“The students missed their families. The affection they had received from their families was gone. You weren’t allowed to touch, or to give or receive affection. I think that was the hardest part for all of us, lacking that affection that we had from our parents and our families, or brothers and sisters. Back home, the older ones always took care of the smaller ones.”

“A lot of the students, like me, came from very poor families. When I was at Assiniboia, I asked the school if they could put me to work somewhere so I could buy toothpaste or whatever small items I needed. Because I never had any pocket money, I never went out on gatherings outside the school grounds.”

“At Assiniboia, some of us were assigned to wait on the staff, to serve them and bring the food to them. I used to look at the food and think, “How come our food is different?”