The Survivors Speak

Chores • 81
Emily Kematch said one of the things she learned at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan,
school was “how to clean.” As a result, she said,
I’m good at making a bed. We were taught how to make a bed perfectly. How to fold
it, like each corner had to be folded just right and tucked in under the mattress, like
the bottom sheet and then we put another sheet on top and our blanket. They were
called fire blankets back then and our pillow and they had to be just right, or we’d get
punished, if our beds weren’t fixed just right. 283
Shirley Ida Moore recalled that at the Norway House school in Manitoba, the students
were supposed to make their beds in such a way that the sheets would be taut enough for
an inspector to be able to bounce a nickel. She could never do this.
So my, my sister again would rescue me; she’d, she’d do her bed ’cause she could do
it, ’cause she was bigger and then she’d come over and do mine so that, I didn’t have
to get punished so much all the time. And that’s, that’s what every morning was like,
every morning waking up scared, afraid you are going to get punished. 284
At the Fort Providence school in the Northwest Territories, Florence Horassi was
assigned to clean toilets.
This one time, they give me a chore to do the lavatory, that bathroom area, the sink,
the toilets. I cleaned the whole thing. And Sister came in the room, and I was standing
a little bit aways, like from the middle, and I told her, “I’m finished.” So she had to
inspect, and she told me, “You missed a spot there.” And, like, what spot? I couldn’t
see no spot. “You missed a spot there. Look again.” And I know I’m not supposed to
talk back, you speak only when you’re spoken to, and when you’re not spoken to, you
don’t speak, and you never talk back. And when I said, “I didn’t miss it, I washed it
there.” “I’ll make you clean that,” she said, and she went out. When she came back,
she came back with a toothbrush. 285
The boys usually worked outdoors. Thomas Keesick said that at the McIntosh, Ontario,
school,
we cut firewood, four-foot-long logs because the school at that time was being heated
by two furnaces and we took turns. Half of the boys would go to morning classes, they
call it, and they’d finish then go in the woods and cut wood or go in the barns to pick,
clean the stables, pick up eggs. And there was an underground thing where they kept
potatoes, carrots, cabbage, we worked there. We had gardens and stuff like that, that’s
what I remember. 286
Rick Gilbert recalled that in the winter, the students at the Williams Lake school had to
help put in the school’s supply of firewood.
We had to cut big logs and have them chopped up and then packed in. We had to
pack them into each building because we had wood furnaces. And I remember
having to pack some of that wood and in the wintertime when now you’re freezing