The Survivors Speak

Arrival
“I’ve always called it a monster.”
Nellie Ningewance was raised in Hudson, Ontario, and went to the Sioux Lookout,
Ontario, school in the 1950s and 1960s. Her parents enrolled her in the school at the government’s
insistence. She told her mother she did not want to go.
But the day came where we, we were all bussed
out from Hudson. My mother told me to pack my
stuff; a little bit of what I needed, what I wanted. I
remember I had a little doll that my dad had given
me for a Christmas present. And I had a little trunk
where I made my own doll clothes. I started sewing
when I was nine years old. My mom taught us all
this though, sewing. So I used to make my own doll
clothes; I packed those up, what I wanted.
I guess I had mixed feelings. I was kind of excited
to go away to go to school. My mom tried to make
it feel comfortable for me and I know it was hard Nellie Ningewance.
for her and hard for me. But when the time we were
ready to leave, they had a bus; and there was lots of people with their kids waiting to
leave. And I made sure I, I was the last one to board the bus, ’cause I didn’t want to go.
I remember hugging my mom, begging her, getting on the bus; waving at them as
they were going, pulling away. I don’t remember how long the ride was from Hudson
to Pelican at the time, but it seemed like a long ride.…
When we arrived there, again I was, I made sure I was the last one to get off the bus.
And when I arrived there, a guy standing at the bottom there helping all the students
to get off the bus, reaching out his hand like this; I didn’t even want to touch him. I
didn’t even want to get off. I’m hanging to the bar; I didn’t want to get off. To me he
looked so ugly. He was dark, short, and he was trying to coax me to come down the
stairs and to help me get off the bus. I hang onto the bus and they had to force me
and pull me down to get off the bus.
The next three days I guess was sort of, like it was like floating.… I remember crying
then calming down for a while, then crying again…. When we arrived we had to
register that we had arrived then they took us to cut our hair. The next thing was to
get our clothes. They gave us two pairs of jeans, two pairs of tee-shirts, two church