THE INTERVIEWER: Could you please tell us your name and spell
it.
PEGGY SHANNON: Peggy Shannon; P-e-g-g-y S-h-a-n-n-o-n.
At the Residential School I was Abrahams; A-b-r-a-h-a-m-s.
Q. Where are you from?
A. I’m from Haidikwai (ph.) Queen Charlotte Islands.
Q. What school did you attend?
A. I attended Residential School at Alert Bay, BC.
Q. What years were you there?
A. 1950 to 1958.
Q. How old were you when you started?
A. Six years old.
Q. Do you remember your first day?
A. I don’t remember anything about my first day.
Q. Do you remember a typical day, like what time you had to wake
up in the morning and what kind of food you had for breakfast and lunch?
A. I woke up in the morning and you have to say your prayers at
the time. I just remember praying all the time.
Q. Was it a Roman Catholic school?
A. No, it was Anglican. But we were still praying all the time.
We had horrible breakfast. All the same. Always oatmeal.
Horrible. And dry milk.
Q. Skim milk powder?
A. Um-hmm.
Q. That stuff is terrible. I’ve had that.
A. Um-hmm.
Q. So did you have chores there as well?
A. They had different kinds of things we had to do all the time. Put
up a list and it said we do different chores.
Q. Did you have brothers and sisters there?
A. My brother was there. That first day he said that when we got to
the school he would try to come with me. That’s when the abuse started
with him. They dragged him away by his ears from me and that was it. I
never saw him hardly except from afar. When we ate in the dining room
we could look over and see him and that was it. I didn’t talk to him again.
Q. So not even on the weekends or anything?
A. No. We were not allowed. There was a dividing line there and
we couldn’t cross the line, or we couldn’t go near the line.
Q. Were there a lot of students in the school?
A. I don’t know how many were there. Probably a couple of
hundred, maybe.
Q. What about the dorm you had to sleep in? Were there a lot of
girls in one dorm?
A. By the time I was there, I went through all the levels; Junior,
Intermediate and Senior were all the different levels.
Q. Do you remember what it was like in the dorms?
A. Pretty terrible because when the girls first got there they were all
lonely and they sneaked to talk their language.
Q. So at night they would speak their language in whispers?
A. Um-hmm.
Q. Were there a lot of strict rules and stuff like that at the school?
A. It was so regimented I didn’t get to know my sisters. I had 2
sisters. I didn’t even get to know my sisters because we were so
regimented. Line up here. Line up there. Line up for everything and you
can’t talk.
Q. What about the teachers? What were they like?
A. I hated them. They were real terrible to us.
Q. Are you able to talk about anything that happened to you there?
A. Well, one thing that I know happened is they beat the girl so bad
that she was on the floor and she was still beating her with the stick and
she was breaking sticks over her head. We were sure she was dead but
she wasn’t. So a lot of the things we had to witness were just as bad as
us going through it, too.
That girl, I heard today she doesn’t do very well because she was
beaten so bad. A lot of the things that we had to witness were just as bad
as if it was happening to us.
Q. There was a lot of physical abuse?
A. Um-hmm.
Q. Do you remember any other situations or anything that
happened to you in particular, any experiences that you would like to
share with us that happened at Residential School?
A. A lot of things happened but I don’t remember because I ended
up on —
There are 4 floors in there and I ended up on top of the roof. I don’t
know how I was there. So I think things happened to me but I don’t
remember.
Q. Was the roof a place where you would be able to hide?
A. I don’t know how I would even get up there. When I look at it
today, how would I have been there. But I would be sleep walking and I
ended up way on top of the roof.
Q. So a lot of the school years are just completely blank then?
A. Pretty well. A lot of the things that went on, even when I was
older I can hardly remember.
Q. Do you find coming to something like this, does that start to
bring things up again?
A. Just all the sad stuff that went on that I don’t like to think about.
Q. How are you now? How are things going for you?
A. Well, I’ve been working with my son. My son has been working
with the Cree Spiritual Elders for years, so I’ve been working with him a
lot.
Q. Does he help you?
A. Yeah. He helps me a lot.
Q. That’s good. What did you do after Residential School?
A. I just went crazy. I was in there for 8 years and when I came
out it was just like I was crazy. I drank all the time.
Q. Do you remember what life was like at home before you went to
Residential School?
A. Yeah. When I think about it, we were playing all day long and
nobody ever bothered trying to make us do anything. We were just out
there in the woods. I don’t know what our parents were doing, but we
were out there. Sometimes we would end up 4 or 5 miles away from
home and just play out all day long.
Q. Do you remember what it was like to go home in the summer?
A. I didn’t go.
Q. You stayed at the school.
— Speaker overcome with emotion
Q. Are you okay? Do you want to stop?
A. We didn’t go. We were so far away from home the Haidas
didn’t go home. But people that went there all the time didn’t know we
didn’t go home.
Q. So for the full 8 years you were there you didn’t go home?
A. No. We didn’t go out on weekends too because if you had a
quarter to go out on the weekend you could go out, but we never had
quarters to go out. So we were locked up for 8 years without getting out.
Q. Are you okay?
A. Yeah.
Q. What about the education? Do you feel they gave you any kind
of an education?
A. No. I got really good marks and I could do anything they told us
to do. I don’t think they cared about what we did. I think they just wanted
us to read a little and maybe sign our name and that was it. They didn’t
care about anything else. I don’t think they thought we could do anything.
Q. What about your culture and your language? Did you speak
your language before you went to school?
A. No, I didn’t.
Q. Did they ever ridicule you and make you feel your culture —
A. That one lady was real terrible. She said that our parents are
going to go to hell and we’re nothing but heathens. She would just be like
that to us every day. She never stopped. She said, “Your parents are
going to go to hell.” We couldn’t figure out how come they were going to
go to hell. We didn’t know what the hell she was talking about!
Q. Was she a teacher that you had throughout all the years you
were there?
A. She was there for a while. I don’t know how long she was there,
but she was horrible.
Q. Do you have any good memories of Residential School?
A. No. We were talking about trying to remember what was good,
if anything might have been good. I said that rock ‘n roll came in while we
were there! That one guy brought in some music to us and that was about
the best thing that I remember.
Q. You don’t have to answer this, but did anyone hurt you? Do
you remember any experiences like that?
A. No. Just the girls that we would fight with all the time. We
would always be getting into big huge scraps with all of the different girls,
the ones who were bullies.
Q. What would the teachers do when there were fights going on?
A. Nothing. They probably liked it. I don’t remember them doing
anything to us.
Q. So you felt afraid a lot of the time, I guess.
A. Um-hmm.
Q. Are there any certain things you want to talk about today, things
you would like to say?
A. I can’t think of something just right off hand.
Q. That’s okay. You can take a minute.
A. My aunties were all there, too. My aunties are going into their
eighties now, but they can’t do anything like this, stand in front of a TV or
even talk on the audio.
Q. Do they have a hard time even talking to family about it?
A. I haven’t even talked about it. I doubt if they have. Because we
never talk about it with each other.
Q. With your son, you said he was helping you. Are you able to
talk to him?
A. Yeah. I talk with my son because he understands quite a bit
about what we’ve gone through. He understands about what has
happened to them, too because of what happened to me.
Q. Do you only have one child?
A. No. I have 2 girls.
Q. Two girls. And how are they now?
A. They’re not so bad. They still have a lot of trouble, even though
I tried as much as I could.
Q. Was it hard to be a mother to them because of your
experiences at Residential School?
A. I had another lady who helped me quite a bit with the children. I
would just ask her what do I do now. And she would help me along with
the children.
Q. It’s one of the things we hear so much of that people who went
to Residential School weren’t able to learn how to raise children
themselves.
A. Yeah.
Q. It was so regimented.
A. My friend didn’t go and she helped me quite a bit with the
children. She’s a little older than me. But much as I tried, I still didn’t do it
right with the children.
Q. Are you able to talk about that at all?
A. Yeah.
Q. So what do you mean by you “didn’t do right with the children”?
A. I don’t know if it was really right or if I did right with them or not.
They’re not really that bad. I don’t know what I didn’t do right. (Laughter)
Q. Is this the first time you have been to a Conference like there
where there have been talks?
A. No. I’ve been, but I don’t really participate too much.
Q. You have just been listening.
A. I have been in and out. I can’t handle too long.
Q. Is there help in your own community where you’re from in
Burnaby?
Page 9 of 11
A. No. I work in North Van.
Q. Are you part of the Residential School Society they have here. I
can’t remember. Is that what it’s called?
A. You probably don’t need to sign up!
Q. Is there anything else you would like to say? I don’t want to put
you through this much more.
A. I can’t think of anything until you ask me some questions.
Q. Would it be okay if I asked you some harder questions?
A. Sure.
Q. You’re okay. Were you ever sexually abused in the schools?
A. I don’t even know because as I said I don’t even remember a lot
of things about what happened.
Q. What about healing? We’ll talk about that a little bit. Your son
is helping you. You’re coming out to things like this which is a good thing.
What are your plans and your hopes?
A. I do a lot of drumming and singing in my own dance group so
that helps us a lot. I take my drum with me to work. When things get too
hard I just drum with my drum.
Q. That’s good.
A. I talk to a couple of the Elders. I have a couple of Elders that I
talk to quite a bit.
Q. Do you dance as well?
A. Yeah. But I don’t dance that much any more.
Q. When did you first start to drum?
A. About twenty or thirty years ago, maybe.
Q. Did you know anything about the drum when you were in
school?
A. No. We didn’t have anything to do with anything like that in the
school.
Q. So it was a wonderful thing to find again in your life?
A. Yeah. I’m really happy about it because when I came down
here to come to university and I was asked to join a group I just jumped at
it because I didn’t know any songs before that.
Q. Well, thank you for coming, very much.
A. What I wanted to say at the end too was I came down here to
come to university twenty years ago. I had a Grade 9 education because
as soon as I got out of that place I didn’t go to school any more. I just
drank. Then I came here. I went to ABE, Adult Basic Education and I
didn’t figure I could even do that. Then I went on to do my Bachelor’s in 4
years and then I went on to do my Master’s in one year.
So I’m going around talking to quite a few people about what can
be accomplished.
Q. That’s wonderful.
A. Thank you.
Q. Are you working right now?
A. Yeah. I work up at Cap College.
Q. What do you do there?
A. I’m kind of like a counselor. I call myself more than a counselor
and more than an instructor. I’m almost everything to all of the students,
mainly Squamish I work with now for sixteen years.
Q. That’s really good.
A. I wasn’t too bad.
Q. Thank you so much for coming.
— End of Interview