As she got off the train, Clara was relieved to see Chief and Mrs. Big Smoke standing on the snow-covered platform. Their sled dogs yipped behind a ten-foot snowbank.
“I’m so sorry,” Clara said. “The sanatorium didn’t have an available bed,” she explained without adding “for a treaty Indian.” Her words seemed hollow in the quietness.
Mrs. Big Smoke, a small woman, braids poking out from her fur hat, slid to the back of the sled. The chief placed Nellie on her mother’s lap, covering them with a coarse blanket. Yanking the restraining hook out of the frozen ground, he cracked a whip, and the dogs began to run. He neither waved nor looked back.
Clara stood alone on the platform, weeping quietly. The scene brought back the day she waited for a horse-drawn carriage to transport her dead son to the Knockholt Cemetery where he was buried in the same grave as his father. Had Billy survived, he’d have studied horticultural science, she thought. He wanted to be a gardener when he grew up. Clara watched the sled disappear. Nellie might not grow up to realize her dream. She’s very sick.
After she warmed her hands at the wood stove in the station house, Clara headed to the home of Father Maurice, the retired headmaster of a Catholic residential school in the town of Spanish. He had offered her the housekeeper’s quarters for the night until the return train to the Soo. A little later, at dinnertime at the priest’s house, he seemed awkward having a visitor sitting across the table.
To break the ice, she finally said, “Tell me about the bread crisis. I understand from Reverend Hives that some parents hired a lawyer when they believed the bread served at the school had no nutritional value. Didn’t the Indian Act make it illegal to obtain counsel?”
“That was a different matter,” Father Maurice said. “In 1927, the government amended the Indian Act to prevent Indians from claiming title to certain lands.” He chuckled. “Nothing to do with bread.”
“The bread problem must have been serious if the parents took legal action.”
“I was in charge of their souls, not their bodies.” He raised his hands as if a soul were tangible.
“It’s hard to have a soul when you’re starving. I understand the investigation found the bread had sufficient nutritional value but tasted like sawdust.”
“I’m eating the same sawdust,” the priest said, bowing his head as though he intended to end the meal with another prayer. “The government decided to assimilate the Indians, and we Catholics jumped at the chance to Christianize them — as Catholics, of course. None of us thought of the cost.”
Later, alone in the housekeeper’s room, Clara wrote in her address book:
March 1934
It’s quite lonely here. There’s little heat from the small gas fireplace. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed with covers pulled over my head to write. I’m beginning to see that governments and churches make terrible partnerships. The Canadian government beats out a way of life, and the churches are bent on filling these empty souls with their ideas of faith. [She crossed out the words beats out and replaced them with removes.] The tender for a new Shingwauk was cancelled because neither the government nor the Anglican Church could afford it. Is money the root of the problem? No! Money cannot take away the loneliness a child feels without parents.
CHAPTER 12
Spring was a long way off, so to mitigate the washroom crisis, Reverend Hives resurrected the outdoor latrines that hadn’t been in operation for thirty years. The boys were told to use the outdoor toilets during the day. Many of the children had never encountered a flush toilet until they came to the school. Some preferred to relieve themselves in the woods. At least until the plumbing was fixed, the latrines were considered a healthier alternative. Noel Thomas, the farm manager, utilized the ashes from the furnaces to cut down the odour.
The latrines soon became a clubhouse where boys and girls could meet, an escape from the confinement of the residential school. A coal delivery hatch no longer in use provided their exit. Although custodians hadn’t reported anything out of order in the workshops or classroom, Clara detected cigarette smoke. Mrs. Aalto confirmed she had also smelled smoke in the clothing and noticed the occasional burn hole. They agreed to keep quiet until Clara could do a bit of sleuthing.
“I learned to ferret out the truth about what my nursing students at the Galt Hospital were doing to circumvent the rules,” Clara told Mrs. Aalto. “I discovered through my young daughter, who was an accidental informer, that students were using a fire escape to get into the hospital after curfew hours.”
“Young people will do anything to stay out and have fun,” Mrs. Aalto said. “What did you do to stop the sneaking in?”
“I had the maintenance man cut off the lower rung. Unfortunately, an enterprising girl used her boyfriend’s shoulders to reach the ladder and fell, breaking her arm.” Clara didn’t add that the girl’s father was on the hospital board and furious when she suspended his daughter for six months.
Mrs. Aalto laughed heartily. “You’re quite a Sherlock Holmes!”
Clara marched off, enjoying the conspiracy.
One April evening, Clara decided to check the latrines. The crocuses hadn’t poked up yet from the ground, but the sewage stench was a sign that it was thawing. Clara stepped onto the concrete block and into the latrine, hoping she wouldn’t intercept anyone. The cubicle doors were covered in a graffiti text that she didn’t understand. Angry thoughts in Ojibwa or Cree, she imagined. The cigarette butts and gum wrappers littering the floor didn’t surprise her. Ivy had brought Clara into the modern world of gum chewing and smoking. Once a year, Clara smoked a cigarette so unattractively that she hoped Ivy would never take up the bad habit, but the tactic hadn’t worked.
The stalls themselves were grubby with human waste, but what caught Clara’s eye was a small metal container of condoms. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the naïveté of her sex talk. Picking up the container with her gloved hands, she opened it and shook the contents onto the floor, then felt sick. The rubber was in such a bad state that it could no longer be protective against pregnancy or disease.
Later that day, she called for a meeting with Reverend Hives, Dr. McCaig, and Mrs. Aalto. Dr. McCaig, as the medical officer of public health, had an established VD clinic downtown and wasn’t shy to talk about sexual behaviour.
The headmaster blamed himself for opening up the latrines and lamented that if they had the new school, such things wouldn’t happen.
Clara and Dr. McCaig exchanged amused glances.
“These young people are doing this because they’re angry,” the reverend added.
“They’re doing this because it’s fun,” Dr. McCaig said with a slight smile. “The young never think of consequences.”
“I kept a chart of the girls’ times of the month,” Mrs. Aalto ventured. She seemed pleased to be conspiring with the headmaster and doctor.
“If there’s a pregnancy, the girl might not know who the father is,” Dr. McCaig suggested. “It looked a bit like a free-for-all in that bathroom.”
Reverend Hives sighed. “This is a disaster.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Dr. McCaig retorted.
Clara was given the job of extracting the truth because she had given the facts-of-life lecture. However, when she assembled the girls, she didn’t expect them to be so tight-lipped. While the girls were from different Native communities, they shared the same hatred for the school and were united in their silence, even Doris Canoe.
The waiting ended a month after the girls’ silent treatment when Tina Courtney walked into Clara’s office. “My pinafore doesn’t fit, Matron.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Clara didn’t notice the rounded tummy on the girl’s small frame. Tina’s nickname was “Tiny.” Clara wondered if Tina had a boyfriend in the school or if her condition had happened because of coercion. Regardless of how she got in the family way, Clara thought, I’ll try to orchestrate an adoption. I did this several years ago in Lethbridge, and the
child and adoptive parents are still happy.
Tina was from a faraway reserve in Northern Ontario. She and her six-year-old brother, Bobby, had flown from Fort Hope to the Soo on the Consolidated Gold Mines plane. Until then, Fort Hope children had gone to a local school. Mine workers had brought alcohol into the community and violence erupted, causing the teacher to leave. To make amends, the Consolidated management offered to fly children to Shingwauk so they could continue their education.
“I thought my ladies-beware chat would have prevented something like this from happening,” Clara said.
“My mother will take the baby so I can stay in school,” Tina replied.
“Let’s start with a bigger tunic.”
Dr. McCaig confirmed that “Miss Tiny,” as he called her, would deliver a baby in August. The girl confided to the doctor that it had happened in the boys’ washroom when he suggested it had occurred in the outdoor latrines.
Reverend Hives, in his third year as headmaster, revealed the frustration of running a school condemned by the local health department and fire chief. “I’ll have to ask the young girl to leave the school. Alas, I can’t ask Consolidated to return a pregnant girl to her parents.”
“The home across from General Hospital cares for unwed girls and arranges their adoptions,” Dr. McCaig offered. He appeared as hamstrung as the headmaster. “We don’t have many options for this young girl.”
“Years ago I experienced the high-handedness of the Catholic Church over an adoption,” Clara said. “Give me a week and I’ll find an alternative to the Catholic Home for Wayward Girls.”
That evening, Clara woke from a dream with her heart pounding. She went to the kitchen, poured a small glass of brandy, and sat down.
Likely hearing Clara stirring, Ivy came into the kitchen to find her shaking. “What’s the matter, Mum?”
“A nightmare. We were back on the ship crossing the Atlantic with Annabel.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Clara placed a hand under her left breast. “Maybe that will calm me down. The dream was so real. I could feel Annabel’s baby, Florence, in my arms as the child’s mother hurled herself into the icy waters. In the dream, I was blaming myself for translating the letter from Florence’s Quebec grandparents, saying they’d never accept Annabel as their dead son’s wife.”
Ivy was five years old at the time of Annabel’s suicide. Florence’s father had died in the war, just as Clara’s husband had. It was the letter in French from the dead soldier’s parents, translated by Barnaby at Clara’s insistence, that had upset Annabel so terribly.
“That was twelve years ago, Mum. You arranged for Florence’s adoption and she’s now very happy. Were you thinking about Annabel before you went to sleep?”
“No, I was thinking about what I have to do for a pregnant sixteen-year-old Shingwauk girl so she won’t feel abandoned like Annabel.”
Ivy looked exasperated. “That’s what happens when you bring up the facts of life. The girls want to try it.”
“I had hoped for the opposite…. Do you remember, Ivy, when we landed in Montreal, there was a newspaperman who kept pestering me?”
“I was only five, but I could read the paper he kept waving at us. It said ‘British Nurse Takes Care of Catholic Baby’ or something like that.”
“I think it was how the priest tried to take little Florence that made me sour on the Catholic Church,” Clara said.
“I do remember how angry you were in the customs office. But you need your sleep. Are you worried this girl at Shingwauk might try to kill herself?”
“No. The girl’s happy to have her baby.”
Ivy frowned. “So was Annabel until she learned the Catholic parents of the dead soldier would abandon her but take the baby. Do you think this girl’s parents will do the same?”
“It won’t matter because I’ll arrange an adoption.”
“You did well with Annabel’s baby, Florence. She’s made Mary and Percy Sampson very happy.” Ivy rubbed Clara’s shoulder. “Mum, you tackled the Catholic Church and won.”
Clara smiled. “I’ll never forget that smug priest trying to put Florence in a Catholic orphanage. I’ll find a good home for Tina Courtney’s baby.”
“Have you asked Tina what she wants to do?”
“She’s digging in her heels right now, but she’ll come around. No sixteen-year-old wants to be burdened with a baby.”
“An Indian girl might not see things the same way,” Ivy suggested.
“Nor did the Catholic Church.”
CHAPTER 13
Even though Ivy knew Clara was busy making arrangements for Tina Courtney, she expected her mother to attend her graduation at Sault Collegiate. “Graduation will be held in our gymnasium at eleven in the morning. I’m banking on you being there, Mum.”
“I will if you give me the date. Perhaps Lily and I can bury the hatchet and we’ll both go.”
“That would make me so happy. The Italian students will come with an entourage of relatives. Grandmas, parents, and siblings will take up all the seats, so you better get to the school early.”
Ivy had completed her final year of secondary school with high marks in all subjects except French. To justify Ivy’s low mark in class, the French teacher had written in her end-of-year report: “Ivy frequently clowned around.”
“You’re going to have to speak some French when you get to Montreal,” Clara said.
“I’ll just have to wing it.”
“A wing and a prayer.” She’ll learn quickly how it matters to speak to patients in their own language, Clara thought.
At the graduation ceremony, Ivy won the English prize, which didn’t surprise Clara, since her daughter had won a literary prize at twelve, receiving a leather-bound edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, which she loved. The irony wasn’t lost on Ivy as the principal presented her with the heavy two-volume edition of the Petit Robert dictionary.
“We thought this appropriate for a young lady going to Montreal,” he said. “Shall I help you carry them?”
Clara chuckled. “She’ll have to bring the heavy tomes to the bedside of her French patients.”
Lily laughed, too. Clara had rarely spoken to Lily after the New Year’s Eve deceit. She had demanded of Lily: “If you could drive Ivy to Marconi Hall, why couldn’t you bring her home rather than let her be part of a police raid?”
“Maybe you should learn to drive,” Lily had retorted. But that was also when she apologized. Ivy’s graduation signalled a truce between the two sparring ladies.
Relatives of the graduates streamed out onto the hillside after the ceremony. The south side of the school had a commanding view of the St. Marys River and the American Soo. Parents, many with little education, showed their pride at having a graduate in the family. Bottles of home-brewed wine were handed to embarrassed teachers.
“I’m surprised to see liquor at a graduation exercise,” Clara said.
“Wine is the Italian way of saying thank you,” Lily said. “It serves as cash in this bad economy.”
Clara circulated through the crowd, occasionally asking, “What will you do with your diploma?” She expected the young Italians to say they would look for jobs at the steel plant, but she was surprised that most were going on to higher education. This contrasted with the Anglo-Saxon girls, who hoped to clerk in a ladies’ department store.
Ivy had disappeared with other graduates to a beach party, and Lily decided to have a cordial with Clara. They were both proud of Ivy making a nice group of friends and doing well in her school results. In Lethbridge, a few of the girls in Ivy’s class had nicknamed her “Ether” until the teacher demanded they stop or she would report it to their parents. Some of the meanness went underground, which was harder for the teacher to control.
“I noticed you had quite a conversation with Irma D’Agostina,” Lily said to Clara. “She’s a lovely girl.”
“An ambitious girl. She was accepted at the Universi
ty of Toronto.”
“And like most second-generation Italians, she’ll move to the east end,” Lily said. “They’ll become lawyers and doctors.”
“Marriage is hard enough, Lily, without adding religious or cultural hurdles. Ivy has already had too many complications brought on by the war. I don’t want her to have to work as I have. A good marriage will ensure she doesn’t have to.”
Clara and Lily rarely hugged, but they embraced each other with tears.
“We’ve both had our hardships,” Lily said. “And Ivy will, too. We can’t prevent that.”
CHAPTER 14
Mindful of how hard nursing students work, Clara wanted Ivy to spend at least part of her summer at a cottage before leaving for Montreal. Clara could afford to take three unpaid weeks of her own choosing. Before telling Reverend Hives about her plans to be away from school, she paid a visit to Maggie Stone, her real-estate agent, and told the woman she was looking for a cottage to rent. Cottages on a lake were relatively rare in England.
“I’d like my daughter to have a real Canadian holiday before she leaves,” Clara told Maggie.
“I have a cottage — or camp, as we Sooites say — to rent for the month of August at Batchawana Bay, a forty-five-mile train ride from the Soo. It’s an enclave of local families just on the edge of an Indian reserve — a beautiful area that’s attracted painters from Southern Ontario.”
“Ivy will be more interested in people her age than the scenery,” Clara said.
“The camp is next door to a family with a daughter Ivy’s age.”
“I’ll take it! You’ve served us well, Maggie.” Outside the agent’s office, she chuckled at the memory of the real-estate broker in Lethbridge. Sam McClintock was a shyster who rented brothels to prostitutes. No comparison, she thought.
The two-hour train ride wasn’t disappointing. Clara could understand why artists travelled long distances to capture on canvas the cascading rivers that flowed into Lake Superior through thick forests. This romantic notion was accompanied by the thought of the bugs they would encounter. The cottage was a twenty-minute walk from the train station through a well-trod path in the mosquito-ridden woods. But the buzzing mosquitos were completely forgotten the moment she and Ivy spotted Lake Superior beyond the sandy beach.
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