The Survivors Speak

112 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Students commented on how they felt lonely even in a crowded school. Alan Knockwood
said about his time at Shubenacadie, “Biggest thing I remember from the school was that I
was lonely. I was surrounded by people all the time, but I was alone. And it took a long time
for me to finally acknowledge that I do live in a loving community.” 396
Despite the fact that there were over 100 students at the Mission, British Columbia,
school, Jeanne Paul felt alone and isolated.
But again it was the loneliness of, of crying under
my sheets at night, you know, just covering my
head, underneath my blankets and sniffling, you
know, very quietly, so nobody could hear me. And I
imagine there were a lot of other ones in the room,
I didn’t know, might be having the same problem
as well. 397
Josiah Fiddler went to school at McIntosh, Ontario.
My first few weeks in school, I cried every day.
Either it was on the beating of the seniors, the
beatings, the pulling of the ears by the nuns, and
my first introduction to the principal was a slap Jeanne Paul.
across the head and told me to get downstairs and
join the other 100 boys there. After those first few weeks I finally said, I’m not going
to give them that satisfaction any more, I stopped crying. And to this day, I haven’t
cried. I really can’t. And I feel so good for people that have the ability to be able to cry
because as I said, I don’t know how to cry. 398
Nick Sibbeston, who was placed in the Fort Providence school in the Northwest
Territories at the age of five, recalled it as a place where children hid their emotions. “In
residential school you quickly learn that you should not cry. If you cry you’re teased, you’re
shamed out, you’re even punished. So you brace yourself and learn not to cry, you have
to be a big boy, you have to toughen up.” There was one nun at the school who would give
students an empty sardine can in which to collect their tears. “And I’ve always thought, you
know, what’s so hard about just putting your hand on a child and saying, ‘Don’t cry, don’t
be sad,’ you know, but there was never anything of that.” 399
Jack Anawak recalled of his time at Chesterfield Inlet in the 1950s that “there was no
love, there was no feelings, it was just supervisory. For the nuns that were in there it was
just, they supervised us, they told us what to do, they told us when to do it, they told us how
to do it, and we didn’t even have to think, we didn’t even have to feel.” 400
Murray Crowe was very homesick at the school he attended in northwestern Ontario.
At nights I was crying. And, I was crying and there was other students that were
crying. We had double bunks; we were all crying in the dorm. And then the workers