Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 131residential schools across the country.Nineteen taught academic subjects andthe other four taught home economicsand industrial arts. 639 Stan McKay, whowas educated at the Birtle and Brandonresidential schools, taught in the NorwayHouse, Manitoba, school in the 1960s.Although there was much that he enjoyedabout the work, he left after two years. Inhis opinion, the education he was beingforced to provide was not relevant to thelives of the children. There was, for example,a heavy emphasis on English, andno recognition of the role of Cree in thecommunities from which the childrencame. “They were doomed to fail underthe system that existed. The majority ofthem would certainly and did.” 640Verna Kirkness, who was raised on theFisher River First Nation in Manitoba,Miss Cornelius, an Oneida woman, taught at theRegina, Saskatchewan, school in the early twentiethcentury. Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-B992.taught at both the Birtle and Norway House schools. 641 She did not like the atmosphereat the Birtle school, where, she felt, administrators discouraged students from spendingadditional time with her. In her memoir, she wrote that she “wondered if they wereafraid the children would tell me things about their lives away from the classroom.” 642It was in the 1960s that a number of Aboriginal people were promoted to the positionof school principal. Ahab Spence, a former residential school student, was appointedprincipal of the Sioux Lookout school in 1963. 643 Under Spence’s administration, theschool had a staff of twenty-three, half of whom were Aboriginal. 644 Colin Wasacasebecame the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora in 1966. 645 In keeping withpast practice, his wife was made school matron. 646 This trend continued into the 1970s,when Aboriginal people were appointed to administrative positions at numerous residentialschools, including those in Mission and Kamloops, British Columbia; BlueQuills, Alberta; Prince Albert, Duck Lake, and Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan; and FortGeorge, Québec. 647 Although the total number of schools declined rapidly from 1969onwards, they became a significant source of Aboriginal employment, particularly inSaskatchewan, where six schools were operated by First Nations educational authorities.Of the 360 people working in the Saskatchewan schools in 1994, 220 were ofAboriginal ancestry—almost two-thirds of the total. 648Most of the Aboriginal people who were hired by the schools worked as cooks,cleaners, and handymen. In 1954, Mrs. Clair, a Cree woman who had attended the