Carriage House Second Floor
The Second Floor/Main floor of Poundmaker’s Lodge Carriage House. This Floor is Presently Used as an Equipment Storage Area by the Alberta Government. It likely Served a Similar Function While Part of the Edmonton Indian Residential School. Click on the triangle to load the point cloud. Labels on the point cloud indicate past room functions.
“I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue until there is not an Indian that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department…” – Duncan Campbell Scott, 1920
Now used for storage for Alberta Culture, the first floor of the carriage house used to be used for storing of equipment and supplies for the residential school, such as items used for labour around the grounds which was primarily conducted by students. While education was supposed to be a core goal of the residential school system, children who attended oftentimes spent a lot of their time on vocational “training” and undertaking activities for the running and maintained of the school itself. During the harvest, for example, older boys would often spend their entire day working on the farm [1]
Countless examples of the acceptance of student as labourers are peppered throughout the DIA records. When the DIA agreed to an EIRS request to build a farmer’s cottage in correspondence from May 18,1927, Deputy Superintendent Scott suggested keeping costs low by employing “as much of the school labour as possible” [1,2]
During the harvest, older boys often spent the entire day on the farm, which, by 1929, consisted of 500 acres under cultivation, including 110 acres of wheat, 125 acres of oats, and 40 acres of barley. The potato crop that year produced 3,000 bushels. By 1933, livestock consisted of 15 horses, 59 cattle (both beef and dairy), 135 pigs, 50 chickens and 25 turkeys.
Principal Woodsworth wrote of his students being pulled out of class to haul water into the school during the 10 days in April of 1929 that EIRS was without water, as well as using school labour to build a new shed in preparation for the arrival of additional students from the Brandon IRS [1,2]. Similarly, in preparation for students moving to the new school, Acting Deputy Superintendent General, A.S. Williams wrote in March of 1931 that “staff and older boys” would be responsible for setting up the furniture and supplies [4].
By 1949 it was suggested to the church that students should no longer be used for this kind of labour, but it was not until 1955 that the administration of the Edmonton IRS finally made changes that resulted in more classroom time for students.
Overcrowding
The carriage house was used to accommodate students when there was not enough room in the main school building. Overcrowding was a consistent problem in many Indian Residential Schools. The cause appears to be two-fold. First, the per capita grant funding model used by the Department of Indian Affairs was flawed. It assigned a fixed allowance for each student registered. This funding model was the primary source of operational funds, following the construction of a school, and therefore, more students meant more money. Second, churches wanted to recruit and retain students within their denominational faith, a practice that is discussed below. Even with overcrowding, the funds did not leave enough to cover the cost of salaries, basic supplies, or food. Consequently, repairs, maintenance and capital projects were done poorly or not at all.
Notes:
[1] United Church of Canada. 2022. Edmonton Indian Residential School. The Children Remembered. Electronic document, https://thechildrenremembered.ca/school-histories/edmonton/, accessed February 23, 2022.
[2] Ma, K. 2018. The Red Road of Healing. St. Albert Today 13 July. Electronic document, https://www.stalberttoday.ca/local-news/the-red-road-of-healing-1299235, accessed on August 3, 2022.
[3] Poundmaker’s Lodge and Treatment Centre (PLTC). 2022. About. Electronic document, https://poundmakerslodge.ca/about/, accessed August 29, 2022.
[4] Wallace, R. and N. Pietrzykowski. 2022. Digital IRS Archival Research Unpublished report prepared by Collective Heritage Consulting for P. Dawson, University of Calgary. On file in Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary.
The following virtual tour was created using panospheres from the Z+F 5010X laser scanner. Use your mouse or arrow keys to explore each image. Click on an arrow to "jump" to the next location.
This image gallery shows historic and modern photos related to the first floor of the carriage house. Click on photos to expand and read their captions. If you have photos of the Edmonton IRS that you would like to submit to this archive, please contact us at irsdocumentationproject@gmail.com.
Laser scanning data can be used to create “as built” architectural plans which can support repair and restoration work to The Edmonton Indian Residential School Carriage House. The main school building was lost to fire in 2000. This plan was created using Autodesk Revit and forms part of a larger building information model (BIM) of the school. The Revit drawings and laser scanning data for this school are securely archived with access controlled by Poundmaker’s Lodge Treatment Center.
Gary Williams- Get on the Train
Okay. Hey, it’s Gary Williams here. Survivor of the Edmonton Indian residential school. We were, I come from the land of the Gitxsan people in Northwestern British Columbia. I was born in 1949, and about in 1961, my brother and I, Wilfred he’s two years younger than me, arrived here by train. And we didn’t know where we’re going.
Our Parents didn’t let us know where we were going, they said, “Just get on,” well they didn’t say get on the train. It was, they called them Indian agents back then, the people that are working for the government that looked after the Indian reserves. And so they got us ready. Just had the clothes we had on. Get on a train. Took us a whole day, 23 hours to get here. My brother was nine years old and I was eleven. Like I said, we didn’t know where we’re going… they just told us to “get on the train,” and that was it.
We didn’t really know, at that time, we didn’t know who all the students were. They were from all native communities in the Northwest, some we probably knew. We didn’t make contact with them, yet they were on the same train, because we didn’t know them. At that time in ‘61 we hardly knew our neighbors, let alone know our, know, our people in the community.
Anyway, we arrived here, and all the people that were on the train we were, they had a couple of bus loads that brought us to the residential school here. And again, we didn’t have… that point we didn’t know where we’re going, and where we were. So they dropped us off and they let us just form a row outside school entrance of the school, and I know that day was kind of hot like in the fall but it is still warm. And we seen this big red building in front of us in our lineup, student lineup. There was all boys because we were made to go on one side of the building. The girls were on the other side of the building.
There was an administration building in between us. But they didn’t want us to get… to go into the [school] building because there was an infirmary in the front office, close to it. They told us to, “stay lined up and wait for your turn.” We had just the clothes we had on and that was the last time I’d seen my brother [younger by two years] for four months, until Christmas time.
Anyway it was kind of strange how they handled us. 1961 this was. Just like I said we didn’t know anything what was happening. We were just like, more or less treated like animals, I guess. You follow instructions, whether it was lay down or whatever. Anyway, you’re going and it was our turn to enter the infirmary. They brought us in one by one, and the first thing they did to us was to strip us down to no clothes at all.
And the next thing they did, they had a clipper. Shaved our heads, bald. The third stage was to jump into the tub. Back in those days there was no shower or anything. They uh, they wanted to try, and that was the first step of everything was to try and clean us up to go at our residence, at our dorm.
So, they I remember them after they, the last thing they did to me was to scrub me down, they had some people the workers there. I don’t know if they were guys or whatever they were. They were scrubbing us down until they were trying to make us white I guess, so after we’re done wiped ourselves dry.
-Gary Williams
Notes:
Oral interview with Gary Williams. Conducted by Peter Dawson at Poundmaker’s Lodge, St Albert, May 4, 2022. Transcribed by Erica Van Vugt and Madisen Hvidberg. University of Calgary, Jan 23, 2024.
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