(Editor’s note: Bill Steer has visited the commemorative residential school cemetery in Chapleau three times and recently interviewed Bill McLeod.)

By Back Roads Bill

Special to The Nugget

Read this new book and go for a drive.

William E. ‘Bill’ McLeod has just released his fourth book about Chapleau and area. The latest is St. John’s (Anglican) Residential Schools, Chapleau, Ontario – 1907 to 1948.

The Chapleau Indian Boarding School was one of 139 Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Children were taken from their families and sent to these schools in order to strip them of their culture and identity, and assimilate them into Euro-American society.

The book begins with a chapter on Rev. George and Mary Vincent Prewer. Prewer was the principal from 1913-23.

“He was, to put it bluntly, evil personified and his wife was not much better,” McLeod says. “The pupils, who were brought from as far away as northern Quebec and southern Ontario were ill-fed, ill-shod, ill-clothed and beaten for the most trivial of offences.

“They spent only about eight hours a week in the classroom as opposed to the normal 27 and a half hours in Ontario elementary schools. More time was spent shoving religion down their throats than learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.”

There were two schools. The first operated between 1907 and 1921, and the second from 1921 to 1948.

To provide some context, McLeod pens an extensive chapter on child abuse in the Chapleau Public School.

“Nothing was done about some dreadfully sadistic teachers and the author suggests that, if the community leaders tolerated this behaviour in their (mostly) lily white, (mostly) Protestant public school, it would hardly be expected that they would question what went on at the residential school.”

The schools were run by the Anglican Church and, the author says, “six bad Anglican bishops, three of whom were out-and-out racists and four who ignored the abuse of the children.”

Pilgrimage

For many years the second school’s cemetery associated with St. John’s was unmarked. The Chapleau Cree First Nation has since worked to put a wrought iron fence around the cemetery and install a commemorative plaque.

As part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s missing children residential school cemetery project, archeologists identified 42 grave sites in the cemetery.

When you walk around the fence and through the cemetery on the side of the hill you see steel stakes with grey metallic tags of the unknown. The sheen has gone but the numbers are very discernible.

You were not even an “Indian,” you were a number.

The trees make for a sombre place, the adjacent railway may remind you of the story and lonely death of Chanie Wenjack. The graves were purposely placed not to be seen, but you will see beyond what was and why healing takes time.

The cemetery is located on Hwy. 129, approaching Chapleau from the south, just before the Chapleau Inn and Suites, south of the OPP detachment on the east (right) side of the highway. The 408-page book retails for $29.95. Contact the author at 705-522-3858 or email him at wemcleod@sympatico.ca.

Back Roads Bill explores the back roads and back waters of Northern Ontario Saturdays in the The Nugget. He is the founder of the Canadian Ecology Centre and teaches part time at Nipissing University and Canadore College. wilstonsteer@gmail.com www.steerto.com