The Survivors Speak

28 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
I could hear a baby crying about the second day, so I start looking, and I found this
little one in the corner. There was a whole bunch of kids around. I don’t know if they
were alive or whatever, you know. I picked him up, anyway, and I remember packing
him around. I lost the space that I was sitting at. So, I was walking around. I was lucky
I had a coat. I took my coat off, I remember holding him, sitting, holding him, looking
at his face. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink. I couldn’t give him anything. 65
Students from remote communities often were taken to residential school by small airplanes.
At the end of the summer in 1957, a plane that was normally used to transport fish
landed on the water at Co-op Point on Reindeer Lake, in northern Saskatchewan. John B.
Custer recalled the roundup:
And all of a sudden I seen this priest coming, and
this rcmp, and they told me let’s go for a walk. So, I
went, walked down the fish plane, and this is where
they, they threw me in without the consent of my
grandparents. And there was already a bunch of
kids there. There was about at least twenty-five to
thirty kids. And that’s at the young age of seven
years old, I remember this very well. This, the fish,
the fish plane was, it had a very strong smell of fish,
and he half-assed washed that plane, and it was,
there was still slime fish in there, in that plane.
And there was a whole bunch of kids there, and I
was just wondering what am I doing in this plane?
John B. Custer.
Most of the kids were crying, and I could see their
parents on the shoreline, waving goodbye, and most of them were crying. 66
Dorothy Hart grew up in northern Manitoba. She recalled how, when she was six years
old, she and a friend were playing by a lake when a plane landed. “My friend took off first. I
remember this ’cause it’s, and this guy just grabbed me and put me on the plane. And there
were other kids in the plane already. And this was how I ended up in Norway House. Not
even saying, I didn’t even see my grandparents.” 67
Florence Horassi was taken to the Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, school in a
small airplane. On its way to the school, the plane stopped at a number of small communities
to pick up students.
And then we got to, there’s another place that we stop at, there’s another, this one
young boy got on the plane there. Had a lot, a lot of crying. There’s … a lot of kids in
the plane. Some of them were sitting on the floor of the plane. It was just full. When
the plane took off, there’s about six or five older ones, didn’t cry, but I saw tears
come right out of their eyes. Everybody else was crying. There’s a whole plane crying.
I wanted to cry, too, ’cause my brother was crying, but I held my tears back and
held him.