Convent of Jesus and Mary in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan

[RedMystic]

Happy Monday Chatters. 

Does anyone have any ideas where I might find write-ups about the student experience at the boarding school / Convent of Jesus and Mary in Gravelbourg? I can find materials on line that speak from the Church's ecclesiastical perspective as well as information about the buildings themselves. Sask Archives say they have Church-created documentation as opposed to student experience.

What I would really like to lay my hands on are any stories from the boarding student perspective, particularly from 1917 - 1925 when my grandmother was sent there for her schooling. She graduated at age 14.

Grandma didn't like speaking of her childhood as it was a difficult one. She only spoke to me once about her experience boarded away from home with the nuns & it wasn't very positively. I know the brief bits she told me, but I'd like to get more of a sense of what she experienced & if it was a common for other boarders.

Thoughts? Sources? Approaches other than a medium to call up my grandmother from the other side?

[JaneyCanuck]

Apparently there was a request to include it in the residential schools settlement (re abuse of First Nations children) but it was rejected:

http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SchoolDecisions.pdf

"These requested institutions have been researched by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and assessed against the test  in  Article  12  of  the  Settlement  Agreement  for  determining  whether  the institutions  should  be  considered  an  Indian  residential  school."

institution: Convent of Jesus and Mary
province/lcocation: Saskatchewan Gravelburg
Canada's decision: Do Not Add To Settlement Agreement
reason for decision: Operated by Religious Organization

To be included in the settlement, "Canada must have been jointly or solely responsible for the operation of the residence  and care of the children  resident there."

In other words, there may have been abuse, but Canada wasn't responsible. However, this would have been in a period later than your grandmother's time there, I imagine.

I think that anyone who ever boarded at a school run by an RC religious order probably had tales of a difficult life, at the very least, to tell, if they wanted to talk about it, which many never did. If you could find material about other schools during about the same time, operated by the Sisters of Jesus and Mary in particular, you might be able to generalize somewhat from that. However, since they originated in France and were located in francophone communities in Canada, what materials there might be would likely be difficult to access because of the language barrier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_of_Jesus_and_Mary (not great English)

Religieuses de Jésus-Marie / RJM is what to look for. I'm googling around a bit and not finding much along the lines of what you're looking for ... obviously, most you find will be laudatory, as they are deeply embedded in French-Canadian culture and pride.

[Rachel Hallson]

My father was sent to couvent of Jesus et Marie in Gravelbourg, sk when he was 4 years old ... was physically and emotionally abused, lost his hearing because the nuns put his head in toilet and flushed it and then hit him...because he wet the bed    I would love to hear from people who have family members who spent time here... my father passed away many years ago and it is only as  get older that I begin to understand what his life might have been like....

[JaneyCanuck]

One thing I might suggest is to start a facebook page.

There is one now, just an automatically generated empty page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Couvent-Jesus-Marie-Gravelbourg/108498269181629

You could start one called something like "survivors of the Couvent de Jésus et Marie, Gravelbourg".

Google would find it if someone went looking, as it just found that empty page for me.

As a child, I spent 3 months in an RC hospital in Ontario, confined to a bed and under the thumb of the nun in charge of the ward, whose bigotry and hatred (my family was Protestant) resulted in emotional abuse that did scar me for life. (Physical abuse amounted only to being made to eat food that made me ill, to comply with RC dietary rules, but I can only guess what that nun would have done if she had had free rein in a protected situation.) My experience would not be one one-thousandth of what children in the residential schools suffered.

Your father's experiences were horrific and there are obviously many who suffered the same. You might find that a facebook page would give you and others the opportunity to talk about it, as a beginning anyway.