The Survivors Speak

Medical attention • 181
doctor.… When they took her down, I held her hand to the door, when they put her in
the ambulance, and that was the last time I saw her.
That day, after dinner, they called us, all, all of us to go in our rooms, and I knew that
there was something wrong. So, I asked Candy, the lady that looked after us, we used
to call her Candy because she always gave us candies, and she, she’s dead, and she
didn’t want to say anything to me. And I ran after her, she ran into her room, and I
ran after her, and said, “Tell me.” She, when she closed the door, I, I went in her room,
and I told her, “Tell me she’s dead.” She didn’t want to tell me. So, they put all us in
one room, and they told us she died. When they brought the body back, the tomb was
near the church, they didn’t even open it for us to see. I wanted to see it. I wanted her
to, I, I felt she wasn’t there, that everything was just lies.
She helped carry the casket to the church. “We’re going to bury her, were only five people
there. The parents weren’t even there. They didn’t even invite, invite the parents to
come. Even to this day, I can’t go to the cemetery, knowing that I’m gonna see a little plate
with just a number on it.” 672
Alex Alikashuak said that when he attended the Churchill, Manitoba, school, one of the
students, Paulosie Meeko, was killed by a polar bear.
In the fall time when bears are migrating and
they’re coming through Churchill, they used to
come, come through our campus, eh, and when
they come through during the daytime, all of us
kids would go out and start chasing them, ’cause
we’re kids, like, you know obviously they’re running,
there’s a whole bunch of us chasing them.
And then one day, I guess a whole other, bunch
of other kids were chasing a bear, and a bear had
happened to hide behind a rock, and when one of
the kids jumped, jumped over, he, he slapped him
to death, and that was a kid was in my classroom,
and he was my best friend. 673
Alex Alikashuak.
The death of a child often prompted parents to withdraw the rest of their children from
a school. One former student spoke of how, when her sister became ill at the Anglican
school at Aklavik, her father made a special visit to the school. “He cried over us. He took
me home. He put her in a hospital, and she died.” 674