The Boarding School

When you get to school in Nain it was strange, you know. You had to start over.

This is the school. That’s where they would teach us. That’s our schoolroom. Mrs. Peacock used to teach religion, and Katie Hettasch was the teacher for everything else, and Mrs. Ogletree was also a teacher.

Reflections from Them Days

Everyone had their little own wooden desks. A lot of children spent half their time in the corners with their hands behind their back. You wouldn’t have to do too much bad anyway for you to get put in the corner. Trying to whisper to one another, I suppose.

I used to like the books they had back then. We didn’t used to have Inuttitut classes then. Everyone was already talking it, just about. After I was going to school, must’ve been after, the kids wasn’t allowed to talk Inuttitut, only English. We usually spoke English and Eskimo, both of it. Auntie Katie could talk Eskimo, and Mr. Peacock could preach in Eskimo. They taught in English.

The girls sleeped in the old anatalak, what they used to call it. We used to sleep in the rooms. We had bunk beds, them old tin ones. Nothing upstairs, only what they had put up there. We used to light the fires every morning, the girls. This building, there was always something going on in there, ’cause that’s where we’d all eat. The boys used to sleep upstairs, and downstairs was the kitchen and the eating place for everybody. The boys only sleeped upstairs. They all had sealskin sleeping bags. Good job they wore pyjamas because the sleeping bag was just a skin, two skins sewed together. The fur was outside.

Inuttitut: The language of Inuit in Nunatsiavut.