Excerpt: Canada’s Residential Schools The History, Part 2 1939 to 2000

Volume 1, part 2 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on Canada’s Residential Schools carries the story of the residential school system from the end of the Great Depression to the closing of the last remaining schools in the late 1990s. It demonstrates that the underfunding and unsafe living conditions that characterized the early history of the schools continued into an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity for most Canadians. A miserly funding formula meant that into the late 1950s school meals fell short of the Canada Food Rules. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a failure to adhere to fire safety rules were common problems throughout this period.

The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 39, “Runaways and truants: “1940-2000”.

Reasons for running away

In May 1943, Mounted Police officer W. E. Needham prepared a brief report on why he thought students were continually running away from Mount Elgin near London, Ontario. When he returned students to the school, he had asked them why they had left. The answers were brief, usually to the effect that the student did not like it there or felt unfairly treated. Needham wrote that, from his observations, “the discipline is too severe, also these children have very little or no recreation, and with help so scarce they are obliged to do the majority of the farm work, resulting in these children being overworked.” Each winter, he wrote, the students have to unload several railcar loads of coal. In his opinion, this was work “that is much too heavy for them.” He said there were a number of children at the school who were over the age of sixteen and should have had the legal right to leave. “They are kept at school to assist in the farm work, thus engendering in their minds somewhat of a rebellious spirit.”

In 1953, J. E. Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, shared with Indian Affairs his own pseudo-scientific theories for the causes of the school’s runaway problem:

Causes of truancy appear to be basically primitive in nature and need careful and scientific investigation from a broad anthropological basis. Motives which might be described as the “call of the seasons”, the bush, and so forth, have a bearing on this problem. Phases of the moon have something to do with it as well as crisp frosty weather. Childish reasons such as “the boys were teasing us” are quite adequate from the child’s point of view to justify his starting out on a fifty to one hundred mile trek in sub zero weather with no provision for food or shelter and, considering the journey, inadequately clothed.

Moving from the anthropological to the material, Andrews wrote that, of the factors contributing to truancy, “the lack of well-equipped playgrounds and the shortage of playroom space and facilities rank foremost.” The playrooms were so small that each child had but a “small patch of flooring about four feet by four feet three inches.” In this view, he was not alone. That same year, A. Lacelle, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, attributed his school’s runaway problem to “our inability to have any organized sports at the school due to lack of play grounds.”

Although it is doubtful that playgrounds alone would have kept students from running away, little was done throughout this period to make most schools attractive to students. As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, there was much about the schools that they might wish to escape. And escape they did.

The recreation room at the Carcross school in the Yukon. A 1946 Anglican Church report commented on the “almost underground” nature of school playrooms. General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7561-110.