THE INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you please say your name and spell it for us?
HARRY McGILLIVARY: My name is Harry McGillivary.
Spell it?
Q. Yes, please.
A. H-a-r-r-y M-c-Gi-l-l-i-v-a-r-y.
Q. Thank you. And what Residential School did you go to?
A. I went to PA; Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1959 and ’60.
Q. Two years?
A. Two years. Well, ten months I guess.
Q. In Prince Albert?
A. Yeah. That’s the only one.
Q. Was that a Roman Catholic School?
A. No. Anglican.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. I’m sixty-one now. Take away ’59 —
Q. Were you about five, just like kindergarten age?
A. Let’s see, sixty-one take away fifty-nine. How old would I be?—Fourteen. Thirteen.
Q. I’m not good in math, figuring those things out. That’s okay. You were young!
A. Yeah. That’s pretty young.
Q. Do you remember what life was like before you went to Residential School?
A. Well, we lived on the Reserve at that time. There was nothing on our Reserve at that time. I came from a very poor family anyway. I only had a single parent. My dad was killed in a car accident at a very early age. My mother was our sole supporter, I guess.
Q. Did you have brothers and sisters?
A. Yes, I had brothers and sisters.
Q. How many?
A. Well, the total in the whole family is thirteen. Two of them are survivors, too, but now they’re gone.
Q. Do you remember your first day of school and what that was like?
A. It was a day school in the beginning. It was close by where we lived.
Q. And it was a day school?
A. It was a day school.
Q. So you were allowed to come home very day?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you go to a boarding school at all?
A. Well, not until I reached —
I don’t know what grade I was in. That’s the time I went, in ’59. that’s when I went. ’59 was the time.
I’m going to start from the beginning there, from ’59.
Q. Okay. Let’s start there.
A. In late August of 1959 an Indian Agent by the name of Pete (something) from Indian Affairs came to our house. He was talking to my mother. The only two words I remember at that time was Prince Albert. Then he came over and he pointed at me, “You, and my brother David, and you.” That was it. Then he was talking to my mother. Then my mother started to cry. We didn’t know why. That same afternoon he came and picked us up. He just took us the way we were.
Like I said before, we came from a poor family. He just took us the way we were with the clothes we had. We had nothing else. And they putted us in the train station that evening and we took off. But I was happy to see that we had some relatives with us too at that time. They putted us in the train and we travelled all night. Where we were going we didn’t even know. We just kept on going and going. Later the train, on them tracks, it goes clickety-clack. That’s all we heard all night.
By the time we reached Prince Albert it was the next afternoon. We reached Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and they putted us up in the school. They brought us up to that school. That school used to be old Army barracks. They were shaped in an “H” shape.
The first thing they did was they stripped the clothes that we had off our backs. They stripped them off and we never seen our clothes again. They were taken and they were gone. Burned, I guess. And the next thing they did was they clipped off our hair and our heads looked like a little soup bowl. You know, they cut your hair (indicating). They cut it. Then they took us to the showers and they sprayed something on our hair. I guess it was to keep the —
Now I know what it’s for, to keep the lice out of your hair at that time. Now I know. Then they settled us into Dorms and that was in ’59. That was a long ten months.
Then the loneliness started to set in. We longed to see our mother and our brothers and sisters. But like I said, coming from a poor community, there was no electricity on the Reserve. There were no phone calls, no letters. We had a pretty lonely life. Like I said, there was no love, nobody to love you or nobody to care for you, nobody to tuck you in bed or tell you a story, like the care we had at home.
Mind you, like I said, we were a very poor family but we were happy when we were home. Being in school was a very different situation.
We were underfed, I guess. We were always hungry. I always laugh at this one because we used to go and steal in the farmer’s fields. We used to go and steal carrots or whatever vegetables there were. I laugh at this one now and then. We used to pull the carrots and you know, you clean them up with that green stuff they’ve got on top there. You clean them up and there’s a little bit of dirt but that didn’t matter. We used to say it was a little bit of gravy. (Laughter) That’s what we used to do there.
But loneliness —
I don’t think anybody loved us. We were just there.
Q. Did you ever get caught stealing the carrots?
A. Well, some guys did but I didn’t. I knew some of them got a good licking.
Q. What was the food like there?
A. Aw, it was terrible. You only got a ration, or whatever. That’s why I say we used to get hungry and steal.
That was the bad part there but we weren’t sexually abused or anything like that. That part I would say we were never sexually abused. I didn’t in my part anyway and I didn’t see anybody get sexually abused too. Mind you, we had a few good lickings, but that’s a part of growing up as a boy. You got in a few scraps. You gave a licking and you took some, too. But that was part of growing up being a boy.
It was mostly the loneliness that set in.
Q. What about your culture. Did you speak your language before you went?
A. Yes, I spoke my language. That’s the one I just about lost. I just about lost that one. But I lost my culture.
Today I can’t even fillet a fish yet and I’m sixty-two years old. That part I don’t know how to do. Like I told you before, my dad was killed at a very early age and we had no teacher in our family, nobody to teach us. That made it worse when they sent us to boarding school. I completely lost it. Every time you tried to talk Cree they told us to shut up. I saw a few kids get a licking for just trying to talk their language. But I managed to get it all back after I came back from Prince Albert.
And then they shipped us to Dauphin. In ’61 and ’62 they shipped us to Dauphin, to MacKay School. That was a better place to be.
Q. That was a better school?
A. That was a better school in Dauphin.
Q. How come?
A. Like I said before, we used to steal those carrots. We used to go and steal crabapples but they were a little cleaner. We used to stuff those crabapples in the fall in our pockets, eh.
Q. So what was it like going home for the summer. Did you get to go home at all?
A. Well, we never went home for Christmas. It was like I said before, we came from a poor family. My mother didn’t work. There was no Welfare at that time. Everything was tough, tough living.
So in 1962 I came out of school and I joined the work force. I went to work in an extra gang and then I never went back to school. I tried to help my mother out raising up these kids. Five of us went to the Residential School —
All different —
I think three of us went to Dauphin and two went to Birtle.
Q. Do you talk to your brothers and sisters about your experiences and do they talk about their experiences?
A. No. We never do.
Q. Did your mom go to Residential School?
A. No, she didn’t. I don’t know if she ever did go to school.
Q. Did you ever get to talk to her about your experiences?
A. No.
Q. So what was your best memory of Residential School?
A. Well, we were healthy and we were well fed in the school. The school was there but I had to leave to go to work.
Q. How old were you in 1962 when you left?
A. Sixteen.
Q. Sixteen.
A. Sixteen. Yeah.
Q. And what’s your worst memory of Residential School?
A. Just the loneliness to be back home with the family.
Q. Do you think that still stays with you today?
A. Yes. I’m sixty-three years old and I’m not married. I think that’s where I picked it up. There was nobody to love us there for ten months, nobody to care for us.
Q. Has life been difficult since Residential School?
A. No. I went into the work force.
Q. And that was a lot better than school. You were happy to get out?
A. Yeah, I was happy to get out and work and kind of help my mother out.
Q. Did you ever try to run away when you were in school?
A. No. There was no sense running away. They would catch you anyway. They would have sent you to a worse place.
Q. Did you go back home at all after 1962?
A. Yeah, I came home in ’62. I worked on the extra gang for CNR.
Q. And you lived at home at that time?
A. Yeah.
Q. So how are things now for you?
A. Well, I’m retired now. I worked in Toco Sawmills for thirty-six years.
Q. Do you think they gave you a good education at Residential School?
A. Yes, they did. The education was there. Yeah, the education was there.
Q. Well, we’ll talk a little bit more about if there are any final things you want to say about Residential School.
A. Well, let’s see. What was I going to say. I was going to talk about that Indian Agent who picked us up in ’59. I’ve been mad at him for all this time. If you see an Indian Agent come to your house or anything like that, just grab him by the scruff of his collar and the seat of his pants and throw him out. Tell him the days of bright coloured jackets, cheap wine and beads are gone. We’re in a modern age here now. We have the resources to build our own schools now on the Reserves and we have the challenge and the knowledge of our Aboriginal People to teach our young people. You’ll be glad to see your children get on an 8:30 bus in the morning and you’ll be happy to see them come back the same day on the four o’clock bus.
Q. Did you ever see that Indian Agent again after that day?
A. No. I never did. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. That goes for all Indian Agents.
Q. So do you still live here now?
A. Yeah. I live here. Like I said, I’m retired now.
Q. And you’ve never been married?
A. No, never been married.
Q. So do you take part in any healing groups or anything like that?
A. No. But I belong to a church group.
Q. What’s the church group?
A. Yeah. Church of the Redeemer. I’m a People’s Warden there.
Q. That’s good. And you find it easy to talk about your experiences now?
A. This is the first time I talk like this. Well, the second time I guess. Last year, too, when they had this Conference, I talked about this.
Q. So you never talked about it before that?
A. No.
Q. Do you find it a little bit easier every time?
A. Yeah. Last time I cried. This time I didn’t. But I didn’t mention my —
Well, she was like a big sister to us at that time. Her name was Victoria. She is a cousin of mine. She was older than us. She knew our loneliness when were up there as small kids. She used to take us to town sometimes. She knew. But she died there a couple of years ago. I never had the chance to say thank you to her.
Q. That would have been something you would have done.
A. Yeah. But I never realized that until after she died.
Q. When did she die?
A. A couple of years ago.
Q. Well, you get to say it now so it’s always going to be there, that “thank you”.
Thank you very much for coming today. Are there any final words you would like to share.
A. No. I guess that’s it. Just get that Indian Agent and throw him a curve.
Q. Good. Well, thank you so much for coming.
A. Thank you.
Q. Okay. You’re done. Good job.
— End of Interview