods than usual,” in an effort to force them to reveal who had stolen a set of the school keys.⁴⁸³

Right across the country, students who wet their beds were subjected to a range of humiliating punishments, of which one of the most common was being paraded in front of the other students, often draped in their wet bedsheets.⁴⁸⁴ In other cases, they were placed in tubs of hot or cold water for extended periods of time.⁴⁸⁵

The post-1953 period

The 1953 policy document appears to have had only limited impact. In 1956, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora had twisted a boy’s ear in the full view of his grandfather. The incident led R. F. Davey, the superintendent of education, to ask the principal “to abide by the regulations governing discipline in our schools, a copy of which is attached.” The principal responded, “I have not previously seen the regulations which you have enclosed. I will abide by it in the future.”⁴⁸⁶ In 1965, an investigation into allegations of excessive discipline at the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school revealed that the school principal did not have a copy of the Indian Affairs discipline policy.⁴⁸⁷

In October 1953, the effectiveness of the discipline policy underwent its first test. That month, a father laid a complaint before the local justice of the peace about the treatment his sons had received at the Birtle, Manitoba, school. He said that Principal N. W. Rusaw had strapped the two boys on the buttocks.⁴⁸⁸ Indian Affairs official G. H. Marcoux spoke to the parents, to one of the boys, the principal, a police officer, and a doctor named Bjoranson. The parents said the beating had left marks on the boys’ genitals, while the doctor and police officer said that the marks were limited to the backs of their legs and buttocks. Marcoux wrote, “Mr. Rusaw may have overstepped the mark a little but I believe his story that the boys were running away and he said he had to make an example of them.”⁴⁸⁹ Acting Superintendent of Education R. F. Davey concluded that neither the “manner of administering the punishment nor the report of the occasion” conformed to the recently released regulations. However, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could not locate any record of any disciplinary action ever taken against the principal, who continued in office for almost another twenty years, until at least 1970.⁴⁹⁰

There are other examples of harsh punishment from this era. A girl from the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan was hospitalized in 1956 after being punished. Indian Affairs did not become aware of this until after the principal in charge of the school had resigned and fled the country.⁴⁹¹ The parents of a student at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school informed the administration in 1959 that their son had told them he was going to run away if the current boys’ master was not replaced. Their son said that the master was “too rough for the boys” and hit them with his fists.⁴⁹² The master was facing criminal charges at the time for an assault that took place outside of the school and did not involve school pupils or employees.⁴⁹³ By the late 1950s, there were reports that students at the Lytton, British Columbia, school and residence were being regularly struck in the face by a number of staff members for violating school rules.⁴⁹⁴

In some cases, Indian Affairs officials appear to have supported and encouraged the use of harsh punishment. In 1961, an Indian agent recommended that a principal respond to truancy at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school with the “heavy strapping of offenders.”⁴⁹⁵

Harsh physical discipline was not only used for punishment: it was also used as a tool of domination. In 1956, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora who had twisted a boy’s ear in front of his grandfather acknowledged that the reason he had done it “was jointly to let the boy’s grandfather see that the boy was in the wrong and also to let the boy know that I do not fear his grandfather.”⁴⁹⁶

Students also continued to be punished in humiliating and public fashion. In 1963, thirteen students at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school were strapped on their bottoms in front of the assembled staff and students. The Indian agent disapproved, but the principal remained in office.⁴⁹⁷ In 1965, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora acknowledged that he had “confined two Indian children to their room in their underclothing with only bare mattresses in the room and provided a diet of bread and milk only as a means of punishment for their having run away from the school.”⁴⁹⁸

In some cases, discipline appears to have bordered on the sadistic. In the 1960s, Kamloops, British Columbia, principal Allan Noonan advocated the following treatment for older boys who got into fights and refused to apologize: “Put them in the ring with gloves and supervise a boxing match until both boys are too tired to care any more. For a bully, this is good medicine too—let five little fellows with gloves on push him around the ring. The bully will get tired especially if he is made to box on his knees.”⁴⁹⁹

Short haircuts (including shaved heads) continued to be given as punishment, particularly in the case of truancy. For example, there are reports of such punishment from Saskatchewan in 1957 and 1965, the Yukon in 1959, and Québec in 1970.⁵⁰⁰

Although Indian Affairs investigated some complaints, in many others, Indian Affairs allowed principals to conduct their own investigations into complaints about staff.⁵⁰¹ There are also examples of staff members who, having raised their own concerns about discipline levels at their schools, were dismissed for speaking up, were marginalized, or had their complaints trivialized.⁵⁰²

In some cases, the churches established and enforced their own disciplinary policies. The 1967 Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school staff manual stated that corporal punishment was to be used only as a last resort. It could be administered only by the principal or, in the absence of the principal, the vice-principal or senior teacher. “Any staff member who strikes a child is liable to instant dismissal and possible prosecution. Difficult disciplinary problems must always be referred to a senior staff member.”⁵⁰³ That same year, a child-care worker at an Anglican school in Saskatchewan was fired for striking a student in the face and kicking him.⁵⁰⁴

Despite positive developments, even in the system’s final years, there are cases where discipline was excessive and poorly controlled. As late as 1989, there were reports that students at the Poplar Hill school in northwestern Ontario were being held down on a table and struck with a leather strap. The same school also had a “counselling room” in which children were alleged to have been locked for hours at a time.⁵⁰⁵ Controversy over these policies eventually led to the closure of the school.⁵⁰⁶

The Gordon’s Residence in Saskatchewan did not close until the late 1990s. The school had a long history of poor management, sexual abuse of students, and complaints that discipline was harsh and abusive. Throughout the school’s later years, its management did not control the staff. The result was relentless abuse of students. There are examples of staff members belittling students’ families, slapping students, banging their heads against doors, banging their heads against walls, and grabbing students by the hair.⁵⁰⁷ Punishments of this sort continued into the 1990s.⁵⁰⁸

Students continued to be subject to excessive, violent, and often humiliating punishments. These were often administered by people who had no authority to discipline the children and who kept no record of what they had done.

Protection from the courts: pre- and post-1953

The courts appear to have offered minimal protection to students who were being physically abused. On at least three occasions, residential school staff members were charged with assaulting students. In each case, they were acquitted.⁵⁰⁹ In a fourth case, a supervisor, Ralph Jubinville, was dismissed from the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school in 1965 for deliberately inflicting burns on the arms and necks of several boys as a form of punishment.⁵¹⁰ Although the police were notified of his actions at the time, they took no action. However, in the 1990s, complaints from former students led the police to revisit the case. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Jubinville was convicted on three charges of assault causing bodily harm. He was fined $500.⁵¹¹

On one occasion, the civil courts were more receptive to parental concerns. In 1914, the father of two children at the Mohawk Institute successfully sued school principal Nelles Ashton for imprisoning one of his daughters for three days on a water diet, and for the physical punishment she had been subjected to for having run away from the school.⁵¹² Ashton, who had been principal since 1911, was replaced that year.⁵¹³ While the finding in this case did contribute to the dismissal of the principal, it did not lead to the introduction of any general policy on issues such as student confinement and restricted diets.

The federal government failed to establish and enforce a comprehensive discipline policy for the residential schools and residences that it funded. Without meaningful regulation, the schools evolved into a set of institutions that were characterized by harsh, punitive, and humiliating discipline. These measures undermined the schools’ education mission; led many students to run away, thereby placing their health at risk; and contributed to the development of a stressful atmosphere that undoubtedly would have undermined student health.

The failure to develop and implement comprehensive and consistent directives, and to monitor for effective and appropriate discipline, sent the message that there were no real limits or consequences to what could be done to Aboriginal children within the walls of a residential school.

Abuse

There were no residential school policies or regulations that dealt specifically with the issue of the sexual abuse of students for most of the system’s history. There were, however, a number of provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code of 1892 that provided for the prosecution of those who sexually abused children. All male homosexual sex acts—and attempts at such acts—were open to prosecution, as were all sexual relations and attempts to have sexual relations with individuals under fourteen years of age. (An exception was made in the case of legal spouses under the age of fourteen.) It was also a crime to seduce “any girl of previously chaste character” who was under the age of sixteen, or to seduce “or have an illicit relationship” with a “ward” (a term that would include a residential school student). It was not possible to use consent as a defence in the case of charges of indecent assault of individuals under the age of fourteen.⁵¹⁴

It was not until the 1960s that North American jurisdictions began to amend child-welfare laws to require the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse to the appropriate civil authorities. All Canadian jurisdictions now have legislation outlining responsibility for the reporting of suspected child abuse.⁵¹⁵

From 1960 onwards, the Anglican Church did require principals to report on the reasons why staff members resigned. A confidential list was maintained of those who were not to be rehired for a variety of reasons, including “lack of suitability on moral grounds.”⁵¹⁶ Indian Affairs established a similar caution list in 1968. All Indian Affairs school superintendents were required to submit the names of all former teachers who had “created problems” and were no longer working for Indian Affairs.⁵¹⁷ The first list was sent out in June 1968. No one on the list was to be hired without the approval of the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa.⁵¹⁸ Six years earlier, in 1962, the lawyer who prosecuted a case of abuse at the Roman Catholic Grollier Hall residence in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, had recommended that the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police conduct a background check “on each and every single man and woman who accepts such a position of authority over youngsters.”⁵¹⁹ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could not find any record to suggest that the federal government acted on this recommendation.

The practice in the absence of regulation

The date of the first known conviction of a residential school employee for sexually abusing a student is 1945.⁵²⁰ However, there were many incidents of abuse prior to that year. There were allegations as early as 1886 that a man who was working for Indian Affairs as a translator and as a recruiter for the High River school in what is now Alberta was sexually abusing students. Nothing was done at the time, even though the man had a reputation for abusing children in the past.⁵²¹ When new allegations surfaced against the same man in 1891, Indian Affairs simply forced him to resign. It is clear from the record that Indian Affairs wished to avoid the negative publicity that would arise from a police investigation and a trial.⁵²²

This was the standard practice. When students, parents, staff, or former staff brought forward allegations of abuse, government and church officials often did not report the matter to the police. Investigations often amounted to little more than seeking out and accepting the denials of the accused school official. Even when government and church officials concluded that the allegations were accurate, they were more likely to simply fire the perpetrator than bring in the police. In some cases, individuals who had been identified as abusers were allowed to remain at the schools, providing them with continued opportunities to abuse children. In this aspect of the residential schools, the government and the churches failed absolutely. They failed in their responsibilities to protect the students who were their legal wards; and they failed in their responsibilities to parents, to ensure the safekeeping of their children. Such failures manifested themselves in the following ways.

•Failure to believe student and parental reports of abuse. In 1944, an Indian Affairs official disparaged the veracity of Aboriginal people when they brought forward complaints about abuse.⁵²³ There are reports that in the 1950s, complaints about the activities of two men were made to the principal of the Lower Post school in northern British Columbia. According to the complainants, no action was taken at the time.⁵²⁴ One of the men would eventually be convicted many years later for assaults committed at the school.⁵²⁵ The other died before he could be prosecuted.⁵²⁶

•Failure to take action. The Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school engineer was kept on staff after he was convicted of assaulting a female student.⁵²⁷ In Inuvik, Northwest Territories, despite complaints from co-workers and suspicions raised by staff, there was no investigation into the behaviour of an employee at Grollier Hall. Instead, the employee, who was later convicted of abusing several students, was allowed to work to the end of the school year.⁵²⁸

•Failure to investigate complaints impartially. When investigating complaints about the principal of the Middlechurch, Manitoba, school in 1897, the Indian commissioner did not speak with the former staff person who had made the complaint.⁵²⁹ The principal was cleared.⁵³⁰ Two years later, an investigation into his relations with female students at the school led to his dismissal.⁵³¹ The only inquiry that Indian Affairs carried out into complaints against the principal of the Shingwauk school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1916 was to contact the principal.⁵³² Charges of sexual impropriety made against the principal of the Gordon’s school were investigated by the senior teacher in 1956. The teacher exonerated the principal.⁵³³

•Failure to report allegations of improper behaviour to Indian Affairs or the police (or both). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has found no documented evidence that Indian Affairs was informed of a 1911 complaint that the principal of the Presbyterian school in northwestern Ontario was suspected of engaging in inappropriate behaviour with female students.⁵³⁴ The practice of simply dismissing staff for having sexual relations with students was common, rather than pursuing criminal action. When accused of indecent conduct, the principal of the Lytton, British Columbia, school fled the school in 1921. There is no record of his being charged or prosecuted.⁵³⁵ When the principal of the Presbyterian school at Kamsack, Saskatchewan, discovered that the farm instructor was having sexual relations with female students, he fired the man immediately and recommended that he catch that night’s train.⁵³⁶ No available records indicate that allegations made against the principal of the Gordon’s school in 1956 were reported to Indian Affairs or the police.⁵³⁷ In 1960, Indian Affairs officials were of the opinion that United Church representatives were not providing them with information about abuse at their Edmonton school. United Church representatives became aware that a second former staff member may have been abusing students at the Edmonton school. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not located any evidence to indicate that United Church officials forwarded concerns about the individual’s activities to the police or Indian Affairs.⁵³⁸ Similarly, in 1961, Anglican Church officials decided not to involve the police in a case of abuse by a Gordon’s staff member (who had left the school).⁵³⁹ When the principal of the Lytton school learned in 1973 that an employee was abusing students, he fired the man but did not report the assaults, or his decision to fire the perpetrator, to either the police or Indian Affairs.⁵⁴⁰

•Government failure to report abuse to the police. When federal government officials concluded that an employee at Coudert Hall in Whitehorse, Yukon, was abusing students, he was dismissed. No report was made to the police.⁵⁴¹

•Failure to support police investigations. In 1930, British Columbia Provincial Police identified a number of cases of abuse at the Kuper Island school. Rather than assist the police in the investigation, Indian Affairs officials and Roman Catholic Church officials chose to protect the school’s reputation. As a result, individuals suspected of abuse were fired and told to leave the province. These measures effectively ended the police investigation.⁵⁴²

•Failure on the part of Indian Affairs field staff to report properly on the prosecution of residential school staff to senior officials. In 1964, Indian Affairs officials in Ottawa were not able to get detailed reports from their field staff on the conviction of a teacher at the Morley, Alberta, school.⁵⁴³

•Failure to screen effectively when hiring. In 1966, a man who had been convicted of a sexual assault just months earlier was hired at the Qu’Appelle school in Saskatchewan.⁵⁴⁴ In 1967, a man was able to find work at the Birtle, Manitoba, school just months after he had left a residential school and a public school in Alberta under suspicious circumstances.⁵⁴⁵ In 1974, the principal of the Lower Post school in British Columbia hired a man to work as the school’s night watchman, even though he was known to have been recently convicted of “molesting” boys.⁵⁴⁶ While the schools failed to put appropriate screening and monitoring processes in place, the government was reluctant to press them to do it out of respect for the church’s need for ‘flexibility.’ And, to ensure that such processes were in place would have required more resources than the federal government was then providing.⁵⁴⁷

•Failure to protect students from abuse by other students. For example, incidents of sexual and physical abuse of students by other students at Gordon’s school continued into the 1950s.⁵⁴⁸

•Failure to assist victims. Although, in one case, there is evidence that a group of victims were assessed by a psychologist—who was actually in the community to assess their abuser—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate evidence to demonstrate that the government or the churches provided any organized form of support or information to abused students, their parents, or their communities.⁵⁴⁹

•Failure on the part of police to investigate properly. When reports of physical abuse at the Roman Catholic school at Kamsack were made in the 1960s, the police were satisfied with the dismissal of the employee. Thirty years later, the individual was prosecuted and convicted for the abusive acts committed in the 1960s.⁵⁵⁰ Paul Leroux, a supervisor at Grollier Hall, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1979 involving a student at Grollier Hall.⁵⁵¹ The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not found any documentation to suggest that an investigation was carried out at that time to determine if Leroux had assaulted any other students at either Grollier Hall or the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school where he had previously worked. It was not until several decades had passed that, in response to the complaints of former students, Leroux’s activities at Grollier Hall and Beauval were investigated. He was subsequently convicted of additional assaults at both institutions.⁵⁵²

The potential for the sexual abuse of students was known by government and church officials from the outset of the operation of the residential schools. Laws existed under which perpetrators could be prosecuted. Children living in residential schools should have been protected from abuse. If they were not protected—and tens of thousands were not—then the system failed to provide a standard of care required by any Canadian child-welfare system.⁵⁵³ The government and the churches did not establish policies to either protect students or address abuse when it occurred: the typical response was to place the institutional interests of the schools ahead of the interests of the students.

Truancy

The provisions of the Indian Act and the regulations adopted at various times under that Act make clear that from 1894 onwards, the Canadian government had a definition of “truancy,” and had established its authority to return truant students to residential schools. Truancy was, in fact, one of the earliest residential school matters on which Indian Affairs had relatively detailed legislation and regulation. The government also adjusted—and tightened—the legislation and the regulations to deal with perceived deficiencies.

The major focus of the regulations and their enforcement was the enrolment and attendance of students. The churches often complained that the regulations regarding attendance were too weak and enforcement was ineffective.⁵⁵⁴ Even so, the government had the power to fine and jail parents who did not enrol their children in residential school. Parents were threatened with prosecution and, on some occasions, were prosecuted under the truancy provisions of the Indian Act.Indian Affairs officials also sometimes denied food relief to communities and individuals in an effort to force them to send their children to residential school.⁵⁵⁵ There are numerous examples of large numbers of parents refusing to return their children to school in the autumn. In these cases, local Indian Affairs officials and police officials worked together to force parents to send their children to school.⁵⁵⁶ On occasion, senior Indian Affairs officials, who favoured a less confrontational approach, cautioned against using police to force parents to send children to school and prosecuting parents who kept their children out of school.⁵⁵⁷ Despite such cautions, a police presence—and the threat of prosecution—was used for much of the system’s history to ensure residential school attendance.⁵⁵⁸ Indian Affairs also threatened to prosecute people who provided shelter to runaway students.⁵⁵⁹

The risks that runaways faced

Students who ran away were at risk of injury and death.⁵⁶⁰ There was one key area in which the government policy on truancy was deficient: the procedures that school staff, Indian Affairs staff, and police force members were to follow when a student ran away from school. The first system-wide policy that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was able to find outlining the procedures to be taken when a child ran away from school dates from 1953. That policy, contained in the 1953 regulations in the Indian Act, simply stated, “The principal shall take prompt action to effect the return to school of any truant pupil, and shall report promptly to the Superintendent, Indian Agency, every case of truancy.”⁵⁶¹ The nature of the prompt action was undefined. In particular, there was no requirement to contact either the child’s parents or the police. It would not be until 1971 that a more encompassing, nationwide policy would be announced.

The scope of the problem

Almost all schools had runaways; at times, the problem became so severe that officials spoke of truancy as reaching “epidemic” levels.

As examples:

•In February 1902, nine boys ran away from the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school.⁵⁶²

•In 1928, the Indian agent at the Anglican school at The Pas, Manitoba, reported that hardly a day went by without a student running away.⁵⁶³

•Eight boys and four girls ran away from the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school in 1928.⁵⁶⁴

•Indian agent J. E. Pugh acknowledged in 1928 that truancy at the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, “has been bad. In fact, at times one could almost designate it a continual in and out.”⁵⁶⁵

•In 1935, ten pupils ran away from the Birtle, Manitoba, school.⁵⁶⁶

•Six children ran away from the Chapleau, Ontario, school during a three-day period in 1937.⁵⁶⁷

•Five boys ran away from the Pine Creek school on the morning of April 22, 1940.⁵⁶⁸

•Six boys, ranging in age from eleven to fourteen, ran away from the Brandon, Manitoba, school on September 29, 1942.⁵⁶⁹ Two more boys ran away on January 9, 1943.⁵⁷⁰

•Five boys ran away from the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school on October 1, 1944.⁵⁷¹

•Between 1941 and 1946, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared at least sixteen separate reports on investigations into students who had run away from the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.⁵⁷²

•Three boys ran away from the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school in a two-month period in 1941.⁵⁷³

•The local Indian agent said in 1942 that “truancy is rife” at the Birtle residential school.⁵⁷⁴

•In the 1942–43 school year, there had been approximately sixty runaways from the Mount Elgin, Ontario, school.⁵⁷⁵

•In the spring of 1945, seventeen boys were truant from the Hobbema, Alberta, school.⁵⁷⁶

•The Alert Bay, British Columbia, school was hit with what the principal termed an “epidemic of truancy” in the fall of 1947.⁵⁷⁷

•On January 23, 1949, twenty-five girls ran away from the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario.⁵⁷⁸

•In September and October of 1966, fifty-five children were absent without leave from the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, a combined total of 146 times. Of those fifty-five students, thirty were absent thirty-seven times. The school had an enrolment of 143. The periods of absence ranged from a half-day to a week. ⁵⁷⁹

The record undoubtedly understates the problem. Many Indian Affairs officials believed that principals did not provide them with proper notification when a student ran away. Oliver Strapp, the principal of the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, neglected to inform Indian Affairs of the school’s persistent problem with runaways. It was only through the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) that the local Indian agent, George Down, learned in June 1943 that there had been approximately sixty runaways from Mount Elgin in the previous year.⁵⁸⁰ In 1940, school inspector G.

H. Barry suspected that the principal of the Lytton, British Columbia, school was reporting runaways as being discharged rather than missing. The local Indian agent, who did not get along with the Lytton principal, had told Barry that “at least nine pupils had run away this year, but there were probably more unreported to him.”⁵⁸¹ In 1942, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, principal J. P. Mackey neglected to inform Indian Affairs that a runaway boy had been located and returned to the school.⁵⁸² When Sam Ross ran away from the Birtle school in the winter of 1959, Principal N. M. Rusaw did not inform either Ross’s family or the Indian agent from Ross’s home community.⁵⁸³ After a change of administration at the Sioux Lookout school in 1961, the Anglican Church discovered that the previous principal had been underreporting the truancy problem—which was attributed to the poor job that was being done by the school’s student supervisor—and the school had been collecting grants for students who were no longer attending.⁵⁸⁴

There are also gaps in the record. For example, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could find no records indicating that the principal of the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school had informed Indian Affairs when three boys were presumed to have drowned after running away in 1928.⁵⁸⁵ The Commission also could find no records to indicate that the principal of the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school had ever informed Indian Affairs when twelve students ran away from that school in 1928.⁵⁸⁶

Failure to search; failure to inform

There are numerous examples of delays in undertaking searches for runaway students, and of notifying Indian Affairs and the police of runaways. The results in several cases were tragic.

•When an afternoon search party brought back eight of the nine boys who had run away from the Williams Lake school, just after lunchtime on February 8, 1902, Principal Henry Boening decided not to continue the search for the ninth boy. He expected that eight-year-old Duncan Sticks would find shelter under a haystack for the night. The following day, a school staff member went to a nearby First Nations settlement “to see if he could get some Indians to go after the boy.”⁵⁸⁷ Later that day, a local man found Sticks frozen to death.⁵⁸⁸

•In 1931, the principal of the Anglican school in The Pas waited until Monday evening to inform the Indian agent that a boy had run away the previous Saturday morning. Eventually, the rcmp were alerted and the boy was found, alive, nine days after he had run away. According to the Indian agent, “The school to my knowledge took no steps to find the boy.”⁵⁸⁹

•Round Lake, Saskatchewan, principal R. J. Ross waited until January 17, 1935, before mailing a notification to Indian Affairs that three boys had run away from the school four days earlier, on January 13. The school never organized a search:

•two of the boys made it to safety; a third boy, fifteen-year-old Percy Ochapowace, froze to death.⁵⁹⁰

•Nine-year-old Allen Patrick, eight-year-olds Andrew Paul and Justa Maurice, and seven-year-old John Jack ran away from the Fraser Lake school in the afternoon of January 2, 1937. It was not until the early afternoon of the following day that a search party was organized. All four boys were found frozen to death.⁵⁹¹

•Eleven-year-old Andrew Gordon ran away from the Gordon’s Reserve school on the afternoon of March 11, 1939.⁵⁹² Principal R. W. Frayling never organized a search or informed the family, Indian Affairs, or the police. On March 14, the boy’s father, who had been told by a visitor that his son was not in school, organized a search. Later that day, he found his son’s frozen body.⁵⁹³

•The rcmp were not informed that five boys had run away from the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school in April 1940 until the afternoon of the day after their escape.⁵⁹⁴

•Late on the evening of April 18, 1941, fourteen-year-old John Kioki, thirteen-year-old Michael Sutherland, and eleven-year-old Michel Matinas slipped out of their dormitory at the Fort Albany, Ontario school. The boys were never seen alive again.⁵⁹⁵ John Kioki’s father said he was “not sure sufficient search was made for my son and the other boys.”⁵⁹⁶

•The police were not informed that five boys had run away from the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school in October 1944 until three days after they had left the school.⁵⁹⁷

•When Albert Nepinak and other boys ran away from the Pine Creek school in April 1951, the principal sent a number of students out to look for the boys. When they returned without having found them, he concluded the boys had made it to their homes. However, in the morning, he spoke to Albert’s father and discovered he had not come home. The father then undertook a search and discovered his son’s frozen body.⁵⁹⁸

•When one twelve-year-old and two ten-year-old boys escaped by canoe from the Roman Catholic school at Kenora on November 9, 1954, the Ontario Provincial Police were notified of their disappearance immediately. However, the rcmp were not contacted until they had been gone for nearly two weeks.⁵⁹⁹ It was the rcmp that organized the search that found the boys, who were alive, stranded on an island.⁶⁰⁰

•It was not until November 1956 that the Ontario Provincial Police and Indian Affairs were informed that Tom and Charles Ombash, aged twelve and eleven, respectively, had run away from the Sioux Lookout school on October 5, 1956.⁶⁰¹ The boys were never located.⁶⁰² Although R. F. Davey, the Indian Affairs superintendent of education, found Principal Eric Barrington’s behaviour to be “inconceivable,” it did not result in any negative consequences for his career.⁶⁰³ He

•remained as principal of the school for another five years, until he was appointed principal of the Wabasca, Alberta, school in 1961.⁶⁰⁴

•Two sisters, Beverly and Patricia Marilyn Joseph, aged twelve and fourteen, respectively, left the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school in a small boat, likely on the evening of January 16, 1959. Their disappearance was discovered the following morning, but the police were not contacted until that afternoon, after school officials had conducted a search of the island. Marilyn’s body was recovered from the water and her sister was presumed to have drowned.⁶⁰⁵

•Three girls ran away from the Anglican school at Gleichen, Alberta, on the afternoon of March 8, 1962. Since there was no school the next day and the girls were going to be allowed to go to their nearby homes at the end of the school day, the principal made no effort to locate them. The girls visited with a local family and did not try to return to their homes until the evening, when they were overtaken by a blizzard in which two of them died.⁶⁰⁶

•Two twelve-year-old boys, Philip Swain and Roderick Keesick (his last name in some reports is also given as Tayapaywakejick), failed to return to the Roman Catholic residence in Kenora at the end of the school day on November 27, 1970. Residence officials did not contact the Kenora police until 9:35 that evening. The Kenora constable who took the call did not pass information on to the Ontario Provincial Police, because he believed residence staff would do so.⁶⁰⁷ Both boys died trying to reach their home at Grassy Narrows, ninety kilometres from Kenora.⁶⁰⁸

It is also clear that many staff members put considerable effort into the search for runaways. Moose Factory, Ontario, principal Gilbert Thompson gave this description of the search he undertook when two boys ran away from his school in the evening of November 20, 1943.

I began searching for the same shortly afterwards. By 10:00 p.m. I could not locate these boys and knowing that they might have crossed the river, which crossing was precarious in the dark due to the fact parts of the river were not yet frozen, I notified Cpl. W. Kerr of the r.c.m.p. Together we made a further search that night. The following morning I went to Moosonee and discovered that it was possible the lads had slept in the deserted shack of the family of one lad. No one had seen the boys at Moosonee. That night the policeman and I went across to the shack in the hope that the lads would have returned there, but they were not there. The next morning the policeman took his dogs and went down the railroad track following up a lead that someone had seen two people walking on the track, who had later disappeared into the bush when sighting the on-coming man. The boys were well clothed, but not outfitted for severe weather. Before the policeman overtook them they had walked some 24 miles and had reached the camp of the parents of one of the boys. All returned the following Wed. night by train, including the parents of one of the boys.⁶⁰⁹

Nine years later, J. Eldon Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, provided the chief of the Whitedog Reserve with this description of a January search for three runaway boys: “Mr. Barrington spent the whole of Thursday from 8:45 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. in the bush without food and at great hardship to himself on the trail of these children. I spent all day Thursday trying to trace them by car, and the hours from 5:30 until 10:30 p.m. in the woods in search of them.”⁶¹⁰

Indian Affairs was prepared to fund only a portion of the cost that schools incurred searching for and returning runaway students. As a result, in some cases, principals concluded it was not worth the cost to attempt to retrieve truant students.⁶¹¹ As late as 1914, Indian Affairs was prepared to pay only half the cost of returning a runaway student to the school.⁶¹² It appears that the students or their parents were obliged to pay the costs of locating and returning runaways in some instances.⁶¹³

Inadequate response to tragedy: The failure to develop policy

It is clear from the above that on numerous occasions, principals failed to undertake searches; carried out inadequate searches; and failed to contact Indian Affairs, police, and family members in a timely fashion. It is also clear that Indian Affairs did not develop national policies to address these failures, thereby helping to perpetuate their recurrence. It also appears that various inquiries held to investigate the student deaths through inquests also failed, to the extent that they did not address these fundamental lacks as contributing causes.

1902 Williams Lake

The coroner who initially opposed holding an investigation into the 1902 death of Duncan Sticks, a runaway from the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school, reportedly said that “he thought the Government would not allow the expenses as he could see nothing to warrant an enquiry.”⁶¹⁴ However, a coroner’s jury was eventually convened. It recommended that the issue of discipline and food at the school should be addressed by an independent inquiry, but it made no recommendations about the measures that should be taken when students ran away.⁶¹⁵ In the wake of the tragedy, Indian Affairs issued no policy guidelines to the principal of the Williams Lake school, let alone to all principals, as to what steps should be taken when students ran away.

1935 Round Lake

The physician who investigated the 1935 death of Percy Ochapowace, who died after running away from the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school, concluded that “no inquest was necessary.”⁶¹⁶ Local and national Indian Affairs officials were unhappy with the fact that the principal had not organized a search or informed Indian Affairs or the police. It was thought that if this had been done, the boy would have been found alive.⁶¹⁷ Despite these internal views, the federal government rejected Ochapowace’s father’s request for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his son’s death.⁶¹⁸

Again, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has located no policy document or circular that was issued after this tragedy to outline the procedures that should be followed when a student ran away.

1937 Fraser Lake

A coroner’s jury examining the circumstance surrounding the deaths of four boys who ran away from the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school in 1937 concluded that

more definite action by the school authorities might or should have been taken the night upon which the disappearance took place.

Further it is our opinion that more co-operation between the authorities and the parents of the children would in future help to lessen the danger of any repetition of such an incident.⁶¹⁹

The senior Indian Affairs official in British Columbia, D. M. MacKay, described the principal’s behaviour as “inexcusable.” MacKay, who conducted his own investigation into the matter, concluded that if a search party had been organized when the boys were first reported missing, “the children would not have perished.”⁶²⁰

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has located no policy document or circular that was issued after this tragedy that outlined the procedures that should be followed when a student ran away. Neither did any of the correspondence on the matter make reference to the violation of any pre-existing policy.

1939 Gordon’s Reserve

A coroner’s jury concluded that there was no negligence surrounding Andrew Gordon’s 1939 death due to exposure after he ran away from the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. Indian Affairs official Thomas Robertson believed, however, that “there has been negligence with regard to this case, and that the death should never have occurred.” Having reached these damning conclusions, he noted the school as being well run and his belief that the principal would ensure that nothing like this matter would ever happen again. “Unless the Indians or the people of the district start any agitation, any action on our part would not be in the best interests of anyone.”⁶²¹ None of the correspondence on the matter indicates that any pre-existing policy had been violated.

The superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, R. A. Hoey, did send the Gordon’s principal a letter outlining what was to be done when students escaped from the school: “1. The information should be conveyed to the agent and to any police officials that may be available in the community; 2. A search should be instituted at once.”⁶²²

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has located no policy document or circular to indicate that these instructions were sent to any other school or principal. By sending these simple, direct instructions to only one principal, Hoey passed up an opportunity to deliver a system-wide instruction on an issue that had plagued that system in the past, and would continue to do so into the future.⁶²³

1941 Fort Albany

Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan believed that the principal of the Fort Albany, Ontario, school had not been prompt enough in informing Indian Affairs and the rcmp of the truancy of four boys who were presumed to have drowned in 1941. He wrote to a regional Roman Catholic Church official that “any unusual event at a school, especially when the results are fatal, should be immediately brought to the Department’s attention.”⁶²⁴ Phelan did not take the opportunity to copy all principals or church organizations on this letter. Again, the Indian Affairs approach on this issue remained piecemeal, reactive, and inadequate.

It is not that Indian Affairs officials were not capable of issuing system-wide instructions on runaways. Less than a month after the tragic deaths of three runaways from the Fort Albany school, the branch did, in fact, issue the first system-wide instruction on runaways that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been able to locate. It was not a policy regarding the steps to be taken in the case of truancy. Instead, it placed limits on a principal’s ability to make use of the rcmp to search for missing children. In that regard, it actually increased the risk that students who ran away might die of exposure or drowning.

The restriction on the use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

In the May 1941 circular to all inspectors, Indian agents, and residential school principals, T. R. L. MacInnes, the secretary of the Indian Affairs Branch, announced a “radical change” in departmental policy regarding the “services of the r.c.m.p. in order to locate truant or absentee pupils from Indian residential schools.” He wrote that it had been customary in the past for Indian agents and principals to request Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistance in finding and returning runaway students to schools. The police, however, charged the costs that they incurred back to Indian Affairs. As a result, MacInnes wrote, “we are required to pay yearly a substantial amount over which we have no control.” The new policy was that the rcmp were not to be contacted “unless the Principals and staffs of the Indian Agencies have exhausted all their efforts.” Under the new policy, MacInnes wrote,

we must depend to a large extent at least, on Indian Agents, Farming Instructors, and other officials to co-operate with Principals of Indian schools in locating and returning truant and absentee students. In making this statement it is understood that the Principals of Indian residential schools are also expected to put forth every effort to return absentee pupils without cost to the Department before calling on Indian Agents and other officials to assist them.⁶²⁵

In the previous six-year period, six runaways had died. In each case, Indian Affairs officials had concluded that the search had been inadequate. The only system-wide policy response was to restrict the use of police and stress the importance of containing costs when searching for students. This is best seen not as a policy document describing what should be done, but as a policy describing what should not be done when students ran away.

Not all principals abided by this instruction. As a result, in 1943, Indian Affairs branch director Harold McGill sent out a circular reminding principals and Indian agents of the 1941 policy. He pointed out that despite this instruction, there had been both a growing increase in truancy and a “steadily growing tendency on the part of the residential school principals to lean increasingly on the members of the r.c.m.p. for the return of pupils to the schools.” In the future, the rcmp were to be called in “only in rare and exceptional cases.”⁶²⁶

This policy clearly increased the risks facing students who had run away. This was apparent to local Indian Affairs staff. When two boys who had run away from the Birtle school in 1945 needed hospital care for their frozen feet after spending a cold March night sleeping outside, local Indian Affairs official A. G. Hamilton called on his superiors to modify the policy. Hamilton said principals and Indian agents should be given a free hand in seeking police assistance, and that “the police should be in at the beginning, not after others have failed.”⁶²⁷

Indian Affairs was itself often reluctant to assist principals in locating runaway students. When, in 1946, the principal of the Kuper Island school asked Indian Affairs to help track down three young girls who, he believed, had made their way to Victoria, the department provided only reluctant assistance. Indian agent R. H. Moore objected to what he saw as the principal’s view that “it is the responsibility of this Department to round up these children and bring them back without any, or very little exertion on the part of School authorities.”⁶²⁸

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could find no record of an order rescinding the 1941 policy directive at the end of the Second World War. In 1950, Oliver Strapp, who was by then the principal of the Brandon, Manitoba, school, reported that he had not called on the rcmp to help search for two runaway boys “because I have been informed that I am not allowed to regard them as truant officers.” One of the boys ended up in hospital with frozen toes.⁶²⁹ There are reports into the 1960s of rcmp unwillingness to assist in locating and returning runaway students.⁶³⁰

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were, however, used with regularity, even during wartime, to force parents to return their children to school at the start of the school year. For example, rcmp officers were dispatched in 1940, 1943, and 1946 to return students to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school.⁶³¹ In October 1945, the Indian agent at Cardston, Alberta, turned over fifty-one cases of truancy to the rcmp. It was a measure that sparked a letter of complaint from H. A. R. Gagnon, the assistant commissioner of the rcmp.⁶³²

The 1953 regulations

It was not until 1953 that Indian Affairs adopted its first regulation relating to the steps to be taken when a student ran away from school. Regulation 10.4 of the 1953 Indian residential school regulations stated that a school principal was to “take prompt action to effect the return to school of any truant pupil, and shall report promptly to the Superintendent [of Education], Indian Agency, every case of truancy.”⁶³³ There was still no clear direction on search parties and the contacting of the police.

The tragedies in northwestern Ontario

It would take two tragedies at schools in northwestern Ontario to prompt Indian Affairs to provide schools with clear direction on the steps to be taken when students ran away from school.

1966: The Presbyterian school in Kenora

In October 1966, twelve-year-old Charlie Wenjack died after running away from the Presbyterian school in Kenora.⁶³⁴ The tragedy drew national attention to the school and was the subject of a coroner’s inquest. Most of the jury’s recommendations focused on the shortcomings of the residential school system and expressed a preference for alternatives such as day schools. If schools were to continue, it was recommended that they take in fewer students and employ more staff. ⁶³⁵ In January 1967, R. F. Davey, the Indian Affairs education services branch director, sent out a memorandum asking all regional superintendents to check with the residential schools in their region to report on the injuries experienced by residential school students “between the time of their running away from school and the time that they are apprehended” during the previous five years.⁶³⁶ This is the first record found by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada of any attempt to carry out such a survey.

Indian Affairs prepared a document after Wenjack’s death, outlining the process to be followed when a student ran away from a residential school “operated under contract with the Indian Affairs branch by a religious body in Ontario.” Step one was to inform the police; step two, to interview friends of the student; step three, to organize a search; and step four, to contact the Indian Affairs district superintendent of schools. After the student was missing for six hours, the parents were to be informed. It was to be made clear to the police that the student was not a fugitive from justice but was being sought to prevent their injury or suffering. The need for the preparation and circulation of such a document in 1966 reflects Indian Affairs’ ongoing policy failure on this issue for almost 100 years. The fact that the document applied only to hostels or residential schools in Ontario is also evidence, though, of the continuing lack of clearly enunciated national policy on the issue.⁶³⁷

1970: The Roman Catholic school in Kenora

A 1970 coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Philip Swain and Roderick Keesick, who died when running away from the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, recommended: 1) that the police be contacted immediately if students did not return to the school by dinnertime; 2) that the police be contacted if students were missing in the morning and that, in such situations, the police commence an immediate search; 3) that students be given courses in wilderness survival; and 4) that an investigation be conducted into why “the residential students run away.”⁶³⁸

In the wake of this inquest verdict, in 1971, Indian Affairs staff from the Kenora district met with school residence staff to discuss steps to be taken in the case of a runaway. All residence staff members across the country were to be instructed “to take immediate emergency steps when a student is missing,” and to contact police officials if runaway children were not immediately located. In addition, staff members were to make every effort “to get in touch with parents or guardians.” Schools were to consider implementing “a regular program of survival training for students who must live away from home to attend school.”⁶³⁹

This document, from 1971, was the first national instruction that clearly set out the measures to be taken by principals when students ran away from school. National policies were finally being enunciated, a century too late, at the same time that the residential school system was being slowly shut down.

Burial policies and practices

At some point in the early twentieth century, Indian Affairs formalized its policy on the burial of students who died at residential schools. The policy is recorded in an undated memorandum by J. D. McLean, who was departmental secretary from 1897 to 1933. According to McLean,

Funeral expenses are met from Relief Vote [money set aside for welfare-related expenses], if a pupil of an Indian residential school dies elsewhere than at the school, and provided the parents or guardians are unable to pay the costs of burial. When a pupil dies at a residential school, it is considered by this Department that the school authorities should be responsible for the expenses. Occasionally, the Department has paid the cost of transporting the body from the school to the home of the parents, when the parents have refused to permit burial at the school.⁶⁴⁰

The practice throughout the system’s history was to keep burial costs low, and to oppose sending the bodies of students who died at schools back to their home communities.

Burial practices were among the aspects of Aboriginal life that the schools and missions sought to change. Sara Laidlaw, a teacher at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school, undertook missionary work on behalf of the Presbyterian Church at a nearby Sioux village. In 1896, she reported, “There have been five deaths at the tipis since I came home, three of whom we buried in a Christian way. The others the parents thought it best to bury in their own way. The medicine men tell the people that so many deaths came because of the missionaries [sic] work & especially of the Christian burials.”⁶⁴¹

Given that schools were virtually all church-run in the early years of the system, Christian burial was the norm at most schools. Many of the early schools were part of larger, church mission centres that might include a church, a dwelling for the missionaries, a farm, possibly a sawmill, and a cemetery. The church was intended to serve as a place of worship for both residential school students and adults from the surrounding region. In the same way, the cemetery might serve as a place of burial for students who died at school, members of the local community, and the missionaries themselves. For example, the cemetery at the Roman Catholic St. Mary’s Mission, near Mission, British Columbia, was intended originally for priests and nuns from the mission as well as for students from the residential school. Three Oblate bishops were buried there along with settlers, their descendants, and residential school students.⁶⁴² When the Battleford school closed in 1914, Principal E. Matheson reminded Indian Affairs that there was a school cemetery that contained the bodies of seventy to eighty individuals, most of whom were former students. He worried that unless the government took steps to care for the cemetery, it would be overrun by stray cattle.⁶⁴³ Matheson had good reason for wishing to see the cemetery maintained: several of his family members were buried there.⁶⁴⁴ These concerns proved prophetic, since the location of this cemetery is not recorded in the available historical documentation, and neither does it appear in an internet search of Battleford cemeteries.

Several of the schools were overwhelmed by the influenza pandemic of 1918–19. All but two of the children and all of the staff were stricken with influenza at the Fort St. James, British Columbia, school and surrounding community in 1918. Seventy-eight people, including students, died. Initially, Father Joseph Allard, the school principal, conducted funeral services at the mission cemetery. But, as he wrote in his diary, the “others were brought in two or three at a time, but I could not go to the graveyard with all of them. In fact, several bodies were piled up in an empty cabin because there was no grave ready. A large common grave was dug for them.”⁶⁴⁵

That same year, influenza killed five Red Deer, Alberta, school students. Four died at the school, and a fifth died while running away. That boy’s body was returned to his home community, the Saddle Lake Reserve. According to Principal J. F. Woodsworth, all the students and many of the staff came down with influenza.

Everyone was so sick that it was impossible for us to bury the dead. There was no one here to dig graves in our own school cemetry [sic]. I thought the best thing to do was to have the undertaker from Red Deer take charge of and bury the bodies. This was done, and they now lie buried in Red Deer. The charges for this extra accommodation amount to about $30.00 a child; that is for the four who died here. In view of the emergency and the totally unexpected nature of the case I shall be glad if the Department will bear part of this expense. I believe the total undertaker bill is $130.00. I instructed the undertaker to be as careful as possible in his charges, so he gave them a burial as near as possible to that of a pauper. They are buried two in a grave.⁶⁴⁶

Because the burial costs in the Red Deer municipal cemetery were judged to be “unavoidable,” Indian Affairs Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott agreed to reimburse the school for the costs.⁶⁴⁷ Although Scott made no reference to an existing policy, the letter demonstrates that under normal circumstances, the schools were expected to cover the burial costs of students who died at school. The most cost-effective way of doing that would be burial in a cemetery on school grounds. Indian Affairs would pay for a child’s burial only under unusual circumstances, and, if it did pay, it expected the costs to be kept as low as possible. In this, the department conformed to the general practice of the period in the treatment of those who died in institutions. It was not uncommon for hospitals to have cemeteries in which indigent patients were buried, and workhouses for the poor also had cemeteries.⁶⁴⁸

According to Chapleau, Ontario, student Michael Cachagee, the students had to help dig the graves. It is a memory that has haunted him all his life. In a 2010 media account, he said that because the graves dug in the winter were shallow, in the spring, bears would root about in the cemetery and feed on the student remains.⁶⁴⁹

Indian Affairs was clearly reluctant to send the bodies of children who died at school home for burial. In her memoirs, Eleanor Brass recalled how the body of a boy who hung himself at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school in the early twentieth century was buried on the Peepeekisis Reserve, even though his parents lived on the Carlyle Reserve.⁶⁵⁰

Although McLean’s memorandum stated that the bodies of students who died at the schools were to be sent home “when the parents have refused to permit burial at the school,” this practice was not always followed. In 1913, two girls, Anna Lahache from Kahnawake and Jennie Robertson from Garden River, drowned while on a picnic expedition at the Spanish, Ontario, school.⁶⁵¹ School officials buried Jennie at the school after being unable to reach her mother within four days.⁶⁵² Anna’s body was not recovered until a week after the drowning. Anna’s mother requested that her body be returned home for burial, but it was decided that it was too badly decomposed and the cost too high.⁶⁵³ In 1938, Catherine Lacore requested that the body of her son, who was dying of tubercular meningitis at the Spanish school, be sent to her in Cornwall, Ontario, for burial upon his death.⁶⁵⁴ The response from Indian Affairs to the school was:

I have to point out … that it is not the practice of the Department to send bodies of Indians by rail excepting under very exceptional circumstances. Bodies so shipped have to be properly prepared by the undertakers for transshipment under the laws of the province, and the expense of a long journey such as this would be, would entail an expenditure which the Department does not feel warranted in authorizing.⁶⁵⁵

The boy’s body was buried at Spanish.⁶⁵⁶

Not all requests were rejected. Clara Tizya, who grew up in Rampart House near Old Crow in the northwestern Yukon, recalled that

in the early 1920’s a girl had died at Carcross Indian Residential School and when they sent the body back, there were many rumours about the children receiving bad treatment and this scared the parents or gave them an excuse for not sending their children to school. And so for the next 25 years, no children were sent out to the Carcross Indian Residential School.⁶⁵⁷

In the 1940s, Indian Affairs was prepared to cover the burial costs of residential school students who died in hospital. It was not, however, prepared to pay for the transportation of the body to the student’s home community.⁶⁵⁸

The Social Welfare section of the 1958 Indian Affairs field manual provided direction on the burial of “destitute Indians.” Burial costs were to be covered by Indian Affairs only when they could not “be met from the estate of the deceased.” There was no fixed rate of payment. Instead, the “amount payable by the local municipality for the burial of destitute non-Indians is the maximum generally allowed.” Those who died away from their home reserve were to be buried where they died. “Ordinarily the body will be returned to the reserve for burial only when transportation, embalming costs and all other expenses are borne by next of kin. Transportation may be authorized, however, in cases where the cost of burial on the reserve is sufficiently low to make transportation economically advantageous.”⁶⁵⁹

An example from that year reflects the implications of this policy for families in remote communities, particularly in the Canadian North. In April 1958, John Lucas, a student from the Carcross school in the Yukon Territory, died during surgery at the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta.⁶⁶⁰ Indian Affairs officials estimated that it would have cost $217.20 to ship the boy’s body back to the Yukon. Instead, he was buried in Edmonton at a cost of $110.⁶⁶¹

The issue was brought to the attention of Yukon Member of Parliament Erik Nielsen, who questioned the decision to bury the boy in Edmonton. He argued that it would have been cheaper to ship the body home.⁶⁶² Indian Affairs officials also stated that the boy’s father had agreed that he be buried in Edmonton. In an internal memorandum, one official said that he believed the former principal of the school was manufacturing the issue to embarrass Indian Affairs. The official believed that the principal blamed the government for his being “relieved of his position as principal at Carcross.”⁶⁶³

Nielsen disputed the claim that the boy’s father had approved the Edmonton burial.

Mr. Lucas was not advised as to the funeral in Edmonton and as a matter of fact had no word about the funeral at all. The Indian people of Mayo are very bitter about this matter and, while Mr. Lucas may not have complained directly to your Department or to the Indian Agent here, he, nevertheless, I can assure you, has complained quite bitterly. I am sure you will appreciate that the Indian people have a slightly different approach to matters such as these than we do, and unless their dear ones are interred in the community in which his close relations abide, and unless they are interred in the Indian fashion and with proper Indian ceremony, the deceased, as far as the Indian people are concerned, is a lost soul. This is quite disturbing to them.⁶⁶⁴

Indian Affairs officials later acknowledged that the estimated cost of shipping the body to the boy’s community had been based on the erroneous belief that the body needed to be sent in a sealed casket. Such a casket was necessary only in the case of death by contagious disease. In reality, the shipping costs would have been $125, making them comparable with the cost of burial in Edmonton.⁶⁶⁵

The reluctance to pay the cost of sending bodies home continued into the 1960s. Initially, Indian Affairs was unwilling to pay to ship the body of twelve-year-old Charlie Wenjack back to his parents’ home community in Ogoki, Ontario. The boy had died from exposure in October 1966 after running away from the Presbyterian school in Kenora. Eventually, the government agreed to pay the transportation costs, which involved both rail and air fees.⁶⁶⁶ Eight years later, when Charles Hunter drowned while attending the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, it was decided, without consultation with his parents, to bury him in Moosonee rather than send his body home to Peawanuck near Hudson Bay. Almost forty years later, in 2011, after significant public efforts made by Joyce, the younger sister who had never got to meet this big brother, Charles Hunter’s body was exhumed and returned to Peawanuck for a community burial. The costs were covered by a fund that the Toronto Star raised from its readership.⁶⁶⁷

Conclusion

There are four major conclusions to be drawn from the above. First, the federal government never established an adequate set of standards and regulations to guarantee the health and safety of residential school students. This failure occured despite the fact that the government had the authority to establish those standards. Second, the federal government never adequately enforced the minimal standards and regulations that it did establish. Third, the failure to establish and enforce such regulations was largely a function of the government’s determination to keep residential school costs to a minimum. Fourth, the failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high residential school death rates.

Students were housed in poorly built, poorly heated, poorly maintained, crowded, and often unsanitary facilities. Many of the schools lacked isolation rooms or infirmaries. Many lacked access to trained medical staff. It was not until the late 1950s that the federal government attempted to provide sufficient funding to ensure that student diets were nutritionally adequate. The combination of poor housing, inadequate medical care, and poor diet left the students vulnerable to infections and reduced their ability to overcome them. Indian Affairs’ failure to address the tuberculosis crisis in the broader Aboriginal community by improving housing, diets, income, and access to medical treatment, coupled with the failure to screen out infected children prior to admission to residential schools, guaranteed that students would be exposed to infection. It must be stressed again that the tuberculosis death rate in the general Canadian population declined in the early twentieth century, prior to the development of effective drug treatment. This decline is generally attributed to a variety of factors such as improvements in sanitation, housing, and diet, and the isolation of infectious individuals in sanatoria. Policies that would have had these same positive effects were recommended for residential schools—but were not adopted. As a result, tuberculosis remained a persistent residential school problem and death rates remained elevated until the introduction of drug treatment.

Student safety was further compromised by the failure to adopt and enforce fire-safety standards in the construction and maintenance of buildings, and to construct and maintain safe, accessible fire escapes.

The failure to establish and enforce system-wide discipline policies left students subject to exceptionally harsh and often abusive punishment. This would have increased stress levels and undermined resistance to disease.

The federal government never adopted a national policy on the reporting of the physical and sexual abuse of students. As a result, parental and student complaints were often dismissed without investigation. In other cases, investigations were not carried out in an impartial manner. A common practice was to dismiss a staff member suspected of abusing students rather than to report the incident to the proper authorities. In cases of actual or suspected abuse, parents were not informed and students were not offered any support. Recommendations to put staff screening procedures in place were not adopted. The failure to adequately address physical and sexual abuse in the schools undermined the physical and mental health of countless students.

Harsh discipline and physical and sexual abuse led many students to run away. The failure to establish and enforce national policies and procedures on the measures that principals should take when students ran away from school further contributed to the elevated rates of school deaths.

In short, both the regulatory regime in which the schools operated and the level of compliance with that regime were inadequate to the task of protecting the health and safety of the students. Government, church, and school officials were well aware of these failures and their impact on student health. If the question is, “Who knew what when?” the clear answer is, “Everyone in authority at any point in the system’s history was well aware of the health and safety conditions in the schools.”