Strict Rules

Every Sunday we’d have to go to church twice. Nine o’clock in the morning, four in the evening. And then the girls would line up on the left side, and the boys would all line up on the right side. And children wouldn’t be able to walk in till everybody else was in church. If there was a funeral or anything at all going ahead, we always had to go. The service was in Inuttitut and English—sometimes they’d have it in English, a bit of it, you know. That’s how they always used to have service. And long ago they even used to have service Saturday evenings at seven. We had to go. The bell was up in the tower. Kiggak, church Elders, were in charge of ringing the bell. There was two ministers down there, Mr. Peacock and Mr. Grubb. Each Christmastime, every service, you’d have to

Reflections from Them Days be there. We put on a play one time, the only Christmas play ever I was in, while I was in Nain school for one Christmas. I was Old Good King Wenceslas!

We wasn’t allowed outside of the fence, see, all the week. We wasn’t allowed to go in the village at all. We wouldn’t never go into the community. We could have one hour, Sunday after dinner, and go and visit somewhere with a friend. I used to always go to Mr. Martin’s, Sue Harris’s parents. Some children was going to only day school, and they’d be out in the community, see, they were okay. But we wasn’t allowed to leave the yard.

Only if some people do something wrong, they walk down to the Mission House and get the cat-o’-nine tails, or something. Some didn’t. I got in trouble once. I washed the

Nellie Winters

lamps and put oil in them, and when I was going back out with the lamps the boys came running in with wood and knocked one of the globes off the lamp. And I had to go down holding on to the lamp, all the way down to Mr. Peacock, the minister. But I never got pounded. It wasn’t my fault, and the boys didn’t know, I suppose, that I was right there. Oh, strict rules. We couldn’t even.…Every school morning, we had to have religion, back them days. Anybody didn’t have a good voice had to sit down. And my brother Harold had to sit down all the time.