Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 99beginning of the twentieth century. In 1940, R. A. Hoey, who had served as the IndianAffairs superintendent of Welfare and Training since 1936, wrote a lengthy assessmentof the condition of the existing residential schools. He concluded that many schoolswere “in a somewhat dilapidated condition” and had “become acute fire hazards.”He laid responsibility for the “condition of our schools, generally,” upon their “faultyconstruction.” This construction, he said, had failed to meet “the minimum standardsin the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions for the education ofchildren.” 357 By 1940, the government had concluded that future policy should concentrateon the expansion of day schools for First Nations children. As a result, manyof the existing residential school buildings were allowed to continue to deteriorate. A1967 brief from the National Association of Principals and Administrators of IndianResidences—which included principals of both Catholic and Protestant schools—concluded, “In the years that the Churches have been involved in the administrationof the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year afteryear, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, in the main, fallenupon deaf ears.” 358When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met withchurch and school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that only emergencyrepairs would be undertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close. 359The badly built and poorly maintained schools constituted serious fire hazards.Defective firefighting equipment exacerbated the risk, and schools were fittedwith inadequate and dangerous fire escapes. Lack of access to safe fire escapes ledto high death tolls in fires at the Beauval and Cross Lake schools. 360 The Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has determined that at least fifty-three schoolswere destroyed by fire. There were at least 170 additional recorded fires. At least fortystudents died in residential school fires. 361 The harsh discipline and jail-like nature oflife in the schools meant that many students sought to run away. To prevent this, manyschools deliberately ignored government instructions in relation to fire drills and fireescapes. These were not problems only of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.Well into the twentieth century, recommendations for improvements wentunheeded, and dangerous and forbidden practices were widespread and entrenched.In the interests of cost containment, the Canadian government placed the lives of studentsand staff at risk for 130 years.The buildings were not only fire traps. They were also incubators of disease. Ratherthan helping combat the tuberculosis crisis in the broader Aboriginal community, thepoor condition of the schools served to intensify it. The 1906 annual report of Dr. PeterBryce, the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs, observed that “the Indian populationof Canada has a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population,and in some provinces more than three times.” Tuberculosis was the prevalent causeof death. He described a cycle of disease in which infants and children were infected