Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

120 • Truth & Reconciliation CommissionIn at least one instance, parents home-schooled their children. In 1941, Muriel,Doreen, and Kathleen Steinhauer were kept home from the Edmonton residentialschool because their parents were not satisfied with the progress they were making atthe school. Their mother, Isabel, had been a schoolteacher prior to her marriage, andhome-schooled the children. 518Sometimes, parents took their children out of school against the wishes of the principal.In 1904, a husband and wife attempted to remove their daughter from the KuperIsland school. When Principal G. Donckele informed them that when they signed theadmission form, they had given the government the right to determine when theirdaughter would be discharged, the father said, “I am the father of this child and I donot care for what you and the government have to say about it.” After being told that hecould be prosecuted, the father left with his daughter anyway. 519In 1913, when a mother removed her daughter from the Fort Resolution school, theMounted Police were called in and the mother surrendered the girl to the school. 520 Inresponse to the death of a student in 1922, local parents withdrew their children fromthe Kitamaat, British Columbia, residential school. They agreed to return them onlyon the condition that the principal “sign her name to a paper before us that she wouldsee that the children got all the food they wanted, that they would be well cared for,and be supplied with sufficient clothing.” 521In March 1948, the principal of the Roman Catholic school at Cardston, Alberta,struck a father who was attempting to take his son out of the school. In discussing theissue with Indian Affairs, the Blood Indian Council insisted on having the record notethat this was “not the first time that Father Charron had hit an Indian.” 522It was not uncommon for the parents of an entire community or region to refuseto return their children to school. In the fall of 1926, for example, parents from communitiesin Manitoba’s Interlake region announced they were not sending their childrenback to the Elkhorn school. According to the parents, the children were not wellfed, the older boys compelled the younger boys to steal, and all children were poorlyclothed. 523 In October 1927, seventy-five school-aged children from the Blood Reservein Alberta either had not returned to school or had not been enrolled in school. Ittook a letter from the police, plus a follow-up visit from the Indian agent, to fill theAnglican and Catholic schools on the reserve. 524 Two weeks after the start of the 1940school year, fifty-four students had yet to return to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia,school. The police were called in, and by October 2, twenty-five of the students hadbeen returned. 525 This form of parental action was common throughout the 1940s. 526Parents were eager to have their children properly educated, and often proposedrealistic and effective solutions. In 1905, parents of children attending the RomanCatholic boarding school in Squamish, British Columbia, petitioned to have theschool converted into an industrial school. The request was not granted, despite the