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‘Two Young Ladies in Connection with a Certain School:’ The Watson-Ketcheson Affair of 1952–53 and the Remains of Eugene R. Fairweather

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2018

Jonathan S. Lofft
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Abstract

Two young teachers posted at an Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, sought to act as whistleblowers regarding abuse there in 1952–53. Theologian Eugene R. Fairweather of Trinity College, Toronto, acted as their advocate and spiritual advisor. A significant correspondence, mostly purged from the official record, considered the reports of the whistleblowers, their fate, and the fraught place of the Residential Schools in Canadian Anglicanism in the decades before the era of Truth and Reconciliation. This article examines the relevant correspondence, retained only in the archival remains of Fairweather at Trinity. The correspondence, which adds to existing narratives of Anglican complicity in and responses to abuse at the Schools, suggests that future research must scrutinize official as well as previously overlooked sources of information, particularly the archival repositories of universities and theological schools, in search of the truth.

Keywords

All Saints’–Lac La Ronge Indian Residential SchoolAnglican Church of CanadaEugene R. FairweatherIndian Residential SchoolsVictoria KetchesonMissionary Society of the Church of England in CanadaUniversity of Trinity CollegeTruth and ReconciliationPatricia Watson
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 7 - 22
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Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2018 

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Footnotes

1.

I wish to gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of the following in preparing this article: Professor Alan L. Hayes of Wycliffe College, Director of the Toronto School of Theology; Ms Nancy J. Hurn, General Synod Archivist of the Anglican Church of Canada; Ms Sylvia Lassam, Rolph-Bell Archivist of Trinity College, and my supervisor Professor W. David Neelands, Dean Emeritus of Divinity, Trinity College. I also owe a debt to the late Ms Patricia Watson for her hospitality and her willingness to share her terrible story.

2.

Dr Jonathan Lofft is adjunct instructor in the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto.

References

3. Woods, Eric Taylor, A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools in Canada: The Long Road to Recovery (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 122-125 Google Scholar. For the text of the apology and context see http://www.anglican.ca/tr/apology/english/ (accessed 21 November 2017).

4. Woods, A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission, p. 125.

5. Woods, A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission, p. 128.

6. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).

7. Fontaine, Phil, ‘Foreword’, in A Knock at the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, edited and abridged, 2016), p. viii Google Scholar.

8. In 2016, the video Finding Heart, produced by Andy Bryce and Peter Campbell in cooperation with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, was released chronicling the fate of an earlier whistleblower: http://news.umanitoba.ca/nctr-releases-finding-heart/ (accessed 21 November 2017).

9. Ignatieff, Michael, ‘Articles of Faith’, Index on Censorship 25.5 (1996), pp. 110-22 (113) CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Originally ‘Schedule N’ of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (Ottawa, 2007), the mandate of the TRC can be found at http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=7 (accessed 21 November 2017). For the concept of archives as arsenals of accountability see Eastwood, Terrence M., ‘Reflections on the Development of Archives in Canada and Australia’, in Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Conference of the Australian Society of Archivists, Inc. (Perth: Australian Society of Archivists, 1989), pp. 76-81 (80) Google Scholar.

11. Niezen, Ronald, Truth and Indignation: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), p. 4 Google Scholar.

12. Woods, A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission, p. 132.

13. For which see Westfall, William, The Founding Moment: Church, Society, and the Construction of Trinity College (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

14. For E.R.F.’s enduring reputation among Anglicans in Canada, and well beyond, as ‘the most distinguished example of the integration of the theological enterprise into the life of the faith community’, see Baycroft, John, ‘Pontifex: A Brief Biographical Note on Some of the Contributions of Canon Eugene Fairweather to the Canadian Church’, Toronto Journal of Theology 3.1 (Spring 1987), pp. 130-33 (130) CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. A Knock at the Door (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015), p. 120. See also Canada’s Residential Schools: The History Part 2 1939–2000 The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada vol. 1 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), pp. 381, 523. The nomenclature is confusing. Before 1953, the Prince Albert Indian Residential School was known as the All Saints’–Lac La Ronge Indian Residential School. The anonymous author(s) of A Knock at the Door, in the gazetteer of 142 individual Indian Residential Schools in Canada, lists these two names separately, despite their institutional connectedness.

16. A Knock at the Door, pp. 248.

17. Hayes, Alan L., Anglicans in Canada: Controversies and Identity in Historical Perspective (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 30 Google Scholar.

18. Interview with Patricia Watson, Toronto, 5 November 2012.

19. Interview with Patricia Watson.

20. Interview with Patricia Watson.

21. Anglican Residential Schools, All Saints School, Lac La Ronge, SK, compiled by General Synod Archives, 23 September 2008. Retrievable at http://www.anglican.ca/relationships/trc/histories/all-saints-school-sk (accessed 21 November 2017).

22. Interview with Patricia Watson.

23. Interview with Patricia Watson.

24. Canada’s Residential Schools: The History Part 2 1939–2000, p. 377.

25. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to E.R.F., 14 September 1952.

26. PW & TK to E.R.F., 14 September 1952.

27. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to E.R.F., 15 November 1952.

28. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to E.R.F., 7 November 1952.

29. Interview with Patricia Watson.

30. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to E.R.F., 14 September 1952.

31. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to E.R.F., 12 October 1952.

32. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, CF to E.R.F., undated.

33. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PW & TK to Scrase, Cook et al., Saturday, 29 November 1952.

34. PW & TK to Scrase, Cook et al., Saturday, 29 November 1952.

35. PW & TK to Scrase, Cook et al., Saturday, 29 November 1952.

36. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, WB to E.R.F., 4 December 1952.

37. WB to E.R.F., 4 December 1952.

38. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PC to E.R.F., 4 December 1952.

39. Carrington, Philip, ‘Forward in Faith, 1942–1951’, in Thine Is the Glory: The Story of Fifty Years of Service by the M.S.C.C., the Society Formed in 1902 to Unify the Missionary Work of the Church (Toronto: MSCC, 1952), pp. 79-98 (83) Google Scholar.

40. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, HGC to E.R.F., 5 December 1952.

41. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, HGC to PC, 6 December 1952.

42. HGC to PC, 6 December 1952.

43. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, PC to E.R.F., 15 December 1952.

44. General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, GS75-103, Box 29-File 10, Laval Fortier to HGC, 6 December 1952. From 1950 to 1965 the Indian Affairs portfolio was carried by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration whose deputy Fortier was.

45. General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, GS75-103, Box 29-File 10, AJS to HGC, 3 December 1952.

46. AJS to HGC, 3 December 1952.

47. AJS to HGC, 3 December 1952.

48. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, CF to E.R.F., 19 December 1952. ‘When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints?’

49. Trinity College Archives, Eugene R. Fairweather fonds, F2010, ‘Indian Schools Admin.’ file in unprocessed records, temporary box 2, TK & PW to PC, 30 January 1953.

50. Gladwell, Malcolm, ‘In Plain View: How Child Molesters Get Away with It’, The New Yorker, 24 September 2012, p. 85 Google Scholar. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/24/in-plain-view (accessed 21 November 2017).