just wanted some explanations. He said, 'I, I will, I will go, I would go in jail, I will go in jail if I didn't let you go.'"35
When she was four or five, Lynda Pahpasay McDonald was taken by plane from her parents' home on Sydney Lake, Ontario.
I looked outside, my mom was, you know, flailing her arms, and, and I, and she must have been crying, and I see my dad grabbing her, and, I was wondering why, why my mom was, you know, she was struggling.
She told me many years later what happened, and she explained to me why we had to be sent away to, to residential school. And, and I just couldn't get that memory out of my head, and I still remember to this day what, what happened that day. And she told me, like, she was so hurt, and, and I used to ask her, "Why did you let us go, like, why didn't you stop them, you know? Why didn't you, you know, come and get us?" And she told me, "We couldn't, because they told us if we tried to do anything, like, get you guys back, we'd be thrown into jail." So, they didn't want to end up in jail, 'cause they still had babies at, at the cabin.36
Dorothy Ross recalled how unhappy her father was about sending his children to residential school. "As we got older, I remember Dad, I knew Dad was already angry. He was angry at the school for taking us away, for taking myself and my siblings. He couldn't, couldn't do, he couldn't do anything to help us. Either, same thing with my mom, 'There's nothing I can do to help you.'"37
Albert Marshall hated his parents for sending him to the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school. Many years later, he asked his brother what the family reaction had been to his being sent to school.
He didn't answer me for a while, a long time. He says, "Nobody said anything for days," because my father was crying every day. Finally my father told the family, "I failed as a father. I couldn't protect my child, but I just couldn't because you know what the Mounties, the priest, the Indian agents told me? They told me, if I don't, if I resist too much then they would take the other younger, younger brother and younger, younger children." Then he says, "It was not a choice. I could not say, take them or take the three of them. But I couldn't say nothing and I know I have to live with that."38
Jaco Anaviapik's parents opposed his being sent to the Pond Inlet hostel in what is now Nunavut.
When they started taking kids off the land to attend school the rcmp boat would pick us up. There is no doubt that our parents were intimidated by the police into letting us go. They were put in a position where they could not say no. Even though they
