Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The history • 89school or as soon after as possible.” 305 In other words, the principals were expected toarrange marriages for the older students.Principals regularly reported and celebrated student marriages, and, indeed, didoften arrange them. 306 Reverend P. Claessen, principal of the Kuper Island school,reported in 1909 that he had succeeded in “engaging one of our leaving girls with oneof our best old boys.” 307 Kamloops school principal A. M. Carion reported, “It is gratifyingto note again that since my last report, two more couples of ex-pupils have beenunited in the bonds of holy wedlock. The ex-pupils who marry other ex-pupils are betterable to retain the habits of civilized life, which they acquired at the school.” 308Efforts were also made to block marriages deemed to be unsuitable. In 1895, Indianagent Magnus Begg told members of the Blackfoot Reserve that “no young man couldmarry a girl from an Industrial or board [sic] School without having prepared a housewith two rooms, and owning cows, with the necessary stabling, &c.” 309 In that sameyear, principals and Indian agents were instructed to seek departmental permissionprior to allowing students to marry. 310Principals continued to arrange marriages into the 1930s. In 1936, the principal ofthe Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake prepared a list of students who had turnedsixteen and who, he believed, should not be discharged. He noted that he insisted onkeeping the students, since he would “always try to marry them as soon as they leavethe school.” He wanted to keep one eighteen-year-old student in the school until thefall threshing was complete. Then, she would be married to a former pupil. He wantedto keep another eighteen-year-old until “she gets married during the year.” 311 In 1922,the head of the Presbyterian Church’s Winnipeg Committee on Indian Work urged thegovernment to make it “unlawfull [sic] for a pupil or ex-pupil of the School to marryor be married without the permission of the Indian Agent.” The Presbyterians proposedthat the children of such unauthorized marriages be denied Treaty annuitiesuntil they reached the age of twenty-one and be prohibited from attending school. 312Although the measure was not adopted, it is reflective of the church’s lack of respectfor the autonomy of Aboriginal people.Food: “Always hungry”In his memoir of his years as a student at the Mount Elgin school in southernOntario in the early twentieth century, Enos Montour wrote that the boys “were alwayshungry. Grub was the beginning and end of all conversations.” 313 According to EleanorBrass, the dinners at the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school consisted “of watery soupwith no flavour, and never any meat.” One winter, it seemed to her that they ate fishevery day. 314 In fair weather, the boys would trap gophers and squirrels, and roast themover open fires to supplement their meagre diets. Sometimes, they would share these