The Survivors Speak

Life before residential school • 5
When I was a little girl, ’cause we live in igloo and we live in nomadic life and there
was no white people and we move around from camp to camp, depending on the
season. And we live with nature and our family and
everybody looks after each other. And it was very,
very simple, living, just survival in the way, looking
for food and moving around. 7
Bob Baxter was born on the Albany River in northern
Ontario.
So, that’s how I, that’s how I grew up, you know, and
knowing all that stuff where listening to the familiar
sounds of my dad’s snowshoes in the winter when
he came to, when he came back from trapping late
in the afternoon, towards, when it’s already dark,
and waiting for him to come home and tell us the
legends, because no tv back then.
Eva Lapage.
So, it was great. My mom was great, too. She really looked after us, made sure that we
were clothed and fed. That was good times.
I remember eating wild game all the time. And ’cause we had our grandparents that
really looked after us, too, that I have good memories of, until, ’til that day that we
were taken from there, taken away to school. 8
Prior to attending the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, Lynda Pahpasay
McDonald lived with her family near Sydney Lake in northwestern Ontario in the 1950s.
We spent most of our time in the trapline, in the
cabin, and we’d play outside and it was really good.
There was no drinking. There was, it was, like, it
was a small sized cabin, and my parents took good
care of us. And they were really, I remember those
happy days, like there was no violence. We had a
little bit of food, but we always had a meal, like we
ate, the beaver meat or moose meat if my dad got a
moose, and deer meat, and, and fish.
She could not recall being physically disciplined
during this time. “They more or less just told me, you
know, don’t do this, you know you’ll hurt yourself Lynda Pahpasay McDonald.
and what not, but it was all in Ojibway, all spoken in
Ojibway. And I spoke Ojibway when I was a child, and there was a lot of fun.” Her mother
would harvest plants to be used as medicine.
And we would, my parents would take us out blueberry picking, and my grandparents
would always take us blueberry picking, or we’d go in the canoe, and we’d go,