Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 101Instead of closing schools or turning them into sanatoria, the government’s majorresponse to the health crisis was the negotiation in 1910 of a contract between IndianAffairs and the churches. This contract increased the grants to the schools andimposed a set of standards for diet and ventilation. The contract also required thatstudents not be admitted “until, where practicable, a physician has reported that thechild is in good health.” 367As noted earlier, although the contract led to improvements in the short term, inflationquickly eroded the benefit of the increase in grants. The situation was worsenedby the cuts to the grants that were repeatedly imposed during the Great Depression ofthe 1930s. The underfunding created by the cuts guaranteed that students would bepoorly fed, clothed, and housed. As a result, children were highly susceptible to tuberculosis.And, because the government was slow to put in place policies that wouldhave prohibited the admission of children with tuberculosis, and ineffective in enforcingsuch policies once they were developed, healthy children became infected. As lateas the 1950s, at some schools, pre-admission medical examinations appear to havebeen perfunctory, ineffective, or non-existent. 368 In the long run, the 1910 contractproved to be no solution for the tuberculosis crisis.The schools often lacked adequate facilities for the treatment of sick children. In1893, Indian Affairs inspector T. P. Wadsworth reported that at the Qu’Appelle school,the “want of an infirmary is still very much felt.” 369 Those infirmaries that existed wereoften primitive. On an 1891 visit to the Battleford school, Indian Commissioner HayterReed concluded that the hospital ward was in such poor shape that they had beenobliged to move the children in it to the staff sitting room. According to Reed, “Thenoise, as well as the bad smells, come from the lavatory underneath.” 370 Proposals toconstruct a small hospital at the Red Deer school in 1901 were not implemented. 371There were also reports of inadequate isolation facilities at the Regina school (1901),the Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (1921), the Mission, BritishColumbia, school (1924), and the Muncey, Ontario, school (1935). 372 When diphtheriabroke out at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1909, the nine students who fell ill wereplaced in a “large isolated house.” 373Even though the 1910 contract required all schools to have hospital accommodationto prevent the spread of infectious disease, many schools continued to be withouta proper infirmary. The 1918 global influenza epidemic left four children deadat the Red Deer, Alberta, school. When the influenza epidemic subsided, Principal J.F. Woodsworth complained to Indian Affairs, “For sickness, conditions at this schoolare nothing less than criminal. We have no isolation ward and no hospital equipmentof any kind.” 374 The Roman Catholic principals petitioned the federal governmentfor the establishment of sick rooms, under the supervision of a competent nurse, ateach school in 1924. At the same time, they objected to the sanitary inspection of theschools by government-appointed nurses, since they recommended changes “leading