L'INTERVIEWEUR: Pourriez-vous s'il vous plaît dire et épeler votre prénom et votre nom.
SAMUEL ROSS: Samuel Ross.
Q. Pouvez-vous épeler cela, s'il vous plaît?
A. Samuel Ross.
Q. Dans quel pensionnat êtes-vous allé?
R. Je suis allé à l'école Prince Albert All Saints en Saskatchewan.
Q. Quel âge aviez-vous lorsque vous êtes entré à l'école?
R. Je pense que j'avais environ six ou sept ans. Je pense que c'était en 1948, de toute façon, quand nous sommes partis d'ici.
Q. Combien d'années y êtes-vous?
R. J'y suis resté jusqu'en 1953.
Q. Vous souvenez-vous de votre premier jour lorsque vous êtes allé à l'école?
A. Oh, I don’t really know. Well, the Indian Agent and somebody else came and got us. There were four of us, eh, me and my three other brothers. They all took us and took us to the train station and they put us on a passenger train. There were older people there, I mean, schoolboys I guess who were older than us. We had to fight when we got into that train, the passenger train. They had to drag us in there you might say. We didn’t want to go. Anyway, they got us there on the train and hung onto us until the train left, until that train was moving fast enough for us not to jump out. I remember that part.
Eh bien, de toute façon, nous y sommes allés, tous les quatre; deux frères aînés et mon petit frère. L'un d'eux était plus jeune que moi. Je me souviens que. Il était un peu plus petit que moi.
When we got to —
Je me souviens avoir changé de train dans la baie d'Hudson. À la baie d'Hudson, nous avons changé de train. Ils se sont occupés de nous, nos frères aînés. Ils nous ont emmenés dans un autre train de voyageurs et nous sommes allés à Prince Albert. Quand nous sommes arrivés à cette école en Pennsylvanie, c'était le matin, je pense, quelque part le matin, ce train est entré et nous sommes tous descendus et puis ils nous ont mis dans un gros camion, vous savez, comme un camion, pas un bus . Ils l'ont chargé et ils nous ont séparés quand nous sommes arrivés à cette école; Junior, intermédiaire, senior, je suppose qu'ils nous ont mis.
At that time I wasn’t able to speak English, eh. I didn’t understand English so I just spoke Cree. We didn’t understand English I guess. We couldn’t speak it. I think I was six or seven. I was pretty young then, eh.
Eh bien, nous avons été séparés dans cette école; Garçons juniors, intermédiaires et seniors. Même chose avec les filles, je suppose, mais avec nous quand même. J'étais avec mon jeune frère chez Junior Boys. Ils nous ont mis dans le dortoir.
That school that they had there was an old Army Barracks. It wasn’t really a —
It used to be an old Army training camp. That’s why they turned it into Residential School Dormitories.
Anyway, when I was there I remember at that time, boy, I was pretty tough in 1948. The hardest part I can remember was my younger brother was smaller than me —
Philip (something) was there and Ernie George, they were smaller than me. I was a little bit bigger, but we didn’t see our older brothers. They were Intermediate and Senior, eh. Well, they used to sleep all over the place, those guys. Me, I don’t know why that —
But I was a little bit, I guess I was a little bit older for my age than that and I used to sleep —
They used to wake up those little kids, those young ones, and tell them not to sleep all over on the outside – not inside – outside all over and then they used to come and feed us carrots, our older brothers, eh, from the garden. This was in September when we went there.
Anyway we were told — later on I found out — not to speak Cree and yet we didn’t understand English. When we first went there, you know, they took all our clothes off and I remember getting a bald head. They cut off all our hair. They put that DDT on your head there, and all over your body. They figured that we were lousy or had lice, I guess, I don’t know. I remember that one. They told us not to speak Cree. Try to understand English. Every time we spoke Cree we get —
Eh bien, ils avaient un petit bâton, un saule, que nous avions l'habitude d'obtenir.
They had straps. I seen that they had straps, the supervisors. But every time you spoke Cree they would either spank you and sometimes you didn’t go for supper just for speaking Cree.
Mais la plupart du temps, la nourriture n'était pas bonne non plus. Ils avaient très mauvaise nourriture que nous sommes arrivés là-bas.
I remember we only had one spoon when you go for breakfast, one scoop of that porridge and a tin cup of what was supposed to be tea, I guess. That little bread that was on the table when we said grace, they used to say grace in the morning, every morning. Before the grace was over we grabbed for that bread. If you were not lucky or fast enough you didn’t get any, just that little porridge there.
La façon dont nous avons survécu aux Senior Boys, nos frères, ils venaient nous montrer comment voler des pommes de terre et des carottes, vous savez, dans cette grande salle de forage ou aller au jardin et en chercher dans le jardin; pommes de terre et carottes, navets.
Anyway, the worst thing was we were always hungry. No food. Not enough food. Sometimes our older brothers used to come for us, you know, and they used to say to the supervisor “we’re going to take them to the skate or picture show in town”, but what they did was they took us to the dump in town, the dumps that they had in town. They used to take us across the bridge and they used to —
That’s where we had a feast. We ate everything there like
oranges —
Eh bien, c'était de la ferraille, hein, mais pour nous, c'était survivre. Mais il était bon. Oranges et pommes, même si certaines étaient un peu pourries, mais nous avons mangé la bonne partie des pommes et des oranges. Nous les mettions dans de gros sacs pour les ramener à l'école. Nous avions l'habitude de ramper sous le vide sanitaire, je me souviens de ce trou qui était là, et je les suspends là-haut. Le soir, nous sortions furtivement et allions manger ce que nous rapportions du dépotoir. La faim était la chose principale.
I remember me and William Lesland (ph.), we were told not to speak Cree. But we got caught one time talking to each other. They took us and they gave us a bar of soap, I remember that pink soap. You had to chew on that, take a bite of that soap. It was pink, eh. They were watching you. If you didn’t gargle with that soap, they gave you water to gargle. It’s for the next time you speak Cree you’re going to get a good licking, or you’ll have to gargle that soap again, you know. That’s what they told us. Gargle that soap so you wouldn’t speak Cree again. They washed your mouth with that.
Well, you know, you had a licking all right and then you wouldn’t go for supper just for that. Every time you spoke Cree, our language, you had to look around first before you would talk or whisper so nobody would hear you. The supervisors were all over, not just one supervisor either. They had those supervisors out there to get you in line. You had to line up for supper for your meals to go to the Dining Hall.
Your clothing. We only had one set of clothes. The clothes that we took there you had them and then they give you a set, but if you had your clothes torn or broken, that’s the way they stayed. In the winter time, those winters at that time were pretty fierce. They were cold. I don’t remember having decent mitts or even decent underwear or good footwear like shoes for winter, you know. I froze my toes quite a few times just wearing those oxfords. They were old. I froze my toes I don’t know how many times, and I froze my fingers.
But the thing that kept us to survive we used to steal those potatoes. They had a big Drill Hall there. There was a hole and we used to manage to get inside there. We would steal potatoes and then come out with a whole bunch of carrots, turnips and potatoes. That’s what we survived on. Sometimes we would go to the dump once in a while.
And then once in a while a Senior Boy would go and kill rabbits, down the hill. They used to make slingshots. In the wintertime I don’t know how they managed it but they used to get rabbits. They used to take these old pails from the dump and that’s how they cooked the rabbits, eh. They used to feed us with a lot of potatoes and those rabbits, and carrots. Some of them would throw some carrots in there.
I guess maybe that’s why we stayed a little healthier because we ate those vegetables, those carrots, turnips and potatoes.
The meals at dinner time at school were something there. I don’t know what they were making. They called it stew, I guess. One round spoon. We never heard of nothing like toast or anything. We didn’t even know it was invented yet. Supper, the same thing at supper. Maybe you get two sausages and one scoop of potato and that’s it. That bread, you were lucky to get it.
Et les filles âgées, je suppose qu'elles se sont senties désolées pour nous. De temps en temps, ils jetaient une miche de pain quand ils nous voyaient traîner dans la salle à manger et qu'ils mettaient les tables en place.
But anyway, I was there when I was six, seven, eight, nine and when I was maybe about ten, I guess, things started to change because we knew how to survive then, eh. Ourselves, we used to go to the dump and go and have a good meal over there. But still, you can’t speak Cree. You learn your English.
We went to school all right. We started to speak. As soon as we knew a little English we got away from getting a licking because we were speaking a little bit of English. We understood a little bit of English because if you didn’t, but still we wanted to speak Cree. We got caught a few times. We got a licking just for speaking Cree.
Anyway, this went on until I was thirteen, eh. I knew already how to survive, how to steal, I guess you might say, potatoes and carrots. My older brother didn’t go there. He didn’t go. Just the two of us, my younger brother wasn’t able to hack it. Just me and my late brother Joe, the two of us, were there until 1953.
The reason why I stayed ‘til 1953, my late dad died. They came and got us in May, in the Spring, at the end of May, somewhere around there. That principal told us you’re not coming back because you will be going home in about the middle of June anyway so you don’t have to come back after the funeral. That was the last time I seen that PA.
Mais vous savez, là-bas, je me souviens des vêtements, de la faim que nous avons traversée, des léchages, nous avons tous dû apprendre l'anglais, c'était la pire partie dont je me souvienne dans ce Prince Albert, toutes les léchages que vous aviez à l'école là-bas .
At first, yeah, when we didn’t understand English —
But the one thing I want to tell you about when I went to Birtle, later on, I went to school here in day school for about a year. And then when I went to Birtle I was about maybe sixteen, sixteen years old. I think I went to a little more day school here. When I went to Birtle that Indian Agent says “there’s no room for you. They are all filled up.” “But I tell you what”, he says, “as soon as that school opens I’m going to send you to a school where they have room.” So he came and got me and he said, “You’re going to Birtle.” “There’s no room in Brandon, Dauphin or Portage”, he said. But a lot of them went, those other young boys. So he took me, he sent me over there. I got on the train with those boys and I went to Portage and Dauphin. They got off the train. I got off in someplace, I think it was in Breslaw, or someplace —
Je suis descendu et ils m'ont mis dans le break et ils m'ont quand même emmené à l'école Birtle.
C'était la pire aussi, cette école. J'avais déjà seize ans, je me souviens. Cette école était une école de ferme, vous savez. Nous étions dix à parler cri; cinq filles qui étaient déjà là et juste moi d'ici et quatre de Norway House. Je pense qu'ils venaient de Nelson House.
They tried to show us how to farm over there, you know, get up early at six o’clock in the morning and clean barns and work. And then from there later in the morning you got ready for school. You went to school. After school you went back to work until about supper time. And then after supper you did your homework. And if you didn’t finish your chores you had to go back and do them again.
This went on until about February. Before February —
Around January I told the principal I didn’t come here to work. I came here to get some schooling. I want to be educated. “All right”, he said. “I don’t like working in that barn, that’s it, give me a ticket and send me home.” “You’re going to go to school”, he said. I’ll give you a good job, an easy job. I’ll put you in the boiler room. So that’s where he put me, in the boiler room.
Alors j'ai travaillé dans cette chaufferie. J'étais le premier à me lever le matin à creuser les clinkers. Ce type m'a montré comment. Il y avait un type là-bas, un homme âgé, ce petit concierge, je suppose, m'a montré quoi faire et comment travailler et entretenir la chaufferie.
I worked like that. At first I didn’t mind it, you know, but then I
got —
I was the first guy up in the morning, clean the clinkers, burn the garbage, mop it, close it down, clean it and burn the garbage, make sure there was enough coal there —
Saturdays I used to go —
Les vendredis, samedis et dimanches, j'avais l'habitude de transporter le charbon de cette voie d'évitement d'un mille dans le wagon couvert pour m'assurer que le bac était tout le temps plein de charbon. J'en ai eu assez de ça. Il y avait deux ou trois types qui m'aidaient à transporter ce charbon là-bas. On leur a dit de m'aider et nous l'avons rempli. Nous l'avons fait samedi et dimanche.
One day I said to the principal again, maybe in February, I said, “that’s enough, send me home”, I said. “I didn’t come here to work. If I wanted to work my brother is in Thompson. I would have gone with him already”, I said. He used to send me some money, my late brother, eh. He used to send me while he was working, that older brother, send me a little. I used to get that.
What they used to do when we got money, they opened the letters, eh, and take the money. They tell you how much you got but they won’t give you fifty cents a week. The parcels they didn’t open. They just give them to you.
I used to watch those trains go by at night when I was doing my homework in that boiler room. I watched those trains going by. It’s useless. That’s when I made up my mind to leave the school, to run away from there.
And if you didn’t work you didn’t eat. That was the rule. If you didn’t do your chores you didn’t eat. You just had to work.
Anyway, when I ran away from that school that night when I left here —
My late mother gave me a good wallet and my uncle, I think, he gave me a good jack knife. I had a good jackknife all the time. I carried that jack knife and my good wallet. I wrote my late mother a letter. I said, “Send me ten dollars. I need ten dollars to buy…” I didn’t tell her how I was going to use that ten dollars. I buy a pair of gloves and put that ten dollars inside the thumb, the thumb part of the glove. She sent a parcel, too, and a scarf. So that’s what she did. She sent me a scarf and those gloves, there. I took my parcel. That’s one thing that school didn’t do was open a parcel, just the letters.
So I took that parcel down to the boiler room and I opened it there. There was ten dollars there and that’s when I made up my mind. So on Tuesday night I filled up the coal, one Tuesday in February, towards the end of February. It was snowing heavy. I used the railroad track. I looked at the map. I studied the map. I know there was a little town every ten miles marked on that. So that night I made twenty miles, eh. I started off at eight-thirty.
And when I got to that second town I waited for the train to come by, the first one. It didn’t stop. It just went right through. It was a passenger train. But the second one, I watched them all the time. They had little passenger cars behind there. That’s the one I got on. It was two dollars to get to Minnedosa on that one. I got to Minnedosa. I got off over there. It was hard walking in that snow, too, especially on the railroad track, eh. When I first left it was tough going on that railroad track. There was snow on the railroad track. It was hard walking. But I made it anyway.
When I got to Minnedosa I guess I was tired. I didn’t know about that. I went in that little station there and I asked that guy “can I rest here”, I told that janitor. He said, “Yeah, go ahead”, he says. “I’m going to wait for the bus to come in”, I said. So I slept. I didn’t know how long I slept. I was tired. When I got up it was daylight all right.
I knew. I went to the bus depot and I asked that guy, “oh, it left already”, the bus. “The bus left already.” “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow”, he says. “There’s another one tomorrow.” I went and hid at the station because I knew they might be looking for me.
Anyway the next morning —
This was on a Tuesday —
Wednesday —
Thursday morning I didn’t sleep very much. I got up and waited for the bus. When I got to the bus depot, boy I was glad when that bus pulled in. I went and bought with whatever money I had there —
I said, “A ticket to The Pas”, I said. “You haven’t got enough”, he said. “Well, what about to Overflow (ph.)”, I said. “Yeah, he says, you’ve got enough for Overflow (ph.)”. “But we can’t drop you off any old place”, he says. “That’s okay. My uncle is working over there.” I lied about that a little. “I’ve got my uncle cutting cordwood over there.” I knew about this already. I used to see people going there from here. He looked at me for a while. “Oh, I’ll give you a ticket anyway.” Boy, I was glad when he gave me a ticket.
The reason why I didn’t have enough there was I had to sell my wallet to that janitor. I gave him my wallet and my jack knife so I had enough there for that fare to Overflow (ph.). I kept using a little bit to eat chips, eh, soft drinks and chips, and a chocolate bar. I wasn’t thinking about that fare. I thought it wouldn’t be that much.
Quoi qu'il en soit, quand je suis arrivé à Overflow (ph.), C'était la fin de la ligne. C'était jeudi soir, dans la nuit. Je pensais déjà quoi faire. J'avais mes idées. J'ai pensé que j'allais faire un grand feu dans la brousse et faire de l'auto-stop à partir de là toute la nuit. Tôt ou tard, quelqu'un viendrait me chercher, pensai-je.
When I got off in Overflow (ph.) at night there I was lucky. I seen my cousin. They were cutting cordwood. Sure enough I seen them. Boy, I got off the bus and I told them what happened. “I ran away from school”. “Pay my way to The Pas.” I guess they must have been drinking a little bit. They were laughing and feeling happy. They bought me a six-pack of mixed drinks, coke, orange, seven-up, chocolate bars and chips. “You go home now. We’ll buy you a ticket.” He knows my mother good, that guy there, eh. Relatives. Cousins. “Tell them we’ll be in on Saturday”, he says.
I says, “All right, I’ll tell them, and I’ll tell them to pay you.” So that’s how I got on the bus when that bus came. Thursday night I got here. And then my late mother and my late aunt went to see the Indian Agent at that time, that morning, Friday morning. He said, “When did you come in?”, he said. “First, before you say anything, I want to tell you why I ran away”, I said, “why I took off from there.” So I told him, eh, all the work we had to did, six in the morning and you know no recreation. There was an arena outside, an outdoor rink, but we never got to use it. All we done was work, work, work, all the time.
At first I used to smell just like cow manure. It went through your clothing and then when I went to the boiler room I didn’t have enough time. I did my homework in that boiler room, the last one in and the last one to get out. I made sure there was enough coal.
He said, “When did you leave?”, after I told him what happened in that school. You know what, you said you left Tuesday? I said, “Yeah, Tuesday at eight-thirty I left over there. It was snowing. But I used the railroad track”, I told him. I took the railroad about twenty miles and then got on the train and then by bus. “And it’s Friday morning”, he says. “Yeah.” “And no call from Birtle to tell him, my relatives or him, the Indian Agent that I was missing from that school already.”
No call for him or to tell anybody that I was not in that school already. That’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; four days already went by without no notice telling anyone. So that’s one thing —
Il y avait beaucoup d'autres garçons qui ont essayé ça, vous savez, à Norway House et à Nelson House. Ils ont utilisé l'autoroute pour essayer de s'éloigner de cette école. Ils se sont enfuis mais ils avaient l'habitude de les ramener. Ils utilisaient l'autoroute et ils se faisaient attraper tout de suite et ils les rapportaient. Mais moi, j'ai utilisé la voie ferrée. Je suis allé au sud à la place, à Minnedosa et puis de Minnedosa j'ai su prendre le bus là-bas et aller de là au nord jusqu'à The Pas ici.
That’s one thing I always wondered. What happened if I would have froze? I would have been lost, I guess. But I worked hard. I was healthy. That’s how I made that trip, when I ran away.
Anyway, Dick Bell – that’s our Indian Agent – he said, “You’ll not go back to that Birtle, but I’ll wait for Portage or Brandon.” That’s when later on he sent me back to Brandon, about April. He sent me to Brandon. But Brandon was also full. It was full. But I stayed in a boarding house. That’s why I couldn’t put my —
Like it’s not a Residential School. It’s a boarding school. Later on after that I was advanced enough in my schooling to go Winnipeg. That’s also a boarding school, in Winnipeg.
That’s the one thing I wanted to share with you. Why didn’t they report my running away from there after that? I left there Tuesday at eight-thirty. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then we went to see Dick Bell that morning at ten o’clock in the morning. No call yet from Birtle, that Residential School.
But I don’t mind telling you this. I want to tell this. I’ve been thinking about this. You think it might be a joke. But I told this guy already, that guy who has a video camera, I’m going to hire you to come with me. I’m a plumber now, eh. I said, “I’m going to hire you”, I told Sam Esther (ph.). He’s got all that video. “I’m going to take you with me to that school”, I told him. I got an extension ladder. I’m going to take that with me. When we go over there to see that school and take pictures of me here and there, eating, running away lots, and when I get to that school I will stop in Swan River Hostel, and we’ll go around that ways. It’s not far from Way-Way (ph.). It’s only half an hour ride from Way-Way (ph.), that Birtle School. Ask those people over there. I went there this winter. That building is still up, that school, that building, eh. That’s when I told Sam Esther later after I got back.
I went to watch the hockey game over there. That’s how I know. Bishops were playing over there and we wanted to watch the hockey game.
But anyway, I told Sam Esther (ph.) you want to take a picture of me. I eat lots on the way, lots of dessert in Way-Way (ph.). I’m going to eat a whole pie! (Laughter) And I’m going to climb up that ladder. I’m going to set up my ladder to climb that school, that building. I know what it looks like. I can never forget that. I will never forget the way it looks. I’m going to climb up on that school, I told you people, taking a picture of me with your video camera. I want to make sure I’ve got a roll of toilet paper with me. I’m going to throw it over the top of that building and I want you to take a picture. I want to take a picture of me making a big poop right on top of that school. (Laughter) That’s what I think of that school, I told him.
But you know, he laughed. It’s just a joke. It’s what I’m thinking, I said. That school was too much work. No recreation.
And over there, too, we weren’t allowed to speak Cree. If you spoke Cree there was no supper for you and they put you to do extra work, and at Birtle. Yeah. Every one of these Residential Schools, I don’t know why they didn’t want —
— End of Interview