Residential high school reunion filled with memories, emotions

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This article was published 22/06/2017 (2497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Adolph Morrisseau nearly collapsed as he turned the corner.

He looked up at what was once his schoolhouse, head shaking and lips quivering. “1962,” he said.

It was the year he first arrived at Assiniboia Indian Residential High School.

Morrisseau took a few deep breaths, holding his hand to his chest as he composed himself. He hadn’t been back in more than 50 years, and Friday afternoon, the memories came rushing back.

“1962,” he repeated before he opened the door.

Morrisseau is one of dozens of survivors who returned for a reunion at the site of the first residential high school in Manitoba, which operated on Winnipeg’s Academy Road from 1958 to 1973.

In many ways, this high school reunion was unlike any other. The attendees faced difficult memories of separation from their families, erasure of culture, physical, spiritual and emotional abuse, and an attempt to strip them of their basic freedoms.

Despite the inherent sadness, the camaraderie between Friday’s attendees — those with a personal connection to the site and those who came to learn about it and honour those who went to the school — was palpable.

“I feel a lot of nostalgia,” said Morrisseau. “I wish it was back in them days. Just to relive everything.”

Inside the building — now home to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection — the rooms and stairwells were packed. About 300 people made their way through the second-floor offices that were once classrooms and science labs.

“This used to be a Grade 9 classroom,” said Hubert Hart, a towering man who attended the school from 1964 to 1969. “Oh, man.”

“You see that big seven-footer over there?” joked Ted Fontaine, one of the driving forces behind the reunion weekend. “He used to be one of the little ones.”

Dell Rundle and Mabel Horton trailed behind their tour group, snapping photos and looking around, trying to remember the building’s former appearance. Horton had three siblings at Assiniboia while she was a student there, but could only socialize with her brothers in the parlour on Sundays after church.

“This room once seemed so much bigger,” Rundle said.

Most of the building has changed since the school shut down, but Horton said the creaky floorboards and big windows are just as she remembered. “I used to look out the windows, outside at the trees, all the clouds. And you could hear the birds,” she said.

“This is bittersweet,” Rundle added, with a lump in her throat.

Bitter because attending the residential school wasn’t their choice. They were forced here and kept here for 10 months of the year, with a brief return home around Christmas, if they were lucky.

Sweet because they had returned to reminisce with friends and classmates they hadn’t seen in years.

Downstairs, by the entrance, people participated in a smudging ceremony, an ancient indigenous rite of purification. The smoke from the burning sage leaves filled the air, and the residential school survivors breathed it in and waved it over themselves.

Lillian Kennedy, a member of the first group brought to Assiniboia in 1958, looked over a photo of her classmates a few days before the reunion. “Most of them are gone,” she said.

Kennedy, who lives in Bloodvein, said she has mostly fond memories of her time in school. She loved volleyball and baseball, and enjoyed spending time with the other children. “I liked school. Not math though,” she whispered.

While making their way through the building, Kennedy and other survivors were treated with reverence and respect, with everyone within earshot hanging on their every word.

Fontaine remembered playing sports with friends and hanging out in the field. “We learned how to dance out there,” he said. “I still can’t dance.”

While most of the guests are 50 or older, there were several young children in the crowd.

Amy Crate brought her daughters, Rhianna, 8, and Amelia, 4, from Fisher River Cree Nation to see the place their grandmother, Dorothy Ann, spent her high school years.

“(Rhianna) was saying she didn’t want to be here, and I said, ‘Imagine, they used to come here and stay here and live here.’ We’re only staying for the day,” Crate said.

Dorothy Ann Crate, now 76, was also a member of the first group to be brought to Assiniboia. In the decades since, she has made sure her grandchildren have an appreciation for their heritage and a love of the Cree language.

“My girls know how to speak more Cree than me,” Amy Crate said. “That’s from my mother.”

Dorothy Ann said the reunion gave her a sense of healing. For the first time in decades, old friends are joining together in joy, not pain.

“It’s a nice feeling for me that I’m alive to see this day,” she said. “We’re all friends. We all love each other. We all went to school here.”

It’s bittersweet, but mostly sweet.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca