Shubenacadie residential school

Shubenacadie residential school is presented as an institution whose promise of education conceals exploitation and violence against Mi’kmaw children. Egga’s experience there damages his body and sense of safety, but the consequences extend beyond his escape: for years he distances himself from Mi’kmaw identity, before his wife and daughters help him consider a return to the family and history he left behind.

Promise of Education

Egga’s father, Lobert Sel, agrees to send him to the school because he hopes his son will learn to read and write and find work better than cutting trees. Lobert and Nanty visit every month, bringing food from home, and take pride in their son’s education. Their visits and trust stand in stark contrast to Egga’s actual days at the school, where he receives no ordinary classroom instruction and is made to shovel coal in the furnace room. The gap between the family’s hopes and the institution’s practice is central to the school’s role in his story.

Abuse and Escape

At the school, Egga learns only to read pressure gauges while doing furnace work. He is insulted and physically abused; a beating leaves him deaf in one ear and with an arm that heals badly. His friend Johnny Stick works alongside him and is also treated harshly. Egga comes to understand that he is being treated as a slave rather than as a student. He forms a plan to escape, hopes at first to bring Johnny with him, but cannot find a private moment to ask. He leaves alone, and his parents are awakened by pounding at their door.

A Long Afterlife

As an adult, Egga explains that being Mi’kmaw made his life painful and that he has tried to put that identity away. His wife, Bren Sel, challenges the idea that ancestry and belonging can simply be discarded, arguing that their daughters should know their people and family history. Egga initially does not see a parallel between her account of women’s historical oppression and his own renunciation of Mi’kmaw particularity. Gradually, however, his daughters’ interest in his stories and in their Sel relatives leads him to speak about his past and wonder what Mi’kmaw identity might mean beyond humiliation.

Return and Reconnection

When Sapatisia later visits her relatives in Shubenacadie and asks about family stories, Lobert writes to Egga that the school that hurt him has closed and burned. He asks Egga or his other granddaughter Marie to come home. The letter moves Egga to tears, and he plans to travel with Bren on the next St. Anne’s Day. The account establishes a possibility of renewed family connection, but does not confirm that the planned visit takes place.