Cormorant Island and

St. Michaels Residential School

The Island, The people, The Impact

Prepared for Lillian Morton

EDTE 430
Issues in Aboriginal Education
November 26, 2015

By Josh Boldt

Purpose
The following investigation is meant to better understand the impact
that St. Michaels Residential School had on the community of Alert Bay. It
will follow the flood of European settlers to Cormorant Island and the nearby
river valleys that became hubs of the fishing industry in the region. It will
look at how devastating first contact was to the Kwakwaka'wakw First
Nations that thrived there. We will then take a glimpse into how the
Canadian Government and the Anglican Church imposed their will on a
people that had already lost so many and so much.

From 1929 to 1974 St

Michaels Indian Residential School was operated by the Anglican Church on

Cormorant Island where the town of Alert Bay is nestled. Like so many other
residential schools that were in operation across Canada, St. Michaels
changed the course of thousands of young lives.
This investigation will look at Cormorant Island before, during and after
St. Michaels and give a history to the island and a look into the future. I will
also reflect on the feelings that I had when I visited Yalis (the Namgis
community next to Alert Bay) and Alert Bay the week prior to the school
being torn down and the people that I met during my time on the island.
Yalis and Alert Bay are places that are full of beauty, a rich, wonderful First

Nations history, loving caring people, and a school that tried its best to take
all that away.

A Brief History
Cormorant Island is located in Queen Charlotte Strait west of the town
of Port McNeill that sits on the east coast of Vancouver Island. The island is
approximately four square kilometers. Traditionally Cormorant Island was the
seasonal home to the Namgis First Nation (One of the Kwakwaka'wakw First
Nations) who mainly lived across the Broughton strait at the mouth of the
Nimpkish (Namgis) River. Like for so many First Nations the river was the
life line for the people. They lived off the region's abundant salmon, herring,
cod, and halibut, while relying on the western red cedar for housing
materials, canoes, clothing, and blankets. The first contact that the Namgis
had with Europeans was in 1792 when they met Captain George Vancouver.
Soon after the first contact Hudsons Bay Company, realising that the area
was rich with salmon, fish and game, set up a trading post in nearby Port
Hardy. This is where the relationship between the Kwakwaka'wakw and
western culture first began. The first Europeans brought with them small pox
which had a devastating effect on the Kwakwakawakw people decreasing
their populations from 19,000 in the 1700s to 3,000 in 1880. As the
population decreased the Namgis people became more reliant on the
commercial fishing industry and in 1870 moved their village to Cormorant

Island to work at the new fish saltery and cannery that had been established
there. Soon the seasonal village site and sacred resting place of the Namgis
people was overtaken by the community of Alert Bay.

Cormorant Island Ariel View, 2015 (North, 2015)

St. Michaels 1929-1974

(irsr, n.d.)

The Government of Canada created the Indian Residential

School System to systematically remove the culture of the Aboriginal Peoples
of Canada and force them to assimilate to the European-Canadian way of life.
The Government wanted to force the English Language, religion, and remove
the Indian from the children. In the process of trying to do so the Canadian
Government and their Indian Agents destroyed the lives of thousands of
Aboriginal families across the nation. St. Michaels Indian Residential School
is one example of the cultural genocide that occurred.
The residential school system on Cormorant Island started in
1882 as the First Nations population grew on the island due to the

employment at the cannery and saltery. It was operated by the Anglican

Church for the Government of Canada. St. Michaels Residential School
officially opened in 1929 with the need for a larger school to hold the
growing capacity of students, near the height of the Residential School
system era in Canada. The school was built to hold 200 students and was at
times well over capacity. During the 45 years that the school was open it
housed thousands of Aboriginal children. The younger students would attend
school all day and the older ones would attend school in the morning and the
work in the afternoons and into the evenings farming or maintaining the
school. The lack of funding made it so that the school had to be almost selfreliant. The older boys would work to produce food and the girls would clean
and learn the typical tasks of a homemaker.
The children were forced to attend St. Michaels and were taken
from communities all along the coast. Children, mostly Kwakwaka'wakw,
were taken from Fort Simpson, Haida Gwaii, Bella Bella, Kitasoo, Terrace and
right from their homes in Alert Bay. Some of these children were taken from
their families were as young as five or six years old and many kept away,
either all together or for the most part, until graduating eighth grade. Others
were allowed a two month break to go back and visit the communities once a
year.
For many of the students the journey started when their parents
were contacted by the local Indian Agent. The parents were then forced to
bring their kids to the school or have them taken away by force. The

children would be put in boats and transported like a haul of winter springs.
Once the children arrived at school they were stripped, deloused, and given
their quarters. The first few hours at St Michaels were very much like those
of a prisoners arriving at a prison. The next few years werent much
different. The native languages of the students were forbidden to be spoken
and replaced with English. This created an atmosphere of fear and confusion
because some of the students came from communities were English had
never been spoken. If the children spoke English or misbehaved in any way
they were given the strap or worse. Physical and sexual abuse plagued the
children. They had no place to turn, nowhere to go and the people that were
supposed to be taking care of them were not, they were the abusers. Girls
and boys taken from their rooms in the middle of the night and found by
school mates, or in the infirmary. Children, now adults, that went to St.
Michaels speak of the nights being filled with hunger, sadness,
embarrassment and with the quiet crying of children in the night. In some
cases the students would run away just to be caught by the RCMP and at
times abused by even them. Alert Bay is on an Island, and very difficult to
run away from. Boys who didnt know their English name or werent acting
the correct way would be beaten. Children were beaten by adults. Some
cases were worse than others, but in all cases the children were taken away
from their homes and had everything that they knew stripped away from
them.

Meals were primarily porridge for breakfast often full of

maggots, those lucky enough to spend their afternoons working in the fields
could steal the odd turnip or potato but if you were the one feeding the boiler
there wasnt much food to be had. The kids were hungry, they were always
hungry. The children were hungry in an area of British Columbia that has a
world class abundance of fish to eat and streams that fed generations of
Aboriginal peoples. Yet these children went hungry on porridge filled with
maggots and stole potatoes for a treat.
Education at St. Michaels was very strict. The kids, dressed in
European clothing, given new Christian names, were taught reading and
writing and the ways of the Anglican Church. They were taught prayers and
how they were savages that needed saving. In many cases they were taught
that they were a lesser people and that that they should be thankful for the
Church. Some of the employees at the school were kind to the children, care
and showed love. These were the people that at least helped through times
that could be very dark.
Once the children had reached grade eight they graduated
St. Michaels and were sent out into the world. This should be an age where
young adults are excited about the lives they had ahead of them. But this
wasnt the case for many of the survivors who tell their story now.
(Foundation, n.d.)

In 1939 the school takes on up to 18 TB patients and becomes St.

Michaels preventorium. Tuberculosis patients are drawn from the school
itself and from Nanaimo.
In 1948 Indian day schools are set up close to the reservations were the
students at St. Michaels had been coming from and attendance starts to
decline. In the 1950s St. Michaels takes on more of a hostel role as public
and Indian day schools open up in Alert Bay. 1968 was the final year that the
school was operated by the Anglican Church. For the next five years the
school was taken over by Indian Affairs and renamed Alert Bay Student
Residents as the enrollment steadily declined. Finally in 1975 when the
school was turned over to the Nimpkish First Nation and later named the
Namgis House. (angican.ca, 2008)

Generations Lost
When you take a child away from their family and everything that
they have ever known and teach them to be ashamed of who they are and
where they come from then spit them back out into the world never having
the chance to learn the ways of their own people you have broken a child.
The children across Canada that were forced into the residential school
system missed out on what it was like in the communities they came from.
The language in which stories and lessons are past was removed from them,
and with it for many, the stories and lessons too. Those broken children

became adults that had horrible secrets of abuse, anger, and the lack of
ability to raise a family because they never grew up with one day to day. Not
only was the dignity taken from these children but also the culture that
defines them. St Michaels School has been closed and since torn down but
the people and their children and their childrens children are still feeling the
weight of those red bricks today. The Canadian Government Apologised and
handed out some money to some but that doesnt really cover the cost of
the damage done.
In order to be saved and continued the cultures of the
Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations must be embraced by the youth of today. The
languages, dances, customs learned, and stories passed down before the
elders have all passed on taking the cultures with them. It is in the youth
that a future is made and a past remembered.

Alert Bay, February 2015

It was early February and the sun had finally broken through the grey
clouds over the nearly black waters of Broughton Strait as the ferry from Port
McNeil turned into Alert Bay. I spent the entire ferry ride out on the outer
deck in order to get a better look at the breath taking rugged wilderness that
we were passing through. We had entered the realm of the orca and the
Namgis First Nation. I was there with an adventure guiding program for a
three day visit to learn as much as possible about the history of the island
and the Namgis people.

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We met a lady whose name escapes me. She is the head of tourism
on the island and a local Namgis First Nation woman. We spent the morning
with her walking through town past the burial site and totems along the
water to the Umista cultural centre. Looking out towards the water I saw a
few fishing boats and dark waters that have been constantly churning up the
abundance of live the strait has to offer. Beyond the sea Vancouver islands
rises up towards the black clouds and rays of sun on a textbook Alert Bay
February day. As I turn around and walk up the drive way of the cultural
centre it stands before me. A reminder that the island has had a very
troubled past. St. Michaels stands still, a huge four story rectangular block
of red bricks and peeling white lead paint. The windows were smash and
doors boarded up, unsafe to enter now, maybe always unsafe to enter. This
building was a force and had such a sinister stance amongst the natural
beauty of the island. After entering Umista and reading the stories of the
children who had been to St. Michaels and seeing their pictures I went back
outside to see the building once more. I have never had such an emotional
reaction to a bunch of bricks before but standing at the foot of St. Michaels I
felt very small and very sad. I cant imagine the memories that flooded back
to the people that had gone to St. Michaels had, seeing it standing there
still. I was a topic of debate amongst the survivors of the school whether it
should be torn down or left up as a reminder. It was scheduled to be
demolished the following week and some wanted it to be left up so that
everyone could see it as a reminder and that if it was torn down it would be

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like sweeping the history under the rug. Others felt that it would never be
forgotten and if left to stand would stand in the way of the youth moving
forward and leaving the anger behind.
I walked away from the cultural centre and the school with a lot to
think about but didnt get very far. A couple of us from the group I was with
were invited into the smoke house next to the school where a man had
brought in some freshly caught salmon to share with us that night for dinner.
As he instructed me on how to clean and fillet the fish in order to secure it to
the cedar pegs for cooking he told stories of how he had travelled across the
States and Canada preparing the fish the traditional way over the fire for
thousands of people. As the oil dripped from the skin and the smoke grew
thick he seemed to have a bright outlook on the future of his people. He said
that some of the youth from the community had taken on the reasonability of
learning the language and traditional customs so that they would never be
lost in the tides of time. That tourism was bringing in money that the fishing
industry wasnt and that the he felt it was time for the school to be torn
down and a chapter closed. Not forgotten but put away so that healthy
growth could take the place of anger. That evening we ate together and he
told stories of oolichan catches a story high and how he today runs a
program teaching the local youth about getting reacquainted with the nature
around them. Teaching them to hunt and fish and camp. The next morning
we were invited to the big house and met members of the community as
they prepared for a celebration the following day. A birth of a child was

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being celebrated. We arrived at the same time as a load of cedar so we were

quickly put to work hauling and stacking wood. After visiting the big house
we explored the interior if the island with a woman who is an expert in
tradition medicines and the plants they are derived from. We walked past
CMTs and through the forest with her as she showed us how to harvest sap
and strip bark from the towering red cedars.
The people that we met during my short stay on the island we some
of the nicest people a person will meet. They took us in, taught us so we
could teach others and seemed to have a very positive outlook on the future.
Even after all the hardships that these folks had been through or witness to
they still had such wonderful spirit. Visiting the Namgis people and Alert
Bay was mind opening. Something that I will take with me and share, and
revisit someday. Hopefully when I am the teacher and taking my students
there to learn and better understand.

February 18, 2015

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 St. Michaels Indian Residential
School was torn down in front of hundreds of witnesses and former students.
The full day event was honored with prayers, speeches and song. This day
hopefully marked the final journey of healing for many as the red bricks
vanished from the landscape once and for all.

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St. Michaels, Josh Boldt

Alert Bay, Josh Boldt

References
1. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://undiscoveredcoast.blogspot.ca/2012/12/stmichaels-residential-school-in-alert.html2.
2. 2 angican.ca. (2008, september 23). Retrieved from www.anglican.ca:
http://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/AlertBay.pdf

3. Foundation, L. o. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://wherearethechildren.ca/en/stories/

4. HelloBc. (n.d.). hellobc.com . Retrieved from http://www.hellobc.com/alertbay/culture-history.aspx

5. irsr. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://irsr.ca/st-michaels-alert-bay-boys-home/

6. north, v. i. (2015). Vancouver Island North. Retrieved from
http://www.vancouverislandnorth.ca/communities/alert-bay/

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7. stueck, w. (205). globe and mail. Retrieved from

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/alert-bay-residentialschool-survivors-gather-for-demolition-ceremony/article23067233/