The Survivors Speak

Discipline • 143
my ear so hard. She took me to the corner, and I stood there for a long time. I don’t know
why.” 499 Archie Hyacinthe recalled that in the classrooms of the Roman Catholic school in
Kenora, “every time we didn’t listen, they would tug us behind the ear, or behind the neck,
or on the elbows.” 500 Joseph Wabano said that at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, the staff
would hit students with a one-inch-thick board. “And there was a lot of times I got hit, me
too, for some reason. They had a board, one by three, like one inch thick, and it was cut like
that, they use it for the board, and that nun used to hit my head, wanted to hit my ears. She
said, ‘I’m gonna hit your ears.’” 501
Edmund Metatawabin spoke of how he and other students at the Fort Albany school
had been punished by being placed in what students referred to as the “electric chair.”
According to Metatawabin, this was a metal-framed chair with a wooden seat and back.
After being buckled into the chair an electric current from a hand-cranked generator was
run into their bodies. The chair had been constructed by Brother Goulet, the school’s electrician,
and had apparently been initially used as an entertainment. It came, however, to
be used as an instrument of punishment. Metatawabin said he had “sat on the electric
chair three times.” 502 Simeon Nakoochee was another student who was put in the chair.
To them it’s, like, entertainment, like it was just, like, “Who wants to get in?” There
wasn’t, it was like a selection. I never wanted to get in that chair, you know. I saw that
chair. I could even describe it, that thing too, you know. That thing just right out of my
mind, I could, I could describe it, you know, what the, what the chair looked like, you
know, what, what they use. Then they, well, I never volunteer, or raised my hand, you
know, and I just, and then she called my name, the nun, you know, “Just sit on that
chair.” It was almost like a crack, you know. She wouldn’t let me get off there until,
and then I, I probably cried after that, you know, and she wouldn’t let me get out after
this. People thought it was, kids were laughing asking why I cry, you know.
He said he thought the chair was later destroyed. 503
Jonas Grandjambe recalled how the nun in charge of the boys’ dormitory at the Roman
Catholic school in Aklavik gave the students what he called a “rough time.”
A strapping, grabbing us by the ear, and pushing us against the corner to kneel down.
Sometimes we had to kneel down all day. And if we spilt something, she would do
the same thing, grab our ear and twist it until we, make us get down on the floor, and
whatever we dropped there we have to eat it or lick it. I don’t know. 504
Margaret Plamondon, who attended the Holy Angels Residential School in Fort
Chipewyan, Alberta, said she once saw a nun push a student down a flight of stairs.
It was one of my, one of my friends, and we were lining up to go to the bathrooms before
school was, was to start, and I don’t know what happened, and one of the nuns,
one of the nuns that were looking after us, not the teacher, and then she, as, as I turn
around, I see the nun push that girl down a flight of stairs, and she never got up, and