The school building continued to have problems. Mackey soon discovered that Rhodes Curry had used the cheapest, softest brick they could find, a brand called Bluenose facing bricks (provided by C. W. Stairs of Nova Scotia Clay Works Ltd). They leaked in the rain. Mackey and a building inspector climbed between the top-floor ceiling and the roof after a rainstorm and found no water coming in: it was going right through the wall. The leaks were damaging or destroying the plaster on every floor and seeping into the basement, causing damp spots. Mackey also found dampness around many of the windows. He and the Sisters had to put basins and towels under them to catch the drip. Mackey got a quote for having the exterior windows caulked—there were more than two hundred of them—and asked Indian Affairs for the money in two separate letters over a two-year span. There are no records of a response from the Department, and Mackey eventually took the money from another budget item.
On the advice of Indian Affairs’s architect, Mackey hired Western Waterproofing Company in Montreal to fix the brick problem for $2,000. Orr inspected several other new buildings in Halifax that had had the same leakage problems, including the Nova Scotia Hotel, Bell Telephone Co., Capitol Theatre, Nova Scotia Light & Power Co., Bank of Montreal, and Moirs Factory. Western Waterproofing, which guaranteed its work for five years, was making a killing in Nova Scotia, thanks in part to Bluenose bricks. “Practically every brick building erected in the Province for the past twenty-five years has had the same trouble,” Mackey would later write.
But none of these other buildings were on a high, exposed hill. Their leaks weren’t as bad. Western’s work on Shubenacadie failed within two years. When Dr. Thomas Robertson visited the school to assess its health for Indian Affairs in 1936, his report was mostly positive. But he noted the poor condition of the boys’ rec room, which was “not a good example of the white man’s standard of living to keep before the eyes of those Indian children.” Robertson said that unless the problem was fixed right away it would lead to “irreparable damage” and “heavy expenditure.” Indian Affairs responded to Robertson’s report by granting Mackey $400 for repairs and improvements. But within two years the leaks were back, pouring in through the top windows during a cold rain. The problem would haunt the school all its days, with Indian Affairs steadfastly ignoring it all the while. Even more than a decade later, when the chief of Indian Affairs’s training division joined the Sister Superior Mary Charles and Indian Agent Rice for a tour of the building, all the plaster on the upper floor was destroyed by ongoing leakage.
Corrosion in the pipes also gave Mackey fits. In 1934 a pipe burst after a January cold snap. There were many years when such problems left the building without hot water. This was the first time Mackey asked Indian Affairs to cover a repair bill. The work required “dies, vice, pipe-cutters, and three foot wrench,” expensive tools he didn’t have. The following year the pipes were clogged. They couldn’t handle the pressure needed to pump water to upper floors. To have baths, the students had to lug hot water from the laundry room. Within another two years, the clogging was so bad that the girls’ bathrooms weren’t getting any water. The pipes were brittle and broke easily; they’d need to be replaced with new copper pipes.
Mackey also discovered that the pump and pump house installed by Canadian Fairbanks-Morse Co. wasn’t working. It didn’t seem to be powerful enough for the slope and distance the water had to travel. Mackey took a train to Fairbanks-Morse’s Halifax office to meet the manager. While he couldn’t explain why the pump wasn’t working or how to fix it, the manager did write a sympathetic and critical letter to his head office counterpart in Montreal: “I understood Father Mackey to say that last winter he carried water for several months and they are almost entirely without fire protection,” the manager wrote. “Father Mackey is an unusually fine type of man…it is something that you should have thoroughly investigated.” But the school went without an effective water pump—relying solely on a smaller emergency pump—for more than a year before the Montreal office wrote Orr, the Indian Affairs architect, to say that the problem was two missing nuts. For several years Mackey went on taking older boys to the reserve to fetch water. Luckily the school would not experience a fire until years later.
One thing Mackey managed to get fixed quickly was the school’s chimney. Soon after the children arrived, the cook made it clear the oven was no good. “A mad cook is not a pleasant animal,” Mackey wrote. “Rice pudding and apple pies in the oven for three hours and not cooked is to say the least a bit provoking.” Much worse was the gas that filled the kitchen. The solution was to build the chimney higher, a labourious and expensive task, to better catch a draft and fan the flames. For the sake of not gassing school residents, or perhaps to save Mackey from the cook, Indian Affairs promptly approved this request.
Health care
A year before the children arrived, Mackey received a letter from E. L. Stone, director of medical services for Indian Affairs. Stone reminded Mackey that as principal he was the legal guardian of the children, even during summer vacations, and thus responsible for their welfare. He was to ensure that every child was vaccinated on arrival and to “resolutely refuse…any pupil who has tuberculosis in any form.” TB had killed residential school children by the thousands already and embarrassed Indian Affairs. Stone told Mackey that above all else, “kindness, good feeding, good ventilation, vigilance against contagious diseases and tuberculosis, and last of all and least, medicine,” were the secrets to healthy children. He recommended a diet of brown bread, fish, meat, cheese, and beans—plenty of protein.
But in the coming years, Indian Affairs failed to give Mackey the funds needed to meet his responsibilities, denying the children even basic dental care. Instead, the Department hired Dr. McInnis in March 1930 as school physician. He made $480 a year to do checkups on the children every six months, conduct all minor surgeries, and remain the physician on call. Each year McInnis gave Mackey a list of children needing glasses, dental work, x-rays, and tonsillectomies. McInnis was willing to do the tonsillectomies at $5 per child and provided his own operating table, something other doctors did not.
Mackey faithfully sent the lists to Indian Affairs. Twice a year he received a response from a secretary saying there was no money. “Our funds being extremely limited, it will not be possible….” In a good year, the Department would pay for the most urgent cases. Mackey was then supposed to contact parents of affected children for permission to conduct any surgeries. But in some cases this wasn’t necessary. Really it was up to Mackey to decide. A dentist would then visit the school to do any fillings that were approved using “cheap material.” If the children still had their baby teeth, the offending tooth was pulled; no point spending money to fill a temporary tooth. For the most part though, all dental work was denied.
McInnis usually completed the tonsillectomies and other minor surgeries at the school. It was a horrible experience for staff and students: setting aside the space, quarantining students, dealing with medical waste and curious children, and living with the anxiety that something might go wrong. Tonsillectomies disturbed the school day and night for at least a week. When Mackey complained, the Department responded by cancelling the surgeries altogether.
Keeping the school disease free was an impossible task in an overcrowded, drafty, leaky building. Despite warnings from the director of medical services and the Department’s own rules against it, Mackey, Indian Agents, and Indian Affairs made matters worse by repeatedly admitting to the school children with tuberculosis, venereal, and other contagious diseases. Mackey and the Sisters were also sent children who were deaf, epileptic, and mentally or physically disabled. The principal and teachers were not trained in working with these special needs, and Mackey did all he could to send them away again. But those with infectious diseases usually went unnoticed until it was too late.
Only two months after Shubenacadie opened, five children under the age of twelve told the Sisters they wer
e feeling very ill. McInnis examined them and diagnosed tuberculosis in each case. As the children lay in their beds, still in their shared dormitories, their white caregivers went half mad trying to figure out what to do with them. McInnis called the Nova Scotia Department of Public Health. On hearing the details, the Department said to send four of the children to a sanatorium to be treated, and to keep the other child for observation and study. McInnis checked with the NS Sanatorium in Kentville. They told him no, they could not take children under twelve. The Lourdes Sanatorium in Pictou did take very young children, but refused to take Indian children. McInnis called the Province again and was told to put the children “on the cure in a section of the school,” and not to return them home.
The children stayed at the school in their own beds, though they were moved away from the other children. Indian Affairs was not impressed. A. S. Williams, the acting assistant departmental secretary, ordered Mackey to keep looking for an institution that would take the contagious children. It took Mackey another two months to convince the Kentville sanatorium to help, and in the end they took only the two worst cases. When Mackey told the Department the good news, he received an angry letter criticizing him for letting tuberculosis into the school. Strangely, the letter reminded the principal of their policy of sending sick children home. Mackey did just that, in one case, two months later. The last two children with tuberculosis got better at the school. More than a decade after Peter Bryce’s exposé on tuberculosis and the Indian population, little had changed. The disease was still running rampant on reserves and was common among children. Dr. J. Blecker of the Children’s Hospital in Halifax wrote on one prospective student’s medical report, “the only Indian child I have ever had under my care free from tuberculosis.”
During the winter of the school’s second year there was an outbreak of mild flu. McInnis was not called in but wrote to say the children probably caught it from visiting parents, although the first cases were in children who had not had visitors. In March, a Sister fell sick with scarlet fever and three children were diagnosed with syphilis. McInnis wanted to give every child a blood test. A. F. MacKenzie wrote to the Nova Scotia provincial health officer asking them to provide blood tests. He offered a “nominal fee” of fifty dollars. MacKenzie assumed the Province would provide use of its labs for free as it had done in the past. He also hoped the Province would provide access to free treatment for any child testing positive for syphilis.
Having not received an answer, MacKenzie offered the $50 to McInnis, who accepted but wanted $5 per treatment in addition. Mackey went ahead and paid McInnis $10 for the first treatment of two of the first three cases, but many treatments were required for each case. “It would cost $120 per child for three months treatment,” Mackey wrote to the Department, “which is two thirds of what you are allowing for their full years keep.” Mackey had to request permission for this expense, but there is no response on record. A month later, four children came down with enlarged glands due to bacterial infections and there was another case of scarlet fever. McInnis sent three children to the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, which was a common occurrence.
McInnis saw at least twenty-five children with syphilis that year. When Mackey reported the outbreak, a senior bureaucrat at Indian Affairs replied that Shubenacadie was “a good place to have it.” More than a decade later, when five children got sick with diphtheria despite Indian Affairs’s vaccine program, McInnis placed the whole building under quarantine for a month. No one could visit or leave.
Early in the 1932–33 school year, Mackey, frustrated by constant struggles over funding for minor but necessary medical treatments, wrote a flippant letter to the Department wondering what was the point of doing checkups twice a year if there was never money to pay for tonsil and dental procedures. To his surprise, Indian Affairs agreed. Checkups would now happen only once a year. In the fourth year Mackey grew desperate and offered to pay for the medical work from the school’s regular budget. He took the money from travel expenses, meaning fewer students would go home for the summer. Indian Affairs allowed it and didn’t fund any tonsillectomies, glasses, or dental work, for another three years. In his May 1936 denial of tonsil and dental work, Secretary MacKenzie wrote that the Department “would be pleased to [provide the work], except that your pupils had the advantage of very considerable work of this kind last fall.” At Shubenacadie, seven children had mucous coming out of their ears because of infected tonsils; some had rotten teeth and couldn’t chew. But other schools had been waiting longer.
Tuberculosis hit the school again in the late spring of 1938, when McInnis diagnosed a girl with an active case and Mackey immediately asked to send her to the NS Sanatorium because she had no home. Indian Affairs approved, but reminded Mackey that Doctor McInnis should have used the proper form for medical examinations to keep her from entering the school in the first place. The following school year, nine new children arrived. One boy complained that his neck was sore. Soon a gland in his neck was discharging. McInnis was called in to examine him. “Evidently someone has mistaken our Residential School for a TB sanatorium,” he wrote. “Please arrange with the Department for his removal.” In this instance, the Indian Agent had actually followed guidelines and sent a signed application form with a medical, which clearly noted that the boy had tuberculosis. But Indian Affairs had admitted him to Shubenacadie, where no one knew of his illness. Regardless, the Department instructed Mackey that the boy “should be disposed of in accordance with the regulations for disposal of tubercular Indians.” The policy was to have a room available for infectious cases. Mackey reported that the boy responded well and his gland stopped discharging.
However, when the boy came down with a bronchial infection immediately afterward Mackey wrote to Nova Scotia Public Health. He received no answer. As winter set in, the boy caught a cold and bronchitis. A Sister sent him to see McInnis, who sent him on to the Victoria General. The VG refused to take him because he clearly had active tuberculosis. The doctor there wanted to transfer the boy to the Sanatorium in Kentville. However, the Sanatorium would only take the boy if Indian Affairs reassured them that the Department would cover the expense. In November McInnis finally sent the boy to a Halifax hospital, where it was confirmed he had active TB and should be at the Sanatorium. To send him there, Mackey still needed the permission of Indian Affairs. The boy stayed in Halifax until he died ten days later. His admission to the school had been “a clear error such as sometimes occurs in the best organizations,” Indian Affairs’s medical director E. L. Stone wrote several months later in reviewing the case. McInnis was incensed. He wrote of his frustration to Father Mackey, saying, “The Department forgot this was…not a tuberculosis sanatorium,” adding that every Maritime province was shipping “all the advanced tuberculosis cases and syphilitics” to Shubenacadie.
The Death of Josephine Smith
In the summer of 1933 there was a long exchange between Father Mackey, Dr. McInnis, the Victoria General Hospital, and Indian Affairs over Josephine Smith. The twelve-year-old girl had been sent to hospital in March with a ruptured appendix, and died after surgery, when she was “attacked by pneumonia.” Letters show animosity between Mackey and McInnis, who at times seem to have forgotten they were arguing about a dead young girl. They rightly blamed each other for various mistakes and failings, and both bore some of the blame for her unnecessary death. Mackey in particular could have done more for her by acting quickly and with greater concern. But McInnis was likely complaining less out of compassion and more out of bitterness over the loss of income he’d suffered when Indian Affairs cut the frequency of medical checkups in half. Dr. McInnis angrily accused Indian Affairs of trying to cover up the school’s neglect of an obviously very sick little girl, and demanded an investigation. Father Mackey described a long angry phone call from McInnis, accusing the principal of cheating him out of fifty dollars—the amount he was paid every six months for examining the students—until M
ackey had inadvertently convinced Indian Affairs to reduce examinations to only once each year; instead, the Provincial Tuberculosis Clinic would examine the school. Mackey in turn accused McInnis of trying to compensate himself at the taxpayers’ expense.
Of Josephine Smith, Mackey wrote that during a month when many children suffered from colds, “We had no reason to think that her condition was any more serious.” She was vomiting and a Sister put her to bed, thinking it might be appendicitis. McInnis was due the next morning and Josephine would be his first priority. But the doctor showed up half an hour late, Mackey said. McInnis examined her and said it was indeed a bad appendix. He wanted to send her to a hospital in Truro by car, a half hour’s drive, but Mackey overruled him, saying they would wait until late afternoon for the next train to Halifax. The surgery to remove the now gangrenous appendix didn’t take place until midnight, and Josephine died late the next morning. “I am sure of this that were Josephine Smith my own sister I could not under the same circumstances do any more for her,” Mackey wrote. He then reminded the Department of the school’s excellent annual health inspection results.
Indian School Road Page 8
