The Survivors Speak

134 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
send me back to Lebret so I went to school in Norquay, put myself back in Grade Ten.
I didn’t think much of myself. I quit when I was [in] Grade Eleven in Norquay. 463
In the 1940s, Arthur Ron McKay regularly ran away from the Sandy Bay school. “I didn’t
even know where my home was, the first time right away. But these guys are the ones; my
friends were living in nearby reserve, what they call Ebb and Flow, that’s where they were
going so I followed.” He said he was physically abused for running away, and that
my supervisors they’d hit me, like a man hitting somebody else, like a fist and all that.
So this went on and on and on, I don’t exactly know how to say. And then one time
the principal threatened us, “If you run away one more time, we’re going to send you
to a reform school in Portage, boys’ reform school.” The boys’ home, they call it a reform
school, “If you run away one more time that’s where I’m going to send you and
take you down there.” I was thinking about that and I said, oh it’s better to go away,
maybe it’s better down at the reform school. 464
Ivan George and a group of his friends ran away from the Mission, British Columbia,
school when he was eleven years old.
Got as far as Abbotsford, and they recognized our clothes, or whatever, and hair cut,
I guess, and said, “Where are you guys going?” I says, “Chilliwack.” He said, “Okay.”
He picked us up, drove us right around, right back to here. He gave us a warning. Next
time you get the strap.
So, I stayed for another month or so, and I took off by myself. Got as far as the freeway,
and the police picked me up, took me back. This time they made me take my
pants down, and strapped me. So about two months later, me and this other guy
decided to run again.
This time, he got as far as his home in Chilliwack. Indian Affairs officials sent them back.
That guy was getting the strap first, my best friend, and he said, “You again.” I says,
“Yeah.” He was just gonna strap me, and I took the strap, and I threw it down in the
dormitory. He said, “Go pick it up.” And I says, “You go pick it up.” He gave me extra
strappings for that, what I did to him. So, I stayed the whole year. 465
Muriel Morrisseau ran away from the Fort Alexander school almost every year she was
at the school.
I ran away for, I don’t know, just to make the nuns angry, the priests angry I guess.
I didn’t get anything out of running away, more punishment. I remember one time
when the priest come and got us, me and this girl that I was close to, we went home
for a night and he’d come and get us the next day. Nothing good became out of it anyway.
I remember running away again trying to cross the river and it started freezing
up, we all got scared, we had to come back again with a tail under our legs. 466
In most cases, the motives would be mixed: the desire to return home was coupled
with the need to escape punishment or bullying. Josie Angeconeb ran away on numerous