THE INTERVIEWER: Okay, so can you please say and spell your
name for us.
FRANCIS BENT: My name is Francis Bent; F-r-a-n-c-i-s
B-e-n-t.
Q. Where are you from?
A. Lytton, BC.
Q. What Residential School did you attend?
A. I went to St. George’s Residential School in Lytton, which was
Anglican.
Q. What years were you there?
A. 1946 to 1953.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. I was 6 years old.
Q. Can you describe a typical day, what time you woke up, the
meals, the chores, the education you received. Just sort of go through a
typical day from when you were younger or older, whatever you decide.
A. On the first day I went there I was wondering why I was there in
that place and why I couldn’t go home. Miss Bell was my first English
teacher and she was very old already, so she used to make us sleep half
a day in class because we were small. And she had a big fluffy cat who
was called Fluffy. (Laughter)
Q. Original.
A. I remember that part of my time there. Later I went to Grade 1
and 2. We went to school half a day even as small kids. We used to look
after a hundred head of sheep. We would go to school half a day and look
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after sheep half a day. It didn’t matter if it was raining or shining, we had
to go out but we had no rain gear. So I learned how to work on a farm. I
worked on a dairy farm later and learned how to milk cows and look after
the pigs and chickens and horses. We planted big gardens but for some
reason we never got to eat the good part of the crop. I don’t know why
that was. But I remember they canned a lot in big cans. They shipped it
away somewhere. We did a lot of labour work while I was going there.
Q. Was that all the years you were there, a half-day education?
A. I had blond hair when I was small and I was pretty fair back
then. My grandfather that raised me didn’t get along with the chief on our
Reserve. They had some kind of family dispute so I missed 2 years of
school on account of that. But I was put back in there again later. So I
kind of missed Grade 3. So because of my age I didn’t really complete
some Grades that I needed until later in life and I had a hard time with
schooling.
I couldn’t learn anything looking at a paper, but I could learn real
fast if somebody showed me how to do a job, working for the White
people. So I was gifted by that, I guess to be a survivor in my life. I did all
kinds of work through my life.
Q. What about the education you received in school? Did you find
that it wasn’t adequate? Like you missed 2 years because of a problem.
When you came back after, were you still doing a half day of labour?
A. No. I was able to attend school regularly, the last couple of
years, Grades 5 and 6.
Q. Grades 5 and 6?
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A. Yeah. I worked in the Boiler Room with my cousin, learning
how to operate steam because they cooked with steam and heated the
building with steam.
At one time the boys were short a couple of players on the ball field
playing softball. We participated and almost blew the school up!
(Laughter)
Q. So what about the food at the school? Do you remember that?
A. We never seemed to get enough food. Everybody would fight
over the heel of the loaf of bread because it was the thickest.
Q. So what was a typical breakfast?
A. Oh, we got mush. Sometimes the milk was sour but still we had
to use it, everything that was put in front of us.
Q. You were saying you didn’t often eat the vegetables from the
garden. Did anyone every try to steal some extra vegetables?
A. Oh, we learned to steal. That was a part of life we never had at
home because I never knew nothing about stealing, lying and cheating
until I went to the Residential School and things changed. We were
always hungry. We would break into the Kitchen to steal some bread or
some goodies or whatever the girls used to make. We would break into
the cellar and steal a whole sack full of apples or whatever we could get
our hands on.
We would cook the wheat down at the piggery farm in a can, just to
eat the wheat, steal some eggs and boil it up. I worked on the dairy farm
and I was in charge of skimming the milk from the cream. I done that for a
few years.
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Q. Were you ever caught taking the food?
A. I wasn’t, but some of the other boys did. They got big time beat
up for it.
Q. How would you describe your experience at Residential
School?
A. Well, I told some of my White friends that I worked with that I
might not have got a good education out of it like I should have and
protected, but at least I learned how to work on a ranch and a farm and
how to survive from it. So that helped me in life by being able to plant a
garden for myself later, as I had a family later.
Q. Did you have any bad experiences that you can talk about?
A. Yeah, I was sexually abused by another boy. He just finally
passed away a few years ago from lots of alcohol in his life. A lot of bad
things happened to him. The police wanted me to have him arrested
when I told the RCMP about my experience in the Res, but I just couldn’t
seem to do it because I seen his life and it was tough. And what were
they going to do with him anyway, throw him in jail? So I didn’t.
And I learned to forgive. I learned to forgive the people. I learned
to forgive myself. I love myself, which was something hard for me to learn
because I never had a mom and dad to raise me so that they could be
there for me when I was small. I always thought my grandparents were
my parents, so I didn’t see my mother until I was 6 years old and I didn’t
see my dad until I was fifteen. My dad was always trying to give me his
stuff, but I never would take it. I guess it was his way of trying to
acknowledge that he’s my dad. My mom had no choice but to leave me
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behind when I was born. It was during the war so she hitchhiked to
California after my grandfather told her to leave me at one year old. She
became a welder in California because of the shortage of men back then
in the factories.
So when she came to see me in the Residential School at 6 years
old, I never ran up to her to hug her or anything. I just stared at this
woman that they said “This is your mother.” Even today my mom and I
have never spent a Christmas together or nothing, but we do phone one
another. She lives in the States and I live up here. I’m the only one on my
mom’s side that’s a Canadian.
Q. Did she go to Residential School as well?
A. Yeah. They had it good when they were there. They didn’t go
through what my generation or the generations after me went through.
They ate good and were treated pretty good.
Q. Was that an American school she was in?
A. No, she was in the same Residential at Lytton, St. George’s,
when she was young. But then she moved to the States and became an
American, marrying a Philippino who had a strawberry farm. That’s what
she did for ten years.
Q. Did you have brothers and sisters who went to school with you?
A. No. I was the only one. I have sisters on my mom’s side, 4 of
them, but they are all Americans. They are Catholics. Fortunately they
are all doing pretty good with the guys they got. (Laughter)
Q. Do you have anything else that you would like to share about
your experience at Residential School?
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A. My wife was a professional counselor and she was there eleven
years. She helped a lot of her People. She did a lot of Workshops and
went to school and learned to be a professional counselor. She was very
educated. She was a school teacher for 6 years. She was in politics quite
a bit. The only problem was she got sick and she was diabetic. My sons
keep asking me, “Why did mom have to die?”
I had to seek the Creator about that, because when I was forty-one
years old I turned my back completely on God, the Creator, whatever
name you want to call him, because in the Res we prayed 7 times a day
and had to sit in church for 3 hours every Sunday. I noticed the choir used
to come in last and they would leave first. One day I says, “I’m going to
join the choir, only for the reason to go in last and be out first.” I did that
for 2 years. I made it. I joined the choir.
I used to hear the kids outside in the winter sleigh riding and having
a lot of fun out there. And here I am in the Assembly Hall with a bunch of
other boys and girls practicing for Sunday services. So my buddy and I
fooled around and got slapped around and we got kicked out of the choir.
I never went back.
Q. Was there a lot of physical abuse at the school from the
teachers?
A. Yeah, there was lots of hitting. A few times I hit back and just
got it worse. (Laughter) I ran away twice. I was brought back both times.
Q. What happened when you were brought back?
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A. We were strapped with a real thick hide of strap. It even had 2
braided ropes on it. They just hit you with that until you were pretty
bruised. There were twenty of us the second time.
Q. Wow. How far did you get?
A. I made it to town. That’s as far as I —
I still had to go 8 miles from town to get home, but I never made it.
We got picked up.
Q. Were you gone for a few days?
A. No. We were caught that same day, most of us.
Q. Do you remember why you ran away?
A. Well, I didn’t like it because it was like the Military in there. It
was just as though we were in the Army. We had to fold our hands and
stand up straight and march into the Dining Room and sit up straight and
fold your hands when you finished eating. We didn’t have much to say
“no” to. We had to do things they tell you.
Sometimes it didn’t help because the bigger boys would say they
would beat you up because they didn’t want to participate in some things
that we did. I was one of the smaller ones so I had to participate in
activities that I didn’t want to get involved with.
Q. What about your own culture? Do you feel that the school didn’t
give you any opportunities to practice any of your own traditions, if you
were traditional all?
A. We used to wonder why we couldn’t go down the river and fish
for fish. That’s what we were raised on. They gave us halibut all the time,
which was dry when it was cooked. Yet all this salmon is going by in the
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river and why can’t we go down there and catch it and have the kitchen
cook it for us to eat.
Q. Did they ever say why they wouldn’t let you fish?
A. No.
Q. You just weren’t allowed.
A. They had boundaries where we couldn’t overstep, even in the
playing field, but we still used to go over it. We would sneak away.
(Laughter)
Q. What did the school look like? Was it a 2 storey or one storey
or 3?
A. It was 3 storeys. Maybe 230 or 240 students in there, boys and
girls. It was quite a good size.
Q. The boys were separate from the girls I imagine?
A. Yeah. I remember some of them tying the sheets together and
going to town on the weekends. (Laughter)
Q. What about holidays? When would you go home for the
summer?
A. We went home for 2 months.
Q. What was that like?
A. It was good. It was good to get away. The last year I told my
grandparents I wasn’t going to go back. I’ll even leave home if it takes
that for me to stay away from going back to the Res. So the cops couldn’t
touch me because my oldest cousin got me a job working in the sawmill in
Clinton, so I stayed there for one year. I worked in the mill. As long as I
kept working the police couldn’t force me to go back to school.
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I’ve been working ever since I was thirteen years old.
Q. What about now? What works for you on your healing journey?
You had said earlier that you had just started talking about this.
A. I pretty near died when I was forty-one. I was given 2 weeks left
to live. I burnt all the inside of me from drugs and alcohol. I lived here in
Vancouver in the fifties on skid row. I tried to go to school down here at
VVI and I just couldn’t do it so I packed school in altogether.
I tried to join the Army down here, and one question they had was,
“Do you like school?” I said, “No.” That’s the only thing that kept me from
joining the Army, which at that time I heard kids talking about the Queen’s
Own Rifles. That was a pretty high regiment I guess for Canada.
I did the same when I went to the States. I lived down there ten
years, too. I passed everything like my medical, my physical and my
written exam to join the Navy. Well, I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my
life to be something earlier in life, but I was influenced by my friends and
buddies and I ended up becoming another drunk on our Reserve. I
abused my family a lot because I didn’t know how to be a dad.
I came to Vancouver when I was forty-one years old because my
brother-in-law heard I was real sick and he said, “How would you like to
get better again?” I said, “I’ve seen every doctor and every specialist
between Vancouver and Kamloops and there’s nothing they can do for
me.” “If they operate on me on the table they told me I would die on
there.” So go home and get your priorities in order and wait for death to
take me.
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Well, I fought pain many years. I know what pain is like. I feel it
even today, not just my pain, I feel other people’s pain.
Well, I turned my life to the Creator after turning my back on him for
forty-one years. As God is my witness, he healed me instantly. I didn’t
know nothing about healing, but when that happened to me on 2
weekends here in Vancouver in the church, that’s when I knew there’s
somebody up there. I had just been missing him all these years.
So I became a Christian. I accepted the Lord in my life. I knew a
lot about him, but I never knew who he was. So I started learning for
myself. I started attending a lot of churches down here, and all over, all
the way to Alaska, asking people about God. Many of them couldn’t tell
me but they had been going to church for many years.
I’ve had a lot of experience with the Creator one-on-one, and I
know when he talks to me. I’ve got to know who he is now in my life, and
that’s what I try to tell people. They have invited me to their schools and I
have spoken to the young people. I’ve told them my story. They think it’s
fantastic, but to me it wasn’t.
Q. What is your favourite thing to tell them when you talk to the
young people
A. They like hearing my life as a young man, a young teenager
growing up and all the wrong things in life I did. They think that was great.
(Laughter) I say, “Yeah, it might have been kind of fun back then.” But
when I look at it now I actually wasted a lot of my life for nothing, because
of hate, anger and strife. I learned to fight and I took care of everybody
that beat me up once. But that didn’t heal me.
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I guess I was like the clown of the bunch when it came to boozing
in the bars. I made people laugh, but I didn’t make myself laugh. I didn’t
know how. I had to learn these things. I had to learn to love. And I had to
learn to start with me.
Q. How are your relationships now with your family?
A. They really depend on me now. It seems they lean on me. As
they say, “You’re actually pretty strong.” I says, “No.” In my own way I’m
not, but with Him I can be. I’ll do whatever is necessary, whatever it takes
to help my People.
Q. One of the things is you go into the schools and talk to the
children?
A. Yeah. I learned to play the guitar and I sing gospel music in
communities.
Q. You’re still in the choir!
A. Yeah, I’m still in the choir. People ask me for participation in
funerals and stuff. So I guess I’ve given back a little bit of myself to some
people.
Q. Well, are there any final things you would like to say?
A. A lot of people are still asking me ways they should go for
healing. I say, “I can’t do that.” Depend on Him up there and he’ll tell you.
If you’re honest and sincere to do it, because that was one thing about
myself, too. I was very selfish. It was me all the time, never anybody
else. So the Creator had to break me to get to where I’m at now, to be
able to talk, because I never was a talker. I was afraid to speak in public.
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I’ve challenged people in authority to stand up to them and
challenge what they believe. I’ve joined in the Union that I work with in the
School District to be participating in Workshops to learn. The one
Workshop keeps avoiding me is the Anger Workshop. I’ve been trying to
get into it. (Laughter) How to stand up to Management. But I’ve learned.
That’s about how my story has been, my life.
Q. Thank you very much for coming and sharing that with us today.
That’s it. You made it through.
A. Thank you.
Q. You did a great job. So thank you so much.
A. All right.
— End of Interview