The Lansdowne Letters: Ablutions and Indian Dogs

Without a doubt there is one thing we four MacBeath children
who attended my father’s school in Lansdowne House remember,
and not with fondness:  the daily government health program. 
We all, including my father, disliked it for various reasons.

Church of England Indian Day School

Lansdowne House, Northern Ontario

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

All Rights Reserved

My father wrote of this program in Indian schools throughout Northern Ontario
in his unpublished handbook for northern teachers:

“Another problem faced by the Indian teacher,
and incidentally, a constant source of irritation and frustration,
is the modification of the normal school program
which is necessary to accommodate the health program
being carried on by The Indian Affairs Branch
and The Department of National Health and Welfare.  

The Indian children rarely wash before coming to school,
and they quite frequently do not have breakfast before school.
The Indian families do not have regular meal hours like white people do.
In a lot of families, it is rare for the whole family to sit down together for a meal.
Something is usually boiling on the stove,
and the members of the family just eat when they are hungry.

Because of the irregularity and haphazardness of the eating habits,
and the fact that the children do not wash too frequently,
our health programs are practical rather than theoretical.

The teacher is expected to do his best to clean and nourish the pupils in school.
In the morning after the opening exercises, the pupils have a period
when they wash their hands and faces and brush their teeth.
The soap, towels, and toothbrushes are kept in the school,
and it is responsibility of the teacher to see 
that the various toilet articles are kept reasonably clean.

In addition to the ablutions period, the teacher has to dispense
powdered milk and vitalized biscuits twice a day to the children,
usually before the morning and afternoon recesses.  
The vitalized biscuits and the powdered milk are provided
in quite ample quantities by the branch to be dispersed by the teacher in school.  

It is quite a nuisance having to mix up the powdered milk twice a day 
and to make sure that the utensils and drinking cups are kept clean.  

It is very time consuming too, 
but when you see how much the children like the milk,
especially the little ones, 
it seems to be more than worth the effort.

Some of Dad's Little Ones

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

All Rights Reserved

The biscuits, on the other hand, cause you very little trouble
but are not very popular with the children.
I think the main difficulty with the biscuits is their appearance.
They are sort of like a better grade dog biscuit.

They remind me of the biscuits that my father used to feed to his foxes
when we had a large fox ranch back on Prince Edward Island.
They are flat, hard, light brown in color with a slight cinnamon taste,
but as nourishing as all get out.  

One or two biscuits constituted a very adequate supplement to any diet, and
six biscuits were sufficient to maintain health and strength over quite a period of time.
The children were not too fond of them, but I always made sure
that each child ate at least two biscuits a day.

There was one boy by the name of Soloman
who had me puzzled for quite a time.
He would take all the biscuits that I would give him.  

One day just to see how many he would take,
I let him take as many as he wanted.  
He took sixteen biscuits.  

I asked him why he liked them so much,
and he told me that he did not like them, he hated them; 
but his dog loved them.  
Oh well, at least the dog was well nourished.”

My Father's Handbook

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

What my brother Roy, my sisters Donnie and Barb, and I remember
with intense dislike is the wretched lumpy powered milk.  
The biscuits were edible, but the milk was ghastly.  

My father expected the four of us who attended school 
to model everything for the Indians.  
So we too had to wash our faces, brush our teeth, 
eat the biscuits, and drink the milk.  
Getting the milk down was doubly hard because 
we always ate a good breakfast before school, 
usually hot porridge with more powdered milk.

At some point during the first two or three days, Dad realized
I was helping my mother bake bread and prepare meals at home.
He decided I was capable of mixing up powdered milk twice a day.
He showed me how, and one of his irritating chores became mine.

There was a small room at the back of the classroom 
where our coats hung, the oil stoves sat, and supplies were stored.
Twice a day I dragged a cardboard drum more than half my height
out of its storage area, dug out cups of milk powder, 
and dumped them into two five-gallon buckets of water.  
Then I stirred and stirred, trying to squash all the lumps 
on the sides of the buckets until that milk was frothy.  

The overpowering smell of several cubic feet of milk powder 
in that drum threatened to upend my stomach as I prepared the milk.  
No wonder my father pawned that chore off on me!  
I was always thankful to secure the cover on the drum and stash it away.

Dad's Children in His Classroom
The storage room was behind the white wall.

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

All Rights Reserved

Then the Ojibway children and my less enthusiastic siblings lined up 
with their cups, ladled out a serving, and headed back to their desks
to eat their biscuits and drink their milk.  

All of us were welcome to go back for as many servings of milk as we wanted
until the buckets were empty, and extra biscuits were available on my father’s desk.  

We four would force down our milk; 
Roy glugged, Donnie stalled, Barbie pretended and shared, 
and I gagged my way through the dreadful, blue-white liquid. 
At least the biscuits had a better flavor.

Soloman’s dog was not the only Indian dog getting fatter.  
A number of times I saw my two younger sisters
slip government biscuits out of their pockets and toss them 
to the dogs hanging out near our back door step. 

The Four of Us Who Attended Dad's School

Back:  Roy and I

Front:  Barbie and Donnie with Gretchen between their feet.

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

All Rights Reserved

Our school did not have running water.  
Dad had to carry the water for mixing powdered milk
and cleaning the buckets, cups, and toothbrushes 
from the nearby DOT waterhole or from our home.  

He strained the water through cheesecloth 
and purified it by adding a few drops of chlorine bleach, 
because the lake water was dangerous for human consumption.
The nurse Mike O’Flaherty had confirmed this fact 
after he, Dad, and Duncan McRae collected water samples 
from around the peninsula and those samples were tested.

Dad crosses the peninsula on a water-sampling excursion. 

Photo Likely by Mike Flaherty

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

Dad went through a short period when he had Mom boil 
the school’s water on our kitchen stove, and he hauled
the heavy buckets of boiled to school twice a day.  

Soon he conscripted Roy and me to haul the water after lunch 
from home to school for the afternoon powdered milk.  
The path though the bush was long and narrow, 
and we slopped more water than we managed to carry to school.  

Boiling and lugging water so far proved to be onerous and time-consuming, 
so Dad soon reverted to straining lake water through cheesecloth
and purifying it with Javex.     

All classrooms have their daily routines,
but this government health program in the Indian schools took the prize.

Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



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

All Rights Reserved

For Map Lovers Like Me:

Lansdowne House, Ontario, Canada

Wikimedia

Lansdowne House

Surrounded by Water

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

Lansdowne House and the Father's Island, 1935

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