FROM THE PAST

Vern, 

About a year ago I found Dr. John Godel who cared for us at Lejac in the early sixties. He lives on one of the small islands off Vancouver Island. This is part of a letter I sent to him prior to contacting him. He was a wonderful doctor and went on to serve the people in Africia. You can type his name into Google and see a 10 minute Video on his life’s work. We were lucky to have had his services at Lejac.  Jim 

To Dr. John Godel

Dear John,

Now here is a voice from your past, early 60’s, Lejac Indian Residential School, Bro. James Callanan.

I fondly remember your weekly visits to care for the children and the staff at the school. I remember the night I called you and asked you to come out to the school because I was afraid I would have one of the children die by the next morning without your intervention. You came to the rescue and you had to send one of the Lejac staff back to the Vanderhoof  hospital to get a bunch of IV equipment because about 6 of the boys were totally dehydrated. While we waited for the IV equipment to arrive back at the school you took an extra stethoscope out of your satchel and handed it to me and began to teach me how to recognize pneumonia. I still have that Stethoscope. I think you found 7 or 8 pneumonias among the 50 boys we had down with the measles. When the IV equipment turned up I got some hockey sticks and taped them to the beds and then taped coat hangers to the hockey sticks so we could hang the IV bottles. You then taught me how to run the IV’s. What an experience and what a responsibility. I was all of 23 years old at the time. I think I went almost 3 days without sleep trying to keep the boys alive and nursed back to health. One of the boys ended up with a large patch of white hair in the center front of his head. It appeared over night and stayed with him permanently. Thank God that was the only permanent damage as a result of the epidemic. 

Another time you came to my rescue was when I built a Heathkit guitar amp for the boys dance band and I could not get the darn thing to work. I phoned you and took it in to your house. After about an hour or so testing you figured I had one faulty radio tube. I picked one up at the local radio store and was in business. Again thanks.

Jim Callanan

(received November 15, 2013)

Residential school...

Verne, a few little corrections on numbers quoted in the Blog. In 1922 Lejac got it's first students. The school was built to accommodate 60 girls and 60 boys but all through the Sixties we always had between 90 and 92 Boys and the same on the girls side, thus the bunk beds. The need was there and we did our best to accommodate. There were no schools on most of the isolated reserves at that time. Teachers of the day were not prepared to live in isolation and besides that the native people of the time were partially nomadic as they followed game, berries and fish as a means of a livelihood.

Re the changing of clothes. In the blog you stated that you got clean clothing every two weeks. In fact all the students got a complete change of clothing once a week not every second week. As you can see by the enclosed picture keeping everyone half decently clean was not an easy task. The picture was taken on laundry day. Roy French on the extreme left of the picture has just come outside, everyone else has been outside playing broom ball in the mud for about a half hour. By the smiles you can see they were enjoying their game despite the mud. The mud probably added to the joy of the game. Life at Lejac had lots of good times and most of them found in the simple things of life. Jim photo courtesy of Jim Callanan.

Residential school days....

Verne a few more pictures of Lejac days have turned up.Jim Photos courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas

AND BOY DID WE EVER GET SICK!....

Sick Bay

Here are two photos of Intermediate Dorm which is being used for all the sick boys during this 1963 measles epidemic. Some of the boys are really sick...others maybe not so much as demonstrated in the top photo. Two of the boys (Ivan & Dear John [Wilfred Solonas]) are so sick they are on intravenous while another boy reads a comic.

I think I've seen these photos a million times already, over and over, but one thing I never noticed before is the boys ' hockey sticks are being used to hold up the intravenous bottles. (these photos courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas)

Coal...

Our big school used to be heated by burning coal in the early 1960s. Coal was shipped to Lejac by railway and the trains used to drop off a coal car down at the train station below the school. Then some of the older boys would have to shovel the coal into one of our work trucks and bring it up to the school. There the coal was dropped off and left on the ground below the church where they had the furnaces. Boys would then have to shovel coal sometimes in the morning before school started. They stopped using coal by the late 1960s after they built brand new furnaces and a boiler room next to the root cellar.

I went to residential school for 8 years. One thing I could never get used to while there was the clanging radiators at night.

There were steel radiators in every room throughout the whole school. And these radiators would all begin making a loud clanging noise as they began to heat up from the steam coming from the boiler room. And they were loud! It took me years to get used to the noise especially at night.

But the thing that scared me the most were the trains coming though at night. First time I ever heard a train was in 1963 while in Junior dorm. It was at night and we were all asleep. All of a sudden I woke up and all I could hear was this great big noise and the whole dorm seemed to be shaking. I didn’t know what it was at first, I was so scared! I learned later that it was the night train coming through. I can’t believe how much noise it made.

The rail line ran from Prince George to Prince Rupert on the way delivering coal to Lejac. Occasionally people used the train to travel to Lejac either from Vanderhoof or Prince George as well.

Later, as we got older, we used to go for walks often using the railroad tracks to get to Two Mile Encombe or One Mile Encombe. Quite a few times, we would be walking the tracks and a train would come along. Of course we all cleared the tracks, standing off to the side with our Supervisor, and watching the train go by, from just a few feet away! (photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas)

Residential School...

Boys Dining Room

Here are two more photos we found from November 1962 of the boys in the dining room. I'm certain the booths were installed later, possibly in 1963. Looks like these boys were well fed. I remember the food was not that bad. (These photos courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas)