The Survivors Speak

80 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
only in Grade Seven; I didn’t even do Grade Seven! I spent most of the time working in a
barn and duty. I got in there a little bit, you know, little bit of education or whatever they
were commissioned to give to me, I didn’t get.” 277
At the girls’ school in Spanish, Ontario, Josephine Eshkibok said, she spent much of her
time doing chores.
We used to work … one week in the dairy and one week in the chicken coop. And
the housework, sewing room, laundry; so we had to do all that work. There was one
day there I was doing, a lot of stairs because the school is so high; I did the stairs and
I guess I didn’t do them right. I must have left some dust or something there in the
corner. The teacher came there, said, “You didn’t do that right. Go back up there; start
over again.” So I did. 278
Darlene Wilson felt that the students at the Alberni school had little time to
themselves.
Our time that we had was only time for us to do
our job in the school. Some of us did the stairwells,
some of us did the floors, stripping and waxing,
laundry work, kitchen work, and some of us did
dishes, pots and pans, helping with the cook,
setting out the kitchen, the kitchen food. Our tables
were set about four times a day for breakfast, lunch
and supper, depending on the weekends. Each of us
had our own jobs. 279
There was a gendered division of labour, with
the girls doing much of the cleaning and cooking. Darlene Wilson.
Geraldine Bob recalled that at the Kamloops school,
the students did much of the cleaning. “We were just little kids, not even ten years old,
eleven years old and we had to, if you can imagine the little kids in this school, cleaning
the entire school and being forced to do things that are beyond them really. You know like
cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the tubs, shining the floors.” 280
Rose Marie Prosper’s first chore at the Shubenacadie school was to sweep down the
steps. “I had to sweep the steps down, make sure there was not a grain of sand or nothing
in between those little runs. They checked everything we did. It had to be perfect. If not
then we were made to do it over again, along with a strapping. I got strapped so many
times down there because I had to learn about rules, regulations.” 281
Of the chores that she had to perform at the Sandy Bay school, Isabelle Whitford said,
“We used to clean up in the, in the rectory. There was a long hallway. And then, they had
hallways on the side for each rooms. We used to get on our hands and knees to wash the
floors and wax them. We were like slaves.” 282