The Survivors Speak

178 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Now, the dentist, again, we never saw anybody until, I think it was when the, the Indian
hospital was opened at Sioux Lookout, in the town of Sioux Lookout in 1951 and
’52. The doctor there came up to the school, and did the dental work, and he wasn’t a
dentist. And it was, it was really ironic how he did it. He, and all of us, everybody had
to go to the senior classroom and line up, and one by one, he’d look in their mouth.
If you didn’t have any cavities, he’d shove you on and go onto the next guy. But if you
had to have a tooth pull out, he did it right there, and there was no ether, or ether, or
any kind of, what they call that when you freeze, freezing. He didn’t have that. He just
go ahead and pulled that. I saw lots of kids there cry. 662
Lydia Ross said the dental care at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school was limited and
painful. “There was no anaesthesia. There was no tools like the dentist tools. They used
ordinary pliers. He use, he used to be the one to pull the teeth. He used the pliers, and
pulled my tooth, just put Kleenex in there or something, and there’s no pain pill, you have
to suffer, but I got over it, anyway.” 663
Sarah Cleary had a similar memory of the dental treatment at residential schools in the
North. “I still remember the dentist. We were all lined up in the hospital to have our—I
don’t know what. I can’t remember much of it but I know I was really nervous, crying and
shaking. That was the worst experience.” 664
Marie Brown, who attended one residential school in northern Manitoba and another
in northern Saskatchewan, said she never received proper medical attention.
I had this grippe. It’s some kind of a cold that affects your bones, and I was in bed,
bedridden for about three months. And, and then I felt that, you know, as I went, as I,
when I was, we became older, I realized that they should have come given me, taken
me to the hospital because I almost died, eh, of that disease. 665
When schools were hit with infectious illnesses, they were often placed under quarantine.
Students said these were particularly lonely times. Martha Minoose recalled that the
Roman Catholic school at Cardston was once under quarantine for six to eight weeks. “It
was some kind of an epidemic but I don’t know what it was. During the night they woke
us up and they gave us a pill [and] a drink and we went back to bed. In the afternoon we
[had] a rest period and … but I didn’t know what it was so we never saw our parents during
that time.” 666
When Shirley Waskewitch came down with a contagious lung illness, she was in the
infirmary in the Onion Lake school for at least a week.
Being locked up in the infirmary was one thing I never, never forget. In a small room,
must have been about this small, a little bit bigger, and I was locked up in there for,
oh, a long time, maybe I’d say about a week, two weeks, I would say, by myself in the
infirmary in the high dormitory, and I used to hear somebody coming up the stairs,
and the keys would be jangling, and they open the door, and they just put a tray in
there, and lock me up there again. I was sick and, I was sick, and I don’t know what
was wrong with me, but I was sick, and I was there for a long time in that little room.