When I first went to Lejac in the fall of 1963 I told you before that we had separate dining rooms, girls one side boys other side. Ours was at the bottom of the stairs to our dorms. When it was time to go for supper, breakfast or lunch, we had to line up and in single file quietly enter the door to our left and into our dining room. There were booths on both sides of the dining hall with six to a booth. Then the servers would bring us our food on carts and serve us our meals. The servers were always the older boys.
Steven Tom was really tall, an older boy from Burns Lake in Senior Dorm. One time we were having beans for supper and one of the servers put one single bean on his plate as a joke and all us boys were trying not laugh during Grace.
The boys would have to say a prayer before each meal. The prayer, called ‘Grace’, would be said together after all the boys have been seated, and after the food is served. So once the food is served, you have to sit there with a full plate of food in front of you and you can’t eat until you have said your prayer.
Well that all changed. In 1967 or ’68.
They tore down our old dining rooms (the girls’ dining room and the boys’ dining room) maybe in 1967 and built one single great big dining room in the middle. After the new dining room was built, they told us the very first day that we could sit anywhere in the dining room. Even with the girls. I....we....we never did that before! We were not....we were not really sure what to do....or where to sit! It took us a while to get used to sitting together, all the boys and all the girls in one great big dining room.
They also made it cafeteria style. Before, you had to sit down in the booths and the servers brought you your food on carts and served you. Now, all we had to do was grab a tray, and work our way along the counter in front of the kitchen and servers would dish us out our food from behind the counter. We had the best coffee in the whole wide world!
When I first started at Lejac we had a big French cook. One time the dogs were fighting outside the kitchen. They said he ran out there with a broom and was trying to separate them, swinging his broom at the dogs and swearing in French!
After he left Mrs. Leslie became our cook in about 1966. The Leslies live up on the highway just past the gate. She had helpers in the kitchen. I used to always see Emma and Tilly in the kitchen with her. Later, maybe in about 1968, they put in two trailers on the road toward the barn. That’s where Emma and Tilly stayed, in that first trailer.
Fred Robison came in as the new cook maybe in 1970. He lived in that first house on the road up to the highway. Mrs. Robison worked down at the laundryroom. She’s the one that washed everybody’s clothes in the whole school.
Throughout the 1960s there were usually about 70 or 75 boys at the school during the school year. And roughly the same amount of girls for a total of maybe 140 to 150 Native students at Lejac in any one year. There were a total of six dorms and each dorm had a supervisor. The staff at the school included the teachers (for Grades 1 to 8), supervisors, the Principal, secretary, priest, cook and helpers, laundry staff, bus driver, maintenance man and night watchman. There were maybe 25 people on Staff at the school each year.
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