Why I Speak Out

Personal Recollections From A Former Indian Residential School Student

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

By Mark DeWolf

In March, 2013, CBC Halifax’s Information Morning radio program asked me to come on the show to provide a different “take” on the topic of Indian Residential Schools. To the interviewer’s first question that morning — “Why do you, a non-Aboriginal, want to share your experience in an Indian residential school?”, I replied in words very much like these: “This is a story with more than one side, but unfortunately only one side receives any attention these days. Having first-hand experience of life in a residential school, I want to speak out for the many dedicated and caring Canadians who served in the schools and whose voices are rarely heard in the current conversation about the IRS system.”

And it was this strong desire to speak out that led me to speak publicly at the National Gathering of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held in Halifax in 2011, and in a sharing circle at the Edmonton National Gathering in 2014. On both occasions, my words were received with respect and a generosity of spirit that made me glad I had shared my thoughts.

But from what the folks at CBC Radio told me after the airing of the program, the phone-in reaction to my interview was mostly negative, even hostile. Because I hadn’t parroted the current narrative about forced attendance, physical and sexual abuse, cultural loss and intergenerational harm, most of those who contacted the station apparently saw me as just another blind supporter of white colonialism. But happily, there was one caller who actually thanked me for telling the story that follows.

Between the years 1953 and 1963, the Principal of St. Paul’s Anglican Residential School on Alberta’s Blood (Kainai) Reserve was my father, the Rev. J.E. “Ted” DeWolf, a young Anglican minister who, as a child of a broken home, had been sent to a boarding school at the age of six — King’s Collegiate in the Nova Scotia town of Windsor. I will never know whether it was the psychological and emotional damage done to my Dad’s father who had been captured by and escaped from the Germans in World War I, or the teachings and behaviour of the staff at KCS, or the moral standards of the Bedford DeWolf relatives who helped raise him, that made him the honest, caring and dedicated man he became. But I do know that, as a curate in Dartmouth’s Christ Church — the church where he met my mother — he contributed to the community newspaper, helped found the Dartmouth Boys Club, and later, as an ordained clergyman, joined a group of young Anglican ministers called “the Briefcase Boys” who believed clergy should tackle important social issues while assisting the exploited and oppressed. Perhaps one reason for his jump from parish priest to Residential School Principal was the fact that the group’s efforts to support and foster local unions and co-operatives met opposition from the Bishop of his diocese. Perhaps my father thought he could achieve more by entering what in those days was called “mission work.”

Whatever the reason, the Rev. Ted DeWolf was a good, even ideal, choice for the role of residential school Principal. Having been placed in a boarding school at an early age, he knew the good and the bad sides of boarding school life, and as one of his Nova Scotia parishes had been the African-Canadian community of Weymouth Falls, he was sensitive to the concerns and hardships caused by a racial divide. Moreover, through his graduate studies at the University of Toronto, he had become truly interested in and supportive of Indigenous culture. In accepting the principalship of an Indian residential school, he hoped to make a positive difference in the lives of Indigenous children. And he worked hard at it.

Thus it was that, for ten years of my young life, I lived with my family at St. Paul’s, in the middle of the Blood Reserve / Kainai First Nation on the southern Alberta prairie, a dozen kilometres from the nearest town of Cardston. And for nearly six of those ten years, I was a student in the school, attending classes, spending recesses in the boys’ playroom, eating some of my meals, and taking part in all kinds of group activities with the Kainai boys and girls. St. Paul’s had been established 50 years earlier, and many of my classmates’ parents had themselves attended the school. When application was made to erect a new building in 1924, prominent members of the tribe signed the application document.

The traditions and daily routines of the school had largely been set down by a former Principal, the Rev. (later Canon) S.H. Middleton, whose British upbringing strongly influenced the way the school was run. When we arrived in January of 1953, St. Paul’s already had a cadet corps, an active sports program, and even an Old Boys Association. In recognition of his efforts, Canon Middleton was made an Honorary Chief of the Kainai and given the Blackfoot name of “Chief Mountain”. Where the Spirit Lives, a film shown on CBC Television in 1989, was based on research conducted in Manitoba but it was shot at St. Paul’s, and its writer, Keith Ross Leckie, has told me that when he saw what was left of a formal English garden laid out at the south of the school, he made his film’s Principal a keen gardener.

Many today do not understand that there was a great variety among the residential schools, not only between schools but also within the history of each school. Under Canon Middleton — who tried to learn Blackfoot and deliver sermons in that language — students were free to speak their native language after 7:00 p.m. each day, but during our time at St. Paul’s, the English-only rule applied only to the classroom. For that reason, I struggled to understand what my schoolmates were saying on the playground or in the recreation room. In contrast to stories told by other IRS students, during our 10 years at St. Paul’s, there was no corporal punishment for speaking Blackfoot, and it was the same at my father’s second school, in the town of La Tuque, Quebec, a school that served northern Cree communities.

Much is made of the fact that some Indian Residential Schools were located hundreds of kilometres away from the students’ home communities, as if this was done deliberately, when in fact the small populations of the home communities made this necessary. Because the Kainai Reserve is, in area, the largest in Canada, and because there were sufficient numbers to support two residential schools on the Reserve, the parents of St. Paul’s students lived no more than a half-hour car ride away. Thus students went home on holidays or even weekends if their parents came for them, and there was no censorship of communication between child and parent. Many of the parents took an active interest in what went on in the school, quite a few became friends with my parents and other staff members, and when my family left St. Paul’s in 1963, some of those Blood families stayed in touch with my folks for years. A few of those correspondents had themselves been staff members at St. Paul’s. Three of our childhood friends were children of a highly-respected Kainai woman who worked at the school, and on both of my return visits to the Reserve, I have been told that my parents are remembered with fondness and respect. At the Edmonton National Gathering of the TRC, a woman who was examining a display of information about St. Paul’s told me she was a former student, and when she learned who I was, her face broke into a glad smile and she embraced me. A similar and very welcome incident occurred during a visit I paid to the Reserve some years ago. At a Kainai community event, the sister of a former IRS staff member, on learning who I was, reached out and grasped my hand with real affection.

My St. Paul’s classmates doubtless chafed at the restrictions of school life, and their ways of making the most of their school years were not always what their teachers would have liked. Among the boys, I recall a fair amount of chatter, horseplay and far more sketching of horses than assiduous copying down of notes from the blackboard. The woodworking and metal shop classes were far more popular than Social Studies or Math. The girls seemed far more academically focused, but they too seemed a relatively cheerful lot, many of the older girls very keen on pop music and anxious to learn the latest dances. The curriculum was similar if not identical to that found in Alberta’s provincial schools, very much focused on subjects considered important by non-Indigenous educators, but at St. Paul’s it was being delivered by Canadians — and a handful of “Brits” — who understood they were teaching First Nations children and would make appropriate adjustments. Kainai children who attended provincial schools in nearby Cardston had no such teachers.

And what was my classmates’ impression of me? As the son of the Principal, I was likely regarded with a mixture of resentment and wariness. I was a shy little boy when I arrived at the school, and being the only “white boy” in my classes didn’t help me make friends. But I was certainly not treated badly by my classmates. The only conversation that stands out in my mind is one that I don’t actually remember, but it led to a Kainai boy slapping my face in the boys’ playroom. It was the only time in my ten years at St. Paul’s that I ever experienced physical hostility from the Bloods.

Perhaps it was out of respect for my father and mother that my classmates didn’t give me a rough time. The St. Paul’s students knew that Father DeWolf wouldn’t treat them harshly or even particularly strictly, although a very infrequent use of the strap was a reminder that some behaviour was simply not acceptable. Because running away could have serious, even deadly, consequences — here I’m thinking of the tragic fate of the Cree boy Charlie (Chanie) Wenjack — it was considered a serious matter, and I suspect strapping was sometimes the punishment. But the St. Paul’s students recognized, I’m sure, the dedication my father brought to their care and instruction, if only through such visible examples as his willingness to go out in the middle of a freezing night and single-handedly flood the school’s rink. He encouraged students to contribute Kainai legends to the school’s mimeographed newsletter Sokapi Aginixin — in English, Good News — and took a keen interest in traditional Kainai ceremonies. I believe the St. Paul’s students appreciated his frequent admonishment of rowdy behaviour: “Stop behaving like a bunch of white men!”

My mother formed friendships among the Kainai women, some of them the Indigenous employees who staffed the school kitchen or laundry, a few of whom had children in the school. I learned from my older sister many years later that female members of the Reserve who had suffered sexual assault felt they could come to my mother for support and comfort.

As a family, we certainly felt welcomed. Upon our arrival — in 1953, it was just my parents, my two sisters and me, my brothers being born over the next five years — we were given Blackfoot names by the Women’s Society: “Red Man Coming Up the Hill” for my father, “Fisher Flag Woman” for my mother, and “Little Yellow Hair” for me. And when in 1963 my father was transferred to a newly-opened school in La Tuque, Quebec, there was a farewell dinner in the school’s new gymnasium, attended by a number of respected tribe members, and he was presented with a painting by the notable Blackfoot artist Gerald Tailfeathers. When my parents left the Reserve, they took with them the knowledge of friendships they had made with such respected Kainai as Jim Gladstone, the first Indigenous Senator, his contributions to the nation now celebrated by the inclusion of his image on the new $10-dollar bill. I treasure the photos I have of Senator Gladstone’s visit to my family in La Tuque during the 1960s.

During our years at St. Paul’s, there was certainly poverty on the Reserve, as well as other problems that still plague First Nations communities today. But impoverished conditions didn’t prevent my classmates from enjoying the life they shared with their families when not in school — a life of wide-open spaces, perhaps horses to ride, rodeos to attend, and community activities like the Sun Dance held annually on the Belly Buttes. When parents dropped off children at the school’s front door in September, there may have been some understandable sadness and even some resentment on the part of both children and parents, but I can’t say I saw any. Certainly, as the school year went on, most of my classmates settled in and, like any children finding themselves in the unfamiliar life of a boarding school, they took what they could from their situation. In the school, they knew they would be fed decent food on a regular basis, they would be adequately clothed, they would enjoy sports and social events with their friends, and their illnesses would be attended to. There was a dispensary, visits to the school by a doctor, and a nurse who administered inoculations. It is worth noting that, during my ten years at St. Paul’s. not a single student died while in residence.

And there were activities galore. I operated the projector for movies on Saturday night — and yes, some of those movies were of the “cowboys and Indians” variety — and I helped shell out candy, chips and pop at the weekly tuck shop. The young Bloods excelled at the sports and games, and beyond the playground with its slide and swings was a quarter-mile cinder track for athletic competition. Among my family’s home movies is footage of a softball game, with the students wearing softball uniforms. A proper skating rink meant that hockey games no longer had to be held on a very small pond some distance from the school. A year or two before we left St. Paul’s, a modern gymnasium complete with gym equipment was constructed in the boys’ playground.

There was a weekly library opportunity, although the books in shelves lining the hallway to the chapel were clearly aimed at British and American youth. With the arrival of television, a large room was set up for group TV watching, and until my family got its own black and white set, that room was where I and my schoolmates watched Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. I belonged to the St. Paul’s Cub Pack, and my sisters were both Brownies. I remember track and field meets, recreational skating on the rink in winter, and extravagant parties at Christmas and Hallowe’en. An elaborate Christmas pageant took weeks to prepare. I remember how popular with older female students were the young men who came from Nova Scotia to serve as counsellors, especially if the new arrivals were good-looking and knew those popular dances. A good example of the complexity to be found in the story of the Indian Residential Schools is the fact that one of those young Nova Scotian men later married an Indigenous woman, a former IRS student.

In the stampede of recent times to demonize the entire IRS system, the staff members who devoted years of their lives to the teaching and supervision of Indigenous children have by implication been tarred as racists, arrogant colonialists and predators. Certainly the system contained far too many individuals who, over its 113-year history, would fit those descriptions, but the staff at St. Paul’s, while a mixed lot, were the kind of people you might find teaching Inuit children in the Far North today, or volunteering to do community work in the Sudan, or driving a truck for Feed Nova Scotia. There was a Phys Ed instructor whose military background made him a loud and very formidable presence, but there were also teachers whose sweet nature endeared them to their students. In my six years as a St. Paul’s student, I never saw a teacher strike a child, although I do remember a chalkboard eraser flying by my head one day in Grade 5. The fact that this incident stands out in my memory speaks to their infrequency.

Could St. Paul’s Anglican Residential School have been the only one of its kind in the dozens of IRS institutions spread across the country? Even as a child, I knew that not every residential school was like St. Paul’s — the Roman Catholic school St. Mary’s in nearby Standoff was said to be far more strict — but I find it hard to believe that my father’s school was the only one where students were treated kindly, where parents felt the school was caring for their children while giving them the “white man”’s education, where friendships sprang up between staff and students, and where the emotional needs of lively young people were met in so many beneficial ways.

In the years that have passed since I left St. Paul’s, I’ve often thought about the Kainai parents who brought their children to the school every September. I’ve wondered if they weren’t very unlike a good friend of mine who, stationed in a dangerous part of the Middle East, sent his daughter thousands of kilometres away to be educated in an Ottawa boarding school. Did those Kainai mothers and fathers send their children to St. Paul’s in the belief that doing so was the best thing for them? Because the students went home so frequently, parents would have heard from their children what the staff members were like, how students were treated, and what their children liked and disliked about residential school life. Perhaps the Kainai parents were glad their teenage sons and daughters were relatively safe from the temptations and dangers to which they would be exposed on the Reserve or in the neighbouring towns — temptations and dangers that were exemplified by “the Nightriders”, a group of young Kainai men on horseback who would occasionally show up at the school and try to lure girls from the dormitories. 

At least in our time at St. Paul’s, parents had options as to where their children received their schooling. One issue of Sokapi Aginixin contains an editorial written by my father, urging parents to make the residential school choice, and Kainai parents wishing to enrol their children signed an application form that was accompanied by a doctor’s certificate.

Children don’t always notice everything that goes on around them, but they can usually sense unhappiness. My classmates were, on the whole, a boisterous, cheerful group of children, similar to those Basil Johnston describes in his book Indian School Days. The presence of Kainai men and women on staff would have helped students feel that they were being looked after, and I believe those Indigenous staff members felt as I did that the “white” staff members were a fairly decent, caring bunch, some of the younger ones quite popular with the older students. If there were any unfitted for the work or motivated by selfish or even predatory impulses, my father would have been watching out for those. I have been told by a respected member of the Kainai of an instance in which a student, returning from a school camp in nearby Waterton Park, reported to my father that a supervising staff member had made an unwanted advance, and, said my informant, that staff member was promptly fired. That the student trusted my Dad enough to report the incident to him says a great deal about what kind of Principal my father was.

The injustices and neglect that First Nations people have suffered for many decades are finally getting significant attention, but I bridle when I hear the word “survivor” routinely used to describe all IRS students. Contrary to oft-repeated claims, the Indian Act did not compel residential school enrolment or forbid the use of native languages, although enrolment in some kind of school was made compulsory in 1920, and encouragement to learn English was certainly a priority in all of the “Indian schools”. I bridle whenever I see the much-repeated claim that “150,000 Indigenous were forced to attend residential schools”, when a multitude of documents show a very different picture. I also take exception to repeated claims that residential school enrolment has caused the various ills that plague Indigenous communities or the increasing percentage of individuals living in urban centres. As no more than a third of school-age Indigenous children during the IRS period ever attended a residential school, and the average length of enrolment was about 4.5 years — which means that a good many IRS students only attended for a year or two — other factors are far more likely to be responsible for what we see today. Much is said about intergenerational harm, but there has been no credible study that compares social pathologies among Indigenous Canadians whose parents or grandparents attended a residential school, attended one of the far more numerous Indian day schools, or received no schooling at all, as was the case for about 30% of Indigenous children during the IRS period.

Such a study would be highly enlightening, and might even reveal the opposite of the current narrative. Certainly many of the students who attended St. Paul’s and other IRS institutions received real educational benefit and even enjoyment from their boarding school experience. What I saw during visits to my father’s second school in La Tuque was no different, and home movies shot at both schools show the faces of cheerful, active children and youths, very like those in the many photographs now collected in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation that show students enrolled in other IRS institutions. 

Some former IRS students have said those were the best days of their lives, and many articulate and influential native leaders received their education at an Indian Residential School. Former IRS students appear to be more active in promoting native language and culture, and the Final Report of the TRC contains much that shows the system in a positive light. If only more Canadians would read it, rather than the totally negative Summary Report, in which one lone sentence acknowledges some benefits.

Other, far more important factors have brought about the deplorable situation that faces many Indigenous Canadians today, and it is those wider issues — some of which should have been dealt with decades ago — that should receive the attention that has been unfairly and unwisely focused on the residential schools.

Mark DeWolf is a retired teacher of English language, literature and drama, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A playwright and musician, he supports Indigenous organizations such as Inspire and Reconciliation Canada, and whenever possible reaches out to Indigenous Canadians, particularly those whose family history includes enrolment in a residential school. He also attempts, whenever possible, to counter inaccurate or misleading statements about the IRS that appear in the media. His Blackfoot name is “Little Yellow Hair”. He maintains contact with members of the Kainai First Nation.

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