The Survivors Speak

72 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
we used to steal food, peanut butter, whatever’s cooking in a pot. There were big pots
in there. I remember taking figs from that pot. I just happened to walk by, you had to
walk through the kitchen to the, to go to the laundromat, drop off the laundry there.
You’d always take something from the kitchen when we’re walking by there. 235
While girls took food from the kitchens, boys might raid the school gardens. Rick Gilbert
worked in the gardens at the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school.
Kids would try and sneak to eat some of the carrots and potatoes and whatever else.
If you get caught if we call it stealing, if you get caught stealing any of the vegetables
to eat the punishment for that was that they would paint your hands red. And so you
had to suffer the humiliation for days and a week until the paint wore off your hands.
To let everybody know that you were a thief I guess. 236
Doris Young said that hunger was a constant presence at the Anglican schools she
attended in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. “I was always hungry. And we stole food. I
remember stealing bread. And they, the pies that, that I remember stealing were lined up
on a counter, and, and they weren’t for us to eat, they were for the, for the staff.” 237
At the Sioux Lookout school in the 1960s, the boys would slip into the kitchen at night to
take extra food. Ken A. Littledeer’s job in the raids was to stand by the doorway and listen
to the steps, listen to the stairs, and echo, to hear if somebody was coming. 238
Don Willie was one of the boys who used to make midnight raids on the kitchen at
the Alert Bay school. “I guess, and steal pretty much, like, just chocolate, chocolate milk
and stuff like that. They’d have it, they’d just, just have it with hot water in the bathrooms,
and when they were caught there, they’d end up being strapped. But also we used to get
strapped for being caught out of bed.” 239
Ray Silver recalled that a small grocery store used to dump spoiled fruits and vegetables
by a creek near the Alberni, British Columbia, school.
And us kids, we used to sneak from the school, we must have had to walk about a
mile, sneak away from the school, sneak over the
bridge, and go to that dump, and pick up apples,
they were half rotten or something, and they threw
out, they were no more good to sell, but us kids that
were starving, we’d go there and pick that stuff up,
fill up our shirts, and run back across the bridge,
and go back to the school. 240
Many students spoke of the lack of variety in the
school menu. At the Assumption, Alberta, school,
Mary Beatrice Talley recalled, there was “porridge
every morning. Evening, eggs and potatoes. That’s
all we have. Milk and coffee, I think the bigger girls,
they take coffee. They have milk and tea there too. But
Mary Beatrice Talley.