Harsh Truths of Residential School

By Bill Robertson
The StarPhoenix
April 10, 2015

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Harsh+truths+residential+school/10964037/story.html

The Education of Augie Merasty.

What a title. It's meant to hearken back to other such 'Education of ' titles, some of which should be taken seriously, others ironically. In the case of Merasty's story, there's a good chance that both he, now living in Prince Albert, and the man who helped him get his story into print, Saskatoon writer David Carpenter, wanted the title to have a savage degree of irony to it.

Like many of his generation, Joseph Auguste Merasty was sent by his parents to a church-run residential school, in his case the Roman Catholic St. Therese school in Sturgeon Landing, Sask., just across the border from Manitoba. This was August 1935. There he would be kept until 1944, when he could legally quit and get away.

The surprising thing about this little book - hardcover, 76 pages, including the introduction and afterword - is the obvious delight Merasty still takes in some of the teachers and keepers he encountered at St. Therese. In the opening chapter, he takes time to acknowledge one principal about whom "(n)o one can ever say anything bad," or a sister who "played with us and really enjoyed her time at our playroom. She loved doing us favours." He closes, after more encomiums about various sisters and brothers, by saying of the engineer who looked after the boiler room, "He was a great guy."

That's the opening chapter. The next is entitled Hard Times, followed by such headings as Father Lazzardo Among the Children, Sisters of the Night and finally, one name alone, Lepeigne. What Merasty chronicles in these chapters - as he makes clear numerous times, which is to the best of his recollection, grounded in his written deposition to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings - is a gruelling litany of beatings, enforced suffering and horrific neglect, all in the name of God. This is Merasty's education.

"They wanted to show who was superior, and no rule or order was to be broken or spoken against ... To be disobedient was a sin in the eyes of God." This is what Merasty and his cohort were taught as "(e)very morning at breakfast, we ate rotten porridge and dry bread ...(and) watched an impeccably white-clothed cart eight feet long being wheeled to the Fathers' and Brothers' dining room. Right through the centre of the refectory for all us boys and girls to turn and watch ... all the beautiful food going past us 10 feet away." Later he adds, "I know they never practiced what they preached, not one iota."

Merasty says of one brother, "He took the blue ribbon for bad example for little boys," telling a ghastly story of sexual abuse, and relates further, "he was an emeritus of immorality, and no doubt he had an everlasting impact on many young boys." This is a theme that recurs constantly: how does one get beyond these abuses of power and privilege over young children? There are the five to six hundred beatings with a special hose from Father Lepeigne "to keep my mouth shut about that sexual abuse ... I have never told anyone about those assaults, until now. They were too painful and shameful to me." He says of his classmates: "These boys have all grown up with these nightmares, but only one of them is still alive."

That Merasty is still alive, albeit on the streets of Prince Albert, is a testament to his resilience and desire to have his story told. Carpenter does ample justice to the incredible work it took to get Merasty's story into print, from the serendipitous way they first got in touch to the myriad of phone calls and letters over many years to Carpenter's dogged pursuit of finally getting to meet Merasty face to face. For those who think residential school survivors should "just get over it," here is another bleak but amazingly fair-minded story that a broken trust and a broken spirit take many years, even generations, to heal.

In contrast to Merasty's story, Irwin Kahan's memoir, Tending the Tree of Life, though fraught with its unfortunate share of racial and religious hatreds, is mostly a story of family love and eventual success. Barbara Kahan, Irwin's daughter, put much of this memoir together from telephone conversations with her father, now in his 90s and in a care home.

Though born in Canada, Kahan's family came from Romania, escaping various pogroms directed at Jews. His family eventually settled in the Jewish farming community at Lipton, where they had a difficult time of it, partly because of the Depression and partly because they weren't farmers. Kahan mentions in passing some active prejudice against Jews, but also champions those of various ethnic and racial origins who helped his family, including First Nations people whose help, according to one "old-timer," allowed the settlers to "make a go of it."

Kahan fought in the war in the RCAF, seeing action from his base in England. He followed that experience with university, getting involved with the CCF and meeting his wife, Fannie. After his chapter on marriage and children comes his section on social work and working with his wife's brother, Abram Hoffer, the man who was experimenting with LSD at the mental hospital in Weyburn. Kahan took LSD a number of times and talks freely about its lifealtering impact, both for himself and for those with various mental illnesses. He was also involved in starting the Schizophrenia Foundation of Saskatchewan, followed by the Canadian foundation.

Kahan closes his book with some profound reflections on the value and believability of religion and looks at his own ability to live in the world and respond to its many challenges. His memoir, outlining his sturdy grounding in family, culture and religion, allowed him a full and productive life from which to meditate on these subjects. What a contrast to Merasty and his classmates, who were gutted of their language, culture and family, declared part of a failed experiment and set loose to do the best they could.