Airdrie’s Sacred Bundle Woman: a residential school survivor’s account

 

Sitting at her kitchen table, her silvery hair is pulled back into a loose bun, framing her face. Her weathered hands are placed flat on the ceramic cloth. 

 

Carolla Fox Hanley, 80, is hesitant to speak. When she does speak in a delicate voice, her words usher her back to childhood; time spent in a residential school. 

 

She pauses often. Her eyes are sullen. Each word weighs heavily on her lips and her heart. 

 

“It’s still very hard to talk about,” Hanley said. “Even now, talking with you.”

  

Hanley belongs to the Kainai Nation, which is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. She grew up on the largest First Nation reserve in Canada, the Blood Reserve, near Cardston Alberta. While Hanley was the first of her brothers and sisters who was sent to a residential school when she was six years old, she was not the first in her family. Her mother also attended a residential school on the reserve, St. Paul’s residential school, run by the Anglican Church.

 

“I was the oldest, so I was the first one to go," Hanley said.  

 

The residential school that Hanley would spend her formative years in, was opened in 1898 and was originally called The Immaculate Conception Boarding School. The school was run by Catholic priests from The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and by nuns from The Sisters of Charity of Montreal, commonly known as the Grey Nuns of Montreal.

 

When Hanley had asked her mother why she had to go, her mother told her that she was threatened with arrest if she didn’t send her daughter to the school.

 

In 1926, The Immaculate Conception Boarding School was replaced with St. Mary’s. Hanley attended the residential school from approximately 1940 till 1956, leaving at the age of 16. In the mid-1930s there were reports of overcrowding at the school as well as severe outbreaks of measles and meningitis in 1956. But even as Hanley remembers, during her time at St. Mary’s there were still many, many children.

 

"There must have been 500 kids," she said. “If we wanted to go to the bathroom at night, we’d have to line up.”

 

 

  

Children lived, were schooled, and worked on the premises of the residential school and they were not allowed to have any mementos from home. It was standard practice to cut boys' hair and strip children of their traditional garb. And while the school provided clothing, it was woefully inadequate. Hanley said that often clothing items such as shoes, that were brought in from charities, would not fit the children.

 

"No matter how many times you told them that the shoes were too small,” she said.

 

Pleas by the children fell on deaf ears.

 

“So, we'd end up having to walk on the backs of our heels.”

 

Hanley’s days would start early in the morning.

 

"We would wake up and go to Mass," Hanley said. "When the bell rang [for class] we would line up in twos, in complete silence." 

  

Boys and girls were segregated in the school and placed into age groups.  

  

"There were small girls, intermediate girls, and big girls," Hanley recalls. 

  

Siblings could not interact with each other. The only hopes of seeing another family member were few and far between. Children would be reduced to waving to each other if they were lucky to spot a glimpse. They were also stripped of their indigenous names.

  

"We were given numbers, mine was 23." 

  

 

In residential schools across Canada, Indigenous children were forced to learn and speak English and French. The rationale was that indigenous children should be molded and assimilated into a white, Euro-Canadian, Christian culture that better represented the majority of Canadian society.

 

During recess and lunchtime, as a small act of resistance, children would speak in their native tongue to each other while playing. 

  

"We'd make sure no one was watching or listening," Hanley said. “Then we’d say something like ‘hurry up’ in our native tongue to our friends.”

 

"It was cultural genocide. They didn't want us." 

  

The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin. The word consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. The Geneva conventions state: genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, among other things: Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 

 

The punishment that was doled in residential schools was both cruel and arbitrary. Today it amounts to physical, emotional, and psychological abuse and in some cases, torture. Hanley said the severity of the punishment could depend on the infraction and the place where it happened.

 

“Beatings happened a lot," she said.

 

"In the class, you'd have to kneel in the front, and they'd yank your hair back," Hanley recalls. "What you got punished for one day, was okay the next day.”

 

Hanley remembers one incident vividly. 

  

One Sunday after Mass, while her mother was visiting Hanley, Hanley's school friend came to say hello and chat with her mom. The meetings between children and their parents were held on the upper floor and children were not allowed to stay in the area after their parents left. Hanley and her friend ended up meandering for a while longer. She is still unsure if the principal of the school, a Catholic priest, saw her, but later he called all the children into the playroom.

 

"We sat in a circle. Then he called names of students," she said. "My name was first." 

  

Hanley went to sit in the middle of the circle.  

  

"He was a short, fat priest," Hanley said. "He took a strap out from his pocket, it looked like something from machinery." 

  

When asked if she remembered the priest's name, Hanley instantly recalled the name.

  

"Father LaFrance," she said. "Till this day I don't know what I did wrong." 

  

According to records, "Father Lafrance was born in 1914 and entered the novitiate of the Oblates in 1935. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1941. He was named principal of St. Mary's boarding school on the Indian Reserve at Cardston in 1948."