The Survivors Speak

100 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
and his work clothes, and he was talking to a nun, and apparently later on I found out
that the nuns refused him a visit, but he tried to visit us all the time, but they wouldn’t
allow him. 346
Madeleine Dion Stout had a vivid memory of her parents visiting her at the Blue
Quills school.
I remember looking out the window, look, thinking they were going to appear
anytime, and so they did drive up, and I remember my father tying the horses to the
posts at the school, and my mother getting out of the wagon. And I really, I looked
harder at my mother for some reason. I saw her getting out of the wagon. She had, I
can’t remember what she had on, but I remember her red tam, and I remember how
she wore it. Today, I’d probably describe it as very coquettishly, you know, sort of
slanted. And, and [audible crying] I started crying then because I was missing them
already. I knew they couldn’t stay. 347
Students were often encouraged to write home, but incoming and outgoing letters were
read. One of Tina Duguay’s letters to her parents was blocked because she had mentioned
another student in the letter, and a second letter was blocked because she described
school activities. “So, I used to wonder, ‘what in the heck am I supposed to talk about?’
You know I want to write letters to Mom and Dad, ‘what am I supposed to say?’ So, letter
writing started to dwindle, and they didn’t hear from me that often.” 348
Leon Wyallon felt terribly isolated from his parents when he lived in residence in Fort
Smith. He also thought he could not describe what he felt in letters home. “Every time you
write a letter they read it, and then they, I don’t know what they do with it.” 349
Doris Young said that when she attended Anglican schools in Manitoba and
Saskatchewan, she never received letters and parcels that her parents had sent her.
My mother would, would write us letters, and my dad, and we never received them,
or they’d send parcels, and they were opened, and we, we just don’t know what happened
to them, but I know that my mother when I, when I would, we’d come home,
and said she would write to us. Her English was limited, but she still wrote, and my
dad send, would send us money, but we never received it either. 350
Because the staff read all outgoing letters, Josephine Eshkibok attempted to have a
school employee smuggle a letter out for her.
And one day I wrote a letter to my mother and it was that lady, an Indian lady that
worked in laundry. I went to the laundry and I gave her that letter. I said, “Can you
post this for me?” you know. I didn’t want to tell anybody, just her. So she took that
letter; I was so happy she’s gonna post it. ’Cause I was writing to my mom, told her to
come and get me; they’re too mean over here, at the school; strap all the time.
The next day, she was called into the office. “There and on the table there was my letter.
Then she opened it up you know, ‘Is this your letter?’ and I, I had my head down. And she