The Survivors Speak

Arrival • 35
Everybody was talking in Cree, some of them in Cree, some of them in English, well a
little bit of English. And my cousins … we were in together some of them, some of us
at the same age, so they came over and talked to me. I said, “Well, here we are.” Here I
was missing home already. 78
Gilles Petiquay, who attended the Pointe Bleue, Québec, school, was shocked by the
numbering system at the school. “I remember that the first number that I had at the residential
school was 95. I had that number—95—for a year. The second number was number
4. I had it for a longer period of time. The third number was 56. I also kept it for a long time.
We walked with the numbers on us. 79
Mary Courchene grew up on the Fort Alexander Reserve in Manitoba. Her parents’
home was just a five-minute walk away from the Fort Alexander boarding school.
One morning my mom woke us up and said we were going to school that day and
then she takes out new clothes that she had bought us and I was just so happy, so
over the moon. And, she was very, very quiet. And she was dressing us up and she
didn’t say too much. She didn’t say, “Oh I’ll see you,” and all of that. She just said, she
just dressed us up with, with no comment. And then we left; we left for the school.
When the family reached the school, they were greeted by a nun. Mary’s brother became
frightened. Mary told him to behave himself. She then turned around to say goodbye to
her mother but she was gone. Her mother had gone to residential school as a child. “And
she could not bear to talk to her children and prepare her children to go to residential
school. It was just too, too much for her.” Courchene said that on that day, her life changed.
“It began ten years of the most miserable part of my life, here on, here, in the world.” 80
Roy Denny was perplexed and frightened by the clothing that the priests and sisters
wore at the Shubenacadie school.
And we were greeted by this man dressed in black with a long gown. That was the
priest, come to find later. And the nuns with their black, black outfits with the white
collar and a white, white collar and, like a breast plate of white. And their freaky
looking hats that were, I don’t, I couldn’t, know what they remind me of. And I didn’t
see, first time I ever seen nuns and priests. And
they, and they were speaking to me, and I couldn’t
understand them. 81
He had not fully understood that his father was
going to be leaving him at the school. “So when my
father left I tried to stop him; I tried, I tried to go, you
know, tried to go with him, but he said, ‘No, you got to
stay.’ That was real hard.” 82
Calvin Myerion was sent to the Brandon, Manitoba,
school. He recalled being overwhelmed by the size of
the building.
Calvin Myerion.