The Great Deception, Chapter 2: Methodists, Woodsworths and Residential Schools
More than a century later, still no reckoning for a National Crime
One of the most notorious villains of the Indian Residential Schools is the bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott. He was hired into the bureaucracy of the Government of Canada because his father, a Methodist Minister, knew Sir John A. MacDonald.
The fact that Scott’s father was a Methodist Minister is mentioned in passing, but it is significant because of the role that the Methodist Church as an organization was playing in education and in colonization across Canada.
The Methodists played a very significant role in the establishment and running of Residential Schools, both on the ground across Canada, as well as in the Federal Bureaucracy. Egerton Ryerson helped create the foundation for education in Canada, because he was acting on and building the Methodist tradition, which also had considerable political influence was also important.
By 1884, Methodism was the largest protestant denomination in Canada, and one of the aspects that always set Methodism apart from other denominations was their missions to Indigenous people.
The Canadian Encyclopedia says that “Methodism … led by John Wesley (1703-91), who encouraged personal holiness and a disciplined (hence “methodical”) Christian life. It was distinctive in its Arminianism, the belief that individuals are free to accept or reject God's grace, and that it is possible to attain “perfection” (the overcoming of a will to sin) in this life.”This is a distinctive way to look at the world. This perfection and overcoming a “will to sin” included temperance, or abstaining from alcohol.
The specifics of the Methodist theology matter. While the idea that people can perfect themselves through their own determination can serve as a powerful message of inspiration for self-improvement, progress and change, the idea of perfection is not one that allows much room for humility or self-doubt, or criticism.
The letter Ryerson wrote to the Federal Government recommending the establishment of Residential / Industrial Schools for First Nations is relevant for all the assumptions it makes.
Ryerson assumes that First Nations lack civilization and sobriety, and that the only way of addressing this is to ensure that schools convert them to Christianity.
“it is a fact established by numerous experiments, that the North American Indian cannot be civilized or preserved in a state of civilization (including habits of industry and sobriety) except in connection with, if not by the influence of, not only religious instruction and sentiment but of religious feelings. Even in ordinary civilized life, the mass of the laboring classes are controlled by their feelings as almost the only rule of action, in proportion to the absence or partial character of their intellectual development. The theory of a certain kind of educational philosophy is falsified in respect to the Indian; with him nothing can be done to improve and elevate his character and condition without the aid of religious feeling.
This influence must be superadded to all others to make the Indian a sober and industrious man. Even a knowledge of the doctrines and moral precepts of orthodox Christianity, with all the appliances of prudential example and instruction, is inadequate to produce in the heart and life of the Indian, the spirit and habits of an industrial civilization, without the additional energy and impulsive activity of religious feeling. The animating and controlling spirit of each industrial school establishment should, therefore, in my opinion, be a religious one. The religious culture in daily exercises and instruction should be a prominent object of attention; and besides vocal music, generally, sacred vocal music should form an important branch of their education.”
Methodism as a distinct branch of protestant Christianity in Canada was lost when the United Church of Canada was created, as a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Many loyalists who moved to Upper Canada after the American Revolution were Methodists, including the Ryersons.
Egerton Ryerson was a convert to Methodism at the age of 17. His father, an Anglican, threw him out of the house. Ryerson ended up becoming a publisher and a preacher. One of the goals of the Methodists was to prevent the Anglican Church from becoming the “official religion” of Upper Canada. Ryerson played a significant role in the development of education in Ontario.
While he is lauded for his “progressive” achievement, like free public schooling, standardized Canadian textbooks, it is seldom mentioned that the same act that created separate schools for Catholics and Protestants, it also created separate schools for black children.
The focus on Ryerson as a “great man” has obscured the larger context that he was operating in – specifically, that of the Methodist church and its adherents who played a direct role in the running every aspect of the residential school system.
The Methodists were running active missions across Canada. They wrote and published books promoting residential schools, and they were part of the federal residential school bureaucracy.
Another prominent Methodist who played an important role was James Shaver Woodsworth. Woodsworth was:
“the director of western missions for the Methodist Church from 1886 to 1915. One of his sons, J. F. Woodsworth, served as principal of both the Red Deer and Edmonton residential schools. (James Woodsworth was also the father of J. S. Woodsworth, the founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a forerunner of today’s New Democratic Party.)”
Being the Superintendent for the Methodist Missions in Western Canada – then termed the “Northwest” meant being responsible for the Methodist Residential Schools in all present-day British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, all from Brandon, where the Woodsworth family moved to in 1882.
It also meant recruiting people to do the Missionary work – one of whom was another future CCF Co-founder, and Methodist Minister, William Irvine. In 1895, the Brandon Industrial School was established, and was being run by another Methodist Minister, Thompson Ferrier. It drew on students from all over Manitoba.
“From its beginning, the school focused its recruiting efforts on Cree and Anishinawbe children from northern Manitoba communities including Norway House, Gods Lake, Berens River, Nelson House, Oxford House, Island Lake, and Little Grand Rapids; other students came from Cross Lake, Fisher River, and St. Peter’s.”
Ferrier was also associated with other Residential Schools. A photo of him in a canoe with Indigenous students at another Manitoba Residential School at Portage la Prairie introduces the first Chapter of John S. Milloy’s book, “A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986”.
Over many years, Ferrier was accused of accused of paying First Nations parents to send their children to the school, where they were underfed, overworked and many died.
“In 1900, Ferrier was accused of paying northern Manitoba families to send their children to Brandon. DIA official Martin Benson considered the charge unfounded, but he wrote, erring to the protocols Aboriginal parents insisted on when making such agreements and commitments, “He may, however, make some present by way of clothing or otherwise to induce them to part with their children as it is said to be pretty generally the practice in the West to fill up the schools by this means.”
In just eight years, from 1898 to 1906, 25 children died while living at the school, which required children to work half-days of unpaid labour to help pay for the school’s operation. The school at Brandon was one of the ones where the death rate was so high that Ferrier proposed “a new cemetery.”
“In the 1902–1903 school year six pupils died at the school. Drawn from distant communities including Gods Lake, Norway House, and Berens River, the youngest of these children was only seven, the oldest 16; most were in their early teens when they passed away. As Paul Hackett has shown, this pattern of declining health following admission to residential schools would continue throughout the residential school system’s history…. On 29 May 1912, Rev. Thompson Ferrier, Principal of the Brandon Residential School, wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Indian Affairs at Ottawa to propose the establishment of a new cemetery for children who died at the school… In 1915, Ferrier responded to criticism that the boys at the school were poorly dressed by explaining that “In the month of April there is a great deal of work to be done that the boys cannot be very tidy in their clothing in doing.”[1]
Ferrier is cited multiple times in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report
“In 1903, Brandon, Manitoba, principal T. Ferrier wrote that “while it is very important that the Indian child should be educated, it is of more importance that he should build up a good clean character.”
Such a heavy emphasis was required, in Ferrier’s opinion, to “counteract the evil tendencies of the Indian nature.”
What was happening at the Brandon Residential School was exactly what Dr. Peter Bryce, Canada’s First Chief Medical Officer, described as a “National Crime.” It was Bryce who wrote a 1907 report that detailed the fact that First Nations students at Residential schools were dying in appalling numbers of Tuberculosis, when the deaths could be prevented. He wrote:
“I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases […] The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime.”
In 1922, Bryce went public again with a self-published booklet called “A National Crime.” He was pleading because nothing had really been done since his first report, in 1907. This is not because his first report was secret – in fact, it sparked coverage in the major newspapers of the day, and it even spurred reactions from Residential School principals where students were being mistreated.
Ferrier knew about and even responded to the Bryce Report about deaths in Residential Schools:
“Upon its release in the fall of 1907, the report made national headlines. Saturday Night magazine reviewed the statistics presented by Bryce and concluded, “Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the educational system we have imposed on our Indian wards.” The headline in the Montreal Star read “Death Rate Among Indians Abnormal.” A similar story in the Ottawa Citizen concluded that the schools were “veritable hotbeds for the propagation and spread” of tuberculosis.
In releasing the report, Indian Affairs asked for comments from Indian agents and school principals. The Indian Affairs inspector at Gleichen, Alberta, wrote that “on the whole, I agree with the Dr.’s conclusions.” He said that “if more funds had been expended to better the conditions complained about in this report and a great deal less on drugs, there would have been fewer deaths among the pupils.” The Indian agent in Morley, Alberta, J. I. Fleetham, wrote that “as far as the Stony Reserve is concerned, I am fully of the opinion that fully 40% of the population more especially those under 25 years of age have more or less tuberculosis in their blood and that 75% of the deaths during the last three years are from this disease.”
One of Bryce’s recommendations was the Federal Government should take over the schools, which caused defensive blowback from the churches:
“The churches and schools aggressively defended their records. Brandon, Manitoba, principal T. Ferrier pointed out that when the schools were first established, there was no medical screening of students and “a large number of pupils were taken into the schools that should never have been admitted.” Admission was now much tighter, and the diet and clothing were much improved. He argued that since the schools that responded to Bryce’s survey had been in operation for an average of fifteen years, the death rate should have been stated as 1.6% per year, not 24%.
This is an early example of how Bryce’s findings were going to be misread over the years, both by supporters and critics of the schools. As noted above, Bryce did not present the figure of 24% as a death rate. He stated that, according to figures provided to him by the principals, a quarter of the individuals who had enrolled in these schools since they opened (and he noted that some had opened as early as 1888) were dead. Since 24% was not a death rate, dividing it by fifteen (as Ferrier had done) does not produce an annual death rate.”
It is worth repeating the fact that Ferrier was operating this Methodist Residential school in Brandon, which is where James Woodsworth, the Superintendent of Methodist Missions, lived and worked. The Ferriers and the Woodsworths knew each other professionally, and even wrote about each other in books.
In 1906 – the year before Bryce released his report - Ferrier had a book promoting Residential Schools called “Indian Education in the North West”[2] which was published out of Toronto by the Methodist Church, in which Ferrier calls for the “destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.” In it, he mentions travelling to the Morley Boarding School, which was the Morley Residential School in Alberta, with one of the Woodsworths.
“And I am sure if all the members of our Mission Board could have seen the Morley Boarding School, as Dr. Woodsworth and I saw it last winter, the conclusion would be that the difficulties in managing a school on a reserve have been more than a match for our church at that point.”
Ferrier’s depiction of Indigenous people is a litany of shameful racist stereotypes, many of which have endured to this day. It is coloured, in part, by the fact that Ferrier, as a Methodist, despised alcohol:
“On the reserve the white man's vices have taken a deeper root than his virtues.
His fire-water has demoralized whole tribes, and the diseases he has introduced have annihilated many.
The Indian is growing up with the idea firmly fixed in his head that the Government owes him a living, and his happiness and prosperity depend in no degree upon his individual effort.
Rations and treaty are all right for the aged, helpless, and infirm.
Strong and able-bodied Indians hang around for rations and treaty, neglecting other duties and the cultivation of their land, in order to secure what in many cases could be earned several times over in the same length of time. The system destroys his energy, push, and independence…
“As fast as our Indian, whether of mixed or full blood, is capable of taking care of himself, it is our duty to set him on his feet, and sever forever the ties that bind him either to his tribe or the Government. Both Church and State should have, as a final goal, the destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”
This entire passage from Ferrier’s book was cited verbatim in the 1909 book, “Strangers Within Our Gates” by J. S. Woodsworth – Methodist Minister, and future national leader of the CCF party, which later became the NDP. It came out supporting Thompson Ferrier after Ferrier had been interviewed about deaths at the Brandon Residential School, in the wake of the report that called Residential Schools, “A National Crime.”
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Richards, Eric (2000). The Highland Clearances People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (2013 ed.). Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. ISBN 978-1-78027-165-1.
https://www.umc.org/en/content/book-of-resolutions-repentance-for-support-of-eugenics
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/methodism
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/methodism [1]
https://thechildrenremembered.ca/school-histories/brandon/
[2] Available in its entirety online here: https://archive.org/details/Ayer_3A_290/Ayer_3A_290_images/Ayer_3A_290_00020_o2_right.jpg
Powerful, horrific. Thank you Dougald 😊