Sport and Physical Activity
Prior to the 1950s, neither the religious organizations nor Indian Affairs devoted much attention to organized sport and physical activity within the Indian administration. In terms of outdoor amenities, most schools lacked such basic playground equipment as swings and teeter-totters. Space and equipment, even for relatively inexpensive sports such as softball, volleyball, basketball, and track and field, were also almost nonexistent.
Boys and girls had very different experiences of sports and recreation at Residential Schools. In general, activities that involved vigorous or competitive action were reserved for the boys. Especially during the earlier part of the operation of the Residential School system, girls’ recreation—when it was provided at all—emphasized gentle, feminine activities such as supervised walks or playing with dolls. Kelly Bull, the student who attended Pelican Lake Residential School and then went on to Shingwauk, explained that to the best of his recollection female students “used to walk down to the [railroad] track, which would be about a mile and then back. I guess walks are good, but as we know exercise today, that did not happen.”[1] Seldom did female students have opportunities to engage in competitive sports. Some notable examples include the 1935 girls’ softball team at Brandon Residential School and a baseball team at Assiniboia Residential School in the late 1950s.
Both boys and girls had to “make do” with what little resources they had while at residential school and improvised to make their lives bearable. One female Métis survivor who attended a mission school in Lac La Biche, Alberta in the early 1900s stated that “recreation was what we made it.”[2] Kelly Bull explained what happened when no basketball facilities at Shingwauk were available:
I asked the principal; I said, “Can we convert the top of that barn into a basketball court?” “Sure, as long as you can get rid of that chaff.” So, we’d work Saturdays all day and get that stuff out of there and fix the floor. And we managed to get some plywood behind the baskets.[3]
Bill Kinoshemeg, who attended Garnier Residential School from 1942 to 1954, recalled that he and the other boys built their own hockey rink.[4] Students quickly learned that they had to rely on themselves to devise activities to improve their quality of life at school.
[1] Kelly Bull, interview conducted by Alexandra Giancarlo on September 21, 2020, transcription and recording.
[2] Métis Nation of Alberta. Metis Memories of Residential Schools: A Testament to the Strength of the Metis (Edmonton : Quality Color Press, 2004), 28.
[3] Kelly Bull, interview conducted by Alexandra Giancarlo on September 20, 2020, transcription and recording.
[4] Janice Forsyth, Reclaiming Tom Longboat : Indigenous Self-Determination in Canadian Sport (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2020), 150
The 1951 revisions to the Indian Act resulted in organized sports becoming a more pronounced feature in residential schools. The revised act called for the dismantling of the Residential School system and included provisions that authorized the Minister of Indian Affairs to enter into agreements with mainstream school boards and provincial governments to school Indigenous children. It also stated that Residential Schools were to follow provincial curricula, which included programs of physical education and extracurricular involvement in sports. Thus, while sports had always been part of the Residential School system, initially offered on an ad hoc basis, by the 1950s, they were a planned, integral part of the broader plan for assimilation.[5]
As more students began to attend integrated mainstream schools in the 1960s and beyond, many Residential Schools came to serve as residences, especially for the upper grades. This was the case for Kelly Bull and Chris Cromarty for their later years at Shingwauk (1953-1958 and 1952-1956 respectively) when they attended high school in Sault Ste. Marie but boarded at Shingwauk. Though having to travel from Shingwauk to Sault Ste. Marie Technical and Commercial High School interfered with their ability to participate in extracurricular activities, sports remained an important part of the young men’s lives. They both played for the Shingwauk Chiefs, the school basketball team that competed in the city league.[6]
Text credit: Janice Forsyth and Alexandra Giancarlo
[5] Janice Forsyth and Michael Heine, "A Higher Degree of Social Organization: Jan Eisenhardt and Canadian Aboriginal Sport Policy in the 1950s ", Journal of Sport History 35, no 2 (2008): 261-277.
[6] Kelly Bull, interview conducted by Alexandra Giancarlo on September 20, 2020, transcription and recording; Chris Cromarty, interview conducted by Alexandra Giancarlo on September 26, 2019, transcription and recording.
