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United ChUrCh of Canada arChives, 93.049P851an, (191?), red deer, alberta.

United ChUrCh of Canada arChives, 049P418n, (191?), CoqUaleetza, british ColUmbia.

baCkgroUnd Photo: the general synod arChives/angliCan ChUrCh of Canada/ P7538 (231) (192?), aklavik, northwest territories.

“Work not training”For most of their history, residential schools depended on student

labour to survive. Until the 1950s, the schools ran on what was called

the half-day system that saw students attend classes for half the

day and spend the other half in what was supposed to be vocational

training. In reality, this training often simply amounted to working for

the school. The female students prepared the meals, did the cleaning,

and made and repaired much of the student clothing. The boys

farmed, raised animals, and did repairs, ran tailor shops, and made

and repaired shoes. In many cases, the students were not learning, but

performing the same labourious tasks again and again.

In Saskatchewan, Indian Commissioner W.A. Graham concluded

that by 1916, the Qu’Appelle school had become little more than a

workhouse. Over a forty-two-day period, the boys had only attended

class for nine days, spending the rest of their time in the field.

Fourteen years later, he concluded that, at Qu’Appelle and another

school, “The boys are being made slaves of, working too long hours

and not receiving the close supervision they should have.” In 1943, an

inspector in British Columbia noted that at the St. George’s school, the

students were doing chores that should have been “done by hired help:

It was routine work not training.”

At the Lejac School in British Columbia, the girls spent most of the

afternoons in the sewing room. In the 1927 – 1928 school year the girls

at Lejac made 293 dresses, 191 aprons, 296 drawers, 301 chemises, and

600 pairs of socks. The work could be dangerous. In 1936 a young girl

lost her fingers in a clothes press at the Qu’Appelle school; her father

had lost his hand in a similar manner when he was a student there.

While the half-day system ended in 1951, chores remained a central

part of student life at many schools.

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“I went to Alert Bay for school and instead they put me in a job!” — Clayton Mack

Quoted in Grizzlies and White Guys: The Stories of Clayton Mack, edited by Harvey Thommasen,

Vancouver: Harbour Publishing, 1993.