“Canada: The Last Best West!” was his slogan. Clifford Sifton, a brilliant interior minister, crafted far-reaching immigration policies that are still with us. The Ottawa house he lived in for 25 years is not. His home might have been saved as a memorial to the man who built the West. Instead it was demolished to make way for a grey apartment building.
First-hand accounts of horrific childhoods are rare in literature, and compelling: Charlie Chaplin’s My Autobiography or A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, the recollections of an English workhouse boy that are so stark one U.K. reviewer said it made Oliver Twist look like a holiday camp.
From Athabasca University Press is My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell, the memoirs of an Indian Residential schoolboy. Arthur Bear Chief’s story is so raw it would have gone unpublished 30 years ago. Bear Chief notes with irony the Anglican Church didn’t give him much of an education at the Old Sun Residential School in Gleichen, Alta. His English skills were so poor that later, as a public servant, he had an ex-wife ghostwrite his government reports. The result in My Decade at Old Sun is a plain and riveting narrative stripped of adjectives and ornamental prose. It is vivid and powerful.
Bear Chief writes in memory of his best friend, Nelson Wolf Leg. He recalls the two little boys cowering in the dark awaiting a summons from the faculty pedophile. “We made a promise to each other to never say anything about what happened to anyone, not even our parents. We also made a pact that if one of us died, the other would come forward and talk about our abuse. I can still vividly remember Nelson, both of us lying in my bed crying and holding onto each other for protection, and scared out of our wits,” writes Bear Chief; “I was younger than Nelson, and I can remember him wiping the tears from my face and saying, ‘Keep quiet.’”
Bear Chief went to Residential School at age 7 in 1949. Eight brothers and sisters were taken, too. He remembers when they came for his older brother: “Francis came running into the house, jumped up into the attic opening and crawled inside,” he writes. “Not long after that, three white men and an RCMP officer came running in. They dragged my brother down as he was screaming and kicking. They dragged him out, and my parents could not do anything. That was a preview of what was in store for me.”
My Decade at Old Sun recounts a boy’s aching loneliness, occasional joy – chocolate pudding was served once a week – and the reign of sadism. One gym teacher liked to rifle a soccer ball at the children’s heads. Another supervisor enjoyed terrifying students by waving his service revolver in class. The faculty kept a directory and checked off the name of any student heard to speak the Blackfoot dialect. A check meant weekly beatings. “We used to call Sundays ‘payday’,” writes Bear Chief.
“There were times when I would go out to the field by myself and sit there calling for my mother,” he writes; “My life is like a cocoon that never really hatched.”
Bear Chief recalls failed marriages and a battle with alcoholism, his letter of apology from the Anglican Church and a $105,000 out-of-court settlement. “My lawyers took 30 percent,” he said. The government charged GST.
Unlike other crime victims, Bear Chief and thousands of fellow Residential School students never had the chance to face their tormentors in court. Nobody named names, nobody went to jail. “Even now I cannot begin to comprehend a system that was so completely out of whack and so full of individuals who were just there to satisfy their cruelty and lust, or understand why they will never be asked to answer for what they did,” he says.
My Decade at Old Sun is an unforgettable memoir. It will make your troubles seem small.
By Holly Doan
My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell, by Arthur Bear Chief; Athabasca University Press; ISBN 9781-7719-91759; $19.95
The Ottawa Police Service days before cabinet invoked the Emergencies Act distributed a memo falsely claiming foreign extremists bankrolled the Freedom Convoy. The memo by a U.K. think tank mentioned “Trump” five times and summarized Facebook insults against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Funding appears to be coming from a host of U.S. and international sources.”
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce yesterday was fined $5.6 million for breach of consumer protection rules. The federal penalty came on top of $11 million in refunds and interest the Bank was mandated to pay under Cost Of Borrowing Regulations: “CIBC was negligent.”
Parliament in promoting a federal dentacare program runs a risk Canadian employers will repeal private plans to offload coverage, medical professionals warn the Senate national finance committee. “It is a real fear,” said the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association: “Either incentivize employers to maintain their dental benefits or you disincentivize them through large government fines.”
Taxpayers face a half billion write-off on overpayments to federal employees due to payroll bungles, auditors said yesterday. “About half of these request had been outstanding for more than three years,” wrote Auditor General Karen Hogan: ‘It may eventually result in the amount being written off.’
Toronto could be a niche market for raw seal meat, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said yesterday. Federal agencies for years have subsidized attempts to build a market for seal: “Did you say there is a demand for seal meat in Toronto? Is that what you said?”
The Public Order Emergency Commission paid as an expert consultant an Ottawa pollster who described Freedom Convoy supporters as thugs and jihadists. Frank Graves, president of Ekos Research Associates Inc., said he regretted his tweets and deleted them: “The Commission was not aware of Mr. Graves’ tweets.”
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s department “begged us” to take a subsidy, says an anti-Semite. Laith Marouf in his first public comments on the $133,822 grant said he was contacted by the Department of Canadian Heritage and promised funding in less than a week: “We got the money very fast.”
Emergency powers could be used to jam Freedom Convoy cellphones, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki wrote a cabinet aide. Lucki did not advocate use of the Emergencies Act but checked off numerous applications: “Cell phone disruption (but more work to be done).”
Cabinet’s YouTube regulation bill is not close to clearing the Senate communications committee, the chair said yesterday. Parliament must not hurry passage of the bill, said Senator Leo Housakos (Que.): “It would be irresponsible.”
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem yesterday warned Canadians to brace for another interest rate hike in time for Christmas and a likely recession. “Rates will need to rise further” December 7 after increasing six times this year, said Macklem: “There is no easy way out.”
Senior officials including police and a deputy minister of public safety drafted a memo to end the Freedom Convoy with the stroke of a pen, in inquiry was told yesterday. A convoy lawyer said the proposal was before cabinet when it opted instead to invoke the Emergencies Act: “The deal would be: Leave the protest and denounce unlawful activity and you will be heard.”
Records at the Public Order Emergency Commission show Ottawa business groups lobbied cabinet for subsidies with inflated claims of damage from Freedom Convoy protests. A $20 million federal compensation fund later saw a third of the money unclaimed: “Daily I am getting stories of fear and desperation.”
Parks Canada wardens will gain extraordinary police powers under an obscure clause of a bill tabled by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Wardens would be permitted to “enter any place” without a warrant: “What changes do you think this will make?”
