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- Physician advocacy essential for Canada's First Nations
- Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings: Tuberculosis took the lives of students at residential schools for at least 40 years
- THE HUMAN TOLL: Sexual abuse at heart of pain
E
78
C2B93
1922
c.1
ROBA
THE STORY
OF
A NATIONAL CRIME
BY
P. H. BRYCE, M.A., M.D.
BEING
AN APPEAL FOR JUSTICE
TO THE
INDIANS OF CANADA
The Wards of the Nation :
Our Allies in the Revolutionary War :
Our Brothers-in-Arms in the Great War.
Published by James Hope and Sons, Limited
OTTAWA. CANADA
1922
PRICE, 35 CENTS
THE STORY OF A NATIONAL CRIME
BEING A
Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians
of Canada from 1904 to 1921
BY
DR. P. H.[Peter Henderson] BRYCE, M.A., M.D.
I. By Order in Council dated
Jan. 22nd, 1904, the writer was
appointed Medical Inspector to the Department of the Interior and of Indian Affairs, and was entrusted with the health interests of the Indians of Canada.
The Order in Council recites :
CLIFFORD SlFTON, Minister of the Interior and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs
" The undersigned has the honour to report that there is urgent necessity for the appointment of a medical inspector to represent the Department of the Interior and Department of Indian Affairs. The undersigned believes that the qualifications for the position above mentioned are possessed in an eminent degree by Mr. Peter Henderson Bryce, M. D., at present and for a number of years past Secretary for the Provincial Board of Health of Ontario, and who has had large experience in connection with the public health of the province. "
(Signed) CLIFFORD SlFTON,
Minister of the Interior and Superintendent General of Indian Affairs.
For the first months after the writer's appointment he was much engaged in organizing the medical inspection of immigrants at the sea ports ; but he early began the systematic collection of health statistics of the several hundred Indian Bands scattered over Canada. For each year up to 1914 he wrote an annual report on the health of the Indians, published in the Departmental report, and on instructions from the minister made in 1907 a special inspection of thirty-five Indian schools in the three prairie provinces. This report was published separately ; but the recommendation
end of page 3
contained in the report were never published and the public knows nothing of them. It contained a brief history of the origin of the Indian Schools, of the sanitary condition of the schools and statistics of the health of the pupils, during the 15 years of their existence. Regarding the health of the pupils, the report states that 24 per cent, of all the pupils which had been in the schools were known to be dead, while of one school on the File Hills reserve, which gave a complete return to date, 75 per
cent, were dead at the end of the 16 years since the school opened.
Recommendations of School Report 1907
Briefly the recommendations urged,
(1) Greater school facilities, since only 30 per cent, of the children of school age were in attendance ;
(2) That boarding schools with farms attached be established near the home reserves of the pupils .
(3) That the government undertake the complete maintenance and control of the schools, since it had promised by treaty to insure such ; and further it was recommended that as the Indians grow in wealth and intelligence they should pay at least part of the cost from their own funds ; [Most of the maitenance and control was given to the churches]
(4) That the school studies be those of the curricula of the several Provinces in which the schools are situated, since it was assumed that as the bands would soon become enfranchised and become
citizens of the Province they would enter into the common life and duties of a Canadian community ; [The curricula ended up being inferior]
(5) That in view of the historical and sentimental relations between the Indian schools and the Christian churches the report recommended that the Department provide for the management of the schools, through a Board of Trustees, one appointed from each church and approved by the minister of the Department. Such a board would have its secretary in the Department but would hold regular meetings, establish qualifications for teachers, and oversee the appointments as well as the control of the schools ;
(6) That Continuation schools be arranged for on the school farms and that instruction methods similar to those on the File Hills farm colony be developed ;
(7) That the health interests of the pupils be guarded by a proper medical inspection and that the local physicians be encouraged through the provision at each school of fresh air methods in the care and treatment of cases of tuberculosis.
II. The annual medical reports from year to year made reference
end of page 4
to the unsatisfactory health of the pupils, while different local medical officers urged greater action in view of the results of their experience from year to year. As the result of one such report the Minister instructed the writer in 1909 to investigate the health of the children in the schools of the Calgary district in a letter containing the following :
"As it is necessary that these residential schools should be filled with a healthy class of pupils in order that the expenditure on Indian education may not be rendered entirely nugatory, it seems desirable that you should go over the same ground as Dr. Lafferty and check his inspection. "
Reccomendations based on Examination of 243 School Children
These instructions were encouraging and the writer gladly undertook the work of examining with Dr. J. D. Lafferty the 243 children of 8 schools in Alberta, with children. the following results :
(a) Tuberculosis was present equally in children at every age ;
(b) In no instance was a child awaiting admission to school found free from tuberculosis ; hence it was plain that infection was got in the home primarily ;
(c) The disease showed an excessive mortality in the pupils between five and ten years of age ;
(d) The 10,000 children of school age demanded the same attention as the thousand children coming up each year and entering the schools annually.
Recommendations, made in this report, on much the same lines as those made in the report of 1907, followed the examination of the 243 children ; but
owing to the active opposition of Mr. D. C. Scott, and his advice to the then Deputy Minister, no action was taken by the Department to give effect to the recommendations made.
This too was in spite of the opinion of
Prof. George Adami, Pathologist of McGill University, in reply to a letter of the Deputy Minister asking his opinion regarding the management and conduct of the Indian schools. Prof. Adami had with the writer [P H Bryce] examined the children in one of the largest schools and was fully informed as to the actual situation. He stated that
it was only after the earnest solicitation of Mr. D. C. Scott that the whole matter of Dr. Bryce's report was prevented from becoming a matter of critical discussion at the annual meeting of the National Tuberculosis Association in 1910, of which he was then president,
end of page 5
and this was only due to Mr. Scott's distinct promise that the Department would take adequate action along the lines of the report.
Prof. Adami stated in his letter to the Deputy Minister :
"It was a revelation to me to find tuberculosis prevailing to such an extent amongst these children, and as many of them were only suffering from the early incipient form of the disease, though practically everyone was affected, when under care it may be arrested, I was greatly impressed with the responsibility of the government in dealing with these children .... I can assure you my only motive is a great sympathy for these children, who are the wards of the government and cannot protect themselves from the ravages of this disease. "
III. In reviewing his correspondence the writer finds a personal letter, written by him [Prof. Adami] to the Minister dated March 16th, 1911, following an official letter regarding the inaction of the Department with regard to the recommendations of the report. This letter refers to the most positive promises of Mr. D. C. Scott that the Department would at once take steps to put the suggestions contained in the report into effect. The letter further says :
" It is now over 9 months since these occurrences and I have not received a single communication with reference to carrying out the Suggestions of our report. Am I wrong in assuming that the vanity of Mr. D. C. Scott, growing cut of his success at manipulating the mental activities of Mr. Pedley, has led him to the fatal deception of supposing that his cleverness will be equal to that of Prospero in calming any
storm that may blow up from a Tuberculosis Association or any where else, since he knows that should he fail he has through memoranda on file placed the responsibility on Mr. Pedley and yourself. In this particular matter, he is counting upon the ignorance and indifference of the public to the fate of the Indians ; but with the awakening of the health conscience of the people, .we are now seeing on every hand, I feel certain that serious trouble will come out of departmental inertia, and I am not personally disposed to have any blame fall upon me. "
Dr. W. A. Roche as Superintendent General of Indian Affairs
It will then be understood with what pleasure the writer hailed the appointment of Dr. W. A. Roche as Superintendent General of Indian Affairs after the year's term of the Hon. R. Rogers, whose chief activity was the investigation of the Deputy Minister, which led up to his retirement. Now at last he said,
" A medical minister exists who would understand the situation as relates to the health of the Indians." So an early opportunity was taken to set forth in a memorandum to Dr. Roche, dated Dec. 9th, 1912, data and statistics relating to the several hundred scattered
end of page 6
bands on whose health the total expenditure was but little more than $2 per capita, while the death rate in many of the bands was as high as forty per thousand. The reply acknowledging receipt of this memorandum contained the following :
Dr Roche is Urge to Act
" There is certainly something in your suggestion that should meet with every consideration, and some time when I can find an opportunity and it is convenient for you, I shall be pleased to discuss this matter with you."
As Dr. Roche became ill and was absent for some months nothing further was done ; but on his return the writer [P H Bryce] in a personal interview urged that this serious medical Indian problem be taken up in earnest. It was stated that medical science now knows just what to do and what was necessary was to put our knowledge into practice. Dr. Roche stated that on his return from the West he would certainly take the matter up. Since that moment however, to the present, the matter has awaited the promised action.
The writer had done no regular inspection work since Mr. D. C. Scott was made Deputy minister in 1913, but had in each year up to 1914 prepared his medical report, printed in the annual report of the Department. About this time the following letter was received :
[To] P. H. Bryce, M. D. Ottawa,
Medical Inspector, June 17, 1914.
Immigration Branch.
Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter of the first instant, asking that the files of the Department, containing our medical officers' reports be placed at your disposal, so that you may peruse them to enable you to furnish a report for publication, I desire to point out, that by the organization of this Department, under the Civil Service Act of 1908 you were not included therein and since that time your whole salary has been a charge against the Department of the Interior. It is true that since then we have availed ourselves of your services on a few occassions; but during the past year, so far as I am aware, you have not been called upon to do any duty for the Department. I may say also that Dr. Grain of Winnipeg, has lately been appointed to oversee the Western schools and reserves and his time is fully occupied in the work. Under these circumstances, I do not think that you should be asked to furnish a report on the medical work in connection with Indians during the fiscal year.
end of 7
I must thank you cordially for the offer to again prepare a report for publication. Yours sincerely,
DUNCAN C. SCOTT,
D. S. G. I. A.
Mr Scott's Malign Influence
The transparent hypocrisy contained in this remarkable communication sent, not by the Minister Dr. W. A. Roche, but by his deputy, will be seen in the fact that from 1908, five annual reports
had been prepared by the writer, while the special report on the eight schools of the Calgary district with the recommendations already referred to had been made on the instructions of the Department in 1909. The other reason given, to the effect that a certain physician, since retired for good cause, quite inexperienced in dealing with Indian disease problems, had been appointed as Medical Inspector for the Western Provinces, showed how little the Minister cared for the solution of the tuberculosis problem. As a matter of fact the Order in Council appointing the writer [Bryce] had neither been changed nor rescinded, while the transfer to the Interior Department of the payment of the total salary was made in 1908 in order that his regular increase of pay under the new classification of the Civil Service Act of that year might be made.
Dr Roche's Culcable Apathy
IV. As the war broke out in 1914 and immigration was largely suspended, an unexpected opportunity occurred through Dr. Roche's the greater time at his disposal for the writer's special culcable apathy- knowledge and experience to be utilized in improving the health of the Indians ; but in no single instance, thereafter, were the services of the writer [Bryce] utilised by this medical Minister, who in 1917 was transferred to preside over the Civil Service Commission, and who must be held responsible for the neglect of what proved to be a very serious situation. In 1917, the writer prepared, at the request of the Conservation Commission, a pamphlet on "The Conservation of the Man Power of Canada," which dealt with the broad problems of health which so vitally affect the man power of a nation. The large demand for this pamphlet led to the preparation of a similar study on " The Conservation of the Man Power of the Indian Population of Canada, " which had already supplied over 2000 volunteer soldiers for the Empire. For obvious reasons this memorandum was not published, but was
end of page 8
placed in the hands of a minister of the Crown in 1918, in order that all the facts might be made known to the Government.
Value of Manpower of Indians
This memorandum began by pointing out that in 1916 4,862,303 acres were included in the Indian reserves and that 73,716 acres were then under cultivation ; that while the total per capita income for farm crops in that year in all Canada was $110 that from the Indian reserves was $69, while it was only $40 for Nova Scotia. It is thus obvious that from the lowest standard of wealth producers the Indian population of Canada was already a matter of much importance to the State. From the statistics given in the " Man Power " pamphlet it was made plain that instead of the normal increase in the Indian population being 1.5 per cent, per annum as given for the white population, there had been between 1904 and 1917 an actual decrease in the Indian population in the age period over twenty years of 1,639 persons whereas a normal increase would have added 20,000 population in the 13 years. The comparisons showed that the loss was almost wholly due to a high death rate since, though incomplete, the Indian birth rate was 27 per thousand or higher than the average for the whole white population.
The memorandum states,
" As the Indian people are an unusually strong native race, their children at birth are large and sturdy, and under good sanitary conditions have a low mortality.
Thus of the 134 children born in the File Hills Farm Colony in 17 years only[?] 34 died, while of 15 births in 1916 only 1 died, giving the unusually low rate of 77 per thousand within the year. "
As it was further desirable to obtain the latest returns of deaths by age periods and causes the writer [Bryce] communicated with the Secretary of the Indian Department asking for such returns.
In reply he received the following letter.
Dear Dr. Bryce, Ottawa, May 7, 1918.
I have your letter of the third instant asking for certain vital statistics. I am unable to give you the figures you ask as we are not receiving any vital statistics now, and last year we obtained only the total number of births and deaths from each Agency. These were not printed and are not therefore available for distribution. The causes of deaths have never been noted in our reports and we have no information.
Your obedient servant,
(Signed) J. D. McLean,
Asst. Deputy and Secretary.
end of page 9
Entire Absence of Causes of Death
Thus after more than a hundred years of an organized Department of Indian Affairs in Canada, though the writer [Bryce] had at once begun, in 1904, on his appointment, the regular collection of statistics of diseases and deaths from the several Indian bands, he was officially informed that, in a Department with 287 paid medical officers, due to the direct reactionary influence of the former Accountant and present Deputy Minister, no means exists, such as is looked upon as elementary in any Health Department today, by which the public or the Indians themselves can learn anything definite as to the actual vital conditions amongst these wards of the nation.
A study of the 1916-17 statistics shows that in the wage earning period of life, from 21 to 65 years, the Indians of Alberta had 161 less population, of British Columbia 901 less, of Ontario 991 less and of Nova Scotia 399 less.
The Famous File Hills colony
In order however to show how an Indian population may increase, the writer[Bryce] obtained from Mr. W. M. Graham, (at that time Superintendent of the File Hills colony from 1901 to 1917), the complete record for this period. In all there were 53 colonists from the neighbouring Indian schools, starting with five in 1901, who had taken up homesteads in the colony. Most of them married although 15 either left or had died previous to marriage. In June 1917 there were resident 38 men, 26 women and 106 children, or 170 colonists in all. Thus we have the picture of a young Indian population of 49 males who remained in the colony, of whom 10 died of tuberculosis after an average sickness there of 2.7 years and of 29 females of whom 3 died and to whom had been born in all 134 chiidren.
In 1916 the colony had 3,991 acres under cultivation or over a hundred acres per farmer. This was one nineteenth of the total area cultivated by 105,000 persons in all the Indian bands in Canada, while 87,498 bushels of grain were grown, and 33,052 head of live stock were kept. That this variation from the normal is viewed as an anomaly may be judged from the following extract from the Deputy Minister's Annual Report for 1917 ; " The Indian population does not vary much from
year to year. " How misleading this statement is may be judged from the fact that between 1906 and 1917 in the age periods over 20 years in every Province, but two, the Indians had decreased in population by a total of 2,632 deaths.
end of page 10
Extraordinary Mortality from Tuberculosis
Naturally it is asked ; Why this decrease should have taken place ? In 1906 the report of the Chief Medical Officer shows that statistics collected from 99 local medical officers having the care of a population of 70,000 gave a total of 3,169 cases of tuberculosis or 1 case for every seven in a total of 23,109 diseases reported, and the death rates in several large bands were 81.8, 82.6, and in a third 86.4 per thousand; while the ordinary death rate for 115,000 in the city of Hamilton was 10.6 in 1921. What these figures disclose has been made more plain year by year, namely that tuberculosis, contracted in infancy, creates diseases of the brain, joints, bones, and to a less degree of the lungs and also that if not fatal till adolescence it then usually progresses rapidly to a fatal termination in consumption of the lungs.
The Amazing Reduction of Tuberculosis in Hamilton
The memorandum prepared by the writer in 1918 further showed that the city of Hamilton with a population greater than the total Indian population had reduced the death rate from tuberculosis in the same period, from 1904 to 1917, by nearly 75 per cent, having in 1916 actually only 68 deaths. The memorandum further states, " If a similar method had been introduced amongst the bands on the health-giving uplands of Alberta, much might have been done to prevent such a splendid race of warriors as the Blackfeet from decreasing from 842 in 1904 to 726 in 1916, or, allowing for natural increase, an actual loss of 40 per cent, since they should have numbered at least 1,011."
V. Such then is the situation made known to the Hon. N. W. Rowell, who applied to the writer [Bryce] in 1918 to supply him with such facts and arguments as would support the Bill he proposed to introduce into Parliament for the creation of a Federal Department of Health.
It was with pleasure that the memorandum dealing with Indian health matters was given him, along with a proposed Bill for a Department of Health, which contained amongst its provisions one for including the Indian Medical Service along with the other Medical Federal services in the new Department. In the special medical committee called by Mr. Rowell to discuss the
end of page 11
Bill, such inclusion was of course approved of and the clause appeared ill the First Reading in Parliament.
Occult Influences again Rob the Indians of a Chance
But something then happened : What special occult influences came into action may be imagined, when the Second Reading of the Bill took place with this clause regarding the Indian Medical Service omitted. It has been noted that from 1913 up to the time when Dr. W. A. Roche was eliminated from the government in 1917 to make room for a more hardy and subtle representative of Unionism the activities of the Chief Medical Inspector of the Indian Department, had, in practice, ceased ; yet now he was to see as the outcome of all this health legislation for which he had been struggling for years, the failure of one of his special health dreams, which he has hoped to see realized.
One who Failed Then in their Agony
If the writer [Bryce] had been much disturbed by the incapacity or inertia of a medical Minister in the matter of the Indian health situation, he now saw that it was hopeless to expect any improvement in it when the new Minister of Health, who had posed as the Bayard of Social Up-lift, the Protagonist of Prohibition, the Champion of Oppressed Labour, the Sir Galahad of Women's rights, and the preux Qhevalier of Canadian Nationalism, could, with all the accumulated facts and statistics before him, condemn to further indefinite suffering and neglect these Wards of the Canadian people, whom one Government after another had made treaties with and whom deputies and officials had sworn to assist and protect.
A side light however, may serve to illumine the beclouded situation. With the formation of the Unionist Government the usual shuffle of portfolios was made and the then dominating Solicitor General, grown callous and hardened over a franchise Bill, which disfranchised many thousands of his fellow native-born citizens, had now become Minister of the Interior. That the desire for power and for the control appointments should override any higher consideration such as saving the lives of the Indians must be inferred from the following statement of the Hon. A. Meighen, Minister of the Interior and now Prime Minister. On June 8th, 1920, the estimates of the Indian Department were under consideration in Parliament. Page 3275 of Hansard has the following :
end of page 12
Arthur Meighen, Minister of the Interior and now Prime Minister
Mr. D. D. McKenzie, " I understand that frightful ravages are being made amongst them (Indians) by tuberculosis and the conditions of life are certainly not such as to preserve them from the ravages of that dread disease. I should be pleased to know at the earliest possible moment if that branch of the Department was going to be transferred to the Department of Health. "
Mr. Meighen, " The Health Department has no power to take over the matter of the health of the Indians. That is not included in the Act establishing the department. It was purposely left out of the Act. I did not then think and do not think yet that it would be practicable for the Health Department to do that work, because they would require to duplicate the organization away in the remote regions, where Indian reserves are, and there would be established a sort of divided control and authority over the Indians. "
Mr. Beland, " Is tuberculosis increasing or decreasing amongst the Indians? "
Mr. Meighen, " I am afraid I cannot give a very encouraging answer to the question. We are not convinced that it is increasing, but it is not decreasing.
Red Tape Condemns the Indians because of a Pitiable Inertia
In this reply of the Minister we see fully illustrated the dominating influence, stimulated by the reactionary Deputy Minister, which prevents even the simplest effective efforts to deal with the health problem of the Indians along modern scientific lines. To say that confusion would arise is the equiavalent of saying that co-operation between persons toward a desired social end is impracticable; whereas
co-operation between Provincial and Federal Health Departments is the basis upon which real progress is being made, while further a world peace is being made possible in a league of once discordant nations.
The Premier has frankly said he can give no encouraging answer to Dr. Beland's question, while at the same moment he
condemns the Indians to their fate by a pitiable confession of utter official helplessness and lack of initiative, based upon a cynical " non possumus." Thus we find
a sum of only $10,000 has been annually placed in the estimates to control tuberculosis amongst 105,000 Indians scattered over Canada in over 300 bands, while
the City of Ottawa, with about the same population and having three general hospitals spent thereon $342,860.54 in 1919 of which $33,364.70 is devoted to tuberculous patients alone. The many difficulties of our
end of page 13
problem amongst the Indians have been frequently pointed out, but the means to cope with these have also been made plain. It can only be said that any cruder or weaker arguments by a Prime Minister holding the position of responsibility to these treaty wards of Canada could hardly be conceived, and such recall the satirical jibe of Voltaire, regarding the Treaty of Shackmaxoii between Wm. Penn and the Indians, which he describes as " the only known treaty between savages and Christians that was never sworn to and never broken. "
The degree and extent of this criminal disregard for the treaty pledges to guard the welfare of the Indian wards of the nation may be guaged from the facts once more brought out at the meeting of the National Tuberculosis Association at its annual meeting held in Ottawa on March 17th, 1922. The superintendent of the Qu'Appelle Sanatorium, Sask., gave there the results of a special study of 1575 children of school age in which advantage was taken of the most modern scientific methods. Of these 175 were Indian children, and it is very remarkable that the fact given that some 93 per cent, of these showed evidence of tuberculous infection coincides completely with the work done by Dr. Lafferty and the writer in the Alberta Indian schools in 1909.
It is indeed pitiable that during the thirteen years since then this trail of disease and death has gone on almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs, placed by the B. N. A. Act especially in charge of our Indian population, and that a Provincial Tuberculosis Commission now considers it to be its duty to publish the facts regarding these children living within its own Province.
14
EPILOGUE.
This story should have been written years ago and then given to the public ; but in my oath of office as a civil Servant swore that " without authority on that behalf, I shall not disclose or make known any matter or thing which comes to my knowledge by reason of my employment as Chief Medical Inspector of Indian Affairs. " Today I am free to speak, having been retired from the Civil Service and so am in a position to write the sequel to the story. It has already been stated that in 1918 and 1919 I had supplied to my then Minister of Immigration, the Hon. J. A. Calder and to the then President of the Council, the Hon. N. W. Rowell various memoranda regarding the establishment of a Federal Department of Health, amongst these being a draft of the Bill which later became the Act establishing the Department of Health. To my disappointment the position of Deputy Minister of Health to which I had a right to aspire after twenty-two years as Chief Medical Officer of Onatrio, and fifteen years as Chief Medical Officer of Immigration and Indian Affairs was given to another, wholly outside the Federal Civil Service and in violation of the principle of promotion, which was supposed to prevail when the patronage system was to be done away with. The excuse was on the ground of my advancing years, although at that moment the position of Auditor General was being filled by the promotion of one who had reached sixty-five years, while a Historian to the Militia Department was appointed at a salary of $7,000 per year, who likewise had reached just then this age.
Naturally I felt that it would be impossible to carry on and retain my self respect as a subordinate, while performing the duties, which I had been engaged in for fifteen years as Chief Medical Officer and so asked that I be given other congenial work.
That my claims to the position were deemed reasonable may be judged from the following letter addressed to my brother the Rev. Professor Bryce, D.D., of Winnipeg. Writing from Victoria, B. C., on March 9th, 1920, to myself he said, quoting from a letter received from the Hon. Mr. Calder in reply to one of his own :
end of page 15
I quite appreciate the views of your brother in reference to his situation here, and personally would be only too glad to do anything I can to help out. When the Public Health Department was created, your brother certainly had claims to the appointment as Deputy Minister.
Owing to his advanced age however, Council finally concluded that a younger man should receive the appointment. The government has on several occasions considered the question of placing your brother in some other branch of the Service, and I have no doubt that this will be arranged in some way or other shortly. He is now an official of the Public Health Department. He could of course remain there but this apparently is not agreeable to him. As a consequence some other arrangement, if possible must be made.
Signed, J. A. Calder.
My indignation at subsequent treatment may be imagined when the same Mr. Calder introduced the Act in 1920, commonly known as the Calder Act, providing for the " Retirement of Certain Members of the Civil Service. " This Act states that anyone retired thereunder shall receive 1/60 of his salary for each year of service. So it came about that on the 17th Sept. 1920, I received notice that I was recommended for retirement under this Act.
The clause of the Act quoted for my information states :
" Section 2 (3). When it is decided to retire anyone under the provisions of this Act, notice in writing giving the reasons for such retirement shall be sent to such person, and he shall have the right to appeal to the Civil Service Commission, and the Commission, after giving such person an opportunity to be heard, shall make full report to the Governor in Council and the decision of the Council thereon shall be final. "
I appealed and in my appeal stated that no reason was assigned as provided in the Act, and further that I was still Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Indian Affairs as set out in the Order in Council of 1904.
As bearing on this point made in my appeal I find the following in Hansard of June 8th, 1921. The matter being dealt with is the amendment to the Calder Act :
Mr. Fielding : But cases have been brought to my attention of men in advanced years some may think them old, I do not being notified of their retirement, although they are blessed with good health and strength, both mental and physical, and are well able to discharge their duties. How is such a man dealt with ?
Mr. Calder : No man will be notified unless a proper official has advised that his condition of life is such that in the public interest he should be retired
end of page 16
Mr. Calder : That in the main has been the practice in the past and that is what the law contemplated last year. The question of age alone was not taken into consideration.
But it was hardly to be supposed that Dr. W. A. Roche, now Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, who during the years 1913-17 referred to had failed to utilise my services when he was Superintendent of Indian Affairs would now consider my services as necessary in that Department. So my protest was of no avail ; my elimination from the Service had been decreed and I received
the following Order in Council :
Ottawa, 14th Feb., 1721.
The Committee have had before them a report, dated Feb. 1st, 1921, from the acting Secretary of State, from the Civil Service Commission :
In accordance with the provisions of Cap. 67, 10-11 George V. " An Act to provide for the Retirement of Certain Members of the Public Service " the Civil Service has to report that Dr. P. H. Bryce of the Department of Health at Ottawa was recommended by the Deputy Minister of Health for retirement ; that under Section 2 (3) of the said Act he was given a personal hearing, which has resulted in the Civil Service Commission now recommending that his appeal be not allowed, but that his retirement be made effective from the 1st of March, 1921. Dr. Bryce was born on August 17th, 1853, and is consequently sixty-seven years of age. He was appointed temporarily to the Service on Feb. 1st, 1904, and was made permanent on September 1st, 1908, and therefore will have been in the Service seventeen years and one month on the 1st March, 1921, the date upon which his retirement is proposed to be effecive."
So it came about that I was retired In March. 1921, without any years being added to my term of Federal service, though I had been brought to Ottawa as an expert after 22 years in the Ontario Health Service, as is provided for in the Superannuation Act of 1870. Neither did I get any gratuity on leaving the Ontario Service after twenty-two years, the excuse being then given that I was improving my position.
The irony and injustice of this Order in Council will be seen when it is stated that a similar Order was passed on May 18th, 1921, retiring 231 persons from the Customs Department as being over sixty-five years of age ; but which was recalled when the protests of the many friends of men who were faithfully performing their duties were made. These and hundreds of other Civil
end of page 17
Servants of similar age are in different Departments still performing their duties.
In view, therefore, of all the facts herein recited I make my appeal for simple justice ; that I be permitted to carry on my work as Chief Medical Officer of Indian Affairs, and I believe that I have the right to demand, after a thorough investigation into all the facts of the case, that the chief obstacle, as set forth in the story, to insuring the health and prosperity of the one hundred thousand Indians, the Wards of the nation, be removed.
Since the time of Edward I, the people have ever exercised their historic right to lay their petitions before the King and Parliament. I now desire herein respectfully to bring my appeal for the Indians of Canada before the King's representative and the Parliament of Canada, feeling sure that justice will be done both to them and to myself.
P. H. BRYCE.
end of page 18
Physician advocacy essential for Canada's First Nations
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/179/7/728.full#xref-ref-3-1
by Peter Warren MB B Chir
doi: 10.1503/cmaj.081290
CMAJ September 23, 2008 vol. 179 no. 7 728
The Government of Canada recently apologized to our First Nations' people for its
residential school policy, which effectively
suppressed the linguistic, cultural and spiritual practices of their pupils, with the
ultimate aim of assimilation.
Federal underfunding coupled with
harsh discipline, exacerbated by the presence of
abusive staff in some schools, also served to demoralize students and compromise their resistance to disease.
The apology has been a long time coming. A century ago,
Dr. P.H. [
Peter Henderson]
Bryce, then-
chief medical officer for Canada's
departments of the interior and Indian affairs (
1904–1921),
revealed that Aboriginal children were being decimated in his
Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North West Territories.
1 A few years later he made an embittered and passionate plea for restitution.
2
Bryce entered public health in the decades when the science of microbiology began providing a powerful tool for monitoring environmentally caused diseases. He
kept statistics on health and disease as an essential means for identifying problems and their roots, although in the residential schools he
had considerable trouble obtaining accurate information. However, what he did find was that, of the
1537 pupils who attended Canada's
15 residential schools between 1883 and 1907,
7% were in poor health and
24% died in, or shortly after leaving, the schools. The most common recorded cause of death was
tuberculosis, which had emerged in all Aboriginal populations at that time; the
death rate due to tuberculosis was 20 times higher in Canada's First Nation's people than among European colonists.
Clifford Sifton Minister of the Interior
The government, through the minister responsible [
Minister of the Interior],
Clifford Sifton, and his deputy,
Duncan Campbell Scott,
eventually acknowledged the appalling state of Indian health,
but nonetheless pursued a policy of active neglect and parsimony (
extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources). It may be that they
thought that the Aboriginals would “go away” as forecast by
Bryce's statistics, which indicated that
between 1904 to 1913 the Aboriginal population decreased by nearly 2000, whereas it
should have naturally
increased by 20 000.
Federal responsibility for the health of Aboriginals was not acknowledged until Treaty Number Six, and then, some argue, only by the provision of a medicine chest. The appointment of
Bryce did, in part, acknowledge Ottawa's duty, but
his findings and crusade were not welcomed.
Because the
federal government had delegated its responsibilities for Indian education to the churches, it is not surprising that in the aftermath of Bryce's report, the
culpability for the conditions in the schools was shuttled back and forth between church and state. And both parties also
blamed the victims, whose weak heredity or habits at home were the real cause of their misfortune. Nothing was done even when
leading tuberculosis experts, including
David Stewart and George Ferguson,
warned that the epidemic of tuberculosis in the First Nations population threatened the health of non-Aboriginal populations. Whether these physicians expressed such a fear on behalf of the latter, or were attempting to blackmail government to do something for the former, is open to question. Physicians may well have used this political ploy to get help for the disadvantaged.
We could use a Bryce today. As noted by epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose, “The primary determinants of disease are mainly economic and social, and therefore its remedies must also be economic and social. Medicine and politics cannot and should not be kept apart.”
3
The specific problems of 100 years ago have changed, but the underlying determinants have not. When
Save the Children, an esteeemed
nongovernmental organization, describes
Canada's North as
“the slowest evolved disaster that I've ever worked in,” 4 something must be done. Physicians have a distinct role, for as Virchow, a model for mixing science and political service, said, “The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor and the social problems should largely be solved by them.”
5
Rose G. The strategy of preventive medicine. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press; 1992.
Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings:
Tuberculosis took the lives of students at residential schools for at least 40 years
Globe and Mail investigation
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.8.GlobeAndMail.1.htm
BILL CURRY AND KAREN HOWLETT
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
April 24, 2007
OTTAWA —
As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis,
despite repeated warnings to the federal government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease, documents show.
A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that
children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.
Peter Bryce, the department's
chief medical officer,
visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least
24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in
one school alone, the
death toll reached 69 per cent.
With less than four months to go before Ottawa officially settles out of court with most former students, a group calling itself the
Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children is urging the government to acknowledge this period in the tragic residential-schools saga – and not just the better-known cases of physical and sexual abuse.
Last week,
Liberal MP Gary Merasty wrote to
Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice asking the government to look into the concerns. Mr. Prentice's spokesman, Bill Rogers, told The Globe that departmental officials have been asked to meet with native groups.
Some of their stories, including tales of
children buried in unmarked graves beside the schools, are told in a new documentary by
Kevin Annett, a
former United Church minister, titled
Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide.
Mr. Annett, as well as some academics, argue that the government's handling, combined with Canada's official policy of
removing children from their homes for 10 months each year to attend distant schools, does indeed fit the
United Nations definition of genocide.
The UN definition, adopted after the Second World War, lists
five possible acts that qualify as genocide, of which killing is only one. The fifth act is described as “
forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
But
transcripts of debates in 1952 of the House of Commons external affairs committee, reviewed by The Globe, show
public servants advised politicians not to enshrine a definition of genocide into law, despite Canada's promise internationally to do so.
In
2000, four years after the last residential school closed,
the government finally adopted a limited definition of genocide,
excluding the line about forcible transfer of children. But courts have rejected native claims of genocide against Ottawa and the churches because
Canada had no law banning genocide while the schools were operating.
“It's another crime,” said
Roland Chrisjohn, a
professor of native studies at St. Thomas University who has written extensively on the subject. “
Canada can't define genocide to suit its own purposes.”
Few argue that the policy was genocidal in the Nazi sense of deliberately killing people. Rather, the focus was on killing native culture in the name of assimilation, said
John Milloy, a
Trent University professor.
“
The purpose of the [federal government's] policy is to eradicate Indians as a cultural group,” said
Prof. Milloy, who has had more access to government files on the subject than any other researcher. “If genocide has to do with destroying a people's culture, this is genocidal, no doubt about it. But to call it genocidal is to misunderstand how the system works.”
Whatever the definition, there is no disputing the deadly swath tuberculosis cut through native schools.
Dr. Bryce followed up his
1907 report with a second one
two years later, this time on the toll TB was taking in Alberta residential schools.
He recommended that Ottawa take over responsibility of the schools from church control.
The Globe has uncovered letters in the archives showing that many others issued similar warnings. Just a few months after Dr. Bryce's
1909 report, the
department's Indian agent for Duck Lake, Sask., wrote to his Ottawa colleagues: “
The department should realize that under present circumstances about one-half of the children who are sent to the Duck Lake boarding school die before the age of 18, or very shortly afterward.”
Another document published in
1914 shows Dr. Bryce's findings were accepted by
Duncan Campbell Scott, the most influential senior Indian Affairs official of the period. “
It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein,” Mr. Scott wrote in an essay.
But one of the documents obtained by The Globe reveals
Mr. Scott's department rejected the doctor's recommendations because the government did not want to upset the churches that ran the schools.
The residential schools were an extension of religious missionary work. They
started receiving federal support in
1874 as part of
Canada's campaign to assimilate aboriginals into Christian society by
obliterating their language, religion and culture. Well over 100,000 native children passed through the schools, most of which were closed in the mid-1970s.
The
tuberculosis problem was symptomatic of the
deplorable living conditions for the thousands of children uprooted from their communities and placed in the care of strangers. Tuberculosis is
one of the deadliest infectious diseases, entering the body through breathing and infecting the lungs. It can then
spread to the central nervous system, bones and joints, according to the Canadian Lung Association.
In May, 1930, at the
Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, officials were coping with an
outbreak of tuberculosis seven months after the facility opened. But it was the arrival several years later of James Paul, a new student with an advanced case of tuberculosis, that raised the ire of the school's visiting physician.
“Evidently somebody has mistaken our residential school for a TB sanatorium,” D. F. MacInnis says in a letter to Indian Affairs.
Later,
Dr. MacInnis wrote to the school principal: “
We are apparently getting all the advanced TB cases and syphilities in the three provinces shipped into our school and apparently there is no way left for us to keep them out.
It is very unfair to the children who are clean and well.”
Although most students from this period are no longer alive, some who attended later recall
sharing sleeping quarters with dying children.
“I've known
some students that died there and
I don't know how they died.
All we know is we had their funeral service,” said Harry Lucas, 66, who attended
Christie Indian Residential on
Vancouver Island from 1948 to 1958.
“There were quite a few grave sites there that I always questioned.
We were able to sleep next to a person that was dying. They didn't put them away in separate rooms. That was always kind of spooky for me.”
Ted Quewezance, the
executive director of the National Residential School Survivors Society, attended
Gordon Residential School and
St. Philip Residential School in
Saskatchewan from 1960 to 1969. He said he has spoken to thousands of former students across Canada.
“
We'd see [funerals] monthly,” he said. “We were never able to ask what they were. It's no different right across the country. There's even some graves unmarked.
Kids were buried at the school, but now we're talking about how do we bring our survivors home?”
The
Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children claims
thousands of children are buried in unmarked graves near the schools. Many of their stories are contained in the documentary by Mr. Annett, who says he was ousted from the United Church in 1995 after raising concerns about the church's residential-school history.
(The United Church rejects Mr. Annett's version of events, pointing to a three-week termination hearing in which several witnesses said he was a confrontational figure who was a poor manager of his Port Alberni church.)
James Scott of the United Church said there is
relatively little solid information on deaths at the schools because archivists have been so
focused on researching claims of living former students.
“My sense is that
the more we find out about [the schools], the deeper our understanding of the catastrophic impact of the residential schools on aboriginal people, on their families and their culture,” he said.
Bede Hubbard of the
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Roman Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, noted that previous research has shown the churches made many
pleas to Ottawa for more money to improve standards.
[The Catholic church has always been very wealthy - why were they not contibuting their own money for their mission works? ]
“I didn't realize that the rates of tuberculosis were that high. In the 1930s, tuberculosis was rampant in Canada itself, so it shouldn't be surprising then that it was also a problem in the residential schools.”
Prof. Milloy of Trent University is the only outsider to have accessed the
locked vault of Indian Affairs records through his role as a
senior researcher for the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
In 1999, he published his research in a book titled
A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System. Prof. Milloy expressed discomfort with the campaign of Mr. Annett and others to introduce language such as genocide and “aboriginal holocaust.”
What government and church records do show, he said, is that the deaths were primarily due to the policy of
paying churches on a per-capita basis to run the schools. Numerous letters indicate that because of the funding policy,
churches would admit sick children and refuse to send ailing ones home.
[ because they did not want to lose the funding money- the money was more important then the safety of the children! ] Pleas to the department for more funding fell on deaf ears.
“That's why there's so many kids sleeping in so few beds in so many dormitories across the country,” Prof. Milloy said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of ‘Let's get them sick with tuberculosis and wipe them out as a species on the earth.' It's the fact that the feds won't spend any money on this, and that's what it leads to.”
As for
Dr. Bryce, the man who
first sounded the alarm, he was
shuffled to another department.
The position of chief medical officer was terminated and
the government appears to have
made no further effort to gather statistics on deaths at the schools. Ottawa did not take over control of all schools until 1969.
In
1922, after he retired,
Dr. Bryce penned a diatribe against Ottawa's lack of response to his reports.
The title:
The Story of a National Crime.
A HISTORY OF SHAME
EARLY YEARS
Started before Confederation as part of religious missionary work, residential schools originally focused on replacing aboriginal beliefs with Christianity. More than
70 per cent of the schools were run by the
Roman Catholic Church; the rest by the
Anglican and
United Churches.
FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT
The
federal government started funding residential schools in 1874, using
American Industrial Schools as the
model for introducing manual labour and agricultural skills to natives. To encourage children to use English and French, they were
physically punished for speaking their own languages.
OTTAWA TAKES OVER
There were
72 residential schools in
1948 and
9,368 students. Ottawa took full control of the schools in 1969 and most were closed during the 1970s. The
last school shut its doors in
1996.
THE LEGACY
Stories of
physical and sexual abuse began to emerge in the 1980s, and became major news when
Manitoba Chief Phil Fontaine, now the
National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations,
went public with his story of sexual abuse as a student.
In
April of 2006, Ottawa reached a
$1.9-billion agreement with former students to settle their class-action lawsuits out of court and compensate for the loss of language and culture. Further money has been set aside to settle claims of physical and sexual abuse. Students have until Aug. 20 to accept the package. Bill Curry
RAISING CONCERN
January, 1919
Duncan Campbell Scott, a
senior Indian Affairs official, talks about the inadequacy of the school buildings in a memorandum to
Arthur Meighen, then
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. “They were
unsanitary and they were
undoubtedly chargeable with a very high death rate among the pupils.”
December, 1920
A report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs says
33 students at the Sarcee school near Calgary are afflicted with tuberculosis.
February, 1925
W.M. Graham,
Indian Commissioner for Saskatchewan, says in a letter to Mr. Scott: “We will have to do something to stop this indiscriminate admission of children without first passing a medical exam. ... I quite often hear from the Indians that they
do not want to send their children to school as it is a place where they are sent to die.”
February, 1925
Russell T. Ferrier,
Superintendent of Indian Education, writes to Indian commissioners and agents, saying each child should be pronounced fit by a medical officer before being admitted to a school. “When a pupil's health becomes a matter of concern soon after admission, the consequent parental alarm and distrust militates against successful recruiting.”
March, 1932
The
Department of Indian Affairs announces that
as a result of spending cutbacks, it
cannot authorize admitting children with tuberculosis to a sanatorium or hospital unless the patient requires “care for relief of actual suffering.” Karen Howlett
Original source.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
THE HUMAN TOLL: Sexual abuse at heart of pain
BILL CURRY and KAREN HOWLETT
http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.8.GlobeAndMail.1.htm
William Coombs, 54, attended two British Columbia schools from 1958 to 1967, including
Kamloops Indian Residential School and
Mission Indian Residential School. Sylvester Green was sent to a school in Edmonton. The two men first told their stories in a film by Kevin Annett.
"I witnessed too many
children being dragged by the hair" to the room of a Catholic brother, Mr. Combs said. "That's the worst thing that hurts me is the sexual abuse.
"That's what he was doing. I was dragged to that room one night and I found out what was happening.
Sexual abuse and getting beat up and forced to stay in his room all night. I was about nine years old."
Eventually, he said, students threw a blanket over the brother's head and beat him up. They had watched it happen too many times.
by Bill Curry
Sylvester Green, 63, said: "No matter how old you are, it hurts. For me, I was sent to
Edmonton in 1949 and I left there in 1959. In that school, there were three perpetrators. One of them was supposed to be a minister. On Sundays he would go up in the pulpit and preach the word of God. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, he would
abuse the kids."
Beatings left pupil unable to be happy Peter Paul recalls running away from the
Shubenacadie residential school in Nova Scotia after a particularly brutal beating. He was
nine years old and had angered the orderly who took care of the boys on weekends by getting up from his bed to go to the bathroom.
"
He picked me up two or three times, kicked me and threw me against the wall," Mr. Paul told The Globe and Mail. "He terrified me. After that happened, I could have killed him or run away."
Mr. Paul, now 50,
ran away but he got caught and was returned to the school. It wasn't the first time he had ever been beaten. In fact,
his refusal to cry on other occasions usually resulted in him receiving more lashes than the other boys.
One time, he said, his brother yelled, "You should at least pretend you're crying, you stupid son of a bitch."
But the beating by the orderly seemed to change everything, he said. "I didn't know how to be happy after that."
Mr. Paul, the youngest in a family of five children,
went to the school when he was 5. He told his story for the first time to The Globe and has never even talked to his brothers and sister about their days at the school.
"I don't listen to anyone else's stories," he said.
by Karen Howlett
To start healing, hating has to stop.
Debbie Paul has made her own peace with the nun who gave her the strap for merely fidgeting during mass when she attended the
Shubenacadie residential school in Nova Scotia.
Ms. Paul, now 51, said
she recently paid a visit to Sister DiGilberta, who is 92 and ill with cancer. It turned out that the nun had a photograph of Ms. Paul's younger sister, Maggie, who died in 1978 at the age of 21.
"She had hung on to the picture for 40 years," Ms. Paul said. But Sister DiGilberta gave the photograph to Ms. Paul, the only one she has of her sister.
Ms. Paul said if she hadn't been able to get over her anger, she never would have found out about the photograph.
"
There comes a point in your life," she said,
"when you have to stop hating, and you have to heal."
