Edmonton Indian Residential School, Kathleen Steinhauer Recalls Her Childhood, Residential School and the Steinhauer Family

Kathleen Steinhauer is interviewed about her background as part of the Steinhauer family, (circa 1930's and 1940's) and includes memories of her experiences in an Indian Residential School, 1937-1940. She also shares her later years training as a nurse.

My name is Kathleen Amelia Jean Steinhauer. I was born in the [? unclear] Hospital in St. Paul, Alberta. My parents had a farm at the Saddle Lake Cree Reserve.


Were your parents Band members? Can you tell me about them?

My father, Ralph Steinhauer, was a band member. My mother was American of Scottish decent who came out because she had bad lungs. She was to go to a dry climate either Arizona or here. My grandmother had a sister and brother in Edmonton, so they came here.


What was your mother's full name?

Isabel Florence Margaret Davidson.


Do you know when your parents were married?

1928 I think. She trained at Mactavish Business College.


How did your mother go to Saddle Lake, or did your father meet her here?

She worked in a bank in Provost for two or three years and then she went to the Camrose Normal School to take teacher training for a year and had to go where she was sent and she was sent to Vilna. My father worked in the General Store where they did everything like being the Post Office. He had some difficulty being sworn in as a postal clerk because he was a Ward of the Canadian Government as a Treaty Indian. They finally reversed their decision. He saw my mother when he would bring her mail and, of course, it was just a small town. They couldn't help knowing each other. They got married.


And did she become a Band member?

Oh yes!


Can you talk a bit about your father's ancestry?

His grandfather, Peter A. Powell, whose wife was Anne [? unclear] from the Papaschase Band. Peter A. Powell was a head man in the band when Treaty 6 was signed. It was signed on behalf of this group of Cree [? unclear].


How this group ended up at Saddle Lake, I don't know. They wanted to have all of central Alberta as their territory and, of course, the Government wasn't doing that. The Bands were all in different geographic locations. In the 1870's there were a lot of problems in that respect.


His father was Gosiah A. Powell and his mother was Amelia Mumford. Her family had originated in Rhode Island and immigrated to Nova Scotia. She was of Scottish decent [? unclear].


Could you tell me how you are descended from Henry Steinhauer?

My grandfather Goshia died and grandmother was pregnant and the baby she had died of diphtheria. She and her friend ran a stocking house at Saddle Lake. They had hay and a barn and provided overnight stays for people traveling by with horse and buggy - usually freighters. Henry Steinhauer's son, Robert, was the minister at Saddle Lake. He didn't approve of two women running this house. It just wasn't the thing in 1910. He got her a job teaching on the Reserve. His house was on the Reserve.


My Dad was buried on a hillside. The school was just at the top of this little knoll and he came there. Rumor is that he took his younger cousin up there and told him that when you bury me, I want to be buried on this gravesite. She met Jimmy Steinhauer then. I called him my grandfather.


They lived for a while in districts just off the reserve. My grandfather rented a farm from one of uncle Robert's sisters for a while.


Can you tell me about your earliest memories at Saddle Lake? Do you have any memories before you went to school or are your first memories of going to Residential School?

First thing that I remember, and my parents were quite surprised that I remembered this because I was 2 andfrac12; or 3 at the most, was in the fall my grandmother had bought a piano and sent it to my mother and it was stored at the river because there was no bridge at the time and you had to ford the river. Once the bridge was built they brought it over by horse and buggy and I was so excited. I can remember standing there.


My Mom and Dad said I was too young to remember but when I started to tell them what I remembered, they realized that that was about what happened. They were just going to unload this piano by ramp and planks put down by the people who hung out there. I don't remember them taking it out and putting it in the house, but I certainly remember seeing it there - the unwrapped blankets around it. That's the first thing I remember.


One of the things about the piano was that we were not allowed to go to the District School, which was a little over a mile south of us. It was the only piano close by and my mother, who had voice training in choir, and when the children were going to do Christmas concerts or had competitive festivals, they would bring these children for my mother to teach music. Yet, the School Board wouldn't allow us to go to that school.


What was the name of that school?

Champaine School. Actually my older sister went for two years and then she was expelled. She was being taught by a Mandeacute;tis woman, Mrs. Russell, whose grandmother was a L'Hirondelle, and Miss Russell kept her in school, but when the School Board Chairman found out he wouldn't let her continue.


What was your sister's name?

Muriel.


Tell me the names of your sisters and brother. Did you have any brothers?

One. The oldest was Muriel, and Doreen and my late sister June. In 1945 as my parents did not have a son and they wanted someone to leave the farm to who could inherit it, they adopted a little boy who was born to a woman whose husband was off to war. He had said he wanted no children when he came back and she knew my parents wanted to adopt a boy, she asked if they would have him. She wouldn't even have him in the hospital. She had him at home. My mother said they went to see him and he melted their hearts and brought him home. They named him Kenneth Davidson Steinhauer. Nellie was actually there. She helped with the birth and cared for him.


Did your parents talk very much, especially your father, about Cree history when you were growing up? Even the story of Papaschase Band. Did you hear of that before the '60's or '70's? Did you know about it as a teenager?

Yes, he would talk about things. He was a very busy man and didn't talk much, but he would. He would tell us stories. He was the one who told me about grandfather. I think he told my mother a lot of it and when we were working around in the garden and the house with my mother, she would repeat these stories. My grandfather, Jimmy, who passed away when I was in my 30's, would talk to us some. The older people wouldn't talk much about that sort of thing as they do now. Even if they did, so many times young people let it go in one ear and out the other or they have something else they have to do. When we would be driving somewhere, horses, I would ask questions about who lives there. What do they do? He was the one who told me about the horn.


What's that?

There is one miniature at the museum. It is a fence build like this and they would chase the buffalo in. He called it [? unclear]. That is the sort of thing he would tell us about.


He also spoke both Cree and English. I was only 5 when I went to school, I didn't know much of either.


Did you mother understand Cree?

I don't know how much she understand but I found out, much to my chagrin, when I said something I shouldn't have and she knew what it was.


So you grew up speaking both languages? Can you tell me about what you know about your parent's decision to send you to Residential School? Had your older sisters gone?

No not yet. My father took sick when I was 5. I am not sure what was wrong with him. They thought he might have TB. We suddenly found out that we couldn't go to District School. They had wanted the three of us to go, my youngest sister was a baby. They thought that if the three of us were in school all day it would be easier. I think the teacher was quite willing, but we weren't allowed to go and the only alternative was the residential school. None of the other schools would have us. Rather than have us hauled away, my mother took us. There were Aunts and Uncles living with us, and my grandfather was there with us to help look after the farm when my father was ill. So she took us to the school. The Edmonton Indian Residential School. I don't know how long she stayed, perhaps a week. She had the baby with her. She had a room on the second floor.


They had a visitor's room downstairs in the basement but they didn't put her in there. They put her in this room just above the hallway into the chapel because the ropes to the chapel bell went through that room with beds on either side of this rope. When we were in bed we could see the rope going through the roof. She ate in the dining room, which was between the children's dining room, and the kitchen and native staff that worked there ate at that dining room. Native people who were visiting ate at that dining room. The other staff had a dining room upstairs.


Did she or your father tell you how they felt about sending you to Residential School?

Their comments were usually that they had no other choice.


Did your father go to Residential School?

Yes, he went to Red Deer. There was a United Church School at Red Deer. And then he went to the one at Brandon, Manitoba.


I know you have given a long interview about going to Residential School, but perhaps you could summarize what that experience meant to you and, you were telling me earlier, that no child should feel those feelings. Can you describe what those feelings were?

One thing, I can remember looking out the window from the dormitory and crying my eyes out. My aunt came in and I said to her, "If I look hard enough, maybe I will be able to see our house." She told me I was looking in the wrong direction.


Also, I was beaten by the Supervisor and the Matron for various things, for speaking Cree. And I was not someone who sat in the corner and hid. I played with the other children. There was nobody around watching us at the time so some of them couldn't speak English, so we spoke in Cree. Some of them were [? unclear].


Actually, my grandmother lived in Edmonton, my mother's mother. I don't remember how many times she came to visit but one visit I remember was; I don't know if it was a Church Service upstairs or concert, sometimes the CGIT girls group would come and do a concert and distribute these oranges, one to each child. I didn't know she was there and we were coming out and we had to line up and walk out and weren't to get out of line and we weren't allowed to talk and as I was a little girl, we went out first, and then the oldest. I noticed my grandmother sitting at the very back, right inside the door and the doors were open and the Matron, girls supervisor, was standing just right outside the door and as soon as the last of her charges went out she would follow us and I saw my grandmother. I whispered, "Grandmother", and the Supervisor heard me and just as soon as I got outside the door she whacked me across the head. I fell into the other child. I didn't dare cry out loud because, it would be worse.


After my mother left, at breakfast I was sitting right next to the cement wall and we got our lumpy, cold oatmeal, and cup of skim milk, cold, and I asked the supervisor for brown sugar because we had oatmeal at home. She whacked me and my head bounced off the cement wall. She hit me on the other side because she said, "Stop crying or I'll hit you again." And I bounced into poor Sarah and Sarah started to cry. Oh! Terrible old lady.


Did you witness that kind of hitting quite often?

There was a girl in our dorm who was enuretic, she was a bed wetter, and she had a terrible time. Every morning she would be beaten through her wet nightie. Big welts and she would be screaming. I didn't dare wet my bed. I did a couple of times and was whacked.


After, you find there is no way out of this. This went on and on. I remember being totally overcome by the most devastating sense of despair. Just total despair and I was just a kid. Nobody should feel that way, especially not a little kid. I just had no hope of anything.


Did the children there go home and tell their parents? Did they tell others about what had happened there, for example, when you were hit by a teacher?

Oh, I told my parents. My mother said, "Well, you must have been a naughty girl." I asked about it when I got older and she, especially, couldn't believe that missionaries were wicked. My dad knew about it but he was so ill when we left that I don't think he had the energy or strength to resist. And, there was no place to go anyway.


Did they ever take you out into the community? Could you ever go out exploring in Edmonton when you were there?

Because my grandmother lived in Edmonton, we would go to Edmonton and stay with her for a few days and then go to the school. One event that I remember vividly was during the 1939 visit from the King and Queen. They taught us new songs - Rule Britannia. The kids lined Kingsway. They had big busses, some would start out walking and others would get on the bus and those on the bus after a while would get off and the others would ride and so on. I was the only child in the whole school who didn't go. We had skin infections and digestive problems and respiratory infections and I was always having skin problems and when you get something open on your skin you wash it and, if you went with some little scrape, they would chase you away and tell you that they were busy and then you go with a great big scab so I got into [? unclear] from my head to my toes.


Were you disappointed about not being able to go?

Oh, of course I was and I wasn't allowed out of doors. The only person at the school besides me was Mr. Laub who looked after the boilers. They called him 'The Engineer'. He seemed pretty old to me, but I guess he wasn't because he was still there when I was a teenager and he didn't look very much older.


Anyway, the Supervisor left a sandwich and a glass of milk for my lunch and told me that Mr. Laub was there and he would make sure I was all right. I don't know what time of the day he came up, but I had forgotten all about him. I could hear his footsteps down the hall, and he came in closer, covered up my head and then I heard his voice. "Are you all right?" he said. I said I was fine. He had these work boots on that weren't tied up and they sounded like the giant in Jack in the Beanstalk.


One question I had was, how many years were you there? You went in at what age and came out at what age?

I went in at the age of 5 and came out at the age of 8. My sister, Doreen, got very, very ill. She had pneumonia and she almost died. My parents were never notified. I vaguely remember I went to the infirmary with a scratch because I wanted to see her and I peeked my head in there and I was caught and, Wham. I remember, in the middle of the night an awful lot of excitement. She was still in the infirmary, people going up and down the hallway and voices up and down the stairs. What happened was, they called the Doctor in the middle of the night and they put her in an oxygen tent. There was a teacher there, named Miss Spence, and she knew grandmother quite well. She was a substitute teacher. She really tried to teach us when she was there. Our Grade 1 teacher was a Royal Conservatory of Music student and she was working on her final degree exams. She didn't teach us, she just sat there and made us keep quiet and my mother was quite worried because when we went home at the end of the school I hadn't learned a lot so she would teach us through the summer when she had time. But Miss Spence happened to be there when Doreen was very sick and she wrote to my mother and told her what she thought of the place and what had happened to Doreen and that she was very concerned.


My mother had met Miss Spence and when she came to get us she had a row with the Principal. I was standing up at the top of the stairs, just inside because I knew my mother was in the office and I could hear this. My mother was a very reserved person, but when she was angry, I was sure I had done something wrong. I could hear these voices and I was terrified of the Principal. We never had to go back.


Where did you go to school after that?

For two years, my mother taught us through correspondence - the Alberta Correspondence School Branch. Of course, the Government didn't care about that time. They had a war to fight.


So you had gone - roughly, what was your birth date?

May 6, 1932. I went from 1937 to 1940.


So you were at home doing your schooling and then where did you go?

To a place called [? unclear] School in Bonnyville. How we heard about it was, the daughter of family friends married and moved to a farm about andfrac34; of a mile from our farm, she had a baby and we would go and visit the baby and she would come and visit my Mother and she told my mother about this Mission School near Bonnyville she had gone to, the [? unclear] Mission School and there was a girl's home and a boy's home and a barn and a church and a manse and a hospital and a nurses residence and doctor's and my mother wrote and it was $6.00 a month for student or farm produce to help feed them all. I can't remember if they send any of that but we didn't want to go to another boarding school. They finally persuaded us and we went and it wasn't all that bad. It was nothing like the residential school. We were treated like all the other kids. There was another native family there.


We had an excellent teacher.


It was a mixed school, it wasn't just an Indian school?

No, it was founded by a group of French Canadian people, the Huguenot, and they didn't want to associate themselves with the Catholic Church so they contacted this Dr. [? unclear] and he came out there and established this mission. It was sort of a little compound, the buildings all had black roofs and it was distinguishable from the farmhouses. We were there five years. We came home for Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays.


I am going to skip ahead now and can you tell me about when you graduated and left that school?

I went to Alberta College.


Every summer my grandmother would come and spend time with us. She sewed. Her full name was Katherine Anne MacDonald, then Davidson, Mrs. Davidson. When we were older, when I could travel by myself, about 10, I would come and visit her for a week or two in the summer.


Where did they live in the City?

My grandmother was a widow and she lived at a place called St. Catherine's Residence for Girls run by the Anglican Church. It was just across from what they used to call Subway. It was at 9707-107 Street. I used to write to her so I remember the address. It was right across 97 th Ave from the Legislative Building.


This one summer, when I was 15, I had finished Grade 7 and my sister Doreen was going to come to Alberta College where my other sister, Muriel, was. She had been there for a year. My grandmother decided that I should be coming to Edmonton too to take Grade 9. She took me to Alberta College to talk to them and asked him if this was possible and he said the subjects you would be taking were English, Social, Science and he made me write them down. I was not so sure I was going to spell Science right, but I must have done all right because he said, well, if she can get permission from her former school we will take her. This teacher we had at the Mission school didn't believe in skipping grades - I didn't finish Grade 3 when we were taking correspondence and he made me repeat it. I learned to read a bit of French there as there were a lot of French kids there. Anyway, I was sure he wouldn't let me skip Grade 8. We came back and he had written a letter of recommendation and I went to Alberta College at 15.


Did you live with your grandmother or did you live in residence?

We lived in residence at Alberta College. We went to visit my grandmother every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday afternoon for tea. If we didn't show up she would be upset.


So the three of you did that and then after that you went to Nursing School. Did you go directly after that?

We were taking Latin and it was three years of that and when we went to start our third year of Latin, the Latin teacher, Mrs. Armstrong was [became] the Superintendent of Schools and so we didn't know what to do. My oldest sister had been to University for a year, so she came to Edmonton, it was harvest time, in August and we were going to go to Mount Royal in Calgary because they were still teaching [Latin], but for some reason that went by the bridge. So my sister was sent to see if we could board at Alberta College, but go to school at Vic where they were still teaching Latin. They weren't interested. Muriel went to see Muriel Armstrong who had been her teacher for many years and anyway we were allowed to board at the college and go to school at Vic. I wanted to finish Grade 12 all in one year and it was a heavy load so our old English and Social teacher suggested that we drop them and study them in the summer through correspondence and that is what we did.


We went to Two Hills to write the exam and being 19, I was told you had to be 20 to write the exam. I told him to just let me write the exam and send it in and I would deal with that them. So that is what we did. I didn't even get a high school diploma. They wouldn't credit me with that but they gave me marks.


When I went to the hospital at Lamont to see about nursing, I told them the circumstances and they said for me to let them know the results as soon as I got them and if they were adequate they would accept me. I had already done a whole morning of IQ tests and interviewed for nursing school.


Can I go back to when you were going to Alberta College and you were boarding there? You must have been among the only Treaty Indians who were there, or were there others? What was it like? Did they know that you came from a Saddle Lake family? Were any distinctions made or anything like that?

Alberta College was right besides the Church, the old little log Church used to be there. We used to go in and look at pictures of our ancestors which were hanging there. The old curator used to tell us stories. All the people seemed to know what happened the first year we were there in the old, old building on 101 st Street. On one quarter, facing 101 st Street there was a big room on the third floor and my two sisters and I shared that room, and down the hall was Elmer Summer from the Residential School at Goodfish Lake and Pauline Gladstone from the Blood Reserve and her cousin, Georgina Davis. Around the corner was the communal bathroom and on that corridor were the Ukrainian girls. We were quite happy to be together. We had a great time. We were right across from The Journal building and Pauline, who was beautiful, she was the cover girl for our yearbook.


She would wake up at the crack of dawn and peek out the window at this gorgeous hunk of a blond guy who would come in every morning at 7:00, with a brush cut, and she would say, 'I am sure he has blue eyes,' and this sort of thing and she would laugh. We thought this was hilarious.


Do you remember any kind of a sense of how things were in the '40's in Edmonton, for native people, or have you heard since?

When we were staying with my grandmother we used to see a few, maybe occasionally, we didn't know [? unclear] we just knew subtly they were Goodfish people. Then when we met Pauline and Flortilla, they knew the Priest, Father Duhanne, who was the Chaplain at the Charles Camsell Hospital. So we used to go out there to the Camsell and there were lots of native people there. We got to know Eddie Bellrose and many more.


We should return to you. You went to Lamont. Did you become a Nurse at the Lamont Hospital?

Yes, I graduated and got my RN and I came back to Edmonton.


Where did you work when you came back to Edmonton?

At the Charles Camsell Hospital and just after [? unclear] at the [? unclear].


Did you ever come back to the Camsell after that?

For different things. I worked in patient transportation the last time I was there.


That is a very important native institution for the native people of Alberta and many, many people remember it. What was the atmosphere like as you remember it? When you went to visit there or when you went to work there even briefly, was it a place that people thought was their own in a way?

No, I don't think they felt that way, but what I found was there were staff people who were, like Miss Taylor was the matron, and she was the most understanding, broad minded, generous person. It was almost like a friendship centre. People came to visit on Sunday afternoon. They had movies and sometimes there would be parties [? unclear] and I didn't know them, but they were around too. There were some staff members who were not like that. That was when I first went to work there as a nurse. One nurse who was in charge of the ward was having late supper. I was working through midnight to 8 and she was a 3:00 p.m. staff and they had an admission on the children's ward and they were talking about this. We were having our supper and they were talking about how they had to wash the little child and this other nurse who was admitting the child said she still had to bathe this child's hair as it was full of lice. This other nurse said, 'well, they all have something in their hair.' I couldn't eat any more and left the table. This was a nurse. She should have known better. I was walking back to our Unit which wasn't attached to the hospital and Beulah came running after me and she said, "We don't all feel that way, you musn't be too hurt.' I really appreciated it because I felt I had been whacked.


How did you identify in those years because you must have been one of the first Treaty Indian nurses?

Pauline had a couple of sisters who were nurses. They went to New Zealand to train as childcare workers. And actually, you have heard of J.F. Dionne. His wife was a Cunningham and her sister was my brother-in-law's grandmother. Her daughter showed me a picture of her graduation from the General Hospital in 1913.


Do you know what her name would have been?

Elizabeth Cunningham.


Did you identify then as Treaty Cree?

I always did.


You told me a little about having to fight very hard for your status. I don't know if you have time to talk about that now or whether you want to talk a little bit about it. Let's interrupt this.