The Lansdowne Letters: Ceilings, Water Samples, and Salmon

Have you ever slogged through a dense, dry report
wondering about about the lives and stories behind the statistics?

Just two days ago I stumbled across a collection
of Indian Affairs Annual Reports, 1864-1990
in Library and Archives Canada.

I quickly located the 1961 report 
that covered the time my father taught in Lansdowne House
and began skimming through its 66 pages.

It's fascinating to see all of the federal government's 
annual interactions with the First Nations Peoples
summed up in 66 concise pages, 
complete with statistical tables.

Northern Ontario had 54 Indian schools 
scattered across its wilderness of rock, lake, and muskeg.
My father's was one of the 38 single-classroom schools. Table

Church of England Indian Day School

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

His school was mentioned in the report in a short phrase
as one of three schools constructed in Northern Ontario 
during the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1961.  Education 

But nowhere in the report could I find any mention
of the quality of construction completed
or whether the schools were actually equipped
with the furniture and supplies needed to function.

I can't help laughing as I remember what was not
in the brief innocuous words of the government report:
My father arriving in Lansdowne House
and finding the new school without a stick of furniture.

After a radio call to the Department of Indian Affairs in Nakina,
my father furnished the school temporarily
by borrowing old handmade desks stored in Father Ouimet's attic
and carrying them over to his school on the mainland via canoe.
He also scrounged card tables and chairs, sawhorses and lumber
around the community to accommodate his Indian children.

Dad's Children in Their Borrowed Desks

Photo by Donald MacBeath
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

That was the beginning of a number of challenges
my father had to overcome at his new Indian school
including shoddy construction, malfunctioning oil stoves,
and partial shipments of necessary equipment.

Fortunately people in Lansdowne House pulled together,
helping each other out with difficult tasks.


On Monday, December 12, 1960 
My father wrote:

Dear Sally:
I had a very busy weekend.  
Friday when I came to school, it was very cold, 
and the ceiling had fallen down again.  

Mike, Duncan, and I spent the morning putting up the ceiling ~
insulating it and sealing the fire door shut.
The three of us spent Friday afternoon banking the school
with snow to keep it warm.

Saturday morning I hauled four or five loads of wood for our shack,
and Saturday afternoon, I spent pumping oil 
from barrels into the school oil tanks.  
I pumped 400 gallons, and by the time I was finished,
I was nearly frozen.

  Dad's Shack on the Father's Island

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue 
All Rights Reserved

It was 25 below all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  
The temperature usually drops to 30 below and lower at night.

Sunday I spent the morning reading, and then about 11:00, 
Mike came over and asked me to help him take lake water samples.
I had dinner at the nursing station, and after dinner 
we put on moccasins and snowshoes and took off for the lake.

We walked five miles and drilled twelve holes in the ice.  
It took us from 1:00 to 5:00 to do it.  
We went up one side of the peninsula for about ¾ of a mile 
and then cut across the peninsula and down the other side.  
Oh, and we went around the island.

Lansdowne House and the Father's Island, 1935

Credit: Canada. Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Library and Archives Canada / PA-094992

I had supper at the Father’s and then came back to Mike’s 
and had a nice hot bath ~ 
my first bath in a bath tub since I arrived here.  
Boys but it felt good.  
I was so tired that Mike asked me to stay the night.  
I did.  I’m quite stiff today.

Tomorrow or Wednesday I have to go out after a Christmas tree for the school.
That will involve another three-mile hike on snowshoes.
This life sure is different from anything that I have been used to up till now.

I had gained five pounds last week, 
but I knocked three of them off this weekend.  
I weigh an even 200 pounds now.  
Another ten pounds to go, and I will have reached my goal weightwise.  
However, I have quite a ways to go yet to reach my goal strenghtwise.

I can tell you one thing though.  I’m in great shape from the hips down.
I never saw my legs so muscled up as they are now.

Dad in the Bush on the Peninsula

Photo Likely by Mike Flaherty

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue 
All Rights Reserved

Continued at Afternoon Recess:
Mr. Gowan is in visiting the settlement now.  
He is in in response to a letter that I mailed to him regarding the school
and the problems I have been having regarding the heating, etc.  

I did not get a chance to ask him about the forestry shack 
when he was in my school just now, 
but I will press him for an answer to this question 
as soon as I see him after school.  
I sure as hell …

And the rest of the letter is missing!
But I found the missing page from a letter 
written back in September attached to this one.
Maybe this letter's missing page will surface somewhere. 

It is funny to note that in the letter of September 12th
when my father was grounded in Nakina by bad weather,
he was trying to track down Mr. Gowan 
and learn where he was going to live
once he finally arrived in Lansdowne House:
"I have met and talked with a few more Indians,
but I still have not succeeded in seeing 
Mr. Gowan, the Indian Agent at Nakina.”

Now Dad was pressing him for permission to move into the forestry shack,
so my mother and we five children could join him.

It's fair to say that my father and the Indian Agent
had an up and down relationship.
The Department of Indian Affairs 
did not want employees to rock the boat, 
and my father was already making waves.
Oh the things to come that are missing in that bland report! 

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



Boars Head Lighthouse
Tiverton, Long Island, Bay of Fundy
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Links to Earlier Posts:

TLL: Freeze-up Approaches

TLL: A Big Bang


Notes:  

1.  Mike Flaherty:  The nurse at the nursing station.

2.  Duncan MacRae:
     Duncan worked for the Department of Transport,
     and his duties included running the DOT Weather Station.

3.  Father Maurice Ouimet:  
     The priest at the Catholic Mission in Lansdowne House.
     He was a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate,
     a missionary religious congregation in the Roman Catholic Church.
  
4.  Mr. Gowan:  As the chief administrator for the Department of Indian Affairs in Nakina,
     the Indian Agent managed the lives of all First Nations people in his jurisdiction
     which included the native people in Lansdowne House.

5.  Liquid Capacity Conversions:
      400 gallons = 1514 liters

6.   Temperature Conversion:  
     -25º F  = -31.6º C
     -30º F  = -34.4º C

7.  Distance Conversions: 
     5 miles =  8 kilometers 
     ¾ of a mile =  1.2 kilometers
     3 miles = 4.8 kilometers

8.  Weight Conversions:
          5 pounds = 2.26 kilograms
      200 pounds = 90.7 kilograms
        10 pounds =   4.5 kilograms

9.  My favorite statistic in the 1961  report:
     The Indians of British Columbia took 262,323 salmon for home consumption.  Source


For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House

Surrounded by Water

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia