hirley I. Williams, Ojibwe, attended St. Joseph’s Residential School in Spanish, Ontario, at the age of 10. She is now Professor Emerita and Ojibwe Elder in the Department of Native Studies at Trent University, Peterborough. When ten-year-old Shirley Pheasant (Williams) entered the St. Joseph’s Boarding School at Spanish, Ontario, in 1949, she could only speak her Native language, Ojibwe. Shirley remembers what it was like when she first arrived: “When I saw [St. Joseph’s] it was grey. A brick building when it rains is dark and grey, you know. It’s an ugly day but the feeling was … of ugliness. [T]he gate opened and the bus went in, and I think when the gate closed … something happened to me, something locked, it is like my heart locked, because it could hear that...[the clink of gates] ...the bus stopped and then the sister or the nun … she came in and she sounded very very cross, and I could just imagine what she was trying to say, because this is what my sisters told me, what she would probably say, so I had in my mind what she was trying to tell us, that we get off the bus [and] we go two by two … up the stairs ... the stairs were, well it was four stories and no elevator and we had to walk up the stairs with our suitcases. ...[at the] top of the stairs . . . you were asked your name ... and this [is] another thing my mother prepared me for ... so I was very proud to say yes that my name was Shirley Pheasant and then they gave you a number and so you went down and they give you another bundle with your chemise … your bloomers and your stocking[s] and you went to the next person ... the last one you saw [was] the nun who looked into your hair to look for bugs.”