The Survivors Speak

School meals • 73
food is—every day, same, same, same.” 241 Many students recalled being served porridge
every morning.
At the boys’ school in Spanish, Ontario, William Antoine remembered:
In the morning they would give you porridge; every morning, every morning. They
call it “mush” back then. It was like lumpy, you know, very lumpy. It didn’t taste very
good … but you had to eat it in order to, to have some food in you. You know you had
to eat it so that’s, and you had to get used to it. You had to get used to, you know. We
got bread with no butter, just dry bread. Got a little milk, you know. 242
Gerald McLeod said that at the Carcross school in Yukon Territory, “you would never
see eggs, you know, for a couple of months. It was always mush. A lot of people didn’t like
eating liver. They had liver there that people couldn’t eat, and they forced us to eat it.” 243
Louise Large said that at the Blue Quills school, the
porridge would be burnt, black toast, and some lucky kids would get, no not, not
burnt. But the food was horrible. I remember that I had to eat, because I was the
youngest, every meal I had to eat everybody’s leftover, and then I became real fat and
chubby in school, ’cause we weren’t allowed to throw away food, and because I was
the smallest, I guess I was bullied into eating everybody’s garbage. 244
Shirley Ida Moore, who attended the Norway House, Manitoba, residential school in
the 1960s, echoed the sentiments of other former students.
And, I hated, I hated, I hated breakfast. I didn’t mind very much eating over there, but
I hated breakfast because, I think what I didn’t like was we always had to eat porridge;
and this porridge was, like it, I was, I eat porridge at home before but it was good. You
know when the porridge they gave us was, like when they put it into your bowl, it was
this big lump; big ball, lump. 245
Chris Frenchman recalled being forced to eat at the Hobbema, Alberta, school. “You
either ate it or we, we would go hungry to bed. So we had no choice but to eat it.” 246
Mel H. Buffalo recalled being punished because he refused to eat his breakfast at the
Edmonton, Alberta, school.
I was the last one to be let out of the cafeteria because I wouldn’t eat my porridge.
And they said, well you’ll have this porridge again at lunch, and sure enough, again at
lunch, and then again at supper, and the next day they got me a fresh bowl of porridge,
but they said the same thing. And I still refused to eat that porridge, and I was
taken to the principal’s office, and I got five straps on each hand, and sent to my, to a
room by myself, with no contact with the other students. 247
Darlene Thomas said students were forced to
eat that, whatever it was in our bowl, or our plate, we’d have to eat every bit of it. And
if we got sick, we got strapped. And I start, put that food in my mouth and I wouldn’t
swallow it and keep putting food until I got a big piece and then I wrap it in the tissue