The Survivors Speak

Daily life
“We were programmed.”
Daily life in a residential school was highly regimented. John B. Custer said the students
at the Roman Catholic school near The Pas “were treated like, I don’t know, a herd of cattle,
I guess. We had to line up for everything. Line up to go to the toilet, line up to go wash, line
up to go take a shower, line up to go to play, line up to go to school, eat.” 200
Life in the Shubenacadie school was strictly controlled in the early 1940s when Noel
Knockwood attended the school.
We used to wake up in the morning, even before we had time to go to the bathroom,
we would kneel down and we would say our prayers. ’Course it was orchestrated by
the nuns and they told us what prayers to say.
Then after prayers we were able to use the washroom and get dressed, then we would
go downstairs in a single file. And then we would find our place in, in, in a, in a kitchen
where, where we sat and we stood by our plates and waited for the nun to go give
the command to sit down and she would clap her hands and by that sound we would
all sit down. Then we would say grace, ’course they were Catholic prayers, Catholic
grace that we said. We were forbidden to speak our own language. 201
Lydia Ross said that the students at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school were organized
“just like an army.… And we used to go, oh, then the other one is you always file, file it
by your number, always for everything. Go, go to cafeteria, you go by your number. Go to
classroom, you go by number all in one row, up the stairs, up to the classroom. And everything
was routinely done.” 202
Mel H. Buffalo spoke of how beds were to be made in precise, military style.
There’s a main sheet from above and the second
sheet goes partway and you pull it under. And then
the other sheet that covers—there’s three—there’s
two sheets that cover and then the main blanket,
that one, that covers as well. And then your pillowcase.
There are two pillowcases, one that goes one
way and the other goes the other way. And your
dirty one comes to changing room, you have to take
everything off and throw them in the centre of the
common room and that goes to the laundry room.
There’s a laundry crew that picks that up, in a little
cage, and takes that down to the laundry room and
Mel H. Buffalo.