The Survivors Speak

26 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
So, that morning, we heard the, told my brothers we had to sit over here and wait
for the train to come. So we heard a train, we heard a whistle and we said, and my
brother said, “Oh, that’s the train coming to pick us up, pick us up.” I said, “Okay,” you
know. So when the train came, they put us on, Indian agents put us on, the rcmp put
us on the train. Told us to sit over here. So it doesn’t matter, so we left from Grand
Narrows. Every station we stopped at, there was children, Native children, that had
long hair when I looked out the window.
And I went, “Wow, there’s more children going on the train, probably they’re going
the same way as I’m going.” So at that time it didn’t matter to me, so every station
we stopped, there was Native children, girls and boys. And there was rcmp and an
Indian agent lining them up, put them on the train, put them on the seats. No one’s
talking about anything, I didn’t know them. Every station, and by the time we got to
Truro, there was full of Native people, Native children on the train. Wow, there was a
whole bunch of us. Had long hair, you know, had no clothes to take with them.
So we didn’t know, we didn’t understand. So we got to Truro, so we changed trains
and then the conductor, he says, when we got to the point where we went, the conductor
said, “Last stop for Shubenacadie. Last stop, get ready.” So we were driving
and we wouldn’t take that long. So we got all the children, all the girls on one side
and all the boys on one side. And we didn’t understand nothing. And when the train
came so far, I think it would be around 12:00, or between 12:00 or 12:30, we got to our
destination and the conductor was saying, “Shubenacadie, Shubenacadie, next stop.”
So he was saying that, so we all stop and the Indian agent was sitting in the front
there. He said, “Okay guys, get ready.” 62
Larry Beardy had a strong memory of the first train trip that took him from Churchill,
Manitoba, to the Anglican residential school in Dauphin, Manitoba—a journey of
1,200 kilometres.
I think it was two days and one whole day of travel on the train to Dauphin. So, it was
quite a, it was quite a ride. And when we boarded the train, I was very excited. It’s like
going on a journey, going for a, a travel. It’s not my first time going on a train, but I
was going alone. I was going with my sister and my other older siblings. And, and the
train ride was okay for the first half hour or so, then I realized I was alone. My mother
was not there. And like the rest of the children, there was a lot of crying on that train.
At every stop if you understand the Canadian National Railway, families lived in sections
every twenty, fifteen miles, and children will get on the train, and then there’d
be more crying, and everybody started crying, all the way to Dauphin, that’s how it
was. So, there was a lot of tears. That train I want to call that train of tears, and a lot of
anger, a lot of frustration. I did that for several years. 63
Emily Kematch was sent from York Landing in northern Manitoba to the Gordon’s
school in Saskatchewan. When she was put on the train that was to take her there, she did
not know she was being sent to school.