INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE

NOVA SCOTIA CENTRALIZATION POLICY

by

LISA LYNNE PATTERSON

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the Degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University,

September 1985.

Examiners:

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY

Author: LISA LYNNE PATTERSON

Title: INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE

NOV A SCOTIA CENTRALIZATION POLICY

l)epartment: History

Degree: Master of Arts Convocation: Fall Year: 1985

Permission is herewith granted to Dalhousie University to circulate

and to have copied for non-commerical purposes, at its discretion, the above

title upon the request of individuals or institutions.

L?~-c;x Signature of Author

lo AiyL~ I'IBS Date

THE AUTHOR RESERVES OTHER PUBLICATION RIGHTS, AND

NEITHER THE THESIS NOR EXTENSIVE EXTRACTS FROM IT MAY BE

PRINTED OR OTHERWISE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE AUTHOR'S

PERMISSION.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE CENTRALIZATION CONCEPT 11

III. MAKING THE DECISION TO CENTRALIZE 43

IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF CENTRALIZATION 63

V. THE CENTRALIZATION EXPERIENCE 99

VI. THE AFTERMATH 119

VII. WORLD WAR II: A WATERSHED IN CANADIAN INDIAN POLICY 136

VIII. INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE CENTRALIZATION POLICY 149

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

Cost of Centralization in Nova Scotia to 31 March 1950

Ministers and Directors Responsible for Centralization

Indian Reserves in Nova Scotia

161

171

172

173

i

ABSTRACT

The prelude to and the administration and aftermath of the relocation

scheme known as "centralization" together constitute a large segment of the

history of Nova Scotia Micmacs under the government of Canada. As a plan to

save the government money and promote the self-sufficiency of Indians by

controlling them and improving their education and health care, the attempt to

concentrate the province's status Indians at two isolated reserves was a failure.

In 1949, seven years after centralization began, the policy was abandoned with

half of the 2,500 Indians still on at least fifteen of their forty reserves and ten

off-reserve sites.

A wartime financial crisis had coincided with an increase in Canada's

Indian population causing the government to respond, in 1942, to long-standing

complaints about Nova Scotia Indians and the administration of their affairs.

Unavoidably perhaps, the method chosen was consistent with colonial philosophy,

the basis of the legislation governing Indians. In keeping with the contradictory

nature of the Indian Act, Indian Affairs maintained that removing the Micmacs

to remote central reserves equipped as "rehabilitative" institutions would hasten

their assimilation. A step in the continuum representing the diminution of

Indians' place in Canadian society, centralization also manifested Indian Affairs'

tendency to try to improve its efficiency and lessen government costs by

reducing the number of places in which Indians lived -- especially when disease

and assimilation were not reducing their numbers.

As effected, centralization proved to be a presumptuous, adventuresome

and completely inappropriate scheme reflecting the insensitivity, paternalism and

lack of expertise characteristic of the Indian administration of the 1940s.

ii

Although centralization had none of the attributes of an effective policy for

social change, the government was deaf to Indian and white protests against it.

Pressure to move to the Eskasoni and Shubenacadie reserves was kept up until

nation-wide social and political factors altered overall Indian policy. Only during

major national crises did Indians in Nova Scotia warrant the government's

attention. The result of the Second World War was that, after a century of

neglect, Nova Scotia Micmacs suddenly bore the full brunt of Canadian Indian

policy.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was made possible by the financial support of the Union of

Nova Scotia Indians and Dalhousie University. I would like to thank Stu Killen,

Harold McGee and Fred Wien for helping me select the topic, and also June

Lewis, Pauline Lewis, Barbara Sylliboy and Cliff Thomas for their assistance

with the interviews. Bruce Daniels and Dorothy Patterson supplied valuable

editorial comments. I remain indebted to these and many other individuals who

made the completion of this project not only possible but a pleasure.

1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Had any status Indians been living in Guysborough County, every county

of the province of Nova Scotia would have had a registered Indian population in

1942. As it was, 2,165 Indians were distributed among seventeen counties.

Shelburne County had the fewest, with only twenty-eight, and Richmond County,

with two hundred and forty-seven, had the most. 1 That year, in the midst of the

Second World War, the Indian Affairs Branch of the federal Department of Mines

and Resources initiated a relocation scheme it called "centralization." Its goal

was to concentrate on the Eskasoni reserve in Cape Breton and the Shubenacadie

reserve on the Mainland all of Nova Scotia's registered Indians. By collecting

them at two central locations, the government expected to reduce costs for

Indian welfare, education and health care; ease local complaints; and give Indian

Affairs, the clergy and the RCMP greater control over Indian life.

By the end of the war, Indian Affairs' interest in moving Nova Scotia's

entire Indian population to two reserves began to wane. Barely half the required

number had been relocated when centralization was finally discontinued in 1949.

Only the Malagawatch reserve was vacated under the policy. The other

"outlying" reserves gave to the two central reserves many of their poor and

elderly as well as some of their natural leaders, skilled workers, returning

veterans and young families, but Eskasoni and Shubenacadie proved incapable of

supporting their expanded populations. Centralization affected Indian life in the

province more than any other post-Confederation event; today, its social,

economic and political effects are still felt.

The impact of centralization is part of the rationale for this examination

2

of the scheme's genesis, administration and eventual abandonment. In addition,

this essay will endeavour to relate the history of the centralization policy to the

history of Indian Affairs in Canada and that of Indian affairs in Nova Scotia. 2 It

will consider the broader context in which decisions about Nova Scotia Indians

were made to show how centralization was affected by certain changes in

twentieth century Indian policy.

Heretofore, the historical experience of Nova Scotia Indians under the

government of Canada has not been a subject of scholarly enquiry. L.F.S.

Upton's Micmacs and Colonists discussed Indian-white relations in the Maritimes

from 1713 to 1867, but developments after 1867 have not been documented.

Centralization exacerbated the "invisibility" of Indians in Nova Scotia which --

probably as much as the uneventful administration of their affairs to 1942 -- may

have contributed to historians' lack of interest in them.

The Canadian government adopted the colony of Nova Scotia's system

for governing local Indians shortly after Confederation and continued it without

significant modification until the Second World War. Overseen by nineteen part-

time Indian agents, Nova Scotia Indians lived on about half of their forty small

reserves, moving about to work, hunt, fish and sell handicrafts. They also lived

on the outskirts of several Mainland towns and cities. Although complaints about

their lot were frequently aired in the House of Commons, the Minister

responsible in 1905 astutely replied:

••• it is in securing their livelihood that the Indians of Nova Scotia wander from their reserves, and I would take it that if the government exercised pressure to keep them on the reserve the government would thereby incur a moral responsibility to provide for their support that it is not called upon to do at the present time.3

Since the government had not entered into treaties with the province's relatively

3

few Indians, it perceived its obligations towards them in the most limited terms.

Minimal education, health care and relief were provided but, otherwise, the

Indians were expected to fend for themselves. Only when relief costs began to

soar did the government move to alter its administrative arrangements in Nova

Scotia. The concept of centralization was first articulated in departmental

memos during the First World War. Although there was a short-lived effort to

reduce the number of Indian agents in 1932, centralization was not really

attempted until the spring of 1942 when an Order in Council authorized the

concentration of the province's Indians at just two reserves.

Many gaps exist in the government's record of the centralization policy.

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church has been unwilling to share whatever

records it may have pertaining to the scheme, and so far private papers and

newspapers have yielded little 'of value. If further sources are discovered it may

become possible to compare the progress of centralization on the Mainland and

in Cape Breton; however, with the material currently available, one cannot

quantify statements about how centralization affected individual reserves. The

dearth of specific information also makes it difficult to compare developments

at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. Since the' likelihood of locating additional printed

sources is not great, future research may have to rely on oral history which

becomes increasingly difficult with the passage of time.

Indian affairs in Canada have been largely determined by the Indian Act

of 1876 and its subsequent amendments. Though modified in 1951, the sense of

the first consolidated Indian Act still influences almost every aspect of Indian

life. Consequently, it will be of benefit to consider some of the effects of the

Indian Act and the reserve system' before proceeding with the discussion of

centralization. For example, status or registered Indians 4 normally do not

4

receive services such as education, health care and housing assistance from

provincial and municipal governments as do other Canadians.5 Having given up

virtually all of their lands and resources to Canada, Indians are exempt from

taxation but, until 1960, they did not have the right to vote in federal elections.

Due to the reserves and legal framework that developed in the colonial era,

status Indians are unlike any other ethnic group in that they are a collection of

partial nations deliberately set apart from the rest of Canadian society.

Securing the co-operation and loyalty of the continent's indigenous

peoples made eminent strategic sense when the Europeans were first extending

their influence into North America. The French and British offered gifts and

protection to Indians willing to be their friends, business partners or military

allies. Agreements necessitated by British/French rivalries established

protection as the first tenet of British Indian policy. The Royal Proclamation

of 1763, which affirmed aboriginal rights to the land and made the government

the middleman in the settlement process, subsequently entrenched protection as

an inalienable concept. 6 Later, when settlers began to occupy Indian terri tory,

further promises of goods, services and protected lands were made in order to

acquire land and keep the peace. Once the colonial population was well­

established the imperial government embraced, through legislation, the

missionaries' conviction that native North Americans should be converted to

Christianity and "civilized." Thus, the British government locked itself into a

paradoxical position with respect to Indians by virtue of its other obligation to

protect them.

Unable and unwilling to accept the prospect of a marriage between the

Indians' values, customs and languages and their own, the colonizers missed the

one opportunity that existed -- if only in theory -- to create a distinctively

5

Canadian, as opposed to Western European, identity here. The social attitudes of

nineteenth century Britain precluded the development of a full and fair

partnership with aboriginal peoples. When the Canadian government

incorporated British Indian policy into its Indian Act, that legislation became a

reflection of the prevailing belief in Anglo-Saxon racial and cultural superiority.

Most Indians were permanently shut out of Canada's social, economic and

political life as a result. Since the federal government continued to perceive

"the Indian Problem" as the failure of Indians to cease being Indian rather than

the refusal of white society to incorporate them, its efforts to solve the Indians'

predicament were limited to various strategies for their assimilation. Opinions

differed about how best to transform Indians into citizens, but doing so was the

only way the government could rid itself of its legal obligation to protect and

maintain Indians in perpetuity.

As will be discussed in Chapter Two, most Eastern and Central Canadian

Indians were r~legated to their protected lands by 1830.7 Since then, there has

been an ongoing debate over whether reserve life retards or promotes

acculturation. While successive governments did try to turn reserves into social

laboratories for purging Indian ways, the reserves functioned mainly as a refuge

for Indians and as a means of securing for the white man the freedom to exploit

Indian resources, and ultimately the Indians themselves. If any guilt was felt

about the establishment of these minority enclaves it was conveniently offset by

a strong sense of liberal paternalism. Seeing itself as the Indians' guardian, the

government felt it knew what was best. 8

Indians' views regarding their own longterm welfare were systematically

ignored in the formulation of the Indian Act and the policy that flowed from it.9

It functioned as an instrument of social control by defining all aspects of the

6

Indians' relationship to Canadian society. Containing elements of some two

dozen different acts of the provinces, and in some cases overriding other federal

legislation, the Indian Act can be seen as a "constitution" for Indians that has the

force of the Criminal Code. 1 0

During the half century with which this essay is primarily concerned,

Indian agents were responsible for administering government policy on reserves.

In 1938 the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs expressed the view that:

••• one of the most important cogs in the wheel of Indian administration is the Indian agent • • • some of · the necessary, almost indispensable qualities that he needs are· firmness, sympathy and understanding, and a little bit of missionary spirit. He must win the confidence of the people he is looking after; for in many respects they are like children.ll

Evidently, the government's perception of Indians had undergone little change

since the first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, explained that Canadian

Indian policy was "to wean" the Indians from their habits "by slow degrees" and

12 "absorb" them on the land. Official statements about the importance of

agents notwithstanding, the Nova Scotia experience also demonstrated that

Ottawa could be as patronizing towards its agents in far-flung locations as it was

towards the Indians in their charge.

The Indian agent's primary task was to promote agricultural self-

sufficiency on the reserve. Since reserve land was often ill-suited to agriculture

and most Indians had little desire to become farmers, agricultural efforts seldom

met the Department's expectations. Viable businesses and industries were also

difficult to establish because the legal straitjacket of the Indian Act curtailed

the infusion of outside capital into the Indian economy and made entre­

preneurial excursions beyond the reserve virtually impossible. 13 In 1981, the

average unemployment rate on Canadian Indian reserves was 68 per cent, with

7

the rate in Nova Scotia even higher. 14

Probably believing that Indians were likely to die out before they became

assimilated, the Canadian public remained apathetic towards them until after

the Second World War. Awareness of Indian conditions was so limited that

almost no public money was available for the types of staff, education and

programs that might have eased the entry of Indians into the wider society.

During the interwar years, therefore, Indian Affairs maintained what might be

described as a holding pattern.

Indian Affairs officials tended to regard themselves as the sole experts

on the subject of Indians. Frequently from military or religious backgrounds,

they lent an air of authoritarianism to a sector of government that, in all its

incarnations, was conservative and inward-looking. With Canadian Indian policy

flounderi~g throughout most of its history, those responsible for Indian welfare

felt obliged to keep up at least an appearance of wisdom and benevolence.

Things were in such a sorry state by 1939 that the Secretary of the Indian Affairs

Branch went so far as to credit his masters with the very existence of Indians:

For a time it seemed that they were doomed. But the government determined that the race should be saved.l5

In 1942, the coincidence of an increase in the Canadian Indian population

and a national financial crisis pushed the government to drastic measures.

Unfortunately, a legislative framework rooted in colonial practice restricted its

vision as well as its course of action. Since the Indian Act was based on the

dichotomy of protection and advancement, a plan which required further

isolation was duly selected to promote assimilation in Nova Scotia. After the

war, it became apparent to some that the government's various efforts to

eliminate "the Indian Problem" were being undermined by the nature of the Act.

8

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, changes in overall Indian policy precluded

the completion of centralization -- a scheme that by then had proven itself to be

not only presumptuous and adventuresome but completely inappropriate.

To show how Indian policy in Nova Scotia during the 1940s sprang from

the thinking of the past, the next chapter will trace the evolution of the concept

of centralization from colonial times to the Second World War. Chapter Three

will explain how and why the decision to centralize was made in the year 1942.

The outline of the policy's implementation in Chapter Four relies on the

available official record; and Chapter Five draws on oral history to fill in gaps in

that account. Some consequences of the relocation scheme, evident in the 1950s

and 1960s, are mentioned in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven provides an analysis of

the demise of centralization, and conclusions follow in Chapter Eight.

9

Notes - Chapter I

1 Public Archives of Canada (PAC), Indian Affairs, RG 10, volume 7758, file 27050-2, Pt. 2, ca. July 1942.

2 Indian affairs consists of Indian issues and problems as well as the relationship between Indians and the government. Indian Affairs represents any of the branches or departments of government that have been responsible for Indian affairs. In the first six years after Confederation Indian Affairs was associated with the Department of the Secretary of State. In 1873 it was transferred to the Department of the Interior and, although it became the Department of Indian Affairs in 1880, it retained its association with that department by coming under the aegis of the Minister of the Interior until 1936 when it became a branch of the Department of Mines and Resources. Until 1950, when Indian Affairs was transferred to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indians were viewed in the context of western development and, therefore, seldom commanded the full attention of the responsible minister. D.J. Hall, "Clifford Sifton and the Canadian Indian Administration, 1896-1905," Prairie Forum II, 2 (1977), 128.

3 Canada, Parliament, House of Commons Debates, IV (1905), 6515.

4 "Status" or "registered" Indians are persqns under the legal jurisdiction of the federal Indian Act and named in a register kept by Indian Affairs. Slightly more than half of the 300,000 status Indians in Canada are descendants of Indians who signed treaties. Few treaties were signed in the Maritimes, Quebec and British Columbia. "Non-status" Indians are those who either were never registered or who lost their status through enfranchisement or marriage to a non-Indian man. The 1981 census recorded approximately 75,000 non-status Indians. Canada's 98,000 Metis, the offspring of Indian and white (usually French) marriages, are often associated with non-status Indians; however, it should be noted that persons of mixed blood and even no Indian blood may also have Indian status. Several thousand of Canada's 25,000 Inuit (Eskimos) are also governed by the Indian Act. Together, status and non-status Indians, Metis and Inuit comprise the 500,000 Native people enumerated in 1981. While this figure represents 2 per cent of the total population, unofficial estimates take into account the refusal of many Native people to be enumerated and place the total number of Native people at well over one million. Less than 1 per cent of Canada's Native population resides in Nova Scotia. As of 31 December 1983 there were 6,000 status Indians in the province. But, the elimination of sexual discrimination in the Indian Act and the restoration of Indian status to certain individuals by Bill C-31 could increase the number of status Indians in Nova Scotia by as many as 5,000. Indian bands have until the summer of 1987 to establish band membership codes. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Reserves and Trusts, Indian and Inuit Affairs Program, Estimated Re istered Indian Po ulation by Reserve as of December 31, 2 Ottawa, and Registered In ian Po ulation by Sex and Residence for Bands, Res onsibility Centres, Re ions and Canada for December 31, 983 Ottawa, 1985; and Micmac News, June 1984, 4.

10

5 Sally Weaver points out that the provision of certain services by the federal government does not stem directly from the Indian Act but rather from the assumptions upon which it is based. Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden A enda, 1968-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 198 , 9. John Leslie and Ron McGuire, eds., The Historical Development of the Indian Act (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1978) is an important source of detailed information about the evolution of the Act.

6 J. Rick Ponting and Roger Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance: A Socio-Political Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada (Toronto: Butterworth and Co. (Canada), 1980), 4.

7 Indian reserves were not established on the Canadian prairies until the 1870s.

8 Peter Carstens, "Coercion and Change," in Canadian Society: Pluralism, Change and Conflict, ed. Richard Ossenberg (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice Hall, 1971), 128, 137.

9 Hall, "Clifford Sifton," 136.

10 Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 8-9. The legitimacy of the Indian Act has been cast further into doubt by the patriation of the British North America Act and the adoption of a Charter of Rights.

11 House of Commons Debates, IV (1938), 3798-3799.

12 Leslie and McGuire, Indian Act, 191.

13 Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 21.

14 Canada, Statistics Canada, Canada's Native People (Ottawa, 1984) and Fred Wien, Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Micmac in Nova Scotia (Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1983), passim.

15 T.R.L. Macinnes, "The History and Policies of the Indian Administration in Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. C.T. Loram and T.F. Mcllwraith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943), 154.

11

CHAPTER II

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CENTRALIZATION CONCEPT

Prior to its acceptance in 1942, the idea of concentrating all the Indians

of Nova Scotia on just a few reserves had a long and tortuous hi~tory. The

campaign for its adoption was waged within Indian Affairs for more than two

decades, even though the general principle of collecting Indians in a limited

number of locations for the convenience of the government and, paradoxically,

to further Indian assimilation had been established at least a century earlier.

Indeed, the 1942 centralization scheme may be seen as part of a continuum that

consisted of a growing population of settlers sweeping North America's

indigenous peoples into a diminishing number of piles. · In terms of this historical

progression towards reducing the interspersal of Indians among whites, the act of

forcing Nova Scotia's Indians onto central reserves was somewhat overdue. Had

the government acted sooner it might have succeeded in eliminating most of

Nova Scotia's small reserves. But it waited too long; the Second World War

brought with it social changes that prevented centralization from ever being

completed.

The native people of Nova Scotia are members of the Micmac nation, the

name of which derives from their own word nikmaq, meaning 'my kin friends.'

Since they greeted European newcomers in this manner, the French, in turn,

addressed their indigenous allies in the area as 'nikmaqs.'1 The Micmac language

belongs to the Algonquian family of twenty languages. Malecite, Montagnais,

Abenaki, Cree, Ojibwa, Delaware, Potawatomi and Blackfoot are the other

Algonquian languages that are spoken in Canada in the area bounded by the coast

of Labrador, the Rockies, Lake Erie, and Hudson Bay.

12

The Maritimes have been occupied by Indians for more than ten thousand

years. At least five hundred years ago, the Micmac people lived in small,

spread-out communities along the shores of bays, coves and rivers in the

Maritimes to best take advantage of the rich food resources available there.

With the establishment of the fur trade, they began to spend more time inland

trapping. The dependence on European foods that resulted increased their

susceptibility to famine and to European diseases. Within a century of Jacques

Cartier's first voyage in 1534, 7 5 per cent of the Micmacs perished. 2

The baptism of Grand Chief Membertou and twenty members of his

family at Port Royal by Abbe Jesse Fleche of Langres, France, in 1610 signalled

the eventual adoption of Roman Catholicism by the Micmacs.3 French

missionaries tried to collect their converts at a single settlement located

between present-day Halifax and Shubenacadie, 4 but once Acadia was lost to the

British in 1713 they opted for either lle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island) or a

location in Isle Royale (Cape Breton). Since the Indians failed to co-operate, a

mission was set up opposite lle St. Jean at Antigonish to draw bothersome Indians

away from Louisbourg but to keep them close enough to heed a French call-to­

arms. That mission was moved to Merligueche (Malagawatch) in 1725, a more

secure location on the Bras d'Or Lake. Two years earlier the mission along the

Shubenacadie River had been reestablished for "tous les sauvages de l'Acadie,"

but the French failed to concentrate their Indian allies in either of these

locations. The Micmacs thus retained their mobility, using to advantage their

strategic position between the French and the British. 5

In 1749, the establishment of Halifax and the appointment of Governor

Edward Cornwallis heralded the creation of a full British colony in Nova Scotia

and the advent of Protestant supremacy there. On assuming office, Cornwallis

13

instructed both the military and civilians to "annoy, distress, take or destroy" the

Micmacs. Ten guineas was the reward for an Indian or a scalp. It was

Cornwallis' hope that eventually it would be possible to hunt the Micmacs by sea

and land until they either sued for peace or left the colony.6 In 1752, his

successor, Governor Peregrine Hopson, made a short-lived peace agreement with

Micmac chief Jean-Baptiste Cope that lasted until the arrival at Halifax of two

shipwrecked sailors bearing six Indian scalps. Peace was not restored until the

Royal Proclamation of 1763.7

An influx of United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution

(1776-1783) further disrupted Indian life in Nova Scotia. Wherever settlers were

established in the colonies, Indians found themselves condemned to "a twilight

existence" on the periphery of civilization. 8 Deprived of any means of economic

independence, Indians tht::refore became an "expensive social nuisance" for the

society that denied them entry.9 A Joint Committee on Indian Affairs reporting

on the situation in Nova Scotia in 1800 tried to be optimistic. It expressed the

conviction that:

•.• by the adoption and faithful execution of a rational and judicious plan for locating these people in suitable situations and inducing them to settle by reasonable encouragement, and by withholding all public assistance from those who would not comply with the terms prescribed, that many, especially of the younger class, might be made useful members of society, and the condition of the whole much ameliorated.lO

The search for a sound and effective plan was to continue into the twentieth

century.

In 1820, some small parcels of land in Nova Scotia were taken into trust

by the government for those Indians disposed to settle. 11 Even though some of

the areas had been previously frequented by Indians, they proved weak as

14

reserves. Encroachment by whites was a constant problem but the legislature

consistently refused to fund surveys or to provide farm training and implements

for the Indians. 12 Faced with either starvation or the possibility of receiving

some meagre relief on these lands, some of the Indians were drawn to the

designated areas. The outline of the reserve system was therefore apparent in

Nova Scotia, as it was in the Canadas, by the mid-1830s. 13

A wave of philanthropic liberalism and the realization that some way had

to be fo.und to curb the expense of maintaining Indians combined to produce the

Colonial Office's first pronouncements about civilizing and assimilating Indians.

"Insulation leading eventually to amalgamation" became the preferred method in

Upper and Lower Canada in 1830. 14 The Nova Scotia government was less

moved by Indian matters; in 1834 it totally ignored a request from the British

House of Commons for a report on the condition of aboriginal peoples in Nova

Scotia. 15 Meanwhile in Upper Canada, several settled In~ian communities had

been organized to train Indians in European ways. When Sir Francis Bond Head

became Lieutenant Governor in 1836, he decided these experiments were a

failure. Believing the Indian could never be changed, he attempted to reverse

the assimilation policy by proposing that all the Indians of Upper Canada be

removed to the islands of the Manitoulin chain where they could live out their

days hunting and fishing. Protests from missionaries and others committed to

civilizing Indians resulted in the rejection of Bond Head's scheme and the

reinstatement of directed culture change as British Indian policy. 16 "To protect

and cherish this hapless Race ••• and raise them in the Scale of Humanity"

became the official goal in the Canadas in 1838.17

Finally, in 1842, "an Act for the Instruction and Permanent Settlement

of Indians" was passed in Nova Scotia as a result of petitions to Queen Victoria

15

by Micmac Chief Paussamigh Pemmeenauweet protesting Indian conditions in the

colony.l 8 By this time, the administration of Indian relief in Nova Scotia was

already mired in patronage and corruption. Members of the Provincial Assembly

were also in the habit of looking the other way while white squatters tilled the

soil of Indian reserves. 19 Joseph Howe, appointed Indian Commissioner for Nova

Scotia in 1843, found the 22,050 acres of land reserved for Indians inadequate,

isolated and encroached upon. Five counties were entirely without any land

designated for Indian use. 20 Nevertheless, the Provincial Assembly was not

eager to fund the establishment of supervised agricultural communities and it

refused to pay for the education of Indian children. Whites opposed Indian

children in their schools, and the Indians were afraid of losing their children to

the White Man's school. 21 The whole situation was so discouraging that Howe's

successor, William Chernley, was forced to abandon the settlement plan in 1853,

concluding that, since the Micmacs were "fast passing away," the most that

could be done was to ease their last days by providing whatever relief the

province would allow them. 22 For their livelihood, the Micmacs made baskets

and did some farming, lumbering and logging. They still followed a seasonal

routine of fishing at the shore in summer and going inland in winter to hunt and

trap, but they were debilitated by disease and their access to their traditional

food sources was gradually being eroded. 23

By the middle of the nineteenth century, doubts were being expressed in

the Canadas about the direction Indian legislation had taken. The Governor

General, Lord Elgin, questioned the government's wardship of Indians:

• • • the laws enacted for their protection, and in the absence of which they fall as easy prey to the more unscrupulous among their energetic neighbours, tend to keep them in a condition of perpetual pupillage. And the relation subsisting between them and the

Government, which treats them partly as independent peoples, and partly as infants under its guardianship, involves many anomalies and contradictions.24

16

An investigation of the Indian Department's operations in both Canada East and

Canada West produced a complete reorganization of the Department after Lower

and Upper Canada were united in 1840. Known as the Bagot Commission, it also

gave rise to further "civilization" legislation destined to form the basis of the

1876 Indian Act. Since the Bagot Commissioners mistakenly believed there were

no racial barriers to Indian advancement, they contended that Indian self-

reliance could be achieved by simply protecting Indian resources and improving

I d. d . 25 n 1an e ucat1on.

This early denial of the racist character of Eurocanadian society is the

source of the most significant weaknesses in Canadian Indian policy. Today, the

racial barrier and the cultural differences between an individualistic free

enterprise society exploiting nature for short term gain and community-directed

Indian societies operating in greater harmony with nature both need to be

acknowledged before Indians can assume their rightful place in Canadian society.

The failure of past policy can be traced back to Canada's inability to accept

Indians as Indians. The efforts of every government since the 1840s were also

undermined by the fundamental contradiction of assimilation and protection.

John Leslie's conclusion about the Bagot Commissioners' Report is that while it

was

••• intended as a blueprint to .reduce operational costs and make Indian people less reliant on government . . • it became a cornerstone in the evolution and development of a costly, permanent and expanded Indian Department which not only would increasingly intrude into, but regulate and control, the daily lives of Native people in Canada.26

17

As will be shown, the same statement fits the Nova Scotia centralization policy

one hundred years later: although its intention was to reduce costs and increase

the Indians' economic independence, it increased costs and reduced their ability

to be self-sufficient.

In 1867, when the British North America Act gave the federal

government the authority to legislate on matters relating to "Indians and Lands

Reserved for Indians," Nova Scotia was relieved of its responsibility for the 1,600

Indians there. 27 By then, the Micmacs had been in contact with Europeans for

more than three hundred years yet they still retained their own ideological

traditions and nomadic lifestyle. Their Christianity distinguished them from the

"heathen savages" of Western lore, but their conversion had not resulted in a

general acceptance of European ways. In fact, their Catholicism contributed to

their isolation in a mainly Protestant province.

Although Joseph Howe had railed against Confederation and was an

outspoken anti-Catholic, he joined the fede.ral cabinet in 1869 and became the

federal government's first Indian Commissioner. 28 Considering his discouraging

experience as the Indian Commissioner for Nova Scotia in the 1840s and the

provincial government's desire for him to continue established practice, it is

perhaps not surprising that Confederation had little effect upon Indian affairs in

Nova Scotia. 29

The main duty of federal Indian Affairs' officials was the administration

of funds held in trust for Indians by the government. Nova Scotia Micmacs, who

constituted less than 2 per cent of Canada's Indian population, had no wealth. In

189 5 only $226.51 rested in their trust account, probably revenue from the sale

or lease of some of their lands. They possessed little to covet, and they

presented no potential political challenge to the new nation. By contrast with

18

Indians in Alberta whose property and assets were worth $2,121.78 per capita in

1919, the real and personal property of Nova Scotia Micmacs was valued at only

$126.67 per capita that year.30 The government was acutely aware of the

differences between the circumstances of Indians in the East and those in the

West where the disappearance of the buffalo not long after Confederation was

blamed for Indian hardship:

The conditions in the maritime provinces are not the same as in the Northwest; in fact the Indians in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia do not receive any treaty payments and the government does not take the responsibility of their support as is the case of the Indians in the Northwest) I

Maritime Indians were "expected to practically make their own living."32

Limited relief was provided only when "absolutely necessary.n33

Around the turn of the century, the federal government's contribution

towards the education of Indians in Nova Scotia consisted of the operation of

twelve elementary schools. It did not conduct farm instruction as it did in the

West.34 While the Department was generally wedded to the "bible and plough"

approach to civilizing and settling Indians,35 it acknowledged that since the

Micmacs lacked "land of a character to support them" as yeoman farmers "it

would be no benefit to give them farm instruction."36 Training Indians for work

in industry was out of the question. Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior and

Superintendent General of Indian Affairs from 1896 to 1905, believed that the

Indian lacked "the physical, mental or moral get-up to enable him to compete."37

Moreover, his successor to 1911, Frank Oliver, considered educating Indians "to

compete industrially with our own people" (emphasis added) "a very undesirable

use of public money."38 In 1907, Oliver summarized the situation in Nova

Scotia:

.•• we have a number of isolated reserves with local agents scattered all over this province. There are no means of carrying on a general policy with regard to them. The reserves are insignificant, the salaries are small, and the agents really have no personal responsi­bility.39

19

Until the 1950s, the Department had what historian Douglas Leighton

termed "an almost pathological fear of large expenditure." It was totally

unwilling to invest any money in creating a viable economy for the Maritime

Indians.l.j.Q Indeed, it resorted to every conceivable method of saving itself

money including deliberately hiring doctors who lived far away from the Indians

in order to curb the amount of medical attention they received.

questioned on this practice, the Minister's explanation was:

We have a constant struggle to keep down the cost of medical attendance in the maritime provinces, because the Indians themselves desire a doctor very often when there is nothing the matter with them, and if we gave them the least encouragement, the medical bill would run up a high figure.l.j.l

When

This parsimonious attitude exacerbated the Micmacs' plight. It was impossible

for them to improve their situation with the resources available to them. The

sluggish Maritime economy, a hostile social milieu, and an inadequate system of

Indian administration ensured that they would continue to remain among the

poorest of Nova Scotians.

Although the lack of federal and provincial financial support contributed

to the deteriorating condition of Nova Scotia's Indians, one cannot assume that

an infusion of money would have reversed their economic situation or helped to

overcome the racist attitudes that were traditionally a part of the intellectual

outlook of Nova Scotian society. Until very recently, racial prejudice and

discrimination also prevented Blacks in the province from advancing significantly

20

b d h . . .. 1 d' d 42 eyon t e1r 1n1t1a tsa vantage. Blacks were forced to settle on the

outskirts of white towns and villages, and as late as 1950 were expected to live

in segregated housing, were denied insurance, and were granted only limited

access to Nova Scotia schools, theatres and restaurants. 43 The Blacks' social,

educational and employment opportunities were also limited by intractable

cultural attitudes, the conditions of settlement, and the nature of the Maritime

economy. 44 Some Blacks, disgusted with the nominal freedom and racism that

governed their marginal exis.tence in Nova Scotia, "migrated whenever the

opportunity presented itself."45 Despite Governor Cornwallis's wish that Indians

would do the same, almost all remained well into the twentieth century. 46

The 1896 elections of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Prime Minister and George

H. Murray as Premier began a lengthy period of Liberal hegemony in federal and

Nova Scotia politics during which it was easy for the federal government to

dismiss complaints in the House of Commons about the state of Indian affairs in

Nova Scotia. For example, the charge that reserve lands were being despoiled by

white lumbering operations prompted the rejoinder from Clifford Sifton that:

"The complaint we generally have from Nova Scotia is that the Indians are

cutting timber on other people's land."47 The Minister falsely claimed that there

was "practically no trespass on Indian lands."48 When Robert Borden, M.P.

(Halifax) urged the government to exchange, sell or dispose of Indian lands rather

than let them be ruined, the Prime Minister explained that, because the Micmacs

were scattered all over the province, it was virtually impossible to discuss the

surrender of their lands with them. 49 A few years later, J.E. Armstrong, M.P.

(Lambton, East) further criticized the government's role there:

The object of our Indian Department seems to be to increase the number of officials and to squander the money of the Indians and give them as little enlightenment as possible.50

21

In 1914, at the outset of the First World War, nineteen part-time agents

and one full-time superintendent were in charge of Nova Scotia's 2,000 status

Indians. Departmental estimates prompted the observation that it looked "as if

the agents were wards of the nation and not the Indians."51 When it was

suggested that $1,000 be allotted to encourage farming, the government replied:

"Probably the Indians are so thrifty that they do not require very much

government assistance in that area."52 The next year, with proposed salaries

totalling $6,200 and In~lian relief at $8,000, the opposition charged "politicians

supporting the present Government" with exploiting "the necessities of the poor

Indians."53 Patronage also raised questions about the quality of the agents,

doctors, teachers and suppliers the Indian Department employed.54

The partial destruction of the British army in 1918 produced an

unforeseen crisis in Canada. Since no one knew when "The Great War" would

end, the federal government suddenly had to muster all its resources in support

of the Allied cause. At home, inflation was soaring and so were costs for Indian

relief. All Canadians became subject to "anti-loafing" laws, and exemptions

under the Military Service Act were cancelled.55 To fund the war effort, the

Unionist government of Robert Borden moved, as none before it had, to regulate

and intervene in the social and economic life of the nation.

It was in the spring of 1918, during this financial crisis, that the concept

of centralization was first expressed. At the behest of the Deputy

Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, an

investigation into the cost of replacing Nova Scotia's nineteen agencies with four

was launched. H.J. Bury, a departmental Timber Inspector, suggested that Scott

consider establishing just three agencies so the Department could "pay a salary

sufficient to secure competent men." The Superintendent of the Nova Scotia

22

agencies endorsed the idea of three, obsequiously adding that he had thought of

it before but had not submitted the suggestion as "such action by me might be

considered over officious."56 Calculations showed that a total of $200 per year

would be saved if three full-time agents replaced the existing superintendent and

nineteen part-time agents who were distributed roughly one per county. The

Assistant Deputy Secretary advised Scott to delay implementation of the scheme

until 1919.57

As it turned out, the system of nineteen part-time agents overseeing

nineteen agencies remained untouched until 1932, the worst year of the

Depression.58 The unexpectedly sudden end of the war in November 1918 very

likely reduced the government's desire to change its Indian Affairs arrangements

in Nova Scotia because, in peacetime, the need to save money was less urgent.

In any case, a major epidemic of influenza and the problems associated with

absorbing returning soldiers into the workforce heightened the public's hostility

towards Indians after the war. Their need for work and their poor health were

perceived as threats by other Nova Scotians.

The Micmacs were becoming more settled by this time. They lived both

on and off their reserves in frame houses they usually built themselves.

Frequently, they lacked title to the land they occupied, but most kept small

gardens and some livestock. A number lived on the edge of Dartmouth in an area

59 known as Kebeceque. They made their living in the "Indian way", relying

primarily on berries, moose, eels, chickens, gardening, preserving, and selling axe

handles and baskets. Mrs. Maggie Paul, who grew up in Dartmouth in a big house

built by her father, recalled that her family was never poor or hungry because

there were so many ways to earn a living "back then."60 Indians at Kebeceque

had their lives permanently disrupted by the December 1917 explosion of a

23

munitions ship in Halifax harbour that killed some 2,000 people. In 1919, most of

the surviving Indians were moved to the Millbrook Reserve. 61

Complaints about Indians living in "wretched shacks and hovels" along

the railway tracks and highways and on the outskirts of Halifax and Dartmouth

continued to come in to the Department. 62 Timber Inspector Bury proposed that

Halifax County Indians be moved to the Shubenacadie (Indian Brook) reserve

because it was larger and better suited to agriculture than some other reserves.

The Indians refused to co-operate because it was too isolated. 63 They preferred

to live near populated centres. Bury therefore brought about the expansion of

Colchester County's Millbrook reserve, sixty miles away from Halifax but near

Truro, to accommodate the Indians of Halifax County and "the remaining Indians

who have no fixed place of abode and who are constantly trespassing on privately

owned property." To finance the purchase of one hundred acres of farmland

adjoining Millbrook and the relocation of the "nomad Indians", Bury arranged the

surrender and sale of unoccupied reserves at Ingram River, Ship Harbour and

Sambro.64

Public complaints reinforced the Department's natural tendency to

concentrate Indians on reserves. If it could not reduce the total number of

Indians, at least it could be fully in control of their affairs and the cost of

maintaining them. Indian Affairs appeared oblivious to the possibility that

straying from the reserve might actually benefit some Indians and further

assimilation, the government's ultimate goal. Rather, it exhibited the

characteristic behaviour of a bureaucracy intent on perpetuating itself by

ensuring that its work is never-ending. The following statement by Bury

demonstrates the narrowness of the frame of reference within which most

officers of the Department operated:

• • • as soon as the Department can impress on the Indians the necessity of realizing in cash, the value of their unoccupied lands • • . and encourage them to concentrate on lands (Reserves) where they are content to live and become progressive citizens, the sooner will the whole problem of Indian administration become simplified and productive of good results,65

24

A dutiful civil servant, Bury was not one to give up on an idea he believed to be

in the best interests of the Department. For two decades, he doggedly presented

to his superiors the arguments that finally became the rationale for centraliza-

tion in 1942.

The Maritimes entered a prolonged period of economic decline after

World War I. Withdrawal of capital from the region caused 42 per cent of the

manufacturing jobs to disappear between 1920 and 1926. Even though almost 20

per cent of ·the population left the Maritimes during the 1920s, work in sawmills,

canneries, founderies, steel plants and with the railroad grew increasingly

scarce. 66 When the Depression hit, Micmacs were the first seasonal and

unskilled workers to be fired. The demand for their wooden wares, such as

baskets, pick handles and hockey sticks, also dropped off, 67 Had they been left

entirely to their own devices during the inter-war period, many Indians would

have gravitated, with other poor people in search of work, to Nova Scotia's urban

areas. The complaints about those who did, and Bury's desire to save the

Department money, caused the Timber Inspector to crusade for their removal to

distant reserves.

In 1920, New Glasgow authorities complained about smallpox among

Indians from the Afton and Cape Breton reserves living in shacks in the town. 68

That year Bury drew an astonishingly simple sketch showing how he thought the

Indian population should be organized. Using two maps -- a 'before' map showing

25

Indians scattered all over the province (by means of scattered dots, each one

representing fifty Indians) and an 'after' map showing all the Indians neatly

clustered into three groups, each in its own third of the province -- Bury again

recommended that three Indian agencies be established in Nova Scotia. The

employment of one full-time agent in each of three agencies and the elimination

of nineteen part-time agents would "over time," he argued, halve expenditures

for salaries. Since the part-time agents were paid only from $50 to $200 per

year and knew little of their charges, matters of consequence were being handled

by the Nova Scotia Superintendent or officials in Ottawa anyway, he explained.

Centralization was put forward as a "remedy" for the Department's problem of

not getting value for the money it was spending in the province. 69

Bury contended that telephone and railway services would enable the

three agents "to discharge a considerable part of their duties." But, since

telephones were still not available at Eskasoni during the 1940s and railways

tended to run between towns rather than Indian reserves, it is doubtful that

either would have been much help to the agents. His calculations also failed to

take into account any costs which might accrue in relocating Indians. He made

no mention of how they might be housed or employed in the three suggested

locations. 70 There was no response.

Bury persisted. Four years later, he presented a more elaborate

submission to the Deputy Minister which compared Nova Scotia's administrative

organization with that of New Brunswick. New Brunswick was already divided

into three agencies. Although the Indians there lived on more than three

reserves, the existing reserves were larger, more populated and fewer in number

than those in Nova Scotia:

Three agents in N.B. covering a territory which is a

third larger, and a population only 10% less administered affairs during the ten months April 1st 1923 to Jan. 31st 1924 for the total sum of $27,754.14 whilst similar functions of 19 afents in N.S. cost $49,716.39 during the same period/

26

Bury compared fourteen categories to demonstrate, for example, that medical

costs were 140 per cent greater in Nova Scotia, and that relief costs were 47 per

cent more. Costs could be "appreciably reduced," he wrote, "if better

supervision was exercised." He urged the Deputy Minister to consider, "in view

of the present agitation for economy," the reorganization of the Nova Scotia

administration so that it more nearly resembled that of New Brunswick.72 Again,

no response appears on file.

Ten months later, the Department of Indian Affairs received the

following communication from a physjcian serving Indians on the Nova Scotia

Mainland:

Do away with all the small reserves scattered throughout the Province, choose a good situation of fertile Crown land, and collect all the Indians to it. Make every Indian family build a small house, well, out­buildings, garden, etc.; built to specification under Government supervision. Build there a Community Hall, a small Catholic church, a school house, etc. as is found in Western Canadian mining towns. Insist on him producing so much garden produce as to comfortably supply his family; pork, etc. and I may say the Indian is a pretty good farmer. Have a Government farm there, as at the Poor Farms, with a large dairy and orchard, help for which is to be hired solely from among the Indians. Have an agency with a Priest or school teacher, to supply American Tourists and sportsmen with guides. Have another agency buy all canoes, baskets, axe handles, etc. as made by the Indians and such agencj to obtain the highest possible market price for same.?

This was Dr. H.S. Trefrey's solution to what he called "the Indians Problem." He

elaborated by describing the conditions at Tusket and the "Gravel Pit reserve" on

27

the outskirts of the coloured settlement at Yarmouth. Though he wrote that his

plan "may read as fantasy," it. would appear, from comparing it with Bury's, that

the two had had discussions on the subject.

Bury escalated his campaign for centralization the next year. In a 1925

report entitled "The Indian situation in the Province of Nova Scotia as it exists

at the present time" he noted that, of a total Indian population of 2,040, only

1,500 were living on reserves. The remaining 540 were either drifting from place

to place or lived in "small, dilapidated shacks adjacent to urban centres such as

Sydney, Halifax, New Glasgow, Yarmouth and Inverness." Whereas Western

Indians had achieved "prosperity" through the Canadian government's policy "to

placate rather than exterminate," Bury pointed out that Nova Scotia Indians had

only "a few barren reserves, no timber limits of great value, no treaty annuities

and no provincial cash subsidy." Their trust fund, at $19.50 per capita, was lower

than that of seven other provinces. "With the exception of the Truro,

Shubenacadie and Whycocomagh Reserves where there [was] a certain amount of

land fit for agriculture, the remaining reserves [could not] be classified as

suitable for growing crops." Of forty-three reserves in the province, seventeen

were unoccupied. Bury made a plea for the establishment of a fund to which

proceeds from the sale of unoccupied and unsuitable reserves could be credited,

and expenditures for the purchase of central reserve lands charged. As before,

he recommended that the Indians be gathered around the three central agencies

depicted in his 1920 map. 7 4

Two new ideas made their debut in 1925. Without abandoning his

comparison of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Bury now included the West as a

model:

Our organization of Indian administration in the

western provinces may rightly be regarded as being productive of the best results, and until an organization more nearly resembling this is brought into existence in the province of Nova Scotia, we cannot expect any appreciable improvement.? 5

28

Largely through Bury's efforts, then, the system of Indian administration in Nova

Scotia, which had been a direct outgrowth of colonial relations, was destined to

be shaped in the twentieth century by developments to the West where more

Indians and larger reserves produced a particular style of administration. Since

the Department operated seventy-two residential schools throughout Canada,

Bury suggested that a residential school be set up at Truro, Nova Scotia, "where

the younger generation would be taught farming, trades and other

. ,,76 occupatiOns.

Meanwhile, Deputy Superintendent General Scott's reply to Dr. Trefrey

gave the appearance that he was reluctant to embrace the centralization plan.

Admitting that it had "engrossed the attention of the Department for a number

of years," Scott wrote:

Our main difficulty is to induce the Indians to concentrate as many of them appear to prefer their present mode of life and resent any form of paternalism which might tend to somewhat restrict their liberty or repress their nomadic instincts. 77

Throughout the 1920s, complaints about Indians continued to come in

from Nova Scotia. Until 1927, Indians at Sydney refused to leave their two acre

reserve on Kings Road, the present site of the Isle Royale Motel and the Sydney

Medical Arts Centre. Beyond the 1925 declaration of the Superintendent

General, Charles Stewart, that "we are going to try to move [the Indians] ou.t of

town," the story of the surrender of that reserve cannot be told here.78 In 1942,

almost two hundred Indians were living on the Membertou reserve just off

29

Sydney's Alexandra Street.

Charles Stewart held the most senior Indian Affairs post from 1921 to

1930. Under him, the power of the Superintendent General's office expanded

steadily during the 1920s despite a brief change of government that displaced

Mackenzie King's Liberals during the summer of 1926. By the time Bury

advanced his next petition for centralization in December 1926, the work of field

staff was being slowed by Stewart's wide and arbitrary powers. All decisions had

to be cleared through Ottawa. 79 The curt tone of Bury's memo to Scott that year

may be indicative of the frustration that was being felt at all levels:

three agents on full time would:

1. Be more economical 2. Ensure more efficient administration 3. Tend to centralize the Micmac Indians of Nova

Scotia on three main residential reserves where they can be given proper and effective supervision.80

Bury asserted that the "drifting" population comprised "at least 50% of the

Indians in the province" -- more than double his estimate the year before. 81

By this time, Indian ways had proven so tenacious throughout Canada

that Indian Affairs personnel had arrived at the view that it would take many

more generations to absorb Indians into the general population. Since none of

their efforts had produced the desired levels of assimilation and no immediate

solution to "the Indian Problem" was apparent, they becarne preoccupied with the

efficiency of the bureaucracy. Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent

General of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, believed intermarriage, as well as

education, was required to purge Indians of their instincts and customs. 82

Nevertheless, he suppressed any personal reservations he may have had about the

centralization plan and took it to the Minister. Scott recommended the change

"be made with as little delay as possible," suggesting 1 October 1927 as the date

30

for the policy to take effect. "I know there may be difficulties in carrying out

this project," he wrote, "but it is entirely in the interests of the administration

that it should be done." (emphasis added)83

While Stewart did not approve centralization, parliament did approve

$35,000 for the establishment of a residential school at Shubenacadie. For

Stewart, the curtailment of Indian liberty was anything but a reason to hesitate:

We believe better training can be given the Indian child in the boarding school than in the day school, because it is very difficult to get him to be at all regular in his attendance at the day school. We have him under control all the time in the boarding school •••• 84

Realizing that something had to be done about the Indians' situation, Stewart

agitated, albeit with limited success, for larger Indian Affairs appropriations

during his tenure as Superintendent General.

When R.B. Bennett's Conservatives were elected in 1930, T.G. Murphy

replaced Stewart as the Minister responsible for Indian Affairs. Murphy served

as Superintendent General of Indian Affairs until the Conservatives were voted

out in October 1935. In Indian policy matters, one of the few differences

between the Liberals and the Conservatives was the latter's emphasis on

compulsory, as opposed to voluntary enfranchisement (loss of Indian status).

Scott felt compulsory enfranchisement was a desirable method of achieving

Indian policy aims. On his initiative, the Indian Act was amended in 1918 to

simplify the enfranchisement of off-reserve Indians, and in 1920 he successfully

guided the passage of another amendment that made enfranchisement

compulsory for certain Indians. The compulsory features of that legislation were

soon rescinded when the Liberals returned to power, but the Conservatives

reinstated them in 1933·. 85 R.B. Bennett's government was also willing to

consider centralization.

31

In December 1931 Bury reminded Scott of the benefits of installing a

"more efficient and modern system" in Nova Scotia. 86 Without hesitation, Scott

presented the centralization proposal to Murphy at a time when the country was

descending still further into the Depression. He included the maps prepared

earlier by Bury, "our timber inspector who is familiar with conditions in the

lower provinces." Scott explained that he had first brought up the idea of "a

more businesslike administration in Nova Scotia" in 1918 and that he had been

unable to make any progress with it. In spite of Bury's maps showing the Indians

in three clusters, Scott suggested two agencies might be sufficient, thus

undercutting Bury's fourteen-year vision of three central reserves. 87

Murphy was fully receptive. On 31 March 1932, the services of all

nineteen part-time agents were terminated "for reasons of public economy."

Two full-time agents, C.J. McNeil of Antigonish and J.W. Maxner of Windsor,

were instructed to assume responsibility for all matters pertaining to Indian

relief, medical service, schools and administration. McNeil's district consisted

of Cape Breton plus Guysborough, Pictou and Antigonish Counties; Maxner's was

the remaining southwestern half of the province. Dramatic though it was, this

development proved to be no more than a passing aberration. In less than three

months, Murphy authorized the immediate reappointment of the nineteen part­

time agents and the dismissal of Maxner and McNeil. 88

No explanation of this fiasco appears in departmental files. Had the

Minister failed to anticipate the political consequences of dismissing the

farmers, priests, doctors, merchants and tradesmen who had grown accustomed

to supplementing their incomes by acting as part-time Indian agents?89 Scott

retired during the upheaval, leaving the Acting Deputy Superintendent General

to sort out the resulting confusion. By reinstating seven of the part-time agents

32

at lower than their previous salaries, replacing others, and handing the inspection

work over to Ottawa, the Department managed a saving of $580 on the salaries

projected for the two full-time agents. Therefore, when the Nova Scotia Branch

of. the Canadian Legion protested the unexplained dismissal of its members

Maxner and McNeil, the Department was able to reply that it had reverted to the

system of part-time agents as a cost-saving measure!90

During the summer of 1932, the Department's inspector for Ontario and

Quebec went to Nova Scotia to tie up loose ends and report on conditions there.

(There was no inspector of Indian agencies for Nova Scotia or the Maritimes.)

Unable to visit all the reserves, and probably forming his opinion from what he

saw on the Mainland, he concluded that Nova Scotia Micmacs were "indolent and

nomadic." Appalled that "they live on relief, marry in poverty, raise children

and look to the Government to provide for them," he recommended that Nova

Scotia Indians be organized into three large groups. 91 While his report may have

vindicated Scott's action, submitting it to A.S. Williams, the Acting Deputy

Superintendent General destined to remain second in command, ensured that

nothing came of it.

Major Harold Wigmore McGill became the Deputy Superintendent

General in the fall. A graduate of the University of Manitoba medical school and

a former member of the Alberta legislature, McGill remained head of the Indian

Affairs bureaucracy from 1932 until his retirement in March 1945. Under

McGill, investigations into the Nova Scotia situation continued until

centralization was attempted again in 1942.

An unsigned inspector's report submitted to McGill in June 1933

attributed the high levels of Indian relief in Nova Scotia to white attitudes, the

paternalism of the department and the nature of Indian legislation. Pointing out

33

that "our Department is sometimes forced by public opinion or other strong

influence to do things which it does not feel to be in the best interests of the

Indian," this inspector offered a stinging indictment of the "appallingly ignorant

public opinion" that prevailed in Nova Scotia:

The whole attitude of the white population is, why bother with the Indians, .the Government is obliged to look after them. Probably with the next breath they are groaning under the so-called burden of extra taxation and have not the intellect enough to realize that their attitude with regard to the Indian is partly to blame for these taxes. 92

Indians were being boycotted from day labour in Nova Scotia; yet, the inspector

had no patience for the "indigent, immoral and arrogantly persistent Indian

beggar." He felt a full-time superintendent could "drive" the Indians to self-

support. Because "the relief problem ••• threaten [ed] to spread its tentacles if

not subjected to drastic action," he agreed it was time for a change. He believed

that concentrating the Indians on the best reserves would reduce the

Department's relief costs by eliminating a system of dispensing relief that was

. . 1 d 93 1rrat10na an corrupt.

Evidently, "the pressing need for economy and the further unavoidable

demand for reorganization of our own Department" prevented the author of this

J 1933 f . N S . 94 Th h une report rom returmng to ova cot1a. e next year, none ot er

than H.J. Bury, Supervisor of Indian Timber Lands, was required to tour the

province. He visited thirteen of the nineteen agencies and reported the specific

conditions at certain reserves to McGw.95

In 1935, Chief Ben Christmas wrote to Member of Parliament Finlay

MacDonald to request a full-time Indian commissioner at Sydney. Through this

and many other petitions over the ensuing years, Christmas -- who was described

in the Halifax Mail as "one of the most intelligent and progressive

34

representatives of the Micmac race" -- discovered that it was impossible to

penetrate the wall of indifference that surrounded the Department.96 Indeed, it

was the Department's policy to ignore any communications from or originated by

Indians. When MacDonald tried to pursue Christmas's request, the Department

told him that the chief was "an agitator and troublemaker" and that it placed

little confidence in his representations. 97

Centralization was recommended later in 1935 by E.L. Stone, the

Department's Director of Medical Services, and G. Armstrong of the Trust Fund

and Relief Branch after each toured Nova Scotia. 98 As soon as the Liberal

government of Mackenzie King was reelected in the fall, McGill approached the

new Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, T .A. Crerar, with Bury's maps

showing the Indian population in three clusters. McGill advocated the creation

of three agencies by pointing out that, exclusive of education, annual

expenditures for a stable Indian population in Nova Scotia had risen steadily from

$8,000 in 1907 to $106,000 in 1934 without effecting any improvement in their

situation.99 Crerar was wary. In light of the previous administration's bungled

attempt less than four years earlier, he was not about to take any action without

having further evidence.

To "report upon the practicability of combining the nineteen agencies of

Nova Scotia into two or more; each containing several reserves and each

administered by a full time agent" Crerar appointed Dr. Thomas Robertson. 100

After a three-month tour of the province, Robertson concluded that the

condition of Indians was due to matters beyond their control. The systematic

refusal of the provincial government and tl)e municipalities to hire Indians

created a sense of injustice and forced them to look to the federal government

for their support. Since the state of public attitudes and the Nova Scotia

35

economy limited the scope for Indian labour, he believed agriculture would have

to serve as the "back-bone" of the Department's plan to make the Indians of

Nova Scotia self-supporting. He recommended close and competent supervision

of agricultural projects, and the tying of federal public works grants to the

condition that Indians be given a fair share of the work thus created.101

"Owing to the very bad condition of the roads," Robertson only visited

Sydney and Eskasoni in Cape Breton. Discussions with "the Indian Chief of Nova

Scotia" (probably the Grand Chief) and others convinced him that conditions in

the rest of Cape Breton matched those at the twelve reserves he had been able

to see. He felt Indian squatters on the Mainland were a detriment to the health

and morale of white communities; and, since the Department could not afford

sanitarium care for all the tubercular cases, he recommended the establishment

of an Indian hospita1. 102 During his visit, Robertson discussed the need for a

new administrative arrangement in Nova Scotia with Premier Angus L.

Macdonald and the principal of the Shubenacadie Residential School, Father

103 Mackey.

Robertson's final report endorsed centralization, noting that "quite a

number of Indians" would have to relocate. Though vague regarding the number

of Indians involved in the move, he submitted the following specifications for

their housing: ·

The houses should be built by the Indians themselves and they should not be finished on the inside for sanitary reasons. A house one and a half stories, twenty by thirty, with eight windows and two doors, sufficient for a family of five, built in this wao should cost no more than $17 5 to $200 in Nova Scotia.l 4

Robertson's report did not bring about the implementation of centralization;

however his blueprint for the centralization house was followed in 1942.

36

By the time Robertson reported, Crerar's attention was being drawn to

larger problems. The Department of Indian Affairs was reduced, in 1936, to

branch status within a new department called Mines and Resources which

consolidated Mines, Immigration, the Interior and Indian Affairs. The change

was a cost-saving measure, and soon the expenditures of Indian Affairs were

drawing attention in the House of Commons. 105 With the number of Indians

increasing by 1,500 per year and one third of them on relief, costs were spiralling

upwards. 106 There was a growing awareness that the root of the problem might

be the legislation governing Indian affairs. Crerar launched an internal review of

the Indian Act late in 1938, but the Second World War intervened.

Had there been no war in 1939, centralization -- on the drawing board

for twenty-three years -- might well have been shelved or at least reconsidered

within a revised frame of reference. But, the war triggered its implementation.

Although the scheme was an attempt to revise the administrative structure in

Nova Scotia that dated from colonial times, centralization turned out to be a

manifestation of attitudes and policy that had always governed Indian/white

relations in Canada and Nova Scotia. In accordance with the belief that proper

supervision, training and health care on reserves would make it easier for Indians

to join Canadian society at a later date, Micmacs were further isolated from it

by centralization. The weight of inherited policy and legislation pressed the

government into rash action during a moment of crisis identical to the one that,

in 1918, had given birth to the concept of centralization.

37

Notes - Chapter II

1 Ruth Holms Whitehead and Harold McGee, The Micmac: How Their Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1983), 1.

2 Ibid., passim and E. Palmer Patterson, II, The Canadian Indian: A History ~e 1500 (Don Mills: Collier-Macmillan Canada, 1972), 58.

3 Cornelius J. Jaenen, "Problems of Assimilation in New France, 1603-1645," in Canadian Histor Before Confederation, ed. J.M. Bumsted (Georgetown, Ont.: Irwin-Dorsey, 97 , 2 an MicMac News, April 1985, 31.

4 Wallis and Wallis in H.F. McGee, The Native Peo les of Atlantic Canada: A History of Ethnic Interaction (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974, 127.

5 L.F .S. Upton, Micmacs and Colonists: Indian-White Relations in the Maritimesj 1713-1867 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1979), 31- 5.

6 Ibid., 52.

7 W .E. Daugherty, Maritime Indian Treaties in Historical Pers ective (Ottawa: Department of In ian and Northern Affairs, 9

8 Ibid., 44.

9 John F. Leslie, "The Bagot Commission: Developing a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department," paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Meeting, University of Ottawa, June 1982, 2.

10 Public Archives of Nova Scotia, MSS Documents, vol. 430, doc 33 1/2.

11 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 65.

12 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 87.

13 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 65.

14 Leslie, "Bagot Commission," 3-5.

15 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 89.

16 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 120-121, 139-140.

17 J. Rick Ponting and Roger Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance: A Socio- olitical Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada Toronto: Butterworth, 1980 , 5.

18 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 89.

38

19 Esperanza Maria Razzolini, "A Safe and Secure Asylum: Government Attitudes and Approaches to the Amerindian Problem in Colonial Nova Scotia," Honours essay, History 1+49, Dalhousie University, 1974, 98-101 and Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 87-88.

20 William B. Henderson, Canada's Indian Reserves: Pre-Confederation (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1980), 23; Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 91; and Patterson, Canadian Indian, 116. Ninety­nine years later, in 1942, only one county had no Indian reserves, but just 19, 788 acres comprised the forty existing reserves. PAC, RG 10, vol. 775.8, file 27050-2, Pt. 2, ca. July 1942.

21 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 92.

22 Ibid., 92-94.

23 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 117.

21+ R. W. Dunning, "The Indian Situation: A Canadian Governmental Dilemma," The International Journal of Comparative Sociology (June 1971), 128.

25 Leslie, "Bagot Commission," passim.

27 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 96.

28 Desmond Morton, A Short History of Canada (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1983), 76.

29 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 96-97 and 172.

30 Ibid., 172-174.

31 House of Commons Debate, IV (1905), 6536.

32 Ibid.

33 House of Commons Debates, IV (1904), 6939.

34 Ibid., 6940.

35 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 122.

36 House of Commons Debates, IV (1904), 6940.

37 Ibid., 6956.

38 D.J. Hall, "Clifford Sifton and the Canadian Indian Administration, 1896-1905," Prairie Forum II, 2 (1977), 134.

39

39 House of Commons Debates, IV (1906-1907), np.

40 James Douglas Leighton, "The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840-1890" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1975), 275.

41 House of Commons Debates, LIV (1901), 2759.

42 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis W. Magill, Nova Scotian Blacks: An Historical and Structural Overview (Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1970), 36 and 79.

43 Ibid., 34 and 40. In 1966, 2,500 Blacks were concentrated on the fringe of eleven major Nova Scotia towns, and 5,000 lived within a twenty-seven mile radius of Halifax. Ibid.

44 Ibid., 97.

45 Ibid., 112.

46 Examples of current racial attitudes in Sydney, Nova Scotia, are cited in Terry Tremayne, "The Marshall Family: 'We're Still Suffering'," Atlantic Insight, June 1984, 34-36.

47 House of Commons Debates, LIV (1901), 2758.

48 House of Commons Debates, IV (1904), 6934.

49 House of Commons Debates, VI (1903), 13781.

50 House of Commons Debates, VI (1907-1908), 11023.

51 House of Commons Debates, III (1914), 2476.

52 Ibid.

53 House of Commons Debates, II (1915), 1310-1312.

54 House of Commons Debates, III (1914), 2479 and II (1918), 2235.

55 Morton, Short History, 155-157.

56 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Assistant Deputy Secretary to Deputy Superintendent General, 18 June 1918.

57 Ibid.

58 Each of Nova Scotia's eighteen counties had its own. Indian agent except for Antigonish and Guysborough Counties which shared one, and Hants and Cape Breton Counties which each had two. With these exceptions, there was one Indian "agency" per county. Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1941, 17 5.

59 Interview with John Abram, Millbrook, 1974--75.

60 Interview with Mrs. Maggie Paul, Eskasoni, 1974--7 5.

61 Interview with John Abram, Millbrook, 1974--75.

40

62 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764--1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 23 April 1919.

63 Ibid.

64 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 30 May and 11 August 1919.

65 Ibid., 30 May 1919.

66 Ernest R. Forbes, Aspects of Maritime Regionalism, 1867-1927 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1983), 18.

67 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 172-173.

68 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3222, file 541,4-32, Rev. J.D. MacLeod to Secretary of Indian Affairs, 31 May 1920.

69 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 27 February 1920.

70 Ibid.

71 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 14 February 1924-.

72 Ibid.

73 PAC, RG 10, vo1 3220, file 536,764-1, Dr. H.S. Trefrey to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 20 December 1924. Note: Hereafter, "to Indian Affairs" will be used to describe all correspondence addressed to Indian Affairs' headquarters in Ottawa.

74 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3220, file 536,764-1, "The Indian situation in the Province of Nova Scotia as it exists at the present time," by H.J. Bury, 1925.

7 5 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Deputy Superintendent General to Dr. Trefrey, 3 February 1925.

78 House of Commons Debates, V (1925), 4980.

41

79 Daugherty, Maritime Indian Treaties, 52.

80 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Scott, 16 December 1926.

81 Ibid.

82 E. Brian Titley, "Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs," paper presented at the tenth annual conference of the British Association of Canadian Studies, University of Edinburgh, 9-12 April 1985, 5-8.

83 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Deputy Superintendent General to Minister, 6 May 1927.

84 House of Commons Debates, III (1928), 3828.

85 Titley, "D.C. Scott," 12-16 and Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 13.

86 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Scott, 18 December 1931.

87 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Scott to Murphy, 24 December 1931.

88 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 17 February, 10, 17, 18 March and 25 June 1932.

89 Dr. C. Lamont MacMillan, Memoirs of a Cape Breton Doctor (Markham, Ont.: Paperjacks, 1979), 172 and House of Commons Debates, III (1932), 2699-2709.

90 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 25 June, 15 and 22 August and 12 September 1932.

91 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Report to the Acting Deputy Superintendent General, 31 August 1932.

92 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Inspector to McGill, 26 June 1933.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

95 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to McGill, 18 June 1934.

96 Evelyn Tufts, "Sydney Invites Everyone to Celebration," Halifax Mail, 27 July 1935, 19.

97 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Christmas to MacDonald, 18 January 1935 and Indian Affairs to MacDonald, 11 February 1935.

98 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 29 August, 15 October, 19 November 1935.

42

99 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, McGill to Crerar, 22 November 1935.

100 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1(2), Correspondence, 7 March 19J6.

101 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 1936 and Robertson to McGill, 27 March 1936.

102 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 19-36.

103 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to McGill, 22 April and 19 March 1936.

104 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 1937.

105 House of Commons Debates, I (1937), 672.

106 House of Commons Debates, I (1937), 637 and IV (1938), 3792-3793; and Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Reports, 1937, passim.

43

CHAPTER III

MAKING THE DECISION TO CENTRALIZE

The Second World War and the sudden increase in Canada's Indian

population intersected in time to produce the conditions that led to the adoption

of centralization. To see how these two factors accounted for the acceptance of

the scheme, one must look beyond the particular circumstances of the Indian

administration in Nova Scotia for it was the general outlook of Indian Affairs and

the personalities concerned with it that permitted the wartime desire for

economy to so profoundly affect Indian affairs in Nova Scotia.

One day after war was declared in Europe, a joint University of Toronto­

Yale University conference began at the Royal Ontario Museum to discuss, in an

informal and unofficial way, "The North American Indian Today." According to

the editor of the conference proceedings, sessions continued from 4 to 16

September 1939 in "an atmosphere of realization that problems of contact in

North America were contingent upon the war."1 The participants included Indian

Affairs officials, social scientists, business and religious leaders, educators, and

Indians from both Canada and the United States, but it appears that the

Canadians were not particularly influenced by American practice. Operating as

they were within a system fraught with contradictions, the Canadian officials

gave every indication that they were more or less resigned to the situation in

Canada.

The Indian Affairs Branch acknowledged the remoteness of its goal of

"final and more or less complete assimilation of the Indian population into the

white communities."2 According to Director McGill, it "indulge [d] in no

expectation of bringing about a complete regeneration in the course of a single

44

lifetime."3 Seeing themselves as "dealing with a race only recently removed

from .•. the stone age,"4 Branch officials concluded that the Indian was not

suited to the "white mold."5 And, since the government was not willing to give

Indians the freedom to determine their own future, the Branch hoped to "direct

the energies of the Indian into channels more or less related to those of his

former life."6 Training was provided in practical courses such as agriculture,

auto mechanics and domestic science. 7 In keeping with the desire to preserve

the Indian "as a useful, competent and picturesque entity,"8 occupations such as

farming, fishing, hunting, work in the forest industry, and handicrafts were

encouraged.9 Although the declared intention of reserves was "to render possible

a continuous and consistent administrative policy directed towards

civilization,"10 integrating Indians into the larger society was, at best, a

secondary objective. By 1939, the Branch's primary goal was to keep Indians on

reserves and "to make life on the reserves as attractive and satisfying as

possible.1111 In reality, reserve life meant living by the whims of legislators and

administrators which included prohibitions on Indian political and cultural

practices such as the Potlach, the Sundance and even the wearing of traditional

festive clothing. 12

Given that the Branch did not expect Indians to be "rehabilitated" within

the foreseeable future, it felt obliged to assure the Canadian taxpayer that the

cost of maintaining them would not become "unduly burdensome." 13 By way of

explaining the higher relief rates in the East, it noted that only in the Maritimes

and Quebec had Canada failed to give "adequately from her lands to provide for

the welfare of her Indian population." (emphasis added)14 In 1939, the annual per

capita outlay for Indian welfare in the Maritimes was $34.51 in Nova Scotia,

$35.46 in New Brunswick, and $37.26 in Prince Edward Island compared to a

45

nation-wide per capita average of $8.70.15

That year, when Public Affairs: Journal of the Institute of Public

Affairs, Dalhousie University, Halifax requested an article on the Maritime

Indian population the Branch refused. 16 And when welfare expenditures leapt by

$5,528 -- $3,707 of it because of Nova Scotia where the Depression hit Indians

especially hard -- the Department did move to cut costs. In May 1940 Indian

agents throughout the country were instructed to make "physically-fit, able­

bodied Indians" work for any relief they received. 17 The costs of the country's

involvement in the Second World War strengthened the Branch's commitment to

economy, and this development coincided with greater concern about Indian

conditions.

The Canadian Tuberculosis Association's warning that:

Indians are a menace to the White people in their respective provinces, and Indian reserves are a source of infection from which adjacent White settlements have become contaminatedl8

must have alarmed many Canadians. Although Indians constituted only 1 per

cent of the population, the Association pointed out that their deaths accounted

for 11 per cent of the national death rate from tuberculosis. Indian deaths in

Nova Scotia, however, comprised only 1.4 per cent of the province's total deaths

from the disease, which was a far cry from rates in the West as high as 43 per

cent. 19 Nova Scotia's overall death rate due to tuberculosis was twice that of

the rest of the country, however. Since Maritime sanitarium facilities could not

even meet non-native needs, 20 Indians with tuberculosis were entirely without

adequate care. Indian Affairs had not acted on Dr. Robertson's 1936 suggestion

to establish an Indian hospital in Nova Scotia, therefore the decision to

centralize was partly a response to the public outcry about Indian health

46

conditions.

The Department also received complaints about Indian affairs in Nova

Scotia from its own staff. Reverend D.J. Rankin of Iona, who had been

responsible for about a hundred Indians in Victoria County until another

clergyman took over in the 1932 shuffle, found himself acting again as part-time

agent in 1939. He wrote to Ottawa urging, among other things, that land title

disputes be resolved; that "unscrupulous profiteering" by suppliers be stopped;

and that Indian agriculture and handicrafts be encouraged. 21 Rankin claimed he

had been begged to take on the task of supplying relief to the Indians at Middle

River (Wagmatcook) because he was already "looking after them spiritually."

The dismissal of the previous agent for "partisan politics" had apparently

diminished local interest in the position since it was thought to be a sop to "mere

supporters of the party in power instead of [a job for] the most competent,

honest and capable man." Patronage and corruption were standing in the way of

22 the Department's work, he wrote.

Wartime conditions heightened the appeal of centralization. The

unemployment that had plagued the Maritimes since the end of the First World

War continued into the Second. Thousands of Nova Scotians were out of work.

Sixteen hundred able-bodied young men were looking for work in Sydney alone

during April 1941, and white "relief camps" had sprung up on the fringes of many

Mainland towns. 23 Since work for Indians was virtually nil, a plan that offered to

move them away from urban centres and make them self-sufficient could only be

attractive.

The war made it difficult for the Branch to retain medical and

educational staff. Teachers were in short supp1i4 and a change in financial

arrangements had eliminated band funding of the ten Indian day schools in Nova

47

Scotia. 25 Consolidation was a way to relieve staffing problems and reduce the

public appropriation for school maintenance and salaries. If the Indians lived in

just two locations, the Branch would also require fewer doctors on its payroll.

Transportation problems were exacerbated by the war. Many roads still

had not been paved in Nova Scotia, and the dirt roads were frequently

impassible, especially in Cape Breton. 26 Since wartime vehicle shortages

compounded the problem of getting from one place to another, stricter

supervision of Indians by fewer agents required the Branch to overcome the

problem of distance between the reserves.

The political climate in Ottawa also made centralization an attractive

means of dealing with a complicated set of problems in Nova Scotia. To begin

with, the Department of Finance dominated the government's outlook. 27

Whereas Canada had entered the war anticipating limited liability, by late 1940,

Finance Minister J.L. Ilsley was predicting expenditures of $28 billion for fiscal

year 1941 -- over half the national income. Should the British position

deteriorate any further, Prime Minister King feared "a greater burden than the

people of Canada can be led to bear."28 Charged with finding money for the war

effort through tough fiscal policies, Ilsley was a dour Nova Scotian who, in the

opinion of King, had a very narrow mind. With respect to international problems

at least, he bore a colonial attitude. 29

Presumably, someone with these views

would not find a scheme like centralization unpalatable.

Supervising Indian Affairs were T .A. Crerar and his Deputy Minister,

Charles Camsell, both born in 1876 (the year of the Indian Act) and educated in

Manitoba. Crerar had led a rural agrarian movement during the twenties, and

Camsell's father had been a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Since

King felt Crerar was "losing his grip" during the war, Crerar may have been more

48

than ordinarily dependent upon his civil servant advisors for policy guidance.30 In

any event, the main role of cabinet ministers was to decide whether or not policy

proposals were politically feasible.31 According to King's Principal Secretary,

Arnold Heeney, cabinet meetings were "incredibly haphazard" before the war

and, although minutes were kept more regularly after 1939, "the tradition was an

oral one, and recommendations of ministers were seldom rejected and very few

records were kept."32 Given that King had been reelected by an overwhelming

majority in March 1940 on the sole issue of the war, it is unlikely that Crerar

encountered much resistance to centralization when he presented the idea to

cabinet. Moreover, he had natural allies in Ilsley and Angus L. Macdonald.

Macdonald, the premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1954 except while

he was serving as King's Minister of National Defence for Naval Services (1940

to 1945), was Crerar's golfing and drinking partner. 33 In private, the two reveled

in their common Scottish ancestry through an exchange of light-hearted doggerel

verse that, for example, regretted that Shakespeare was not a Scot.34 In public,

Macdonald's limited sensitivity to Indians was revealed in a "toast to Canada"

that advocated tolerance between the nation's "four great races": the English,

the Irish, the Scottish and the French -- the latter deserving credit because it

had "tamed the savage Indian."35 Along with Ilsley, Crerar and Macdonald

constituted the core of the resistance in King's cabinet to proposed social

welfare programs.36 Considering the government's overriding preoccupation with

the war, one would not expect these three key Ministers to oppose

centralization, a scheme that promised to cut Indian relief costs and promote

self-sufficiency.

Within two months of the May 1940 directive to tighten Indian relief,

Crerar collected the cost figures for Nova Scotia and obtained the assurance

49

that, although three agencies in Nova Scotia would cost 50 per cent more than

the existing arrangement:

.•. in the judgement of the officials of this branch who have investigated the situation, this increase should be offset many times over in saving on relief costs and furthermore we should get better value for our money

· in improved services to the Indians and a betterment of their conditions.37

Crerar then wrote the Nova Scotia cabinet ministers, Macdonald and Ilsley, on

the necessity of reorganizing the Indian Affairs administration there "as soon as

possible." The increasing cost of Indian relief and the Department's inability to

direct its agents or control the prices of supplies made change "imperative," he

stated. He explained that the part-time agents could either be replaced by three

full-tiiT_le agents or the teachers at the ten Indian day schools could be

transformed into teacher/agents also responsible for the purchase and

distribution of supplies. While he expressed concern that it might be difficult for

only three agents to supervise the distribution of relief, nowhere did he mention

relocating Indians. In fact, he acknowledged there would be an increase in

administrative travel expenses whichever option was chosen. The primary

motivation for the reorganization was clearly the reduction of relief costs.

Crerar anticipated "considerable objection" by local storekeepers and their

Members of Parliament to the dismantling of the patronage system, but almost

no space was devoted to any benefits the Indians might derive from this

administrative change or their possible reaction to it. 38 Macdonald quickly gave

approval in principle to the reorganization.39

Some nine months later, Crerar corresponded with A.S. Macmillan, the

incumbent Nova Scotia premier, explaining that "more urgent problems in

connection with the war ••. had prevented any definite action from being taken"

50

so far. Appending a copy of his earlier letter to Macdonald and Ilsley, he now

proposed "to consolidate the present agencies into two or three groups and

secure new areas of land to which [the Indians] might be moved and where

conditions might be more favourable for the Indians to become self­

. "40 supportmg.

Advised by Crerar that provincial cooperation would permit speedy

action "to improve the physical welfare of Indians," Macmillan replied five days

later saying he thought the idea "practical." "[T]here are plenty of vacant lands

where they can be placed" he pointed out, but the plan was likely to meet with

some opposition from the Indians who "have the habit of spending their time

loafing around the towns."41 Macmillan also expressed his willingness to meet

with a "senior officer of the Branch" whom Crerar intended to send to Nova

Scotia to study the problem "from every angle,"42 and to facilitate the necessary

negotiations, requesting only that the officer see him before meeting with the

Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests and the Farm Loan Board. 43

W .S. Arneil, the "officer of the Branch" selected for this task, had no

previous experience with Indians. He was chosen by Crerar for his familiarity

with land settlement work. 44 Prior to joining Indian Affairs in January 1941,

Arneil had been with the Soldier Settlement Board for nineteen and a half

years. 45 His five-week inquiry was mere window dressing on a ministerial

directive shaped by more than two decades of pressure from the Branch.

The Indian Affairs Director was briefed by the Deputy Minister regarding

Crerar's intentions on 1 May 1941. McGill was reminded that Dr. Robertson's

1936 recommendations regarding Nova Scotia had not been given serious

consideration by Council, and was told that "the Minister is desirous that the

whole problem should be gone into most thoroughly so that when the report is

51

made it will be possible to arrive at some definite decisions as to what should be

done."4-G Arneil was to report on conditions in each agency paying particular

attention to: the health and welfare of the Indians; their means of livelihood;

the amount of relief issued; the quality of medical and educational services

available to them; the type of land in each reserve; the character and

qualifications of Indian Affairs' employees; and the condition and replacement

cost of government-owned buildings. Arneil was to suggest ways "whereby the

welfare of Indians might be improved and th~ cost of relief and administration

reduced." He was also to examine "the Indian problem" in Prince Edward Island

where the suggestion had been made to move all the Indians to Lennox Island. 4-?

Arneil's ten-page "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian

Administration," submitted 23 August 194-1, was not particularly thorough, but it

found its way to the predictable recommendations: that all .Indians receiving

relief should be established at two large reserves, that the remaining reserves

should be sold, and that the few Indians not receiving relief and those opposed to

centralization should be enfranchised. Given Nova Scotia employers'

predilection for hiring white workers, Arneil conceded "there was no immediate

solution for ••. the Indian problem" there. He described centralization as "a

step in the direction of a solution that in my judgement could be worked out over

a period of years." Replacing the nineteen part-time agents with two full-time

agents would eliminate "neglect and faulty administration," and concentrating

the Indians at two locations would relieve the Branch of the necessity of hiring

medical personnel in every county. It would also facilitate the provision of

improved medical services, and eliminate the health and moral hazards posed to

white communities. Isolating Indians in remote locations would reduce the

number of illegitimate children and the Branch's support costs for them, and

52

would enable the church to instruct Indians in hygiene, morals and manual

training. Centralization would eliminate at least eight Indian day schools, and

would permit the establishment of two consolidated schools where crafts and

agriculture could be taught. More economical bulk purchasing would be possible,

and the overcharging, substitutions and excessive paper work arising from

dealing with numerous suppliers would be eradicated. By installing two sawmills,

which would serve as a basis for developing Indian woodworking, Arneil explained

that the Branch could completely avoid purchasing building materials for new

structures.l.j.8

From the Department's point of view then, centralization appeared to be

extraordinarily advantageous. If Arneil anticipated any negative consequences

or any Indian or white resistance to the plan, he did not voice them in his report.

Nor did he include any estimate of the costs involved. He simply suggested the

cooperation of the chiefs and church be secured, and that "the transition" be

overseen by a committee at each central reserve composed of a priest, an RCMP

officer, a doctor and the Indian agent. Once all the Indians had been either

moved or enfranchised, Arneil expected the two agents to adopt "the duties and

responsibilities ordinarily assumed by a full-time agent on one of our larger

Indian reserves in Ontario or in the West." Concluding, "If centralization is

rejected I can think of no alternative policy worthy of submission or indeed

worthy of consideration," Arneil had told Crerar what he apparently wanted to

hear .l.j.9

In his report, Arneil echoed the moral indignation expressed by white

Nova Scotians regarding the "temptations besetting their sons." As R.A. Hoey

put it when he became the Director of the Branch, such complaints were so

"very, very disturbing," and the demands for action so insistent, that

53

centralization "was the only thing we could possibly do."50 Arneil judged the

fathers of illegitimate Indian children to be "transients, negro and white, who

periodically drift into the Province." Eager to avoid implicating locals, Arneil

overlooked several factors which might have enabled Nova Scotians to be among

those who fathered such children. One was the Indian Act's requirement that

Indian women give up their Indian status when marrying non-Indians. This

militated against marriage between Indian women and persons who lacked Indian

status. Since Indians frequently lived in proximity to the province's Blacks, it is

also unlikely that Black fathers were necessarily drifters from other places.

Seemingly unable to credit Indians with responsibility for their own actions,

Arneil attributed the exemplary "standard of morals and decency reached by

Cape Breton Indians" outside of Sydney "almost wholly to the supervision and

influence of the Parish Priests."51 To counter any possible suggestion that

isolating Nova Scotia's Indians might not be in keeping with the government's

long term interests, Arneil wrote:

There may be those who will contend that a policy of centralization as outlined in this report will tend to retard assimilation which should be our ultimate goal. My reply to this contention is that on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, with a population of approximately 6,000, and on the Tyendinaga Reserve with a population of 1,500, a larger number of young Indians proceed with high school courses of study and take up responsible positions in white communities and do this to a far greater extent than Indians living in comparatively small groups.52

Surely Arneil could not have believed that simply lumping Indians together in

large groups automatically produced greater success in education and

employment. If so, he disregarded entirely the different historical, material and

cultural circumstances of the two Ontario reserves mentioned and the two

proposed for Nova Scotia.

54

The most grievous error in Arneil's report was his assumption that the

Indian population of Nova Scotia would not expand. In the years between 1910

and 1940 it increased by only 100 but, from 2,100 in 1940, the numbers leapt to

2,641 in 1949 and 3,002 in 1954.53 Proceeding with centralization on Arneil's

prediction that Nova Scotia's Indian population would remain stable because of

immigration to the United States was a mistake.

Arneil chose Eskasoni, thirty miles southwest of Sydney on the Bras d'Or

Lake, and Shubenacadie, forty miles northeast of Halifax (halfway to Truro), as

the two focal points for centralization. Even if the population had not grown,

neither reserve was capable of supporting the Indians who were moved there

under centralization. Arneil's estimation of Eskasoni's ability to carry more

livestock without feed shortages proved to be wrong, as was his assessment of

the durability of timber resources at both reserves. 54 It appears that Eskasoni

and Shubenacadie were chosen mainly because they were remote and offered

more available acreage than other reserves.

Shubenacadie contained 1,790 acres, two-thirds of which, according to

Arneil, could be cultivated. Given that "the majority of Indian reserves on the

mainland [were] not suitable for farming," and the desire of the government to

turn Indians into farmers, Shubenacadie was an understandable choice. It was

large and ideally situated in the centre of the Mainland away from any major

1 . t 55 popu at10n cen re.

Of the half dozen populated reserves in Cape Breton, Eskasoni was not

only the largest, but it had the greatest potential for expansion. Adjoining

properties and Crown land could be acquired to add to the 2,800 acres that

already ran along three miles of the north shore of the East Bay. Seven hundred

acres were "being farmed to advantage" and it was distant from any major

55

town.56 There were, however, three reserves in Cape Breton in addition to

Eskasoni which supported agriculture and had their own timberland.

Whycocomagh and Wagmatcook (also known as Nyanza or Middle River) adjoined

white communities, and Chapel Island (also called Barra Head or Salmon River)

straddled the main highway that ran from Sydney to the Mainland. Drinking and

immorality were not significant problems outside of Sydney, nor was squatting

since virtually all Indians were concentrated on six of the island's eleven

reserves. The Cape Breton Indians, who comprised approximately half of the

status Indian population of Nova Scotia, enjoyed a standard of living comparable

to that of the average Cape Bretoner.57 Like many Maritimers, they pursued a

seasonal round of activities drawing their livelihood from a combination of

fishing, farming, lumbering and selling handicrafts.

Although the Indian population and the twenty thousand acres reserved

for it were both divided almost equally between Cape Breton and the Mainland,

Indian Affairs seemed generally unaware that the situation of Cape Breton

Indians was not comparable to that of most Mainland Indians. Inspectors seldom,

if ever, visited all the Cape Breton reserves when assessing conditions in the

province, and the Nova Scotia administration never seemed to be analyzed in

terms of the differences between the two regions. More anxious to cut financial

losses than to further the modicum of success achieved at some Cape Breton

reserves, the Department embraced the simplistic centralization scheme without

regard for the disruption it would cause the residents of relatively well­

established and self-sufficient reserves.

An Order in Council (P .c. 33/2570, 2 April 194-2) authorized

centralization in Nova Scotia retroactive to 1 March 194-2.58 The scheme first

proposed in 1918, and now nudged into reality by Arneil's report, was therefore

56

approved without any parliamentary discussion as it simply required the

agreement of the Treasury Board. Also authorized at this time, although not to

be dealt with here, was the centralization of Prince Edward Island's 27 5 Indians

to Lennox Island. They were living both on and off that province's five reserves

which, as far back as 1884, had been described as "a great inconvenience to the

Department.1159

Before examining the implementation and outcome of the policy, it is

worth considering whether or not centralization was sensible in terms of what

was known at the time. One source of relevant information is the Nova Scotia

Economic Council. The annual reports it presented to Premier Macdonald are

excellent indicators of the state of the provincial economy, a context within

which -- in addition to that of national affairs and the activities of the Indian

Affairs Branch -- centralization should be understood.

The Council's reports for 1936 and 1937 reveal that by the mid-1930s all

branches of the Nova Scotia fishing industry were depressed and timber prices

were down in the United Kingdom, the main market for the province's lumber.60

Nova Scotia was having difficulty accommodating a population that was growing

due to American restrictions on immigration and the effects of the Depression

on other parts of Canada. Unskilled labour swelled the urban areas, prompting

the Council to advise "keeping farm children on the farm" and "the development

of rural manufactures."61 In the depths of the Depression, the government ran

an elaborate land settlement scheme in response to high unemployment levels

but, in 1938, the Council declared it a failure. Chronic structural unemployment

prompted the Council to make a number of recommendations "to guard against

any further costly and impractical relief settlement schemes." These included

allowing sub-marginal farms to revert to forest, and encouraging settlement

57

only by experienced people with a commitment to agriculture. "The presence of

a large number of vacant farms in Nova Scotia does not necessarily mean that

the supply of suitable farmland is plentiful" it cautioned. The Council also

stressed the need for organization and planning if such schemes were to be

effective. It concluded that "any further attempt, involving public money, to

settle inexperienced, unemployed workers on farms in the hope of making them

self-supporting is not justified.1162

Angus L. Macdonald ignored the Nova Scotia Economic Council's advice

when he approved the scheme that involved moving unemployed Indians onto

marginal farmland. Obviously, the government did not know what else to do with

them. Not much was known about the natural resources of the province in 1941.

Little data had been gathered to determine which lands were best for

agriculture or forestry, and long range economic planning for these and other

industries awaited the results of surveys that had only begun to be taken in

1939.63

While it might have been possible to foresee that. centralization was a

dubious solution to the problems of a shortage of federal money and high

unemployment in Nova Scotia, there was not much opportunity, during wartime,

to consider the consequences of the plan's failure. At the very least, however,

its instigators might have taken into account the Economic Council's 1941

finding that "the number of carpenters and plumbers in Nova Scotia could

scarcely meet the demand.1164 The agonizing slowness of house-building largely

accounted for the government's inability to relocate most of the Indians before

the scheme was abandoned in 1949.

Publicly, centralization was proclaimed as a move that was in the best

interests of the Indians. Whether or not a significant proportion of the

58

relocatees actually benefitted is difficult to measure. However, the general

consensus among Indians and whites familiar with the scheme is that the Indians

became more dependent on the government as a result of centralization. As far

as the Department's goal of saving money was concerned, the plan was a dismal

failure. Centralization cost the Department $1,293,000 (exclusive of health care

expenditures) to 31 March 1950,65 and welfare costs rose sharply afterward

because Indians isolated at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie found it virtually

impossible to find work in a province whose economy continued to decline

throughout the fifties.

As a plan to remove Indians from Nova Scotia life, centralization

successfully reflected Indian Affairs' guiding philosophy. It immediately

addressed white complaints about Indians while promising to save the

Department money and benefit Indians in the long run. In the absence of

attitudes, information and material resources that might have permitted a more

creative and viable response to the Nova Scotia situation, Crerar buckled under

national and local pressures. Just when departmental thinking was being shaped

by the exigencies of war, he was faced with an increased number of Indians on

relief. The practices built on the structures of the past had failed, but, with

Ottawa desperate for funds to meet wartime costs, the proposal to centralize

Nova Scotia's Indians suddenly became irresistible.

59

Notes - Chapter III

1 C.T. Loram and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds., The North American Indian Today (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943), ix.

2 T.R.L. Mcinnes (sic) for the Director, January 1938 in W.E. Daugherty, Indian Government Under Indian Act Le islation, 1868-1951 (Ottawa: Department of In ian and Northern Affairs, 980 , 61.

3 Dr. H. W. McGill, "Policies and Problems in Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 133.

4 J.F. Woodsworth, "Problems of Indian Education in Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 266.

5 D.J. Allan, "Indian Land Problems in Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 186.

6 McGill in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 134.

7 A.E. Wescott, "Curricula for Indian Schools," and Woodsworth in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 284-285 and 271; and Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1939, 223.

8 Allan in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 186.

9 McGill in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 223.

10 T .R.L. Macinnes, "The History and Policies of the Indian Administration in Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 163.

11 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1938, 193.

12 Macinnes in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 162-3.

13 Allan in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 198.

14 Allan in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 197.

15 R.A. Hoey, "Economic Problems of the Canadian Indian," in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 200-201.

60

16 PAC, RG 10, File 4-82-1-1(1), editor to McGill, 29 May 1939 and Macinnes to editor, 14- June 1939.

17 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3220, file 536,764--1, McGill to agents, 22 May 194-0.

18 Canadian Tuberculosis Association, "The Tuberculosis Problem in Canada," a memorandum prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1938), 13.

19 Ibid., 3.

20 Ibid., 7-8.

21 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 6810, file 4-70-2-3, pt. 10, Rankin to Indian Affairs, .11 January 1939.

22 Ibid.

23 House of Commons Debates, III (194-1), 2579.

24- Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 194-1, 166.

25 Macinnes in The North American Indian Today, eds. Loram and Mcllwraith, 158.

27 J.L. Granatstein, Canada's War: The Politics of the Government, 1939-4-5 Toronto: Oxford University Press,

28 Ibid., 135.

29 Ibid., 107.

30 Ibid., and Mitchell Sharp, "Decision-making in the Federal Cabinet," 'Canadian Public Administration XIX, 1 (Spring 1976), 6.

31 J.W. Pickersgill, "Mackenzie King's Political Attitudes and Public Policies: A Personal Impression," in Mackenzie Kin : Widenin the Debate, eds. John English and J.O. Stubbs Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1977, 25.

32 A.D.P. Heeney, "Mackenzie King and the Cabinet Secretariat," Canadian Public Administration X, 3 (March 1967), 36 and Sharp, "Decision-making," 13.

33 Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Angus L. Macdonald Collection, folder 901, 29 July and 23 December 194-2.

61

34 Ibid, Crerar to Macdonald, 23 December 1942.

35 Angus L. Macdonald, Speeches of Angus L. Macdonald (Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960), 20.

36 Granatstein, Canada's War , 283.

37 Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (OlAND), Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Macinnes, 20 July 1940.

38 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Crerar to Angus L. Macdonald, 26 July 1940.

39 Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Angus L. Macdonald Collection, cabinet 4, 2nd drawer, folder 729, Macdonald to Crerar, 5 August 1940.

40 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Crerar to Macmillan, 24 April 1941.

41 Ibid., Macmillan to Crerar, 29 April 1941.

42 Ibid., Crerar to Macmillan, 24 April 1941.

43 Ibid., Macmillan to Crerar, 29 April 1941.

44 Canada, Senate and House of Commons, Special Joint Committee to Consider the Indian Act, Minutes of the Proceedings and Evidence, 1946, No.8, 369, w.s. Arneil, 24 June.

45 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Crerar to Macmillan, 24 April 1941 and c.w. Jackson to McGill, 1 May 1941.

46 Ibid., Deputy Minister to McGill, 1 May 1941.

47 Ibid.

48 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian Administration, Province of Nova Scotia" by W .S. Arneil, August 1941.

49 Ibid.

50 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1947, No. 39, 1961 and 1970, Hoey, 26 June. Such complaints had often been channelled to the government through local politicians. Senator J.J. Kinley of Lunenburg took credit for suggesting, sometime before 1941, that the Branch concentrate the Indians on fertile islands no longer needed by white people because the Indians "polluted the poorest of the white folks" and vice versa. Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 486-501, Kinley, 20 October. From 1937 to 1951 the Indian illegitimacy rate averaged 15.4 per cent as compared with 6.5 per cent for the population of Nova Scotia and just less than 4 per cent for all of Canada. Since the illegitimacy rate among Nova Scotia Indians was about 10 per cent in the late 1930s and 19 per cent in

62

1951, centralization clearly failed to reduce illegitimate births among the Indians. Nova Scotia, Department of Public Health, Annual Reports, 1937-1952.

51 "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian Administration, Province of Nova Scotia," 1941.

52 Ibid.

53 Canada, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1950, 82 and Annual Report, 1954-55, 70.

54 OlAND, Ottawa, file 274/30-1, Inspection Reports, 27 June and 8 July 1941.

55 Only about half of the Mainland's thirty-one reserves were occupied; and, some of these were small and close enough to other reserves that they were commonly referred to by the name of the dominant reserve.

56 OlAND, Ottawa, file 274/30-1, Inspection Report, 8 July 1941.

57 Dr. MacMillan, Memoirs, 194 and passim.

58 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, E.A. Jackson to McGill, 8 April 1942.

59 James Douglas Leighton, "The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840-1890," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1975,274.

60 Nova Scotia Economic Council, Reports, 1936, I, No. 1 and Reports, 1937, II, No. 6.

61 Nova Scotia Economic Council, Reports, 1937, II, No. 12.

62 Nova Scotia Economic Council, Reports, 1938, III, No. 21.

63 Nova Scotia Economic Council, Reports, 1938, III, Reprint from Industrial Canada (March 1939).

64 Nova Scotia Economic Council, Reports, 1941, VI, No. 57.

65 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Director to Deputy Minister, 2 May 1950. See Appendix A for itemization of costs.

63

CHAPTER IV

THE ADMINISTRATION OF CENTRALIZATION

As it happened, the attempt to concentrate Nova Scotia Micmacs on two

inland reserves coincided with the removal of thousands of Japanese Canadians

from the West Coast to internment camps in the British Columbia interior.! Was

this pure coincidence, or were the Indians of Nova Scotia and the Japanese of

British Columbia victims of the sort of ethnocentricity that develops when full

participation in a war requires fervent belief in the moral superiority of one's

own nation? During the Second World War there was an unprecedented degree of

government intervention into all facets of Canadian life and, through its

virtually unlimited emergency powers, Ottawa had a golden opportunity to deal

with social problems that had persisted for decades. Just as Indians were not

welcome in Nova Scotia, persons of Japanese descent had always been perceived

as a social and economic threat by some British Columbians. For whatever

reasons, the acceptance of these two groups, separated by thousands of miles and

several millenia of experience, was set back even further when they were

uprooted by the federal government in 194-2.

According to the 194-2 report of the Department of Mines and Resources,

the "entire Indian population of Nova Scotia" was to be established on two

reserves.2 In anticipation of the arrival of hundreds of Indian families,

negotiations with the .provincial government, the Mersey Paper Company, and

neighbouring farmers continued throughout 194-2 with the result that

Shubenacadie and Eskasoni were eventually doubled in size by the acquisition of

adjoining land. The argument that centralization "would remove from the

vicinity of the City of Sydney in particule!:r, and other white settlements in the

64

island, certain Indian settlements that have not been an asset" was used to

appeal to the province for lands near Eskasoni. 3 At Shubenacadie, 1,768 acres

were purchased at a cost of $10,477, and at Eskasoni 3,860 acres (3,000 of it

timber land) were added for $30,888.4 Little was worked out in advance.

Strategic decisions had to be made in the field by departmental inspectors and

agents, but their attempts to realize the grand design of converting "2100 Indians

scattered in about 19 localities in groups of 35 to 150" into 1,387 Indians at

Eskasoni and 778 at Shubenacadie were frustrated by a shortage of skilled labour,

materiel, money, and the Indians' resistance to the idea.5 Only about half the

intended number of Indians ever moved to the two reserves.

Some of the reasons for the plan's failure are easily discerned from the

administrative record. In addition to providing glimpses of events in Nova

Scotia, it is also revealing of Ottawa's attitude towards its Indian clientele and

its Indian agents; the agents' attitudes towards Indians and Ottawa; and the

Indians' attitudes towards the agents, the federal government and each other.

While the next chapter will explore the experience of centralization through

mainly Indian accounts, the following is a survey of the plan's implementation

gleaned from the currently available departmental files. Personnel changes and

administrative developments of relevance will be noted in this year-by-year

sketch of the policy's seven-year life •

In the summer of 1942 W .S. Arneil, Inspector of Indian Agencies for

Ontario, went to Nova Scotia to decide on a plan of action. Neither Eskasoni nor

Shubenacadie had a full-time agent until September 1942; and, before all the

part-time agents were fully retired on 31 March 1943, some of them contributed

to the transitional confusion by refusing to co-operate with the Branch. 6 Well

65

before Arneil tried to put centralization in motion, many Nova Scotia Indians had

made it abundantly clear that they were not likely to co-operate either.

While it is generally believed that the Grand Chief gave his consent for

centralization on behalf of all the Micmacs, a 12 January 1942 letter signed

Gabriel Sylliboy and John S. Googoo reads in toto:

We, the Chief and Councillor of the Micmac Indians of Inverness County Indian Agency, Nova Scotia, hereby state that we have interviewed the Indians of Whycocomagh and Malagawatch Reserves regarding the transfer to Eskasoni and find that, with few exceptions, all are willing to go and eager to comply with any Department's instructions to better their living conditions.7

No other permission from the Grand Chief appears on file. Indians living

elsewhere quickly made known their unwillingness to move. On 28 January 1942

J.C. Cope, an eighty-three-year-old Micmac from Cumberland County, wrote to

Indian Affairs to say that centralization was "not satisfactory to the majority of

Micmacs" because it infringed on their freedom. 8 In March, letters from Mrs.

Josephy Nibby and Martin Simon opposed centralization because they both had

work at Cambridge. Horton Reserve Indians petitioned for the right to stay

where they were for the same reason.9 A 9 April story in the Eastern-Chronicle

explained that four Indian agents had gone to Ottawa to request centralization, ·

but that Mr. A.W. Harris of Pictou had visited the Minister of Indian Affairs in

Ottawa to oppose the relocation of Pictou Landing Indians. 10

Close to one hundred Indian names were attached to a petition dated 26

May 1942 from the Middle River (Wagmatcook) reserve protesting the move as

"unfair" and of benefit to no one. "We cannot understand why it is being done,"

it said, "there is not one single individual who will go willingly.1111 The Victoria

County Liberal Committee sent a telegram in support of Middle River to

66

Matthew MacLean, M.P. (Cape Breton North-Victoria) stating "ninety percent

Indians and other citizens are opposed to it." 12 Ben Christmas informed

Clarence Gillis, M.P. (Cape Breton South) that Sydney Indians opposed any action

to move them to Eskasoni; and Mrs. Margaret Phillips of the Cole Harbour

reserve near Dartmouth wrote to Gordon Isner, M.P. (Halifax) in July saying

there was work where she was and she did not want to leave her "beautiful home

which we have worked so hard to accomplish."13 Also in July, Millbrook Indians

petitioned Indian Affairs pointing out that there was n<? employment at

Shubenacadie and that few of the forty-three families at Millbrook were on

relief because there was work in nearby Truro. 14

In the face of mounting opposition, Indian Affairs officials tried to allay

fears of forcible removal. Replying to Isner's enquiry regarding Mrs. Phillip's

letter, McGill went as far as to say that "It is not the intention of the

Department to move any Indian who is established and self-supporting to the new

reserve."15 What he failed to mention was that the Department hoped to

enfranchise any Indians who did not move. A reply to the lawyer for the

Millbrook Indians confirmed that consolidation to two reserves and the

centralization of the Indian population there was indeed the Department's policy,

but that:

• • • it will be sometime before the necessary accommodation can be supplied and the opportunities for gainful employment and the fuller life we plan for them can be worked out. Our plans are, however, maturing and when the proper time comes we anticipate no trouble in getting all the candidates for removal that we want or can take care of.l6

Evidently, once Indian Affairs had won political approval of the centralization

plan, no amount of negative reaction to the proposal could prevent it from being

attempted.

67

Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, Arneil was making important decisions that

were to have the effect of restricting the speed with which centralization could

proceed. Early in July, he discovered that house-building lumber was both scarce

and costly in Nova Scotia. 17 While some lumber would have to be purchased "to

get the project underway," Arneil decided that sawmills should operate at each

reserve so that "as much lumber as possible [could be] sawn and piled to

season."18 Having informed Director McGill that it should be possible to obtain a

sawmill, planer and shingle mill for Eskasoni for under $3,000, 19 Arneil then

chose the cheapest of five available second-hand sawmills. 20 When it was

delivered to Eskasoni late in October 1942, parts were missing. 21

A second-hand

shingle mill was not located until July 1944 and, when it proved unsatisfactory,

a new one was eventually purchased in Ottawa in May 1947 and shipped to

Eskasoni. By the end of 1948, the mill at Eskasoni had cost the Department over

$12,000~22 Considering the number of repairs and additions required, the basic

mill, at $2,000, was no bargain.

A second-hand sawmill and shingle mill were purchased for Shubenacadie

in July and October 1942, respectively. At the end of September 1942 the main

part of the mill was attached to a concrete foundation on a flooded low-lying

site selected by Arneil and the part-time agent. 23 H.C. Rice, the new full-time

agent, wrote:

••• we had to go searching for parts that floated away, but found most of them. I might say the mill was half under water for two days.24

Flooding of the Shubenacadie mill site was to be a recurring problem. The

following February, for example, high water in the nearby brook made the mill

inaccessible except by raft.

Wetness seemed to be one of the conditions Ottawa failed to allow for in

68

its Indian Affairs operations in Nova Scotia. Throughout the 1940s, lumbering

and sawing were regularly interrupted because of rain and impassable roads.

Roothouses built at Eskasoni under the agent's supervision leaked in the fall of

1942 and forced the shipment of seed potatoes to other Cape Breton reserves in

a salvage effort. Supplies such as seed potatoes had been withheld from the

other reserves during 1942 as an inducement for Indians to move to Eskasoni. 25

Despite disappointing progress in the building program due to lumber shortages

and disputes over the supply of gravel, four families did move to Eskasoni in

1942. Among them was that of Gabriel Sylliboy the Grand Chief of the

M. 26 1cmacs.

The severe winter of 1943 limited lumbering operations, aggravated

medical problems, and produced an increase in relief allowances, particularly in

Cape Breton. The concomitant impediments to travel and communication made

it difficult for J.A. MacLean, the full-time agent at Eskasoni, to deal with

problems at other Cape Breton reserves which included organized resistance to

centralization. 27

In February 1943, Ben Christmas wrote again to Clarence Gillis, M.P.

(Cape Breton South) as Secretary of the Sydney Indian Council to complain that

at Eskasoni there would be no opportunities for Sydney Indians to follow their

accustomed occupations. He thought it would be impossible for a large number

of Indians to support themselves at Eskasoni because fuel wood and timber

supplies were limited, and hunting, fishing and agriculture were impractical.

Regarding the latter, he wrote that it is "doubtful we could induce our sons and

daughters· to become farmers where so many better and well to do people have

failed." He considered drunkenness, lawlessness and illegitimacy more likely in

isolated locations, and described Alexander MacDonald, MacLean's assistant in

69

charge of house construction, as an "incompetent. n28 The charge of

incompetence was levelled at all the supervisors of centralization a month later

in a letter to Prime Minister King from Noel Marshall, the Secretary of the

Barra Head Indian Council. He explained that the majority of the fifty families

at Barra Head (Chapel Island) were against centralization and would continue to

oppose it until they were provided with a proper explanation of the scheme and

given evidence of a systematic approach to win their confidence.29

In April, MacLean and Rice, his counterpart at Shubenacadie, together

with the agent responsible for centralization in Prince Edward Island went to

Ottawa where they spent a week visiting the various departments connected with

their work and discussing their problems with Arneil. In light of MacLean's

stormy departure from his job less than two years later, his reaction to the visit

is worth recording:

The kindness, willingness, co-operation and interest shown in our problems were a revelation to us and we left Ottawa with a load off our minds and the kindest feelings and most pleasant memories of everyone connected with the Department •••• all connected with the Indian Affairs Branch are first class fellows)O

Whatever' reassurances MacLean and Rice were given by headquarters, both

found themselves confronted by frustrating delays and shortages upon their

return.

Although the record is not as complete for Shubenacadie as it is for

Eskasoni, it is possible to deduce that some of the same problems were

encountered at both places. In Cape Breton, Eskasoni's location thirty miles by

unpaved road from Sydney accounted for many supply and communication

problems. Also, that reserve's hilly terrain made it especially difficult to bring

lumber to the mill in bad weather. Shubenacadie was equally distant from supply

70

centres, but there the agent's main problem was retaining Indian labour since

there were more employment alternatives on the Mainland.

Shortages of shingles and lumber slowed the completion of six houses

started at Shubenacadie during the fall of 1942. In May 1943, when the shingle

mill was finally ready to operate, the mill crew went on strike for a wage

increase to forty cents per hour. 31 Rice reported that, for two days, the Indians

had maintained more cohesion than he had thought possible. However, after a

few of them had sought work at the local mill and other establishments without

success, they gradually drifted back. Their wages were not increased, and six

and a half days had been lost: three to heavy rain and three and a half to the

strike. Rice had a low opinion of the Indians' work habits, but when they had to

keep up with the saw he felt the Department was getting its money's worth:

While working on the houses. it is impossible to get a full days work from most of them but while they are chopping by the thousand or following a good sawyer there is no doubt that we are getting all that is paid for.32

Just over a year later, in August, a similarly unsuccessful strike for higher wages

occurred at Eskasoni. It ended in two days and drew the same sort of comment

from MacLean:

The workmen, as a whole, would try the patience of Job. As we know them, they are not very ambitious and it would be necessary to have a foreman for every small group working.33

In the summer of 1943, building operations at Eskasoni were hampered first by

the lack of a truck and other necessary equipment, and then by the condition of

the roads and trouble getting the truck repaired.34 When the sites were finally

cleared for houses, work on the foundations had to await the acquisition of .

wheelbarrows and a cement mixer.35 No provision had been made to train

71

workers in the operation of the sawmill so that when it was ready to operate in

August 1943, MacLean had to get the Branch's permission to bring an instructor

in· from Baddeck for two weeks. The training actually took the better part of a

month and resulted in some broken parts for the mill and a reprimand from head

office for MacLean.36 Since MacLean was four miles from the nearest

telephone and twelve miles from a telegraph office, supervising the work at

Eskasoni meant that he could only attend to the most urgent calls from other

Cape Breton reserves.37

Whycocomagh residents, allegedly in favour of centralization in 1942,

sent a petition to Indian Affairs in June 1943 insisting that their situation at

Whycocomagh was better in all respects than it would be at Eskasoni. The

response of R.A. Hoey, the Superintendent of Welfare and Training, is

noteworthy because he replaced McGill as Director in 1945:

A decision will later be reached with respect to the responsibility of the Department for the education, medical care and general welfare of Indians who refuse to take up residence on the newly created reserves. In view of all the circumstances, however, it is not at all necessary that a decision such as this should be reached at this date.38

Centralization had been in effect for less than a year and a half, but already the

officials were being forced to acknowledge its possible failure.

Opposition also sprang from unlikely quarters. Even though the church

had been consulted, Father Leo J. Keats spoke harshly against centralization in

his sermon to Nova Scotia Indians congregated at Chapel Island in July 1943 for

the annual "Mission." MacLean struck a steadfast pose in response:

••• we are paying no attention one way or the other, as from what I have seen to date, if anything is to be done with the Micmac Indians, their salvation lies in cen­tralization •••• For the present we have our hands full accommodating those who are ver.¥ anxious to come and we are not afraid of the outcome. 9

72

Dissension among Indians meeting at Eskasoni on Labour Day prompted MacLean

to conjure up a convenient bogeyman. Though not present at the meeting, he

wrote Ottawa that "left-wingers" had stirred up opposition to centralization,

whereas others counselled by Grand Chief Sylliboy still vigorously supported the

lj.Q plan.

In anticipation of moving to Eskasoni during the summer of 191J.3, some

families living at other reserves had planted gardens there in the spring.IJ.l The

files do not indicate whether they returned to Eskasoni to collect their harvest

but, in December, MacLean had to report that "many families which we hoped to

have here before now will have to remain where they are for sometime as we

have no accommodations for them.IJ.2 Rain and equipment problems had

curtailed building. MacLean judged the Indians "a roving lot" who were often

attracted away from Eskasoni by hunting, fishing, and higher wages; and Rice

complained that his labourers were "being continually drawn away from

Shubenacadie to other, higher paying industries."lj.3

During MacLean's first summer at Eskasoni, medical services were

. d h d th f th d' h . . IJ.IJ. I h f 11 nonex1stent ue to t e ea o e atten mg p ys1c1an. n t e a , an

epidemic of influenza forced an increase in relief allowances, and cases of

rheumatic fever and birth complications required hospitalization. "Considerable

difficulty" was encountered getting the afflicted individuals admitted to the

crowded hospital at North Sydney because "some white patients complained of

having Indians in the wards with them." Getting the dead buried was no easier;

undertakers at Antigonish, for example, wanted nothing to do with destitute

Indians who died in St. Martha's Hospital there.IJ.5

Some able-bodied men left Nova Scotia reserves to participate in the

war effort. Since Indians were not exempted from military service during the

73

Second World War, agents were directed to encourage Indian men to enlist by

appealing to their "pride, self-respect and loyalty."46 Early in the war, Indian

Affairs Secretary, T .R.L. Macinnes, pointed out to agents that a soldier's

monthly salary of $99.30 per month should represent a very substantial

improvement in the economic lot of most Indian enlistees and their families. 47

Agents were also expected to persuade soldiers' wives to purchase War Savings

Certificates or to invest in the Indian Trust Fund from their Dependent's

Allowances. 48 By the end of 1943, 86 of the total of 113 Nova Scotia Indians to

.enlist were serving in the armed forces. 49 When the tribal class destroyer

H.M.C.S. Micmac was launched at Halifax in 1943, five Mainland Indians "added

colour to the ceremony" which included an Indian blessing of the ship.50

The first full year of the centralization policy was filled with a variety

of circumstances that prevented the two agents from getting houses built fast

enough to accommodate the Indians scheduled to move to Eskasoni and

Shubenacadie. By early 1944, only ten houses had been completed at each

reserve. Inadequate and broken equipment, shortages of skilled labour, bad

weather and closed roads all slowed the building program and were never

overcome.51 Conceding that making, rather than buying, lumber had "been a

factor in retarding speed," Arneil met with MacLean and Rice at Truro in

February 1944 to discuss their problems. They set a target of building at least

twenty more houses at each reserve within the next year.52

In March 1944, Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy and Grand Captain Simon

Denny wrote a letter to Mines and Resources Minister Crerar expressing, on

behalf of the Micmacs, their dissatisfaction with the way their affairs were

being handled in Nova Scotia. However, in line with a general policy

discouraging Indians from direct communication with Ottawa, the letter was

74

returned to MacLean for action by future Indian Affairs Director Hoey. It is

therefore unlikely that Crerar saw the letter which requested an official to be

sent to Nova Scotia "for the purpose of investigation • . . in order that our

Indians may receive due justice."53 While MacLean did not arrange the

requested investigation, six weeks later he asked for the visit of an official with

the authority to straighten out the Indians' dissatisfaction. His request was

denied. With reference to the specific complaints raised by Sylliboy and Denny,

MacLean told the Branch:

Where the mis-management came in, we are unable to understand but we know that our fanciful informers do not understand either, but use these unfounded opinions as a means of retaliation for personal matters.54

Just a month later, MacLean felt it necessary to have John R. Denny

prosecuted on a charge of common assault resulting from an incident in which

Denny grabbed him by the collar and threatened him when MacLean refused to

pay for lumbering work which, he contended, Denny had not performed. Denny

was convicted.55 "I took this action as an example to all concerned," MacLean

1 . d 56 exp ame •

Obviously fearing that matters were getting out of control, MacLean

formally requested the establishment of R.C.M.P. protection on the reserve; a

telephone system; adjustment "of locations on the original reserve"; "a

government set-up with the Indians"; and measures for dealing with Indians who

do not support their families. Insisting that "conditions will have to be

straightened out and a solid foundation set before we can hope to have any

measure of satisfaction," he then asked Ottawa to send someone "with full

authority to act on the spot." "Before any further developments are carried out,

we want a definite policy here •.• . "57 MacLean followed the letter with a

75

telegram stating that he had "stopped operations" at Eskasoni "pending arrival of

Department official to adjust matters." MacLean's work stoppage made little

impression on the Department. Sloughing off all requests, Indian Affairs

Director McGill replied:

At the present time I cannot advise you when it will be possible to have an official from headquarters visit your agency, and in the meantime it is desired that you should carry on your work in accordance with established policy and instructions, and submit regular reports to this office)8

In addition to the problems which had handicapped his work from the

start, MacLean now found he had to contend with the growing resentment of

long-term Eskasoni residents who felt newcomers were encroaching on their

territory. While endeavouring to •istraighten out" their ideas, MacLean continued

to urge the Department to provide the full-time services of a medical officer, a

priest and the R.C.M.P.59 Along with money, these were prerequisites to the

f 1. . h . . d 60 success o centra 1Zat10n, e ms1ste • Hoey's reply advised MacLean to be

patient, ignore the opposition, and carry on. Hoey explained that shortages due

to the war made it impossible for Ottawa to supply the necessary staff and, until

these conditions changed, the Indian administration could only operate on a day­

to-day basis. 61

Concerned as he was with "the lives and welfare of so many Indians,"62

MacLean reluctantly concluded that there were only two ways to improve

matters: either place the necessary machinery behind centralization £!:. abandon

the reserves and Indian status. Ostensibly drawing on his experience with the

Cape Breton reserves, he told Ottawa that

.•• it seems an injustice to the Indians to confine them to reserves. It would not appear that they are of any lesser intelligence than the average white person and confinement on reserves handicaps them or limits them

to employment only near a reservation •••• It only postpones the time when these people can take their place among society, as white people do.63

76

Such thoughts were heresy, of course. The fact that no reply appears on file is

perhaps explained by the coincidence that, two weeks earlier, T .R.L. Macinnes,

Secretary to the Indian Affairs Branch, had expressed very similar views to the

House of Commons Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment.

McGill had been reprimanded by the Deputy Minister for Macinnes' comments

which included the statement: "In Eastern Canada we should be climbing out of

the Indian reserve problem instead of digging ourselves into it." Appearing

before the same committee, even Hoey ventured the opinion that "this is the

proper time to review the whole Indian problem."64

Evidently opting to carry on, MacLean then met with Bishop Morrison of

Antigonish to discuss the appointment of a priest to Eskasoni. He told the Bishop

that centralization was "the nearest solution" to making the Indian "a decent

chap," and that "if developed, [the Micmacs are] one of the greatest tourist

attractions the province has to offer ."65

Having received no answers to their pleas, the Indians of Cape Breton

attempted to organize a meeting at Eskasoni in the first week of September

1944. Although nothing on file confirms that the meeting was actually held,

MacLean did support this move to "clear the air" and duly notified the Branch so

that it could prepare to meet with delegates from the various reserves. As

MacLean put it, the Micmacs were bothered from the start that they had

"nothing to show, in black and white, or in any matter, on paper, concerning

centralization." They claimed they had not been consulted, and that they did not

know what to expect. "The matter of livelihood after the reservation is built up

77

is a question that will have to be treshed (sic) out," wrote MacLean. The

manufacture of toys, cheap furniture and cheap caskets from "our holding of

softwoods" was offered by him as one suggestion. 66

Persistent delays hindered Eskasoni's building program during the fall of

1944. Meanwhile, MacLean attended to urgent repairs and staffing problems at

schools on the other Cape Breton reserves. In his October report, MacLean

exhibited the requested patience but he also took the opportunity to prod the

Branch: "It is hoped that next year will see the centralization policy put in force

and attention to outlying reserves eliminated.1167

In 1945, when Hoey succeeded McGill as Director of the Indian Affairs

Branch, clearer signs of its backing down on the original plan to centralize all

Indians began to appear. Responding to an enquiry from Ralph Kirk, M.P.

(Antigonish-Guysborough), Hoey declared:

••• it is not our intention to disturb any Indian who has succeeded in establishing himself on a self-sufficient basis in any community. Primarily we are interested in the Indian who constitutes a charge on public funds.68

Hoey reiterated some of the objectives of centralization: since "the worst

conditions prevail on those reserves that are located on the outskirts of

important industrial cities and communities" centralization would "improve the

amenities of the white communities which are not improved by the immediate

presence of isolated groups of Indians." The intention was to remove the Indians

"to a less artificial environment" where they could live "closer to nature" and be

given better services. Hoey seemed to be committed to something less than

total centralization, but the plan to consolidate Nova Scotia's reserves so that

there were only two was never officially discontinued. 69

Soon after taking office, Hoey directed all agents to cease reporting on a

78

monthly basis and to submit quarterly reports instead. Limited staff at head

office had "not enabled the officials any time in recent years to give monthly

reports the attention to which they are undoubtedly entitled."70 In view of this

directive, one might wonder if all of MacLean's and Rice's reports had ever been

read. Certainly the lack of response had taken its toll of MacLean. His patience

eventually ran out.

When head office suggested MacLean's performance had not been "wholly

satisfactory," he countered: "the same can be applied to you only in a great deal

greater scope. Noth~ng you have promised has come to pass .••• 11 While not

clear from the files, Hoey may have moved on 30 January 1945 to terminate

MacLean's services. Whatever the case, MacLean's 10 February letter of

resignation supplies ample reason for the decision he may have made to leave.71

Firstly, MacLean concluded that "the factors necessary for the upkeep of

a people to the extent to which centralization proposes [were] missing" at

Eskasoni. The site was isolated and generally unsuitable. Not only did it lack

timber resources to support the imm'ediate building program, but insufficient

stands of timber in the vicinity of the reserve would make it impossible to

operate small-scale wood-related industry there or to meet longterm fuel and

winter employment needs. MacLean felt farming, fishing, trapping and hunting

had to be eliminated from consideration as significant sources of food or

revenue; moreover, he was certain that the Sydney area could not be relied upon

to "solve the employment situation for these people."

Secondly, MacLean had lost faith in the Department. Medical services,

communications and law and order problems still needed to be remedied; and he

had become convinced that the Department had "no clear cut policy" on

centralization. He charged Ottawa with a lack of commitment to the plan, and

79

recommended that "the whole proposition •.. be investigated" prior to any

further expenditures. MacLean told the Department that it had "a seventeenth

century attitude to a twentieth century problem." Predicting that centralizing

Indians at Eskasoni would "only add to the additional cost of maintaining them

without any benefits," MacLean concluded, "I think it is time you gave this

problem the reasoning which the modern day requires."72

As has been touched upon briefly in this chapter and will be dealt with

later in more detail, Departmental thinking was beginning to change by the end

of the war. Unfortunately for the Indians of Nova Scotia, the change in the

approach to Indian affairs came about too slowly to rescue them from the ill

effects of centralization.

MacLean's successor at Eskasoni was F .B. McKinnon, a former teacher

and cler:k of the Shubenacadie Agency. Rather than detail his first experiences I

at Eskasoni, it may be said that 194-5 brought McKinnon the same sorts of

problems MacLean had encountered in the previous two years. Major repairs had

to be made to the sawmill, and supplies were difficult to obtain. MacLean's

opinions about the unsuitability of the site and the absence of timber resources

were confirmed.73 The fact that McKinnon was promoted into the position and

then beyond it four years later suggests that he (like his former boss, Agent

Rice, who remained at Shubenacadie until 1955) was more ready to accept things

as they were. Displaying the survival instinct needed by those who hope to make

lifelong careers in the public service, he wrote:

There are many problems which knowledge of, alone, will not remedy and it is hoped that the Branch will appreciate the fact that under existing circumstances, I, or an_yone in my position, can only do what is possible.74-

Judging by subsequent Departmental files, McKinnon was not subject to

80

intemperate outbursts of personal opinion.

About the time work on the agency's administration buildings

commenced, Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy and family left Eskasoni in protest to

return to Whycocomagh. Several others followed because they too felt the

government had failed to fulfill its promises. For three years, their children had

been without a school at Castle Bay, the distant end of the reserve acquired

from local farmers for the new residents. They were unhappy with the quality of

medical care and their houses. Since homes they had left in Whycqcomagh had

been destroyed by fire on directions from MacLean, they now asked for help to

rebuild them but no such help was forthcoming. 7 5

Surveys had not been done in 1942. Discovering that the reserve's

boundaries were in doubt, McKinnon requested the necessary surveys so that he

could go ahead with logging and the alloc~tion of acreage to new families.76 Not

until "men and money are again available" was the reply.77 After an Order in

Council transferred Crown land from Nova Scotia to Canada, Eskasoni was

surveyed in 1952 and was found to contain 1,994.9 acres beyond the 3,000 acres

mentioned in the Order in Council. 78

In 1945 Rice reported that "with headquarters at Shubenacadie" he was

having difficulty keeping troublemakers away from the Indian reserves in other

counties?9 At Shubenacadie, weather also delayed lumbering, and labour

shortages and sawmill problems impeded production. The boilers at both the

Eskasoni and Shubenacadie sawmills were in terrible condition. 8° Fearing the

boiler at Shubenacadie would be condemned, Rice tried to avoid having it

. t d 81 mspec e •

Welfare Division's Inspector Morris reported that lumber piled at

Shubenacadie near the highway was unsorted, unstable and easily stolen. During

81

floods it stood in two feet of water. Unsatisfied with Rice's explanation as to

why the site was chosen, he told Ottawa that "consideration will be given to

locating the mill on a higher site •••• "82 Morris was also critical of the site of

the Eskasoni mill because its location near a brook provided little land for piling

logs or lumber. 83 About twenty houses were built at both Shubenacadie and

Eskasoni during 1945.84

As the Branch's new Director, Hoey was so determined to put a good

face on its activities that he entered the realm of fantasy with this statement in

the 1945 Annual Report:

The Indians of the Maritime provinces enjoyed a continued high standard of living through excellent employment opportunities in the steel industries, lumber camps. and on farms. The centralization policy in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island was continued with favourable results.85

Three significant developments occurred within the Indian administration that

year. The Indian Health Service was transferred to the Department of National

Health and Welfare.86 After 1 July, family allowances meant Indians received

five dollars per month per child (at a time when the average wage for all

Canadians was approximately $25 per week). 87 And, Crerar resigned his

portfolio to be replaced in April by J.A. Glen, described by historians Abella and

Troper as "ineffectual in the cabinet and the puppet of his ••. civil servants."

Glen remained the minister responsible for Indian Affairs until June 1948 when

ill-health forced his resignation, but Prime Minister Mackenzie King found, "He

really [was] a disappointment as a Minister ••• next to useless in government."88

On the last day of 1945 the boiler at Shubenacadie was condemned.

Ottawa denied Rice's request for a diesel replacement on the grounds that "your

Indians are not competent to handle such valuable machinery," and purchased the

82

cheapest new boiler available once Rice had established that none was available

second-hand. Parts were missing when it arrived and, when finally assembled in

June 1946, it leaked. 89 The attendant delays produced layoffs and further labour

troubles, although Rice maintained the only thing the "troublemakers" went

without was "a few less trips to the theatre."90

In 1946, a Special Joint Parliamentary Committee of the Senate and the

House of Commons was established to examine the Indian administration with a

view to revising the Indian Act. The committee visited Nova Scotia that year

and, while some Indians complained that they had not been notified of the

hearings, the record at least reveals a predictable divergence of opinion among

those that did attend. Indians already at Shubenacadie supported centralization

whereas those living only a few miles away on the Millbrook Reserve adjoining

Truro were against it. The Shubenacadie Indians looked forward to receiving

better medical care, but worried about their employment prospects after the

building program was finished. 91 Twelve Millbrook families had moved to

Shubenacadie under centralization, but thirty-two families still remained

because they thought the employment opportunities were better near Truro.

They had work as masons, carpenters, painters, electricians, general labourers,

factory workers and domestics that they did not want to give up by moving to

Shubenacadie where they knew the wages were lower. Though they felt in need

of a better school, they valued their homes and church at Millbrook, and were

fearful of the influence of undesirable Indians at Shubenacadie. 92

Indian veterans, in particular, took "exception to the high handed

methods which the government of Canada is using in forcing us to move."93

Perceiving that centralization was "being done for the convenience of several

officials in Ottawa," eight veterans signed the brief from which the following

83

excerpt is taken:

Does anyone ever think of our convenience? When we were fighting for freedom against the powers of dictatorship, when we defended our country in its hour of need; did we think our own country would deny us the very personal right to live where we wanted to? ••• Do the people of Canada believe we love our homes less than the Poles, the French and the Russians ••• ?94

During centralization the Department refused to recommend Veteran's Land Act

grants to Indian veterans who wanted to live outside Shubenacadie or Eskasoni.95

By this time, it had also drastically cut back building repairs on all other

reserves in order to avoid spending money "on the reserves we are

abandoning."% When pressed by the commissioners to explain how far the

Department would go to get people to move, Mr. Morris of the Welfare Division

said:

They will not be forced • • • . If they can look after themselves they can remain there. As far as the Millbrook reserve is concerned they will be the last ones to be disturbed because it is in the vicinity of Shubenacadie. 97

Halifax M.P., Gordon lsnor, spoke at the 29 October 1946 hearing in

support of the Millbrook Indians and against the principle of segregating Indians.

Commissioner Garfield Case of the Joint Committee also wondered if isolating

Indians was in their interest. He thought that "living close to a civilized centre

and mixing with the white people had probably helped" the Millbrook Indians.98

Truro M.L.A., R.F. MacLellan, also believed that moving them to Shubenacadie

would make them dependent on the government.99

Reflecting the Branch's determination to make farmers out of Indians,

Morris told the commissioners that "this centralization scheme means cattle."

Noting that there was not enough cultivated land to keep livestock at either

Eskasoni or Shubenacadie, Commissioner Harkness concluded, "The thing is not

84

possible," and "· • • trying to turn these people into farmers is just hopeless."

When informed that the Branch had been buying hay, he replied in disgust, "That

is the wrong ·economic system. It is no good." The skepticism of the

commissioners notwithstanding, Morris had little choice but to outline the

Branch's plan "to break the land [with bulldozers] , put in apple trees and fruit

trees, chickens, pigs, goats, cattle and horses" and to provide farm

instruction. 100

Late in 1946, centralization received bad press in Nova Scotia from "the

Conservative paper," and the Indians' complaints about being moved away from

employment and into substandard housing were taken up by the Town of Pictou

and the Canadian Legion branch at Pictou Landing. The Liberal representative

for the area, H.B. McCulloch, M.P. (Pictou), therefore asked the Department for

information "to contradict some of the things that are in the paper."101

In April 1947, the Deputy Minster endorsed a suggestion by Hoey "that

Indian agents secure the co-operation of the local press . . . to obtain

constructive publicity on local Indian activities."102 The result in Nova Scotia

was a spread in the Sydney Post-Record entitled "Eskasoni: Village Turned into

Model Community." Thirteen photographs, including 'before' and 'after' shots

attested to the building being achieved there in an "atmosphere of action."

Somehow, Indian Affairs must have mollified Grand Chief Gabriel Sylliboy for,

by this time, he was back from Whycocomagh and was speaking about

centralization with surprising enthusiasm: "I am urging all by brother Indians to

come to Eskasoni. I know that the government means well by us in this

wonderful project." It was reported that Eskasoni's population had risen to 435

from 257 in 1942, and that other families were "clamouring" for houses there.

"Within five years," the article closed, "the Federal Department of Indian Affairs

85

feel certain that the Indian people of Nova Scotia ... will be well on their way

to self-dependence." A description of centralization as "the first social

experiment of its kind in Canada" -- one that was "being watched with interest

throughout Canada and may lead to a pattern for the establishment of similar

projects" completely obscured the fact that it was really an attempt to bring the

Nova Scotia administration more in line with the type of administration that

prevailed on the larger reserves further west.l 03

Just eight days after the "Model Community" article appeared,

Eskasoni's entire male workforce went on strike for a wage of fifty cents per

hour for ordinary labour, the removal of white labour from the reserve, and

increased financial support from the government. The "instigator" was convicted

of Intimidation under the Criminal Code; the R.C.M.P. conducted an

investigation to satisfy itself that there had been no Communist subversion; and

the men went back to work eight days later at the previous rate of forty cents an

hour. 104 Writing to Hoey as President of the United General Indian Council of

Nova Scotia, Ben Christmas pointed out that wages had remained constant since

1942 even though the cost of food and clothing had gone up 47.5 per cent. With

the average wage for a common labourer in Nova Scotia at seventy-five cents

per hour, he suggested that sixty cents per hour was a "fair and reasonable" step

towards "relieving the malnutrition now existing at both Shubenacadie and

Eskasoni.11105 Hoey merely rerouted Christmas's letter back to McKinnon. 106

Failing a reply, Christmas asked Clarence Gillis, M.P. (Cape Breton South), to

"find out and let us know" the government's intentions. 107 Morris telephoned

Gillis on the subject in July, noting afterward on Gillis's written enquiry: "Mr.

Gillis is not going to take any action." 108

A June 1947 conference of Quebec and Maritime agents and the Indian

86

Agent's Manual distributed at that time were both manifestations of the post­

war concern with Indian Affairs. In the wake of the Joint Committee's hearings,

the Department had decided to overcome the Indians' distrust of agents by

reducing "over-centralization" of decision-making. By delegating more

responsibilities to "the man in the front trenches," Ottawa embarked on a

strategy to end the suspicion with which most agents were regarded. Since "the

only way to learn anything about Indian psychology and temperament is by

intimate contact," work in the field was now touted as essential to the

Department's operations: "I can't see how we can serve the Indians when few of

us know anything about them" admitted Hoey. 109

At the agents conference, Rice and McKinnon voiced some of their

frustrations. Rice longed for better medical and office help; McKinnon worried

about job creation: "Just what am I going to do when I get 1200 Indians on a

reserve who are away from most industries and away from employment?"110

Describing centralization "an experiment in rural sociology," Hoey gave the

impression that he still preferred to think of centralization in the abstract.

McKinnon felt what was needed was "someone who knows what he is doing,

rather than risking the making of costly mistakes" --a revelation that must have

b d . h' . h f 1' 111 een roote m IS expenence on t e rent me. Comments by Morris

regarding the role of education betrayed a weakening of the Department's self-

sufficiency-~-reserves doctrine:

This educational program should aim to help the Indian to the point where he can look after himself -- on or off the reserve -- preferably off. If we fail there, cen­tralization will be one of the worst steps we have ever taken.l12

The year 1948 brought high-level personnel changes among those

responsible for Indian Affairs. J.A. MacKinnon replaced Glen as the Minister of

87

Mines and Resources in June and, in November, Liberal Louis St. Laurent became

Prime Minister. W .S. Arneil, whose former responsibilities for the centralization

program had been handled by Acting Inspector Morris since mid-1946, now

replaced Major D.M. Mackay as Indian Commissioner for British Columbia so

that Mackay could take Hoey's place as Director of the Indian Affairs Branch.

J.E. Morris became the Supervisor of Indian Agencies for Ontario in 1949.113

This discontinuity in the administration might have had little effect upon

centrc:tlization because virtually all of the agency buildings were in place by the

end of 1948. Shubenacadie and Eskasoni each had a four-room school with

facilities for Domestic Science and Manual Training in the basement; an agent's

office and dispensary; a store and warehouse; a teachers' residence; houses for

the agent, the storekeeper, the clerk and the school principal; plus waterworks

and a pumping station. At Eskasoni there was also a nursing station, a Mounted

Police headquarters and barracks, an agency barn, and an eight-car garage and

workshop. For the Indians, one hundred houses had been built at Eskasoni and

eighty at Shubenacadie but many more were still needed if the relocation scheme

was to be fully realized. 114 Late in 1947, in anticipation of "carrying on our

centralization programme to completion," Hoey had authorized the purchase of a

reconditioned steam engine for the Eskasoni sawmill as well as a new boiler after

expensive repairs had failed to render the old one safe. 115 Once these were

delivered, in the spring of 1948, the Eskasoni mill was moved to a more suitable

site and rehoused.

It is difficult to document the precise moment at which the policy of

concentrating the entire Indian population at Shubenacadie and Eskasoni was

actually abandoned. Correspondence for the year 1949 does make it clear,

however, that under a new Director, a new Minister and a new Prime Minister,

88

total relocation ceased to be the Department's goal. The seventh full year of

centralization was therefore its last, although the notion of Eskasoni and

Shubenacadie as suitable repositories for indigent Indians was not immediately

dispelled. It was a logical continuation of the attitudes that, more than a

century earlier, had made Indian reserves homes for the care and instruction of

certain native persons society .considered defective, delinquent and dependent.

On 23 March 1949, Agent Rice wrote a letter to the Branch which began:

It would appear that the time is past due when a hard and fast policy should be laid down respecting the position that the Centralized Reserve at MICMAC, N.S. [Shubenacadie] is to,lay in respect to the Indians on the Mainland of N.s.l1

Approximately 700 Indians were already living at Shubenacadie, but another 816

resided in at least 20 different locations on the Mainland, about half of them

reserves. Of the "271 families or part thereof" on relief outside of

Shubenacadie, most were elderly. He wrote:

The aged, sick and destitute Indian is of primary concern, and it is felt should receive priority over everything else pertaining to the administration of this Agency. Once we have this problem overcome, we can devote our undivided effort toward establishing industries, encouraging agriculture, advanced education and the various other projects that tend to raise the standard of living of these people.ll8

Rice felt the aged should be moved to Shubenacadie where a single institution

for them, rather than individual houses, could be built. This would save the

Department money and be more beneficial for the Indians, he argued. Thus, the

desire to economize once again inspired the urge to have Indians living in fewer

locations.

Recognizing the need for a clearer policy in Nova Scotia, Major MacKay

articulated Ottawa's new position when he passed Rice's letter to McKinnon for

comment:

The Bran~h feels that if Indians residing on outlying Reserves have permanent or part-time employment, they should be encouraged to remain in their

1ljSresent

locations and, moreover, that the usual services should

89

be extended to them.ll9 (

The inclusion of "part-time employment" as a criterion for ~ncouraging Indians

not to move to the central reserves signifies the Director's re~lization that life

at Eskasoni or Shubenacadie might mean complete unemployment. His

instruction to extend "the usual services" to other reserves marks the de facto

end of centralization.

McKinnon replied that he still subscribed to the theory of centralization,

but the absence of employment opportunities at Eskasoni and his inability "to

build houses fast enough to accommodate those who want to move in," forced

him to admit that it was preferable to let those "attached to their reserves"

remain where they were. He also suggested "the program • • • be adjusted to

accept only the old, the sick and the families who constantly require

assistance." 120 And so it was.

Although it might appear that centralization was abandoned mainly

because of the two reserves' failure to provide housing and jobs, there were other

important factors that contributed less obviously to the demise of the policy. A

change in Indian Affairs' tactics that resulted from the ·1946 to 1948 review of

the Indian administration and Act will be discussed in Chapter Seven. Here it

will suffice to say that the particular approach represented by centralization

(but not the philosophy upon which it was based) proved incompatible with post-

war directions.

In deciding to "abandon" some thirty-eight reserves in Nova Scotia the

90

officers of Indian Affairs, and ultimately the federal government, acted as

though the lands in question were their own to manipulate. Albeit couched in

terms of facilitating the purchase of more suitable Indian lands, the eventual

sale of almost all the existing Indian reserves in the province was on the

government's agenda. Since nothing in history or law entitles federal, provincial

or municipal governments to that unilateral authority, and since reserves are

Indian property that only Indians can decide to vacate or dispose of, the

imposition of centralization in Nova Scotia amounted to a transgression of

aboriginal rights.

The misguided arrogance of officials in Ottawa meant that, at least prior

to 1946, Indian Affairs paid absolutely no heed to the views of Indians whose

affairs they administered. Nor were the opinions of lowly agents valued.

Because of his idealism and practicality, agent MacLean was particularly

frustrated, but certainly his frustration could not have exceeded that of the

Indians or even that of departmental officials who could not understand why

their actions consistently failed to improve the Indians' lot. Some Micmacs

willingly co-operated with the centralization policy by putting their trust in the

Department and its agents, but when it failed to deliver the improved lifestyle

they had been promised, many grew hostile. Centralization created and

aggravated divisions among the Indians, yet they were still capable of collective

action under pressure.

Ottawa had no grasp of the specific circumstances in Nova Scotia.

Worst of all, it could not differentiate between conditions on the Mainland and in

Cape Breton; consequently, important variations in the Indian situation were

overlooked. Had there been any planning before centralization was put into

effect, it should have at least taken into account the actual terrain of both

91

Eskasoni and Shubenacadie, the prevailing weather, the wartime shortage of

supplies and skilled labour, and the extent to which transportation and

communications were still undeveloped. Why the predictable natural increase in

Nova Scotia's Indian population was disregarded when a population- explosion

among Canada's Indians had caused general alarm is unclear. Partly because it

still saw agriculture as a panacea for "the Indian Problem," the government

imposed an unrealistic set of expectations upon those who did move to the two

central reserves while it simultaneously neglected other Indians in the province.

The centralization scheme lacked the financial backing it required to

even approximate the form imagined by its proponents; moreover, the Indians'

natural resistance to being uprooted from their homes was reinforced by the

plan's obvious infeasibility. Their reluctance to move, and the problems that

occurred when they did or did not, must be included in the reasons for the

termination of the policy -- even though Indian resistance counted for absolutely

nothing until well after the war.

92

Notes - Chapter IV

1 Orders in Council authorized the evacuation of the Japanese from 24 February 1942 and the centralization of the Micmacs from 1 March 1942.

2 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1942, 137.

3 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7758, file 27050-2, Pt. 1, Acting Deputy Minister, Indian Affairs to F .A. Harrison, Director, Lands and F crests, Department of Lands and Forests, Province of Nova Scotia, 27 January 1942.

4 Canada, Senate and House of Commons, Special Joint Committee to Consider the Indian Act, Minutes and Proceedings of Evidence, 1947, No. 39, 1961, 26 June.

5 The "19 localities" does not refer to inhabited reserves. The number nineteen derives from the Branch's practice of keeping track of the Indian population by agency rather than reserve. Indeed, the Superintendent of Reserves and Trusts made it clear that not only was the number of Indians living on each reserve unknown, but that the number of inhabited reserves could not be established because the population was "in a state of flux." DIAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, 5 March 1942 and D.J. Allan to Mr. Bethune, 8 May 1942.

6 DIAND, Ottawa, file 274/1-1, Correspondence, 4 and 8 June, 16 August, and 7 September 1942.

7 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7758, file 27050-2, Pt. 1, Gabriel Sylliboy and John S. Googoo to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 12 January 1942.

8 Ibid., file 27051-2, Pt. 1, J.C. Cope to Indian Affairs, 28 January 1942.

9 Ibid., file 27051-2, Pt. 1, Correspondence, 20, 21 and 23 March 1942.

10 Ibid., file 27050-2, Pt. 2, Eastern-Chronicle, 9 April 1942.

11 Ibid., file 27050-2, Pt. 2, 26 May 1942.

12 Ibid., file 27050-2, Pt. 2, 30 May 1942.

13 Ibid., file 27050-2, Pt. 2, C. Gillis to Crerar, 14 May 1942 and file 27051-2, Pt. 1, Mrs. Margaret Phillips to G. Isnor, 13 July 1942.

14 Ibid., file 27051-2, Pt. 1, 10 July 1942.

15 Ibid., file 27051-2, Pt. 1, McGill to G. Isnor, 10 July 1942.

16 Ibid., file 27051-1, Pt. 1, W.J.F. Pratt to W.S. Burchell, 8 October 1942.

93

17 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), Rev. Alexander MacDonald to Hoey, Superintendent of Welfare, 7 July 1942.

18 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 17051, Arneil to McGill, 14 July 1942.

19 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), Arneil to McGill, 16 July 1942.

20 Ibid., file 17050(1), Arneil to McGill, 30 September 1942.

21 Ibid., file 17050(1), 31 October 1942.

22 Ibid., file 17050(2), 27 November 1947 and 1948, passim.

23 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 17051, J.E. Morris to J.S. Robb, 24 July 1942 and Arneil to McGill, 15 September 1942.

24 Ibid., file 17051, H.C. Rice, 30 September 1942.

25 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 31 October 1942.

26 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 30 September 1942.

27 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, January 1943.

28 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7758, file 27050-2, Pt. 3, Ben·Christmas to C. Gillis, 13 February 1943.

29 Ibid., file 27050-2, Pt. 3, Noel Marshall to Mackenzie King, 16 March 1943.

30 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, April 1943.

31 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, April and 24 May 1943.

32 Ibid., file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, February and May 1943.

33 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Ottawa, August 1943.

34 Ibid., file 23-4(1), June and July 1943.

35 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Ottawa, August 1943.

36 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), MacLean to Ottawa, August 1943 and 29 September 1943.

37 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, May 1943, and file 3-9, MacLean to Indian Affairs 18 September 1943.

38 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7759, file 27051-2, Pt. 2, Hoey to Rice, 13 July 1943.

94

39 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, July 1943.

40 Ibid., file 23-4( 1 ), Correspondence.

41 Ibid., file 23-4(1 ), MacLean to Indian Affairs, May 1943.

42 Ibid., file 23-4(1 ), MacLean to Indian Affairs, December 1943.

43 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, October 1943 and vol. 9626, file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, August and September 1943.

44 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, August 1943.

45 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, October and November 1943.

46 Ibid., file 3-9, McGill to agents, 31 July 1943. Indians had participated voluntarily in the First World War; almost every eligible Indian man in the Atlantic Provinces enlisted. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, The Canadian Indian: Statistics (Ottawa, 1973), 28.

47 Ibid., file 3-9, Macinnes to agents, n.d.

48 Ibid., file 3-9, McGill to agents, 11 March 1943.

49 Of a total of 113 World War II enlistees, 51 were from the Eskasoni agency and 62 were from the Shubenacadie agency. Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1947, No. 40, 1987-1988.

50 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1944, 153.

51 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, Spring, Summer and 20 September 1944; vol. 7625, file 17050(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, May 1944; and vol. 7626, file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, October 1944.

52 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 17051, Arneil to McGill, 25 February 1944.

53 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), Sylliboy and Denny to Crerar, 9 March 1944 and Hoey to MacLean, 16 March 1944.

54 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 29 March 1944.

55 Ibid., file 23-4(1), trial proceedings, 14 April 1944.

56 Ibid., file 23-4(1 ), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 20 April 1944.

57 Ibid., file 23-4(1 ), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 20 April 1944.

58 Ibid., file 23-4(1), McGill to MacLean, 1 May 1944.

95

59 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 18 March and 1 April 1944.

60 Ibid., file 23-4( 1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 27 May 1944.

61 Ibid., file 23-4(1), R.A. Hoey to MacLean, 5 June 1944.

62 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 27 May 1944.

63 Ibid., file 23-4(1 ), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 8 June 1944.

64 PAC, RG 10, vol. 8585, file 1/1-2-17, Hoey and Macinnes in Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment, 24 May 1944; and Camsell to McGill, 1 June 1944.

65 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 16 June 1944.

66 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 10 and 21 August 1944. Wooden caskets were produced in Cape Breton for a time. In 1984, a fibreglass casket plant began production on the Wagmatcook Reserve.

67 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, October 1944.

68 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Hoey to Ralph Kirk, M.P., 6 January 1945.

69 111id.

70 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), Hoey to agents, 23 January 1945.

71 Ibid., file 23-4(1), MacLean to Indian Affairs, 10 February 1945.

72 Ibid.

73 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 1945.

74 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 9 October 1945.

7 5 Ibid., file 23-4(1), McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 18 and circa 30 June and 28 July 1945. Indian Affairs' stock explanation for burning down the houses of those who had left them to move to the central reserve was: "They were a source of infection and filth." Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1947, No. 39, 1976, June.

76 OlAND, Ottawa, file 274/30-1, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 12 April 1945.

77 Ibid., Hoey to McKinnon, 26 April 1945.

78 PAC, RG 10, vol. 77 58, file 27050:-2, Pt. 2, note to file, 28 August 19 56.

79 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9030, file 51/18-1, Rice to Indian Affairs, 14 February 1946.

96

80 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 3 May 1945.

81 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7627, file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, 20 June and 20 September 1945.

82 Ibid., file 17051, Morris to Indian Affairs, 27 October and 1 November 1945.

83 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(1), Morris to Indian Affairs, 27 November 1945.

84 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, 31 December 1945 and Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1945.

85 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1945, 166.

86 Sally M. Weaver, Makin Canadian Indian Polic : 1968-70 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 9

The Hidden A enda, ' 25.

87 J.L. Granatstein, ed., Twentieth Century Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1983), 335. ·

88 Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None is Too Man : Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1983 , 240.

89 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7626, file 1705i, Correspondence, 31 December 1945 and 18 and 22 January, 19 February, 17 April and 11 June 1946.

90 Ibid., file 17051, Rice to Indian Affairs, March 1946.

91 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, Appendix AS, 868-869, hearing at Shubenacadie, 18 July.

92 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 854, 2 July; 382-403, 28 October; 469.,.474, 29 October.

93 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 854, hearing at Millbrook, 28 October.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9030, Ace. 71/446, Hoey to J. Ralph Kirk, M.P., 5 May 1947.

97 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 29 October.

98 Ibid.

97

99 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 400-402, 28 October.

100 Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 29 October.

101 DIAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, H.B. McCulloch, M.P. to Pratt, Private Secretary to the Minister, 10 December 1946.

1-02 PAC, RG 10, vol. 6815, file 482-1-1(1), Hoey to H.L. Keenlyside, 24 April 1947 and Keenlyside to Hoey, 27 April 1947.

103 Sydney Post-Record, 8 May 1947, 10. A shorter Canadian Press story also extolling the virtues of centralization at Eskasoni appeared in the Halifax Herald on 8 October 1947.

104 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7625, file 17050(2), May 1947.

105 Ibid., file 17050(2), Christmas to Hoey, 31 May 1947.

106 Ibid., file 17050(2), Hoey to McKinnon, 7 June 1947.

107 Ibid., file 17050(2), Christmas to Gillis, 24 June 1947.

108 Ibid., file 17050(2), Gillis to Hoey, 1 July 1947.

109 Canada, DIAND, Treaties and Historical Research Centre document, "Report of Discussions at Conference of Indian Agents from the Province of Quebec and the Maritimes, 1947," Hoey.

110 In 1942 McGill estimated the "eventual population" of Eskasoni at 1,000 and that of Shubenacadie at 2,100. No target date accompanied his projections, but it is interesting that McKinnon found it necessary to revise upwards the prediction for Eskasoni. At no point in time did the population of Shubenacadie exceed that of Eskasoni. PAC, RG 10, vol. 7758, file 27050-2, Pt. 2, 30 July 1942.

111 Canada, DIAND, Treaties and Historical Research Centre, "Conference of Agents from Quebec and the Maritimes, 1947," Rice.

112 Ibid., Morris.

113 PAC, RG 10, vol. 7907, file 40209, Pt. 1.

114 DIAND, Ottawa, 201/1-1.

115 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 7625, file 17050(2), Hoey to Purchasing Agent, 15 July and 27 November 1947.

116 Ibid., file 17050(2), McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 12 November and 8 May 1948.

117 DIAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Rice to Indian Affairs, 23 March 1949.

98

118 Ibid.

119 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, MacKay to McKinnon, 5 April 1949.

120 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, McKinnon to Director, 11 June 1949.

99

CHAPTER V

THE CENTRALIZATION EXPERIENCE

Since the Department did not keep population figures by reserve during

the 1940s, it is difficult to arrive at anything more than an impression of the

numbers of people actually relocated under centralization. Another

complicating factor is that many moves were not permanent. Some people

moved back to their origipal homes within months, others stayed on for several

years and then returned or moved to other reserves or left Nova Scotia entirely

in search of work.

By combining census figures with departmental records and estimates

provided by Indian sources, it is possible to construct the following portrait.

Only one reserve, Malagawatch, was closed down because of centralization. Of

the ten families living there in 1941, eight moved to Eskasoni, one moved to

Whycocomagh, and one moved to Wagmatcook. The other five populated

reserves in Cape Breton remained open. Almost none of the 200 people at

Membertou (Sydney) moved to Eskasoni, and only four families left Wagmatcook

(Nyanza/Middle River) from a population of about 160.1 At Chapel Island (Barra

Head) and Whycocomagh, with populations of 240 and 210 respectively,

somewhere between one quarter and one half of those at each reserve were

centralized. Schools at both Chapel Island and Whycocomagh were closed soon

after the plan was implemented, leaving only seven families at Whycocomagh at

one point. 2 These rough figures do not explain the quadrupling of Eskasoni's

population to approximately 7 50 between 1941 and 19 51, however. It appears

that the natural growth of Cape Breton's Indian population was concentrated at

Eskasoni. This may have been due to the greater willingness of younger families

100

with children to 'relocate and the reluctance of older people to leave their

lifelong homes.3

The situation on the Mainland was more complex partly because reserves

there were especially subject to population drain to "the Boston States" and Nova

Scotia centres. In 1949 well over 600 people lived at Shubenacadie, and in March

1950 it was reported that 982 Indians were living there, but by 1951

Shubenacadie's population was only 450 -- still three times larger than it had

been in 1941.4 As far as can be determined, the Department did not close down

any Mainland reserves in the 1940s; however several counties had the meagre

remains of their Indian populations further depleted.

The largest number to leave established Mainland reserves seem to have

been from Afton and Pomquet, located about twenty miles from the Strait of

Canso. About two-thirds of the population of 240 left, but some may have gone

to Eskasoni rather than Shubenacadie. At least two-thirds of the 280 people at

or around Pictou Landing and of the 120 at the Cambridge and Horton reserves in

Kings County also moved away. About 40 of the 50 Indians in Queens County and

30 of the 50 at Yarmouth left. About half of the 70 at Bear River moved but

less than a sixth of the 200 at the Millbrook and Truro reserves, located closest

to Shubenacadie, were centralized. Three Millbrook families went to

Shubenacadie and one went to Eskasoni.5

The most obvious impact of centralization was that Shubenacadie and

Eskasoni got bigger and more crowded and the other reserves had their

populations diminished. Almost half of Nova Scotia's 2,500 status Indians

became concentrated at the two central reserves. The consequences were

serious in the long run but, before the aftermath of centralization is discussed,

some of the Indians' comments about centralization will be presented to fill in

101

gaps in the official record. The experience of Indians in Nova Scotia is perhaps

the most accurate measure of the scheme's success or failure.

Once centralization had been authorized by the government,

departmental officials intent on convincing the Grand Chief that the new policy

was in the best interests of his people visited him twice at Whycocomagh.

Gabriel Sylliboy's son, who was twenty-seven years old in 1942, remembers his

father signing a letter outlining the benefits of centralization presented to him

by Matthew Maclean, M.P. (Cape Breton North-Victoria). 6 To the government,

the seventy-year-old Chief's signature may have represented Indian consent to

the policy, but many Nova Scotia Micmacs failed to see how the Grand Chief and

only a handful of men could have made such a ·decision without consulting them.?

Today, that process remains a source of levity within the Micmac community.

According to Caroline Gould, they began calling the Grand Chief "We All Agree"

after he approved centralization -- a nickname for the old man that is as

affectionate as it is derisive. 8

Only the statement signed on 12 January 1942 by Gabriel Sylliboy and

John S. Googoo on behalf of Inverness County Indians appears on file. No letter

stating the promises made in connection with centralization has been located.

Of equal importance at any rate is how and what Indians were verbally told about

the scheme. Many did not speak or read English, therefore unfamiliarity with

the language used by the government put them at a disadvantage from the

outset. Interviews conducted in Micmac by Lillian Marshall in 197 4 and 197 5 and

by this researcher in English or with the aid of translator in 1981 provide enough

information to draw a fairly clear picture of the Department's modus operandi.

Dan K. Stevens remembers standing outside a closed-door meeting

102

waiting to find out "what they were going to do to us." Asked when she first

heard of centralization, Caroline Gould said the priest and part-time agent first

announced it at Whycocomagh in 1942. Someone then came to Whycocomagh

from Ottawa to tell the Indians how wonderful it would be. Several

interviewees, including Caroline Gould and Dan K. Stevens, explained that the

Micmacs were in awe of the agents and especially anyone from Ottawa. Ottawa

seemed so far away, and the power the agent had over their lives made him seem

like God. 9 This power was enhanced by the willing co-operation of the church.

Maurice Francis recalled that the parish priest

broke the news to us by telling us that the Indian people of Pictou Landing had to move to Shubie. This was compulsory. This Father Chiasson was a very ambitious man, and was after the post of being Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He kind of forced the Indians to move and some did.l 0

Whether or .not they were attuned to the personal motivations behind priests'

actions, the fact that most Micmacs were devout Catholics made it difficult for

them to resist the instructions of priests. The announcement at Pictou Landing

was followed by a visit from Agent Rice and Inspector Morris who came to

convince the Indians to move. 11 This pattern probably repeated itself at most of

the reserves, although it was Mrs. Annie Googoo's impression· that the

Wagmatcook Indians had been told to move by the Grand Chief. 12

When Mrs. Mary Johnson was asked if she remembered what promises

were made in connection with centralization, she replied:

Yes, I remember distinctly. They told us our houses would have electricity, water would be put in, we would have nice basements, they would be finished, a furnace would be put in. This is the kind of houses you would get. It took twenty years until I could get a house like that.l3

A barn, an outhouse and a choice of location were also promised. 14 Victor

103

Jeddore remembers the promises as: better houses "completely finished inside

and out"; "a lifetime job"; cleared, plowed and harrowed land if you wanted to

15 plant; and "a boat, or whatever you needed."

Although employment was supposed to be one of the incentives to move,

many Indians were skeptical about the prospects of lifetime work at

Shubenacadie ·and Eskasoni. Michael Denny, who was working at Pictou in 1942,

remembered the reply to his question concerning what he would do at

Shubenacadie:

They told me if I knew how to drive a nail, I would get along. I told them I couldn't do that all my life; there isn't anything I'd be nailing down. I had a good job here. I had been to Shubie four or five times and I didn't see any future over there.l6

Maurice Francis remembered being pressured to move away from Pictou

Landing:

I was sitting at my work bench hewing pick handles. I received a contract from the Mines to do 100 pick handles. These two distinguished men [Rice and Morris] got off a big fancy car and came over to introduce themselves. One of them said, "My good man, you are making a living the hard way." ••• He said there was no future in it •••. "All the Indians will have to move to one centralized reserve, which is Shubenacadie, and factories and a mill will open up there."17

Morris told Francis: "I am here from Ottawa and all you fellows are going to

move out of here. You have to abandon this reservation." 18

The Indians became frightened when they were told that schools would

be closed and relief and medical care stopped, so they started to move. 19

"Government trucks would arrive and load up with the people's belongings, etc.

20 and move them away." All the government farm implements in use at

Wagmatcook were taken to Eskasoni. "They took everything we had," explained

Levi Googoo, "they wanted us to follow that stuff to Eskasoni."21

104

Some were lured to Eskasoni and Shubenacadie by offers of responsible

jobs such as running the agency's barn or sawmill, or supervising the building

program. 22 Family ties drew others there, 23 and the prospect of having a full­

time parish priest made the two central reserves attractive to still others. 24

Many were forced into moving, however, by the actual termination of services at

their reserves. 25

Even though they were relatively well off, people from the Grand Chief's

reserve, Whycocomagh, were among the very first to move. Their school, closed

in September 1942, was torn down, and their children were not welcome in the

neighbouring white school. Many of their homes were destroyed on instructions

from the agent or the inspector from Ottawa after they moved, and the families

that did remain had to fight to save their church. 26

As soon as Victor Jeddore left Whycocomagh to run the government barn

at Eskasoni, the house and barn he had built at Whycocomagh were burned down.

Because the promised house was not ready for him at Eskasoni, he and his family

had to live in an army tent for the fall of 1942. At Christmas they moved in

with their parents to survive the cold, then lived in a tent again from the spring

to the fall of 1943 when a house was finally available. 27 Housing construction

proceeded so slowly that some families had to share houses or split up until a

house was ready for them. Impatient with this situation, Levi Poulette informed

the agent that he was moving back to Whycocomagh with the result that, the

very next day, his house was burned down.28

As demonstrated by the various appeals to the government, a large

number of Indians were understandably reluctant to leave their existing lives in

order to move to the central reserves. Like many of those who left

Whycocomagh, Victor Jeddore abandoned a life built on fishing, hunting, keeping

105

several cows and horses, cutting pulp, making pit props for the mines, and taking

off-the-reserve work with local mills and white-owned farms. 29 Mrs. Mary

Johnson, then a widow with nine children, felt she and her husband had enjoyed

"a good living" at Whycocomagh. They had built their own house, barn and ice

house, and in 1942 she had work cleaning the railway station and at a hotel in

town. Rather than move to Eskasoni, she had her mother, who lived there, take

three of her school-age children. One daughter quit school in order to help at

home, and only when Mary Johnson's father became ill and her mother needed

her help did she move to Eskasoni. 30

Practically everyone who moved to Eskasoni or Shubenacadie was

disappointed with the quality of the housing.31 The case of Mrs. Madeline Julian

is typical even though she did not move to Shubenacadie until 1948. She left

Afton when Agent Rice told her that a large, completely finished house was

ready for her and her many children. She found it nothing more than a shell "like

a barn" with no kitchen, bathroom, water or insulation. There were large cracks

between the floor boards, and the basement steps wobbled because the "floor" of

the basement was gravel rather than cement. There were stumps all over the

yard, and the driveway was a "bog." Having no choice but to stay there, Mrs.

Julian told Lillian Marshall: "My God, I was sorry that I came." The cellar was

always filled with water and the house was cold:

When I washed my floor in the winter-time no wonder I got sick and ended up in the hospital that time I heated up the water that I used for the floor, as soon as I put it on the floor it freezed up right away ••. )2

All of the centralization houses, including those built for veterans,

followed the twenty-by-thirty-foot shell design originally prescribed by Dr.

Robertson in 1936. "Damn it, there wasn't even gyproc or anything else on the

106

walls. There wasn't even tar paper on the inside -- you could almost see right

through the walls."33 Mrs. Tom Bernard and her husband moved into one of

these houses but did not stay long:

A man came to see us. I told him we weren't staying there because the house was too cold. I told him we were moving back to Alba because our house there was much warmer. I told my husband, let's get the hell back -- we won't listen to this man, he's a big liar .34

In spite of the Eskasoni band council's insistence that better materials needed to

be used for house building, green lumber continued to be used because the agents

were under pressure to build as fast and as cheaply as they could.35 "When the

shingles dried up those houses leaked like baskets."36

Most of those who moved into the centralization houses could not afford

to finish the houses themselves because the wages paid on the reserve were so

low. It often took ten or fifteen years to achieve the sort of house they had

expected on moving. Many were to conclude that the finished product was not

worth the money and effort spent on it. As a carpenter working on the agency

buildings at Eskasoni, Roddy Gould was able to bring home scraps of building

materials. The walls of the Goulds' master bedroom were finished with seventy-

two pieces of gyproc before they were papered over. When the temporary school

at Castle Bay was torn down, the Goulds salvaged the drywall from it to finish

the rest of their house. 37

The Indians' sense of injustice was intensified by the spectacle of non-

Indian agency personnel moving into properly finished housing, complete with

plumbing and electricity, when they were expected to make do with the most

primitive and unsatisfactory dwellings for years. Many of those from Chapel

Island and Whycocomagh and some from other reserves had left behind fully

finished houses, plots of cleared land, livestock, proximity to the doctor, store

107

and post office, not to mention their livelihood, to move to Eskasoni or

Shubenacadie where things were supposed to be better.38 Many found their living

conditions much worse.

Mrs. Mary Johnson said that food had been plentiful at Whycocomagh but

"we were half starving sometimes" at Eskasoni. 39 There were no food shortages

at Malaga watch either, according to Mrs. Tom Bernard, who felt she had left

behind "a good livelihood" to move to Eskasoni. 40 Noel Marshall also pointed out

that. the centralized people at Castle Bay were sometimes on the verge of

starvation during the 1940s, and that their situation was aggravated by the

agents' inability to provide sufficient relief or pay them regularly for their

work. 41 Stinginess and corruption of Indian Affairs staff were common

complaints. The agents were suspected of both keeping goods (such as farm

implements, potatoes, livestock, clothes, and blankets) for themselves and selling

them to white people. 42

The agents mismanaged even the most elementary attempts to provide a

means of self-sufficiency at the central reserves. Sarah Denny recalled the

truck that dropped off apple and cherry trees at Eskasoni being followed by

another that dropped off goats. Because of the shortage of pasture and hay, the

goats were to substitute for milk cows, but they promptly ate the fruit trees and

generally wreaked havoc on the unfenced reserve. Since the Indians never

developed a taste for goats' milk, the animals were eventually herded onto an

island to be sold or slaughtered. For a while, goat meat was part of the Indians'

d. t 43 1e •

Sarah Denny was convinced the agents and their staff "could never get

anything right." She explained that the attempt to supply school children with

milk from the agency's cattle had to be abandoned because the milk was

108

suspected of causing tuberculosis. 44 Wilfred Prosper watched an agency

bulldozer clear the land behind his house in a fraction of the time it had taken

him to clear the front with a horse and pick but, when he sowed the back lot with

oats, the plants scarcely grew because the bulldozer had scraped away the

topsoil. 45 To prevent the Indians from eating seed potatoes, the agent had them

coated with kerosene -- which prevented them from growing. 46

Indian labourers at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie were expected to do many

jobs for which they were ill-prepared, but the local white people hired to

supervise them were often equally ignorant. 47 Edward Morris listed several

examples of damage to the sawmill and other agency equipment caused by

incompetent management. Since the lengthy and troubled history of the sawmill

defies explanation here, an incident involving the agency's only truck will

illustrate his point. On the instruction of Alexander MacDonald, the agent's

assistant, the truck was driven from Sydney to Eskasoni on its wheel rims.

Driving it on six flat tires burnt out the motor which effectively left the agency

without a truck until a replacement was found eight months later.48

Edward Morris sold the home he had been building from scratch at

Whycocomagh to take up the job of running the Eskasoni sawmill. He also

wanted his children to have an education. On arrival, he was made to feel

uncomfortable by Gaelic-speaking farmers who made fun of the Indians at the

train station. With others from Whycocomagh and elsewhere, he voiced the

opinion that relations with the white community had been better in his former

home. He also thought farming, fishing and lumbering were better at

Whycocomagh. Since there was little arable soil at Eskasoni, Morris rented a

plot of land off the reserve to grow vegetables for his family but, because

tourists and vandals helped themselves to all the produce, he eventually gave up

d . lJ.9 gar enmg.

109

For twelve years, Edward Morris worked at the Eskasoni sawmill. He

found J.A. MacLean, the first full-time agent, completely unapproachable.

Though departmental files reveal the evolution of MacLean's attitude, Morris

said MacLean never told him how he felt about the way things were going with

centralization or the sawmill. When MacLean quit, there was no explanation by

him or anyone else as to why he had left. Things just went on as if nothing had

happened, Morris said.50

Levi Googoo felt the Indians were treated like children at Eskasoni.

Even though his house at Wagmatcook (Middle River/Nyanza) was in poor

condition, he returned to it after only one month at Eskasoni because he was

frustrated by the working conditions and unimpressed with the new housing. A

measure of self-sufficiency was possible for him at Wagmatcook through cutting

pulp wood, working at local sawmills, gardening, fishing and raising livestock.

The reserve's school remained open, and a local politician, Stephen MacKenzie,

helped the Indians fight to retain their medical services there.51

Both in Cape Breton and on the Mainland, Indian resistance to

centralization was supported and assisted by sympathetic white people. Pierro

Isadore, who remained at Wagmatcook in the solid old house built by his father,

credited Magistrate McCurdy of Baddeck and Ben Christmas of Membertou (the

Sydney reserve) with helping the Indians stay where they were. Christmas made

them understand they had a choice; and McCurdy circulated, among both Indians

and whites, the petition opposing centralization.52 Though she did not elaborate,

Mrs. Belle Sapier said, "The white people were responsible for us not being

forced to move to Shubenacadie." When her husband died in 19lJ.7, she moved

from Linesbrook (Lyons Brook), four miles outside of Trenton, to the nearby

110

P. L d' 53 1ctou an mg reserve.

Maurice Francis was one of about a dozen men who "held the fort" at

Pictou Landing. Having debated centralization with his fellows, Francis

approached Agent Rice in his "office in a hotel in town" to find out if the move

was compulsory. Rice told him he could stay at the reserve as long as he was

working. Questioned by Francis about the possible termination of services, Rice

had said, "as long as there's people living on the reserve, the government will not

be able to stop anything." "This is what I found out," Francis said, "and I related

this information to the other men when I came back home. My brother Andrew

said, 'That settles it then. Let's not move. I don't see any future in Shubie

anyway.' "5 4- After two years at Shubenacadie, Mrs. Mary Katherine Prosper

reached the same conclusion. She found herself at a loss to know how to earn a

living there. Life at Shubenacadie was hard and expensive, so she moved back to

Pictou Landing.55

When the Special Joint Committee toured Nova Scotia in 194-6, Maurice

Francis believes they were "off-tracked" by H.B. McCulloch, M.P. (Pictou), to

prevent the committee from meeting with him and Acting Chief Bill Bernard.

Francis caught up with the delegation at Eskasoni where McCulloch told him

they were making a mistake to stay at Pictou Landing because it lacked

potential "for fishing, lumbering or setting up factories" and because it was full

of tuberculosis and syphillis. The people should get proper medical care if that

were so, Francis replied, and "if the Indian were given a chance, he could do

just as well as any white man."56

Whether they stayed or moved, the Indians found their lives eroded by

the upheaval and uncertainty associated with centralization. Family and social

relations deteriorated at all reserves.57 Promises of specific work at Eskasoni

111

and Shubenacadie drew capable men away from the smaller reserves and

undermined community leadership in those places.58 Artificially congregating

natural leaders and people from various and distinct places also produced

tensions at the two central reserves. The new people tended to group together

with their former neighbours while the original residents, like Sarah Denny, tried

to keep their distance from the newcomers. 59

In 19lj.lj., the Dennys bought a house from a Scottish farmer at the Castle

Bay end of Eskasoni, dismantled it, and moved it to the old part of Eskasoni

because they did not want to live among the new families. Mr. Denny's heart

condition prevented him from continuing his work in Sydney as a bricklayer,

therefore the young couple purchased six sheep at the suggestion of Agent

MacLean. The sheep were soon killed by dogs the new people had brought with

them -- "so much for the sheep business!1160

Since the agents encouraged the most needy families to centralize first,

the original residents began to feel their territory was being invaded by

undesirables. Community standards and trust suffered. Today, the general

consensus seems to be that people grew more selfish and less willing to help each

other after centralization. 61 Mrs. Madeline Julian found it pointless to grow

vegetables at Shubenacadie: "I trusted the people around here, I thought it was

like our old reserve but when I checked my cucumbers they were all gone."62

Sarah Denny remembered Eskasoni residents sharing and co-operating before

centralization. Almost all had gardens, cows and chickens, and few were

receiving relief.63 Mrs. Agnes Matthews' family, at Eskasoni from 1929,

managed without government assistance until 1955. 6lj.

The Indians' memory of a self-sufficient life at Eskasoni prior to

centralization was supported by the recollections of the wife of one of the white

112

farmers whose family had lived next to the reserve since 1807. Before, when

practically everyone in Cape Breton was poor, the Scottish farmers of Castle

Bay and the Indians of Eskasoni enjoyed an interdependent relationship that went

well beyond the exchange of goods. The two communities socialized together

and attended the same church during the thirties. Prior to centralization, the

two hundred or so Indians "did business just like the white people."65

About five white families left Castle Bay in order to make way for the

expansion of the reserve; only one re-established itself in the area. The farmer's

wife felt they would have had to leave anyway, even if they had not been bought

out by the government, because the land was so poor. 66 The few buildings they

vacated at Castle Bay were used to house incoming Indians. At times, two or

three Indian families shared a single farm house while waiting for their

centralization houses to be built.

Centralization marked the end of the frequent and friendly interaction

that had been a long-standing tradition between the neighbouring farmers and

the Indians of Eskasoni. With the influx of so many new people to Castle Bay,

the remaining white farmers found it impossible to get to know everyone. After

the war improved social welfare, better transportation, and a generally higher

standard of living reduced the need for mutual support between the two

communities. 67

From 1950 to 1955, Joe MacMillan ran the Christmas Island Co-op which,

throughout the forties and fifties, was an important supplier for Eskasoni, six

miles away. For the next two years, he worked for the Eskasoni agency as a

"jack of all trades," supervising various projects. During that time, he observed

that the agency was unable to provide much employment for the able-bodied men

of the reserve and that the trend toward total dependence was well-established.

113

MacMillan offered few opinions about the government's actions at Eskasoni, but

did state that the main flaw in the centralization plan was its failure to provide

68 adequate work.

Being forced onto relief or having to line up for work orders affected the

Indians' pride. Men had to accept whatever work was assigned and, at first, some

hid their work orders because they were ashamed of them. 69 When they did

admit that government help was a necessity, the final erosion of their self-

sufficiency set it:

What ruined the people was the movement to this reserve [ Eskasoni ] • The young over here get welfare, but one time ago it was a long wait because in order to qualify for welfare you had to be old.70

Many who can remember the Indian way of life before centralization maintain

that poor management of government projects necessitated the increase in

welfare. To break the cycle of dependence on welfare, Maurice Francis thought

"the people should be treated more strictly" and "should not be allowed to sit

around."71

In 1960, Wilfred Prosper wanted to remove his family from Eskasoni. He

found work in Toronto, but since he did not want to move his family into a public

housing ghetto, he approached Indian Affairs to see if it would provide the same

financial assistance in Toronto as was available to him at Eskasoni to build a

house. The Department rejected the idea and Prosper returned to the reserve

wher~ he now lives on welfare.72

Over the years, Wilfred Prosper has wondered why the government

wanted to move all of Cape Breton's Indians to Eskasoni. He has also racked his

brain trying think of ways to make Eskasoni economically viable, but its location,

lack of resources and physical geography all seem to stand in the way

114

of any money-making scheme.73 Today, he and Dan K. Stevens both suspect

centralization was simply a way of moving Indians out of public view.74 Others

interviewed regard centralization as a failed experiment.? 5 Possibly influenced

by the "Model Village" newspaper story, Pierro Isadore came to believe that:

We were the guinea pigs. If centralization had succeeded for us then I suppose it would have been implemented for all the Indians in Canada. But centralization didn't work for us. Because most of us didn't like it and we fought against it.76

While some may feel Nova Scotia Indians were materially better off

after centralization/7 this perception is probably due to social and economic

developments that were quite separate from centralization. Indian health care

and the standard of living were improved everywhere after the war partly

through social welfare programs that benefitted all Canadians. Those

interviewed generally agreed that centralization devalued the Micmacs' spiritual

life by depriving them of the work and social interactions they previously

enjoyed, and because it was impossible for most to establish a satisfying way of

life at Eskasoni or Shubenacadie. Some felt they had been fooled or tricked into

. 78 movmg.

115

Notes - Chapter V

1 Interview with Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook 197 4-7 5.

2 Lillian Marshall (interviewer) to Annie Googoo in interview with Annie Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

3 Interview with Edward Morris, Eskasoni, 1981 and Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census, 1951, Vol. I, Table 5, "Population for Electoral Districts."

4

5 Interviews with Maurice Francis and Michael Denny, Pictou, 1974-75, and with Dan K. Stevens, Eskasoni, 1981; and Census, 1951, "Population for Electoral Districts."

6 Interview with Anthonasius Sylliboy, Eskasoni, 1981.

7 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-7 5.

8 Interview with Caroline Gould, Whycocomagh, 1981.

9 Inverviews with Caroline Gould, Whycocomagh, and Dan K. Stevens and Margaret Johnson, Eskasoni, 1981.

10 Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974-75.

11 Ibid.

12 Interview with Annie Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

13 Interview with Mary Johnson, Eskasoni, 197 4-7 5.

14 Ibid.

15 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

16 Interview with Michael Denny, Pictou, 1974-75.

17 Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974-75.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid., and interviews with Michael Denny, Pictou, and Victor Jeddore, l!SKasoni, 1974-75.

116

20 Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974-75.

21 Interview with Levi Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

22 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-75, and Edward Morris and John N. Paul, Eskasoni, 1981.

23 Interview with Wilfred Prosper, Eskasoni 1981, and Mary Johnson, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

24 Interview with Frederick Young, Ma1agawatch, 1981.

25 Interviews with Margaret Johnson, Eskasoni, and Caroline Gould, Whycocomagh, 1981.

26 Interviews with Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook, 1974-75, Frederick Young, Malagawatch, 1981; and Canada, OlAND, Treaties and Historical Research Centre document, "Report on Indian Reserves of Nova Scotia," Royal Com mission on Indian Affairs, 29 October 1946, 517.

27 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

28 Lillian Marshall (interviewer) to Pierro Isadore in interview with Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

29 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 197 4-7 5.

30 Interview with Mary Johnson, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

31 Interview with Anthonasius Sylliboy, Eskasoni, 1981.

32 Interview with Madeline Julian, Shubenacadie, 197 4-7 5.

33 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

34 Interview with Mrs. Tom Bernard, Eskasoni, 197 4-7 5.

35 Interviews with Anthonasius Sylliboy and Rita Toney, Eskasoni, 1981.

36 Interview with Victor Jeddore, Eskasoni, 1974-7 5.

37 Interview with Caroline Gould, Whycocomagh, 1981.

38 Interviews with Dan K. Stevens, Anthonasius Sylliboy, Wilfred Prosper, Margaret Johnson, John N. Paul, Edward Morris, Eskasoni, 1981.

39 Interview with Mary Johnson, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

40 Interview with Mrs. Tom Bernard, Eskasoni, 1974-7 5.

41 Interviews with Noel Marshall, n.p., 1974-75 and Edward Morris, Eskasoni, 1981.

4-2 Interviews with Victor Jeddore and Mary Johnson, Eskasoni, 1974--75.

4-3 Interviews with Wilfred Prosper and Rita Toney, Eskasoni, 1981.

4-4- Interview with Sarah Denny, Membertou,- 1981.

4-5 Interview with Wilfred Prosper, Eskasoni, 1981.

4-6 Interview with Levi Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974--75.

4-7 Interviews with Sarah Denny and Edward Morris, Eskasoni, 1981.

4-8 Interview with Edward Morris, Eskasoni, 1981.

4-9 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Interviews with Levi Googoo and Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook, 1974--7 5.

52 Interview with Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook, 1974--75.

53 ·Interview with Belle Sapier, Pictou, 1974--75.

54- Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974--75.

55 Interview with Mary Katherine Prosper, Pictou, 1974--75.

56 Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 197 4--7 5.

57 Sayers, Sammy Louis, passim.

117

58 Lillian Marshall (interviewer) to Levi Googoo in interview with Levi Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974--7 5.

59 Interview with Sarah Denny, Membertou, 1981.

60 Ibid.

61 Interviews with Mrs. Tom Bernard, Eskasoni, and Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974--75 and with Wilfred Prosper, Eskasoni, 1981.

62 Interview with Madeline Julian, Shubenacadie, 197 4--7 5.

63 Interview with Sarah Denny, Membertou, 1981.

64- Interview with Agnes Matthews, Eskasoni, 197 4--7 5.

65 This interviewee requested that her name be withheld; she was interviewed at Castle Bay in 1981 and will be identified as "farmer's wife."

118

66 Interview with farmer's wife, Castle Bay, 1981.

67 Ibid.

68 Interview with Joe MacMillan, Christmas Island, 1981.

69 Interview with Levi Googoo, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

70 Interview with Mrs. Tom Bernard, Eskasoni, 1974-75.

71 Interview with Maurice Francis, Pictou, 1974-75.

72 Interview with Wilfred Prosper, Eskasoni, 1981.

73 Ibid.

7 4 Interview with Wilfred Prosper and Dan K. Stevens, Eskasoni, 1981.

7 5 Interview with Frederick Young, Malaga watch, 1981.

76 Interview with Pierro Isadore, Wagmatcook, 1974-75.

77 Interviews with Sarah Denny and Margaret Johnson, Eskasoni, 1981.

78 Interviews with Rita Toney and Wilfred Prosper, Eskasoni, 1981 and Michael Denny, Pictou, 1974-75.

CHAPTER VI

THE AFTERMATH

119

Within a decade of centralization's demise, unprecedented levels of

social assistance were required at both Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. In 1968, an

Indian Affairs official visiting Eskasoni wrote back to Ottawa that the dispersal

of the Indians was a prerequisite to solving that reserve's social and economic

problems. Since this was never undertaken, Eskasoni and Shubenacadie remain

the most populated reserves in Nova Scotia. One of the unforeseen effects of

centrali~ation was that it facilitated marriages between status Indians and thus

hastened the natural increase in the Indian population. In Cape Breton, five

"Indian islands" are now so well established that the residents of these reserves

feel they are "sailing" through a "white sea" when they go to visit their Indian

friends and relations. The current interest in preserving the Micmac language

and culture may be another byproduct of the greater isolation produced by

centralization.

An analysis of the effects of centralization is deserving of a study unto

itself. The twenty years following 1949 will be considered only briefly here in

order to complete the context within which the policy will be evaluated. Once

again, the official record for Shubenacadie is regrettably less complete than that

for Eskasoni. This lack of information is somewhat offset, however, by the

dramatic withering of Shubenacadie's population after 1950. Since Eskasoni

continued to grow, the social consequences of centralization were felt more fully

there.

Given that no official announcement was made regarding the termination

of centralization, Director MacKay's 5 May 1949 instruction to encourage

120

certain Indians to remain outside the central reserves and to extend the usual

services to them must be construed as the end of the policy even though

confusion about the Department's intentions persisted for years. 1 One of the

first questions to arise was how to handle the affairs of Indians on "outlying"

reserves. For "squatters" living on the Mainland, Ottawa tried to preserve the

general thrust of centralization by recommending enfranchisement. 2 The Indians

clung to their status, however. Perhaps in anticipation of their resistance to

enfranchisement or, more likely, because of Indian Affairs' limited resources,

Agent Rice continued to think that at least some of the scattered Indians "would

be much better off if they moved to Shubenacadie where they could be taken

care of."3

Rice found it so difficult to manage 1,400 Indians living in more than

fourteen locations in an area 350 miles long and 17 5 miles wide, that Antigonish

and Pictou Counties were transferred to the more compact Eskasoni agency in

19 50.4 In spite of this adjustment, complaints continued to pour in from all

quarters. Indians at Yarmouth and Cambridge were dissatisfied,5 and both

Indians and whites complained bitterly about the lack of control at Afton.

Stephen Lewis wrote from the reserve:

What is most necessity right now is Law and order, a constable who will protect your cultivated property if any and protect your home and your family in case you go off the reserve for employment purposes and would protect younger generation from bad examples such as drunkness, adultry, abusive language ect.6

Walter Taylor was irate about "a drove of new" Indians at Afton who were

trespassing on his land:

I can hardly call my property my own any more instead of building new homes for them there should be a bounty on their head now if there is anything you can do to remove these crowd that don't belong here I would appreci~te it very much •••• 7

121

Throughout the early fifties, at least a few Indians were kept busy

building and repairing houses and schools as part of the Department's "Welfare

Construction Program." The centralization houses required much work to make

them habitable, and housing at all other reserves had been neglected for at least

a decade. To solve the crisis at Pictou Landing, thirteen prefabricated wartime

houses were acquired in 1950 and moved to that reserve. Houses built under the

Veteran's Land Act at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie were purchased from veterans

who wanted to build at other reserves. 8

Since it had been assumed that reserves outside Eskasoni and

Shubenacadie would be vacated, their schools had been allowed to fall into

disrepair if they had not been deliberately demolished. The Afton school

underwent a particularly slow recovery. It had been rented to a white school

board during the forties and was not immediately available once movements to

central reserves were stopped. 9 In August 19 51, F .B. McKinnon, now Regional

Superintendent, found it necessary to remind Ottawa that:

• • • we are morally obligated to reopen the Afton school this coming term. There are possibly 20 children who are under school age and it is not planned to move any of these families either to the Shubenacadie or Eskasoni Agencies. In other words, I think the school population will vary from 15 to 20 pupils for several years to come. Attendance of these children in a white school is not practical or possible due to the distance.lO

The school at Afton was reopened "as an experiment" in the fall of 19 51. New

schools were built at Whycocomagh in 1952 and Wagmatcook in 1956. 11 In 1958

the future of the Afton school was still uncertain. An inspector reported that it

was cold, in need of painting or cleaning, and had inadequate playground space

and plumbing. 12 In 1961, urgent repairs and the installation of indoor plumbing

and an oil furnace were still awaiting the necessary funding. "The attitude of a

122

few non-Indian families in Tracadie" was making it impossible to transfer

children from the higher grades to nearby Tracadie school, and McKinnon

informed Ottawa that if this problem were not overcome it would be necessary

to add an additional classroom and teacher to the Afton schoo1. 13

Other reserves were slowly reborn as families drifted back, but the

problems spawned at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie often returned with them.

Mutual suspicion and hostility and the desperate competition for jobs maintained

t.ensions between different groups and within individual families. 14 Meanwhile,

local Indian Affairs staff groped for any employment scheme to relieve the

suffering at the central reserves.

The Mersey Pulp and Paper Company was approached about the

possibility of work for Eskasoni Indians, but there is no reply on file. 15 Twenty

"nuisance beaver that had to be removed from the mainland" were delivered to

the northern part of Eskasoni in 1953 "in the hope that controlled trapping could

mean a small source of revenue for a few Indian families." 16 Harvesting

blueberries at Eskasoni was considered along with oyster cultivation and more

woods work but, in general, the Indians were encouraged, as always, to pursue

subsistence agriculture. 17 Realizing that the government could not possibly

generate enough work for all those who had been moved to the central reserves,

the agents began actively "encouraging the men to find work off the Reserve" as

early as the fall of 1951.18

The previous year, some Shubenacadie Indians had made their first

organized trip to Maine to pick blueberries. Since many found the opportunity' to

earn wages as migrant workers preferable to trying to eke out a subsistence

existence on the reserve, they gave up their pigs, chickens and vegetable gardens

in order to take part in what was to become an annual pilgrimage. 19 The

123

practice of going to Maine disrupted the education of many children in the

succeeding years because most families did not return to their Nova Scotia

homes until well after the school year had begun. 20 So many crossed the border

that, in 19 53, External Affairs complained to Indian Affairs about the nuisance

created by the great number of Indians approaching the Canadian Consulate in

Boston for assistance. 21 Nova Scotia Micmacs still travel in large numbers to

Maine every year to participate in the blueberry and potato harvest, and

thousands have taken up either permanent or semi-permanent residence in New

22 England.

From January 1950 a new ministry called Citizenship and Immigration

was responsible for Indian Affairs. Following a community meeting in 1953, a

committee representing Eskasoni residents wrote to the Minister, W .E. Harris, to

insist:

• • • that your Government take immediate action to relieve our unfortunate situation, in a way of immediate and increased rations, feed and hay to starving cattle, establishment of industry or industries, that will provide employment such as re-opening of our present shutdown sawmill and factory, under expert supervision, management and salesmanship in place of present incompetence.23

In reply, Harris pointed out that improving the economic situation in the

Maritimes was a prerequisite to solving Indian unemployment there. He

explained that the depletion of timber resources in and around Eskasoni

precluded viable lumbering and sawmill operations, and gave his assurance that

relief would be available to persons "who, through no fault of their own, are

unable to supply themselves and their families with the necessities of life." The

only limitation on the amount of assistance available to those pursuing

"subsistence farming, gardening, fishing and • • • sales of handicraft" was "the

124

will to work and energy of the individual Indians."24 Over the next few years a

small amount of work was created at Eskasoni by the acquisition of cutting

rights on wood lots, but by 1957 25 those resources were exhausted.

Shubenacadie's sawmill was also "out of operation" by the mid-fifties. 26

J.D. MacPherson assumed responsibility for the Eskasoni agency in the

fall of 1953. In 1954 he reported an increase in the numbers of illegitimate

babies, destitute mothers, residents disabled by heart conditions and high blood

pressure, and Indians being jailed for long periods of time. 27 The death of a

seventeen-year-old Cape Breton Indian from acute alcohol . poisoning and

exposure, and the conviction of another young person for raping his fifteen-year-

old sister while under the influence of alcohol, were just two symptoms of the

increasingly desperate situation in which Nova Scotia's Indians found

themselves.28 When the latter was released from Dorchester Penitentiary, Rice

had to inform Ottawa that "employment for this man is very limited on this

Reserve [Shubenacadie] as he can only do light work. n29

The continuing deterioration of Nova Scotia's economy made it

increasingly difficult for Indians to find work off the reserve through the

fifties. 30 An "all time high" of $6,738 for relief at Eskasoni in April 19 55 was

easily surpassed the next year when 5,700 Cape Bretoners were searching for

work. In 1956, even the livestock at Eskasoni were on relief rations31

MacPherson transferred to the Shubenacadie agency in 19 56 when Agent

Rice retired. The new superintendent of the Eskasoni agency, Terrence W.

Boone, reported:

The annual exodus to Maine for Blueberry and Potato picking commenced in September, leaving many Reserves semi-ghost towns and causing a considerable decline in relief.32

125

When he took charge, water at the Eskasoni reserve was unfit to drink because

all the wells were contaminated. Family desertions and the need for foster home

placements were on the rise.33 In addition to deplorable social, moral and

sanitary conditions at Wagmatcook, Boone had to contend with Victoria County's

unwillingness to absorb the expense of jailing Indians from that reserve. 34 The

frequent breakdowns of agency vehicles added to his frustrations and, like Agent

MacLean, he found he co.uld not contain his thoughts.35 He wrote to Ottawa:

It is unfortunate that new houses must be built on reserves where resources and employment opportunities are somewhat limited.36

For the same amount being expended on reserve housing,

••• abandoned farms and farms presently productive, with excellent woodlots and not below average buildings could be purchased ••• where alternative sources of income are available and more attractive.37

Boone thought favourable consideration should be given to Indian requests for

assistance in getting established off the reserve, but the Department was

nowhere near ready to entertain such a proposal. 38

Indian Affairs' main preoccupation during the mid-fifties was the

establishment of band lists for Nova Scotia so that trust funds could be released

for certain administrative purposes. Since the Micmacs of Nova Scotia had

never been officially subdivided into separate bands, and since centralization had

failed to concentrate them in two convenient locations, there was no practical

way the Department could obtain band council consent for the release of funds

or lands as required by the 19 51 Indian Act. 39 Bands therefore had to be

created, a process which took about five years and raised several interesting

issues related to centralization.

Acknowledging that centralization had "not proved too successful," and

126

that the division of the Micmacs into bands according to site of residence would

tend to curtail movement, Indian Affairs recognized that "some families might

wish to move back to their original reserve or become established at some other

reserve" before the band lists were finalized. It was prepared to give the

Micmacs "the privilege" of returning to their former reserves, but it refused to

absorb any of the expenses involved or to· provide housing for families who

wanted to relocate. 40 Since accommodation was limited at all reserves and

some Indians, including those at Whycocomagh, were opposed to having people

move back, the creation of bands had little actual effect upon the distribution of

the Indian population. 41

In Cape Breton band division was a relatively straightforward matter of

simply establishing one band for each of the five inhabited reserves. On the

Mainland, however, the erratic distribution of the Indians raised once more the

thorny question of whether or not small groups living some distance apart should

be amalgamated. Approximately 950 of the 1,439 Indians living on the Mainland

were concentrated in the eastern half at four principal locations: Shubenacadie,

Millbrook, Afton and Pictou Landing which together encompassed fifteen

reserves. In the western half, only about 100 Indians lived on six reserves.

Several reserves in both areas housed just one or two families while the rest of

the Indians were scattered or lived in small clusters off reserves. Indian Affairs

now feared that including in a single band "groups living many miles apart •••

might encourage centralization which in Nova Scotia is most undesirable for the

reserves do not and will not provide a source of livelihood for all the Indians."42

A recommendation that the Department encourage enfranchisement or help the

Indians acquire title to the lands they occupied "against the possibility that·

squatters might some day drift back to the reserves which would be a backward

127

step" hints that the lessons of the forties were slowly being learned.43 The

officer charged with the task of band division observed:

Generally, the practice in Indian Affairs over the years has been to amalgamate small groups rather than create them. While such practice may have had administrative advantages, it would seem to me quite unsound for the Indians in Nova Scotia. Taking the long-term view it seems to me that we are more likely to achieve the integration of the Indians if they are in relatively small groups, and I can see much more possibility of the Indians at reserves such as Yarmouth, Gold River, etc.; seeking enfranchisement if they are established as a band rather than being amalgamated with some other larger group who live miles away and with whom they have little in common.44

When eleven bands were created in 19 58, the thirty-eight residents of

the Yarmouth, Gold River and Wildcat reserves were put on a general list. Their

reserves, along with Ponhook Lake and Medway River (both unoccupied), were

not allotted to any band. This evidently did not have the desired effect for, in

1974, all five reserves were assigned to the newly-created Acadia Band. The

rest of the Mainland reserves were separately assigned to six Mainland bands

which were named Afton, Pictou Landing, Truro, Shubenacadie, Annapolis Valley

and Bear River. Whereas it was impossible to completely avoid including

disparate and far-flung groups within single bands on the Mainland, the divisions

in Cape Breton were more natural because no one lived off the reserve. The

Malagawatch reserve, abandoned during centralization, was set apart for the

joint use of the five Cape Breton bands known as Eskasoni, Chapel Island,

Whycocomagh, Middle River (now Wagmatcook) and Sydney. Three or four small

and traditionally unoccupied reserves in Cape Breton were allotted to specific

bands.45

The division of the Micmacs into bands enabled them to make certain

decisions regarding the expenditure of funds held for them by the Department.

128

The Department hoped, largely in vain, that it would result in the sale of unused

reserves and the acquisition of more useful land. Bands with many off-reserve

members, such as Shubenacadie, found that conflicts over elections and the

management of band funds and assets developed easily. 46

Band division did little to ameliorate the conditions discovered by

community development officers from St. Francis Xavier University's Extension

Department who began work on the reserves of the Eskasoni agency in 19 57.

They noted high rates of illiteracy and unemployment, and an almost total

absence of upgrading courses:

The result was that the Indians were apathetic. This apathy led to a sub-human existence. Heavy drinking, constant brawling, sexual promiscuity, and many uncared for children were the outward marks of their bitter frustration. 47

From fiscal year 19 57-58 to 19 58-59, the cost to the Department for the care

and maintenance of neglected children rose about 60 per cent, that is from

$13,885 to $24,970 for the Eskasoni agency and from $11,277 to $17,914 for the

Shubenacadie agency.48 Agent Boone reported that insufficient housing and

overcrowding was a problem throughout the Eskasoni agency, and that "60

percent of those needing new homes resulted from marriages during the past five

years where the couples show no indication of living elsewhere." The new

couples were the offspring of the Indians the government had tried to centralize

eighteen years earlier. Boone found that the "small homogeneous and self-

contained" reserves were more independent than Eskasoni and responded more

readily to St. Francis Xavier University's community development program. 49

By 1960, Eskasoni's population had reached 1 ,000, whereas

Shubenacadie's was down to about 400 because so many had moved to Maine,

Massachusetts and New York. Of the remaining 400, half were gone from June

129

to October each year to harvest strawberries, blueberries and potatoes in the

United States.50 With relief costs for 1958-59 at $153,811 for Eskasoni and

$7 5,000 for Shubenacadie, Regional Superintendent McKinnon alerted Ottawa:

• • • we are being very unrealistic when we ask a Superintendent and one assistant as part of their duties, to administer with any degree of efficiency a welfare program of that extent.51

On a single day, there had been 103 applicants for assistance in the Eskasoni

office.52 Approximately 98 per cent of the households at Eskasoni and 78 per

cent of those at Shubenacadie were receiving welfare.53 Early in 1961, Agent

Boone wrote the Department of his "own inability to cope with the situation."

He attributed the maladministration of the Eskasoni agency to inadequate staff

and funding. In the fall he resigned. 54

On 6 May 1968, the agency office at Eskasoni was blockaded by men,

women and children bearing placards that read: "We are the Victims of Injustice

by the Government"; "Medicine, Houses and Transportation We Need"; and "Now

is the Time for Action."55 Jules D'Astous, Indian Affairs' Director of

Administration, was dispatched from Ottawa to handle the crisis. The Indians

demanded jobs and the removal of the agency office from the reserve. They

wanted improvements in housing, sanitary conditions, and the transportation of

sick persons to Sydney. After touring the reserve and meeting with the band

council and the executive of the Eskasoni Community Betterment Association,

D'Astous concluded "that eventual relocation is the only answer.1156

A year later, before anything as drastic as the deliberate dispersal of

Indians from Eskasoni and Shubenacadie could be attempted, the entire context

of Indian affairs in Canada was altered by the Trudeau government's White Paper

130

on Indian Policy. The Union of Nova Scotia Indians was formed in response in the

fall of 1969, and since then it has worked, within the limitations of the existing

system, to improve the circumstances of Indians in the province.

At Eskasoni and Shubenacadie in particular, Indian life during the fifties

and sixties was detrimentally affected by the aborted centralization scheme.

Today, the persistence of a substandard quality of life for the overwhelming

majority of Micmacs continues to underline the government's ongoing inability to

devise effective solutions for the problems faced by the six thousand Indians who

have the misfortune of living in one of the most economically deprived regions of

the country. In the past, most were only trained for unskilled, temporary, low­

paying and dead-end jobs. The Micmacs entry into Nova Scotian society was

inhibited by racist attitudes and, in 1942, the government catered to those

attitudes by implementing a plan which isolated the Indians even further. The

extent to which centralization sapped the Indians' morale and ability to provide

for themselves apparently was not foreseen by Indian Affairs whose sensitivity

and imagination were circumscribed by a legal and administrative framework

based on outdated, and indeed racist, assumptions.

In practice, government housing, education, medical services and relief

imparted an atmosphere of permanence to the reserves. Contrary to the

intentions of the government, the number of Nova Scotia Indians seeking refuge

on reserves continues to grow.57 Although the United States has been a more

friendly environment for many Micmacs, the attachment to the subculture of the

reserve prevents others from making the dramatic break with friends and family

that is required to pursue employment elsewhere.

Since relatively few Indian-run stores and businesses have been

developed on the reserves, government money flows out to enrich non-native

131

enterprises in the surrounding communities. For those neighbours, there is

obviously little incentive to reduce the Indians' economic dependence on the

government. Living on the margin of both the economy and the society, Nova

Scotia Indians can only hope that political independence might enable them to

pursue solutions as yet undreamed by Indian Affairs. At present, they are

vigorously promoting education and self-sufficiency for, whether or not genuine

self-government becomes a reality, they have no choice but to rise above poor

education, isolation, poverty, dependency, frustration and alienation in order to

make the best use of their meagre community resources.

132

Notes - Chapter VI

1 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, MacKay to McKinnon, 5 April 1949.

2 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, MacKay to Henry Hicks, M.L.A., 12 October 1949.

3 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Rice to Indian Affairs, 18 October 1949 and "Report on Field Interviews with Micmacs of Nova Scotia," July 1957.

4 OlAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 25 April 1950.

5 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9030, file 52/19-1, Charlie Paul to Rice, 7 January 1951; Albert Labrador to Rice, 17 June 1951; and John Toney to Rice, n.d., 1951.

6 Ibid., file 51/18-1, Stephen Lewis to Rice, 12 May 1953.

7 Ibid., file 51/15-4, Walter Taylor to Rice, 12 November 1954.

8 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), H.A. MacNeil to Indian Affairs, 31 December 1955.

9 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9016, file 51-6-1-250, P. Phelen, Education Division to McKinnon, 13 September 1949; B.F. Neary, Education Division to School Trustees, Afton Station, 25 January 19 50; and P. Phelen to McKinnon, n.d.

10 Ibid., file 51-6-1-251, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 9 August 1951.

11 Ibid., file 51-6-1-251, n.d. and Canada, Department of Citizenship and 'iiTI'Tliigration, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Reports, 1953 and 1957.

12 Ibid., file 51-6-1-251, Regional Inspector of Schools to Maritime Regional Office, 14 February 1958.

13 Ibid., file 14-6-1-251, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 14 June 1961.

14 William C. Sayers, ed., Sammy Louis: The Life History of a Young Micmac (New Haven: The Compass Publishing Co., 1956), 269.

15 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9026, file 20-1, McKinnon to Mersey Pulp and Paper Company, 18 January 1950.

16 Ibid., file 20-9-1, McKinnon to Deputy Minister Lands and Forests, Province of Nova Scotia, 31 March 1953.

17 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 29 January 1953; McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 18 April 1953; and Canada, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1954, 65-66.

133

18 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(1), MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 17 September 19 51.

19 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9030, file 51/15-6, Rice to McKinnon, 9 August 1955; and interviews with Freda Bernard and Madeline Julian, Shubenacadie, 1974-7 5.

20 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 30 September 19 55.

21 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, H.M. Jones, Welfare Service to McKinnon, 5 January 1953.

22 Status Indians cross the Canada/United States border with relative ease because they are not bound by the same restrictions that inhibit other Canadians who wish to work in the United States. ·

23 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, Eskasoni Resolution Committee to Superintendent General, Indian Affairs, n.d., 1953.

24 Ibid., file 29-1, W.E. Harris to Ben Christmas, 4 March 1953.

25 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), Boone to Indian Affairs, 22 January 1957.

26 DIAND, Ottawa, file 274/1-1, Director to Deputy Minister, 16 April 1956.

27 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 26 July 1954.

28 Ibid., file 23-4(2), MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 21 January 1955.

29 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9030, file 51/18-1, Rice to Indian Affairs, 6 April 1955.

30 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), MacNeil to Indian affairs, 31 December 1955.

31 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, MacPherson to Indian Affairs, 26 May 1955; and vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), MacNeil to Indian Affairs.

32 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), Boone to Indian Affairs 18 October 1956.

33 Ibid., file 23-4(2), Boone to Indian Affairs, 18 October 1956.

34 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, Boone to Maritime Regional Office, 3 May 1957.

35 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), Boone to Indian Affairs, 24 April 1957.

36 Ibid.

134

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 DIAND, Ottawa, file 274/30-1, L.L. Brown, Reserves and Trusts to McKinnon, 9 April 1953 and H.M. Jones, Director to McKinnon, 31 December 19 54.

40 DIAND, Ottawa, file 274/30-1(2), Brown to Director, 11 December 1956 and 5 February 1957.

41 Ibid., Brown to Indian Affairs, 14 January 1957.

42 Ibid., Brown to Director, 11 December 1956.

43 Ibid., Brown to Indian Affairs, 17 April 1957.

44 Ibid.

45 DIAND, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Chief, Reserves and Trusts Division to Chief, Agencies Division, 19 June 1959.

46 H.B. Hawthorn, ed., A Survey of the Contem orary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Nee s an I Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1966), 274-275.

47 DIAND, Ottawa, file 201/29-6(3), C. Thompson, Social Development Section, St. Francis Xavier University, Extension Department, 16 December 1969.

48 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, Chief, Welfare Division to Regional Superintendent, 1 October 1959.

49 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), Boone to Branch, 22 January 1960.

50 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9016, file 211/1-13, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 28 June 1960 and vol. 8553, file 88/1-1-9(1), H. Boudreau, 14 February 1959.

51 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, McKinnon to Indian Affairs, 7 January 1960.

52 Ibid.

53 Hawthorn, A Survey of Contemporary Indians, I, 115-116.

54 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9022, file 23-4(2), Boone to Indian Affairs, 6 January 1961.

55 Sandy Macdonald, "Indians Protest," Cape Breton Post, 7 May 1968.

56 DIAND, Ottawa, file 274/1-1, Jules D'Astous to Director, 22 May 1968.

135

57 Peter Carstens, "Coercion and Change," in Canadian Societ : Pluralism, Change and Conflict, ed. Richard Ossenberg Scar orough, Ont.: Prentice Hall, 1971), 141 and R.W. Dunning, "Some Aspects of Governmental Indian Policy and Administration," Anthropologica IV, 2 (1962), 223.

136

CHAPTER VII

WORLD WAR II: A WATERSHED IN CANADIAN INDIAN POLICY

Nova Scotia's Indians will not abandon their reserves within the

foreseeable future partly because of their financial dependence on the

government but, more importantly, because of their attachment to their land and

culture. The concentration of hundreds of Indian families at Eskasoni and

Shubenacadie did inadvertently aggravate Indian Affairs' problems in Nova

Scotia, but there is more to the explanation of why centralization was quietly

dropped in 1949. In essence, the mounting social awareness of Canadians made a

policy like centralization both unnecessary and unacceptable by the end of the

Second World War.

From Confederation, Indians in Canada were ruled by a paternalistic,

authoritarian, highly-centralized and under-funded branch of government. They

were wholly dependent upon it for any services. Federal legislation restricted

their activities to the extent that most were excluded from participation in the

economic life of the country. Nevertheless, a disproportionately large number of

Indians joined the armed forces during both the First and Second World Wars. By

interacting with other Canadians in this way, they generated public awareness of

their peculiar situation and simultaneously raised their own expectations. 1

Although the ability of Indians to make effective demands upon the government

was limited by their small numbers and the fact that they were not permitted to

vote in federal elections until 1960, Indians became increasingly involved in their

own political organizations once it became clear they were no longer a vanishing

race.

· By June 1944, .when the North American Indian Brotherhood was founded

137

specifically to protest the handling of Indian affairs, sympathetic public opinion

was already taking shape behind Indian demands for reform. 2 An article

published out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the Dalhousie Review described and

contributed to this surge of opinion:

During the past year or so, more white people right across Canada have raised an outcry in protest at the obsolete and arbitrary methods of the Indian Department. Give the Indians a vote, these people say, for they won't get a square deal until they carry some weight in the world of politics. Why continue to treat them like unintelligent children? Give them at least as good an education as we give to young people of our own race. Give them responsibilities, and something to live for.3

The author criticized Minister Crerar for being unfamiliar with the terms of

early treaties, and called reserves "concentration camps" to be "taken away from

the Indians when the white man considers he needs them for his purposes."4

Virtually the same sentiments were echoed in Canadian Forum in 1946: since

Indians had been intelligent enough to fight admirably in the armed forces, they

should be granted the full rights of Canadian citizenship. The Canadian Forum

article advised removing Indians from the "stultifying atmosphere" of the

reserve, which it described as "a concentration camp on which a race was to be

confined until it became extinct." It deplored the "unparalleled levels of

degradation and poverty" among Indians, and proclaimed "the sight of these

wretched people • • • a denial of all our high-sounding pronouncements, our

Atlantic charters, our San Francisco agreements."5

Well before World War II, Indian Affairs officials were aware of the

inadequacies of the legislation governing Indians. In November 1938, the

Branch's field officers were asked for their criticisms of the Indian Act as well

as for suggestions for improving it. Revision of the Act was impeded by

138

World War 11.6 Afterwards, a new climate of opinion and a developing interest in

the resources of the North returned the government's attention to Indian Affairs.

The work of the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee, appointed to

investigate both the Indian administration and the Act, did produce a revision of

the Act in 1951. Its hearings represented the Canadian government's first

systematic attempt to consider Indian opinion in the formulation of Indian

legislation and policy.

The atmosphere in whi~h the Joint Committee conducted its work was

described this way by one of its members:

The Indians now have confidence we are really going to do something for them, the Canadian people as a whole are interested in the problem of Indians; they have become aware that the country has been neglected in the matter of looking after the Indians and they are anxious to remedy our shortcomings. Parliament and the country is "human rights" conscious. This is clearly shown, as we all know, by discussions in the House of Commons at the present time.?

Maritime Regional Supervisor McKinnon recalled the 1946 to 1948 review

process as "a rough experience." In describing it to his staff on the eve of a

similar investigation in 1959, McKinnon warned them not to be caught

unprepared because "the Indians will be given the opportunity to express

themselves and undoubtedly will do just that."8 In Nova Scotia in 1947,

The complaints from Indians were many and touched upon every facet of our administration, relief food and clothing, jobs, wages, house construction, road building, projects, etc. ad infinitum. After the Band meeting the agents were called in and we were cross examined on all complaints.9

Committee members Harkness, Bryce and Case formed very negative

impressions of the centralization scheme. Harkness observed that "the majority

of the Indians questioned were opposed to centralization" and they

139

complained of being forced to move. In his view, Eskasoni "would not support a

reasonable standard of living for more than 20 families" and Shubenacadie could

not accommodate "one-tenth of the number of people being put on that place."10

Bryce told Inspector Morris during the hearings that driving the Indian back

among his own class and keeping him there would prevent assimilation. 11 Case

suggested "the problem might solve itself" if the Indians could be brought closer

to white people where they might be "absorbed."12 Although the Committee

avoided condemning the scheme when it presented its findings, Harkness

predicted the aftermath with great accuracy:

It seems to me the result of that centralization policy is going to be that you will make these people perpetually a charge on the dominion government; in other words the taxpayer is going to have to support them in perpetuity, rather than leaving them on reserves where they have good prospects of making- a living for themselves for the most part.l3

Had the Committee wanted to recommend the termination of

centralization, doing so was made problematic by the remarks of the Director

which obscured Indian Affairs' intentions. The Superintendent of Welfare and

Training since 1936 but only the Director of the Branch from March 1945, R.A.

Hoey prefaced his explanation of centralization this way:

Now, I would not be fair to the committee if I did not state that, from the outset, there was a division of opinion in the department itself with respect to the feasibility of this whole program.l4

Claiming "it was never our intention that these two reserves should be used for

anything other than a training ground, and a home of refuge," Hoey situated

himself among the advocates of the plan, but not without this qualification:

I have always taken the position that unless our schools function properly by carrying out a program of education based on the actual needs of the group concerned, bringing them up to a point where their

As he put it:

education and moral standard will permit their leaving the reserve and taking their places as blacksmith, mechanic, carpenter and fisherman, and so on then the project must, of necessity, fai1.15

The construction work at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie in Nova Scotia represents an attempt to centralize the entire Indian population in Nova Scotia upon those two reserves .••• (emphasis added)l6

140

Without explaining the reasons for the Branch's deviation from the original

objective of total relocation, Hoey told the Committee that it would not disturb

any "Indian fully employed and living usefully" somewhere else. Evidently

realizing that it was inadvisable, if not impossible, to house all the Indians at the

two designated reserves, Hoey nevertheless lauded centralization as "one of the

most forward steps that is being taken in Indian administration over a great

many years." "It has been retarded as a result of the war," he added. 17

After hearing both the Indians and the bureaucrats, the Committee

drafted its final statement concerning centralization:

Your Commissioners are of the opinion that the success of the policy of centralization undertaken in the Province of Nova Scotia will depend on two factors: 1) on the educational program provided at the

Shubenacadie and Eskasoni reserves, and, 2) on the provision of sufficient economic resources

and opportunities to enable the Indians located on these reserves to make a living for themselves and thus become increasingly less a burden on the taxpayers of Canada.l8

Clearly influenced by Hoey, it praised the Branch's general efforts in the region:

It is the opinion of your Commissioners, based upon actual investigation, that the Indian Affairs Branch, since 1940, has done much to improve the social and economic ~tatus of the Indians in the Maritime Provinces.!

141

Political pleasantries notwithstanding, the contradiction between the

Committee's two prerequisites for success is obvious: the Indians were expected

to prepare themselves, through education, for life off the central reserves while

simultaneously making themselves self-sufficient there. That the Committee

would adopt a position consistent with the opposing principles that governed the

Indian administration -- assimilation and protection -- is not surprising. It could

not challenge the inherent incompatibility of these two objectives because, short

of breaking past promises, the government was not free to give up its protective

role in favour of promoting assimilation. The Indians were entitled to life on

their reserves.

Although many Committee members believed that driving Indians "back

into the hinterlands" would retard assimilation, their mandate was simply to

suggest amendments to the Indian Act and recommend ways to make the reserve

a more effective training ground for citizenship. The Committee therefore

focussed on the neglect that had been the main feature of the government's

relationship with Indians. For decades, public and government indifference was

reflected in inadequate financial appropriations. Consequently, the Branch's

small and shrinking staff was frustrated and poorly qualified. No effective

Indian education program existed, but it was clear that education and technical

and financial assistance were needed to further the Indians' economic

development. Indians and departmental staff told the Committee that the great

and arbitrary powers of the Superintendent General, headquarters' staff and the

agents were standing in the way of progress. At least one of the commissioners

concluded:

One of the things basically wrong· with the administration of Indian affairs is the attitude of the people of Canada, the government and the officials of

the department toward Indians. They are treated as wards and inferiors.20

142

To redress the situation, the Committee proposed revisions to the Act

that were "designed to make possible the gradual transition of Indians from

wardship to citizenship."21 Mindful of the rapidly growing numbers of Indians

and their resistance to enfranchisement, the Committee strove to eliminate

"many anachronisms, anomolies, contradictions and divergences" in the old Act.

Greater emphasis was placed on assimilation through the attainment of

citizenship, but the paradoxical goal of protection had to be retained. It

therefore recommended:

That the revised Act contain provisions to protect from injustice and exploitation such Indians as are not sufficiently advanced to manage their own affairs.22

It was the Committee's view that the new Indian Act should also provide:

A. A political voice for Indian women in band affairs. B. Bands with more self-government and financial

assistance. C. Equal treatment of Indians and non-Indians in the

matter of intoxicants. D. That a band might incorporate as a municipality. E. That Indian Affairs officials were to have their

duties and responsibilities designed to assist the Indian in the responsibilities of self-.government and to attain rights of full citizenship.23"

With respect to Indian policy it recommended:

A. Easing of enfranchisement B. Extension of the franchise to the Indian C. Co-operation with the provinces in extending

service to the Indian D. Education of Indian children with non-Indians in

order to prepare Indian children for assimilation24

Indian Affairs' speedy adoption of the recommendation regarding joint

education sounded the death knell for centralization, a policy based entirely on

the concept of separating Nova Scotia's Indians from whites. If Indian children

143

were to be educated in association with other children, they could scarcely be

moved to two isolated inland locations. By 1949, the Branch's Education Division

was "negotiating with school boards and Provincial Departments of Education for

the training of Indian children in Provincial schools." Only twenty-six Indian

children were studying in provincial or private schools in Nova Scotia at the

time, 25 but the Department was determined to have more admitted "in

accordance with th~ recommendations of the joint parliamentary committee."26

The Committee's early findings concerning the low status and poor

administration of Indian welfare, and the exclusion of Indians from normal

federal and provincial welfare programs, produced a reorganization of Indian

Affairs in 1947 that saw the Welfare and Training Service split into two

divisions: Welfare and Education. 27 The fuller welfare measures that became

available to all Indians alleviated much of the original need for centralization.

Indians began receiving family allowances and pensions for the aged, blind and

and infirm, and the Welfare division took on responsibility for an expanded

building program, economic development, and agricultural assistance. 28 Social

workers were hired by the Department to encourage homemaking andto act as a

liaison with municipal and provincial welfare officers. 29

Once the parliamentary budget for Indian Affairs was increased to make

fuller and improved services available, the most important reason for

centralization disappeared. It will be remembered that when the scheme was

first devised, its originators knew they could not adequately minister to the

needs of Nova Scotia Indians with the meagre resources available to them. Since

they had little reason to anticipate any increase in allocations or staff, they

thought centralization would be the most efficient means of allotting the

services they were able to provide. Only when integrating Indians into the

144

economic life of the country became an urgent national priority was Indian

Affairs' budget expanded.

Another manifestation of post-war thinking was the transfer of the

Indian Affairs Branch from the Department of Mines and Resources to the

newly-created Department of Citizenship and Immigration in 1950. While Prime

Minister St. Laurent (elected by a landslide in June 1949) hoped that grouping

Indians with immigrants would hasten acculturation and have a beneficial effect

on Indian policy,30 their subsequent disassociation in 1966 has been attributed to

the superficial logic of the grouping:

••• the human clientele were not only located in quite unrelated areas -- the Indians on tribal reserves in Canada, the immigrants scattered across Canada -- but also had unique problems totally unrelated to one another.31

Today one can see that the revised Indian Act also failed to accelerat~

integration. Rather than calling into question the wisdom of the government's

desire to eliminate Indians through assimilation, the 1951 Act retained the basic

features of the original 1876 legislation. It remained paternalistic partly

because of the government's legal obligation to protect Indians, but also because:

••• in the official mind, Indians still had a long way to go before they could be considered fully equal to other Canadians.32

In practice, additional appropriations and the hiring of more Indian Affairs field

staff during the 1950s produced closer supervision and control of Indians. Though

motivated by a sincere desire to "help," heightened public concern ironically

resulted in increased spending, a larger Indian Affairs bureaucracy, and even

greater government intervention in the lives of Indians.

Whereas Indian Affairs had operated in a vacuum and without coherent

policy through to the end of the Second World War,33 afterwards it was obliged

145

to chart a clearer course. The Second World War therefore stands as a

watershed in Indian Affairs policy -- if only because there was a shift at that

point from an era of almost total indifference, neglect and ad hoc decision­

making to one in which the public's expectations and the expenditure of large

sums of money required some accountability and more consistent policies. The

fate of centralization was tied to these larger changes.

It appears that doubts about the feasibility of the centralization policy

existed within the Branch from the very beginning. The agents' experiences with

the scheme must have contributed to this sense of unease and, once the Indians

had voiced their objections before the Joint Committee, Hoey had little choice

but to publicly draw back from the original intention of transplanting all the

Nova Scotia Indians to Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. In any case, in 1947, the

Branch was still without the power, the finances, and the personnel to realize the

full plan.

Centralization's demise was gradual, however. While there is no reason

to think that those who objected to the presence of Indians near their

communities had wavered in their desire to see the Indians moved away, the

spectacle of Indians being coerced into moving to places which very likely had

less to offer than those they were' leaving was disturbing to many others. Yet,

the outright abandonment of centralization in 1947 would have involved a loss of

face for the Department. Furthermore, it remained to be seen what new

directions Indian policy was about to take. For at least two years then, Indian

Affairs officials maintained the intermediate stance of requiring only certain

Indians to move to the central reserves. Finally, when the Branch took up the

Joint Committee's recommendation to educate Indian children in association

with non-Indians, the time came to jettison the cumbersome centralization

146

policy. By then, more generous social welfare was available to all Indians.

Between the official launching of centralization on 1 March 1942 to

sometime in April 1949 when the policy was unceremoniously scuttled, Indian

Affairs was overseen by Ministers Crerar, Glen, MacKinnon and Gibson and

Branch Directors McGill, Hoey, and MacKay -- all seven of them at the end of

their careers.34 The fact that none of those responsible could expect to gain

much by rocking the boat, and had everything to lose in the way of personal

reputation, is probably part of the reason why the scheme was allowed to limp

along well after it had proven to be a mistake. Although centralization was

pursued without conviction from the start, it still took seven years to break

Indian Affairs' attachment to it. In those years, the policy went from being a

bold and attractive solution to the longstanding problems of the Indian

administration in Nova Scotia to one that came to be seen for what it always

was: just another backward step in the relationship between Indians and the rest

of Canadian society.

147

Notes - Chapter Vll

1 John Leslie and Ron McGuire, eds., The Historical Development of the Indian Act, Second Edition (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1978), 133.

2 E. Palmer Patterson, II, The Canadian Indian: A History Since 1500 (Don Mills: Collier-Macmillan Canada, 1972), 73.

3 H. Glynn-Ward, "Canada's Indian Problem," Dalhousie Review XXV, 1 (April 1945), 46.

4 Ibid., 46 and 49.

5 Hazel A. Robinson, "Blueprint for the Redman," Canadian Forum XXV (January 1946), 233-234.

6 Leslie and McGuire, Indian Act, 123, 129 and 130.

7 Ibid., 134.

8 PAC, RG 10, vol. 9023, file 29-1, McKinnon to all superintendents in Maritime Region, 28 January 1959.

9 Ibid.

10 Canada, Senate and House of Commons, Special Joint. Committee to Consider the Indian Act, Minutes of the Proceedings and Evidence, 194 7, No. 39, 1976, June.

11 Canada, OlAND, Treaties and Historical Research Centre document, "Report on Indian Reserves of Nova Scotia," Royal Commission on Indian Affairs, 29 October 1946, 511.

12 Ibid., 494.

13 Canada, Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1947, No. 39, 1977, June.

14 Ibid., 1961, 26 .June.

15 Ibid.

16 Cana:da, Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1946, 147.

17 Ibid.

18 Canada, Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, 1947, No. 41, Appendix GN, 2012.

19 Ibid., 2011.

148

20 Canada, Parliament, House of Commons Debates, VI (1948), 5769-5770.

21 Canada, OlAND, Treaties and Historical Research Centre document, "Recommendations of the Special Joint Committee on Indian Affairs, 1948," 1.

22 Ibid.

23 John L. Tobias, "Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada's Indian Policy," Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology VII, 2 (1976), 25.

24 Ibid. The government of the United States was introducing its "termination" policy about this time. This researcher did not encounter any references to American Indian policy that would suggest the Canadian government was especially concerned with developments in the United States. In his thesis, "Comparative Changes in the Status of Indians in Canada and the United States since World War II," John A. Olsen concluded there was no evidence that American practice influenced the Special Joint Committee's 1948 recommendations or the formulation of the 1951 Indian Act. (M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1979), 39.

25 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1949, 199.

26 House of Commons Debates, IV (1950), 3709.

28 Ibid.

29 House of Commons Debates, IV (1950), 3709.

30 House of Commons Debates, III (1949), 2285 and John A. Olsen, "Comparative Changes in the Status of Indians in Canada and the United States since World War II" (M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1979), 45.

31 J.E. Hodgetts, The Canadian Public Service: A Physiolo y of the Government, 1867-197 Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973, 106.

32 Olsen, "Comparative Changes," 53.

33 Tobias, "Protection, Civilization, Assimilation," 24.

34 Appendix B lists Indian Affairs' Ministers and Directors responsible for centralization.

149

CHAPTER VIII

INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE CENTRALIZATION POLICY

Prior to the Second World War, Indian Affairs was at a loss to know how

to promote Indian assimilation. Since the Indian population and the cost of

maintaining it were both growing at an alarming rate, an internal review of the

Indian Act began, as mentioned, late in 1938. Senior officials suggested revisions

over the next two years, and in 1941 a draft of the proposed new Act was

circulated within the Branch. Only one amendment was effected immediately

but, throughout the war, Branch officials continued to discuss questions of Indian

status, band membership, and the leasing of reserve lands, as well as "what

effect Indian Act protection had on encouraging Indians to become 'citizens'."!

Were it not for the government's overwhelming urge to save money, one might

question its decision to implement, in 1942, an idea that had been simmering

within Indian Affairs since the First World War. Through centralization, Nova

Scotia's Indians suddenly bore the full brunt of outdated Indian policies after

having been virtually ignored for the previous one hundred years. Indian Affairs

had never before attempted to bring its administrative arrangements in Nova

Scotia in line with the style of operations practiced in other provinces.

Purportedly a means to Indian self-sufficiency, centralization was rooted

in a world view that denied Indians the right to exist and had produced a corpus

of legislation incapable of improving Indian life because it stood on the

paradoxical premise that removing Indians from society would eventually enable

them to become part of it. This formula, born of colonial Indian-white relations,

was applied in Nova Scotia during World War II in utter disregard of past

experience. However, when the general failure of the government's approach to

150

Indian affairs began to present both financial and moral challenges to the nation,

questions about the methods being used by the Indian administration thankfully

brought an end to centralization in 1949. After 1951 the relationship of Nova

Scotia Indians to the government was defined by the long-term consequences of

the imprudent relocation scheme, a revised Indian Act, and increased public

spending.

Insofar as centralization was actually effected, it failed to save the

government money. An expenditure for it of $1.3 million to March 1950

(Appendix A) was enormous relative to the day's spending levels and, afterwards,

welfare costs soared, especially at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. When the

establishment of bands raised the issue of whether or not to allow centralized

Indians to move back to their former reserves, the government made clear that

it had no intention of incurring any further expense in connection with the

centralization policy. Although it had already admitted that concentrating Nova

Scotia's Indians on isolated reserves was a mistake, it was curiously unwilling to

provide compensation beyond allowing entitled veterans to build houses on

reserves of their choice.

How a miscalculation on the scale of centralization could have occurred

is explained by the nature of Indian Affairs Branch and the frame of reference

within which it operated. While it is impossible to perfectly reconstruct the

intricate web of persons, ideas, and conditions that determined the shape of

centralization, it is easy to recognize the attitudes and assumptions that

governed the process. Not only did Indian Affairs think centralizing Nova

Scotia's Indians on two reserves would represent an improvement over leaving

them scattered around the province, it believed the proper role of the Canadian

government was to decide exactly where and how Indians would live. It took for

151

granted that Indians unwilling to be enfranchised would move, or be moved, to

the central reserves and, once relocated, it expected them to work for lower-

than-average wages and to accept subsistence and isolation as a way of life until

they were assimilated. It apparently also assumed that houses could be built fast

enough to accommodate all the relocatees, and that the agents responsible for

the plan would be imbued with infinite patience. These erroneous assumptions

formed the backbone of a policy that reflected the arrogance, insensitivity,

paternalism, and lack of .expertise present iry Indian Affairs at the highest levels.

Branch officials admitted that, in general, they knew little about Indians

and, since they had scarcely been concerned with them, they knew even less

about the 2,000 registered Micmacs in Nova Scotia. Officials in Ottawa were

incapable of recognizing the difference between the relatively good situation of

most Cape Breton Indians, who were already well-established on a few sizeable

reserves, and the varied situation of Mainland Indians who tended to be more

mobile and lived on smaller reserves and in scattered off-reserve locations.

Because they knew very little about conditions in the province, they grossly

overestimated the capacity of the two central reserves and failed to make

allowances for weather and shortages of materiel and labour. In these respects

alone the plan was inappropriate, but the fact that the government tried to

execute centralization without any financing, strategy or time frame suggests

that it was engaged in pure adventure.

Regrettably, it has not been possible in this essay to adequately

distinguish between "the government" and "Indian Affairs." Obviously, the goals

of the two did not always coincide, and sometimes the department of which

Indian Affairs was a part was motivated by still other considerations.

Nevertheless, Indian Affairs was in the habit of suggesting to the Minister

152

policies it thought would best serve the national interest. At a time when war

commanded most of the government's attention, the Minister and the Cabinet

were almost wholly reliant on an ossified Indian Affairs bureaucracy for solutions

to the problems at hand. It appears Prime Minister King's Cabinet approved

centralization without concern for either the political or financial risks involved.

Indians undoubtedly were a low priority in wartime, but it is far too easy

to attribute the adoption of a reckless policy like centralization solely to the

circumstances of war. The government was also responsible for Indian Affairs, a

sector whose small budget and isolated position attested to its lack of political

clout. Centralization sprang quite naturally from a. highly centralized and

authoritarian bureaucracy in which decisions were made by an "old guard" who

had risen slowly through the ranks and were almost as out of touch with the

Branch's field staff as they were with the Indians themselves. Senior officials

were mostly preoccupied with administering the provisions of the Indian Act and

controlling expenditures for this miniscule segment of the Canadian population

that neither paid taxes nor voted in federal elections. No funds were available

to hire experts to conduct policy-relevant research or to devise economic

development schemes. In any case, the Branch's distrust of outside opinions was

buttressed by a tangle of philosophical and legal restrictions which precluded

1. . . 2 po 1cy mnovat1on.

At the root of Indian Affairs' conservatism was a delicate balancing act:

overemphasis on the protection and special rights of Indians jeopardized their

chances of assimilation; active promotion of assimilation by minimizing legal and

administrative protections put Indian rights and property at risk. This dilemma

created a rigidity of mind that severely hampered the vision of Indian Affairs

153

officials; meanwhile the uncertainty associated with the war eliminated the

foresight Cabinet might have had in normal times.

While, in the opinion of this writer, the war was the main reason for the

implementation of centralization in 1942, it is conceivable that, had there been

no war, a massive relocation could have been attempted then as a response to

public complaints and rising relief levels. Both the public and the government

seemed convinced that the best route to Indian self-sufficiency was through

reserve-based agriculture. They were impatient with the Indians' tendency to

cling to the vestiges of their former life, and since they had not yet recognized

that "the Indian Problem" stemmed from society's rejection of Indians, it was

fitting that the government yielded to pressure to move Indians away from white

communities by applying its traditional formula.

In fairness, it should be stated that most proponents of centralization

sincerely believed that concentrating the Indians at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie

would benefit them in the long run. Who would question the benefits of improved

education and health care? The absence of even minimal planning and funds in

support of the grand design, however, suggests that it was primarily a self­

serving policy designed to save money and quell criticism of the neglect of

Indians in Nova Scotia. As handled, centralization simply gave the impression

that it was responding to demands for action -- demands which may, in fact,

have foreshadowed the greater interest in Indians that developed after the war.

Between 1943 and 1945, the numbers of Indian children attending school

in Nova Scotia actually dropped to a ten-year low because schools were closed at

some reserves and new ones were still not ready at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie.3

Neither hospitals nor full-time doctors were ever provided at the central

reserves; and, even though Indian health care improved throughout Canada after

154

the war, the distance from medical facilities poses a problem for residents of

Eskasoni and Shubenacadie even today.

Some Indians were glad to be centralized because it meant that they

would gain a full-time priest. Indian Affairs had ensured that education at the

central reserves would be handled by the Roman Catholic church both as a cost­

saving measure and an attempt to exert greater moral control over the Indians.

Today, Micmacs appear to take their religion very seriously but it is difficult to

determine, especially from the sources available to this researcher, its influence

in the precentralization era. It did differentiate Indians in Nova Scotia from a

predominantly Protestant society, and might have been a factor in their

dependence on the government either before or after centralization. The

authors of a comprehensive study of Canadian Indian conditions observed in the

1960s that affiliation with the Catholic church sometimes deters economic

success because of its separatist tendencies. Especially where Catholic Indians

were a minority in a Protestant and secular environment, Hawthorn et al found

the church discouraged migration from reserves and other forms of participation

in white-controHed activities. They also point out that it is difficult to judge the

importance of this factor as it tends to be related to the degree of faith held by

the Indians. 4

As far as Indian Affairs' desire to improve morality was concerned,

centralization was definitely a failure. Illegitimacy, alcoholism and other social

problems abounded at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie during and especially after the

1940s. Furthermore, complaints about the corruption of agents and their staff

came in from Indians during centralization just as they had come in from non­

Indians during the precentralization era.

Prior to centralization, certain status and non-status Micmacs

155

constituted a visible Indian minority that was extremely impoverished. Yet as

they are quick to point out, and others have confirmed, some Indians enjoyed an

adequate subsistence lifestyle not unlike that of many white Nova Scotians who

were forced to draw their income from a variety of sources. In 1941, Indian

Affairs described their situation this way:

The homes in most of the reserves consist of one and one-half storey frame buildings fairly well-finished on the outside. • • • A certain amount of employment is available in lumber camps, sawmills and as stevedores. Other Indians work for farmers, especially in the Annapolis Valley orchards. Seed, potatoes and fertilizer are supplied but these Indians do not engage in large scale farming. During the tourist season they act as canoemen and guides and manufacture baskets, wooden _fandles, hockey sticks, butter tubs, churns and barrels.

Even though job creation was never one of the explicit goals of centralization,

the plan's failure to either create new jobs or further assimilation (beyond

encouraging emigration to the United States) does raise the question of how the

Indians were to occupy themselves once relocated. Hawthorn reported that the

Shubenacadie Band was "depressed or underdeveloped" by virtue of being located

in an area "lacking in farmland or other utilizable resources, and isolated from

main centres of employment."6

Sheila Steen observed in 19 51, in a thesis enti tied "The Psychological

Consequences of Acculturation Among Cape Breton Micmac," that centralization

had weakened the Micmacs former way of life by disrupting the settlements and

informal bands that had existed before:

Prior to the centralization program, the Indians were fairly self-sufficient. They worked their small farms, hunted a little, and procured jobs on their own initiative. The reserves on which they lived had been home to them and their forebearers (sic) for gener­ations. Their forced migration away from these homes was, to say the least an unsettling experience • . . •

Individuals are becoming increasingly dependent upon the government, not only for their support, but for the very ordering of their lives.?

156

Whereas the agents had not lived on Indian reserves in Nova Scotia prior to

centralization, Indians at Shubenacadie and Eskasoni found themselves in daily

contact with agents and their staffs once the program began. Work, wages,

housing, food, clothing and agriCultural supplies were all suddenly determined by

the agent. Not surprisingly, it was the agents who tried (where Indians had

failed) to tell Ottawa that they could not supply sufficient amounts of work to

employ all the Indians that were being centralized.

If greater dependence on the government was one effect of

concentrating Micmacs at isolated central reserves, another was the

enhancement of their natural desire to remain among their own people.

Centralization contributed to conditions that created a resurgence of interest in

Micmac language and culture, and paved the way for the political radicalization

that blossomed in the 1970s. The relocation scheme may have appeased a few of

the municipalities that were complaining about Indian squatters, but the cost was

enormous. A price is still being paid by both the government and the Indians for

the hasty adoption of a policy that excluded Indian opinions as thoroughly as it

tried to exclude their persons.

Only during national crises did the Indians of Nova Scotia merit the

attention of the federal government. Because the Indian population of Canada is

skewed to the West (opposite to the pattern of distribution for the general

population) and settlement proceeded mainly from east to west, Indian welfare

has been traditionally regarded from either a western or a national perspective.

157

Centralization conformed to this pattern in that the concept was shaped by

Indian Affairs' practices to the west of Nova Scotia, and its implementation was

a byproduct of a nation-wide Indian relief crisis and an international war.

Centralization demonstrates, as well, Indian Affairs' most dominant

characteristic: its tendency to simplify its administrative task and curtail

expenses by either reducing the number of status Indians in the country or the

number of places in which they live. This propensity, exhibited until very

recently, must not be underestimated. In 1942, enfranchisement and assimilation

were not reducing the number of Indians, therefore Indian Affairs turned to a

policy that relegated them to fewer parcels of land. Drastic though it may have

been, the adoption of centralization in Nova Scotia was just one step in the

continuum that represents the diminution of Indians' place in Canadian society.

Termination of the policy also had to await nation-wide changes. One

would reasonably expect the host of protests against centralization to have

contributed to the Department's willingness to give it up, but there is no

evidence it had any real bearing on events. From the time centralization was

announced, determined opponents, Indian and non-Indian, agitated against it

pointing out the reasons why the plan was destined to fail. Indian Affairs ignored

them. It even allowed a full four years to pass before the abandonment of the

scheme tacitly confirmed the inadequacies pointed to in the third year by agent

MacLean on his resignation. Apart from damaging admissions the government

would have had to make if it reversed itself, the uncertainty in Indian Affairs

and the frequent changes of Ministers and Directors undoubtedly helped to delay

. t . 8 appropna e actton.

The prelude to centralization, its administration, and the policy's

158

aftermath constitute much of the story of Indian affairs in Nova Scotia. By the

1940s, the welfare of the province's Indians had been disregarded by every

government concerned with the region. The colonial government had been eager

to rid the area of Micmacs altogether; the provincial government was apathetic

towards them; and the federal government had been content to extend colonial

arrangements another seventy-five years beyond Confederation. While Nova

Scotia Micmacs undoubtedly wanted lands free from the intrusion of outsiders,

they seldom got to choose them. That Indian reserves exist at all is because they

allow the mainstream to be protected from "contamination." Institutions for the

poor, the aged, the handicapped, the mentally ill, and the criminally inclined all

serve the same purpose. All are a product of a rhetoric that is as self-deluding

as it is self-serving. All allow essentially decent people to resort to a "solution"

that is usually ineffective, if not actually indecent. Had centralization

accomplished what it set out to, "the Indian Problem" in Nova Scotia would have

been hidden from public view, and perhaps society's subconscious guilt for its

unconcealed hostility towards Indians might have been slightly alleviated.

It is pointless to wonder if complete centralization would have been, as

Arneil suggested, "a step in the direction of a solution."9 It was instantly clear

to at least half the Indians concerned that Eskasoni and Shubenacadie could

never support them all; furthermore, they instinctively resisted relocation. The

only way they could have been centralized would have been through force.

However the Indians worded it when they discussed centralization among

themselves, what they knew was that the scheme was without the basic

attributes of an effective policy for social change.

Indian Affairs ignored the lessons of the past. It refused to take into

consideration the opinions of the people its centralization plan was to effect. It

159

did not assess the problem accurately, and it did not set precisely defined goals.

It did not devise a strategy or supply the financial backing necessary for

successful implementation, nor did it monitor and suitably adjust the program

once it was underway.

A general lack of understanding of Indian culture and experience is one

of the reasons why so little progress has been make in Indian affairs to date. If

knowledge of the past is to be marshalled in support of wiser and more humane

policies, a huge tract of historical ground will have to be covered. One hopes

this study will contribute to our knowledge of Indian history in Nova Scotia, and

that the Native peoples of Canada soon may be given the freedom and

wherewi thai to govern their own affairs.

160

Notes- Chapter VIII

1 John Leslie and Ron McGuire, eds., The Historical Development of the Indian Act, second Edition (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1978), 129-130.

2 Canada:

Printer, 1966), 369-370. Queen's

3 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Reports, 1937-1949. The opening of new schools at both Eskasoni and Shubenacadie in 1945 caused school attendance to jump to 380 from a low of 243 the previous year.

4 Hawthorn, A Survey of Contemporary Indians, I, 130-134.

5 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1941, 175.

6 Hawthorn, A Survey of Contemporary Indians, I, 139.

7 Sheila Steen, "The Psychological Consequences of Acculturation Among the Cape Breton Micmac" (M.A. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1951), 79.

8 Sally Weaver maintains that leaderless portfolios, such as Indian Affairs between 1945 and 1950, produce complacency and resistance to change within the bureaucracy. Partly because officials have to devote their time to briefing new ministers, they become indifferent to public needs and feel less accountable for their actions. Since the ministers are not in office long enough to become fully apprised of current conditions, ministerial guidance is missing and new programs which might be in the offing go without political support. Sally M. Weaver, Makin Canadian Indian Polic The Hidden Agenda, 1968-70 (Toronto: University of oronto Press, 44-46.

9 Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian Administration, Province of Nova Scotia" by W .S. Arneil, 1941.

161

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Manuscript Collections

Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Angus L. Macdonald Collection. Folders 729 and 901.

Public Archives of Nova Scotia. MSS Documents. Volume 430.

Public Archives of Nova Scotia. MSS Documents. Journals of the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia, 1803.

Record Groups

Public Archives of Canada. Canada. Indian Affairs. RG 10, volumes 3220, 3222, 6810, 6815, 7624, 7625, 7626, 7627, 7758, 7907, 8553, 8583, 8585, 9016, 9019,9021,9022,9023,9026,9030.

Departmental Files

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Ottawa, files: 201/1-1, 201/29-6(3), 201/30-1, 274/1-1, 274/30-1{1).

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Treaties and Historical Research Centre documents: Bands, "Mic Mac Indians -Schedule of Reserves," Privy Council, 3 March 1960; Conferences, "Report of Discussions at Conference of Indian Agents from the Province of Quebec and the Maritimes, 1947"; Indian Reserves, "Millbrook Reserve (collection of interviews)," Royal Commission on Indian Affairs, October 1946; Indian Reserves, "Report on Indian Reserves of Nova Scotia," Royal Commission on Indian Affairs, 29 October 1949; History, "Chronology of Events of Relevance to the Indians of Atlantic Canada," 1974; History, "Management of Indian Affairs in the Maritimes, 1754-1939"; Indian Act, "Recommendations of the Special Joint Committee on Indian Affairs, 1948.11

Indian Affairs Publications and Reports

Canada. Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Indian Affairs Branch. Annual Reports. 19 50-1960.

Canada. Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Indian Affairs Branch. ·Census of Indians in Canada. 1954, 1959.

162

Canada. Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Indian Affairs Branch. A Review of Activities, 1948-1958. Ottawa, n.d.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs. Census of Indians in Canada. 1934.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The Canadian Indian: Statistics. Ottawa, 1973 --

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Indians of Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. Ottawa, 1970.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Linguistic and Cultural Affiliations of Canadian Indian Bands. Ottawa, 1970.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy. Ottawa, 1969.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Reserves and Trusts, Indian and Inuit Affairs Program. Estimated Registered Indian Population by Reserves as of December 31, 1982. Ottawa,l:984.

Canada. Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Reserves and Trusts, Indian and Inuit Affairs Program. Registered Indian Population by Sex and Residence for Bands, Responsibility Centres, Regions and Canada, December 31, 1983. Ottawa, 1985.

Canada. Department of Mines and Resources. Indian Affairs Branch. Annual Reports, 1937-1949.

Canada. Department of Mines and Resources. Indian Affairs Branch. Census of Indians in Canada. 1939, 1944.

Canada. Department of Mines and Resources. Indian Affairs Branch. "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian Administration, Province of Nova Scotia" by W .S. Arneil, August 1941.

Other Government Publications

Canada. Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Census, 1931, 1941, 19 51, 19 56.

Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Debates, 1900-1950.

Canada. Senate and House of Commons. Special Joint Committee to Consider the Indian Act. Minutes of the Proceedings and Evidence. 1946-1948.

Canada. Statistics Canada. Canada's Native People. Ottawa, 1984.

Nova Scotia. Department of Public Health. Annual Reports, 1937-1952.

Newspapers

Cape Breton Post, 7 May 1968.

Micmac News, April, June, 1985.

Halifax Mail, 27 June 1935.

Halifax Herald, 8 October 1947.

Sydney Post-Record, 8 May 1947.

Interviews by Lisa Patterson and Clifford Thomas, 1981

Denny, Sarah. Membertou. 3 July. Gould, Caroline. Whycocomagh. 7 July. Johnson, Margaret. Eskasoni. 14 July. MacMillan, Joe. Christmas Island. 28 July. Morris, Edward. Eskasoni. 24 July. Paul, John N. Eskasoni. 13 July. Prosper, Wilfred. Eskasoni. 15 July. Stevens, Dan K. Eskasoni. 27 July. Sylliboy, Anthonasius. Eskasoni. 6 July. Toney, Rita. Eskasoni. 6 July. Young, Frederick. Malagawatch. 22 July. Name withheld. Castle Bay. 28 July.

Interviews by Lillian Marshall, 1974-75

Abram, John. Millbrook. Bernard, Mrs. Freda. Shubenacadie. Bernard, Mrs. Tom. Eskasoni. Bernard, Mrs. William. Pictou. Christmas, Mrs. Tom. Sydney. Christmas, Mrs. Victor. Membertou. Denny, Michael. Pictou. Francis, Maurice. Pictou. Googoo, Mrs. Annie. Wagmatcook. Googoo, John. Wagmatcook. Googoo, Levi. Wagmatcook. Gould, John. Eskasoni. Howe, Mrs. Mary. Eskasoni. Isadore, Pierro. Wagmatcook. Jeddore, Mr. and Mrs. Victor. Eskasoni. Johnson, Mrs. Mary. Eskasoni. Julian, Mrs. Madeline. Shubenacadie. Mackenzie, Mrs. Roddie (Isabel). Pictou. Marshall, Caroline. n.p. Marshall, Noel. n.p.

163

Marshall, Mrs. Susan. Membertou. Matthews, Mrs. Agnes. Eskasoni. Matthews, Mrs. Richard. Membertou. Paul, Mrs. Leo. Shubenacadie. Paul, Mrs. Maggie. Eskasoni. Prosper, Mrs. Mary Katherine. Pictou. Sapier, Mrs. Belle. Pictou. Sappier, Martin. Pictou. Sylliboy, Mrs. Mary Ann. Eskasoni.

Contemporary Books and Reports

164

Canadian Tuberculosis Association. "The Tuberculosis Problem in Canada. A memorandum prepared for . the Royal Commission on Dominion­Provincial Relations." Ottawa, 1938.

Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943.

Nova Scotia Economic Council. Reports. 1936-1941. Halifax: King's Printer, 1938-1942.

Wallis, Wilson D. and Ruth Sawtell Wallis. The Micmac Indians of Eastern Canada. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955.

Contemporary Articles and Essays

Allan, D.J. "Indian Land Problems in Canada." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 184-198.

Dent, John C. "New Deal for Indians in Planning by M.P." Saturday Night, 30 March 1946, 10-11.

Glynn-Ward, H. "Canada's Indian Problem." The Dalhousie Review XXV, 1 (April 1945), 46-49.

Hart, C. W .M. "The Problem of Laws." Lor am, C. T. and T .F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 247-254.

Hoey, R.A. "Economic Problems of the Canadian Indian." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 199-206.

King, William Lyon Mackenzie. "The Issues as I see it." MacLean's Magazine, 15 March 1940, 12, 53.

165

McGill, Dr. H.W. "Policies and Problems in Canada." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 132-139.

Macinnes, T .R.L. "The History and Policies of the Indian Administration in Canada." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 152-163.

Robinson, Hazel A. "Blueprint for the Redman." The Canadian Forum, XXV (January 1946), 233-234.

Wescott, A.E. "Curricula for Indian Schools." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 283-293.

Woodsworth, J.F. "Problems of Indian Education in Canada." Loram, C.T. and T.F. Mcllwraith, eds. The North American Indian Today. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943, 265-274.

166

SECONDARY SOURCES

Books and Reports

Abella, Irving and Harold Troper. None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1983.

Cardinal, Harold. The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada's Indians. Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig, Ltd., 1969.

Clairmont, Donald H. and Dennis W. Magill. Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Ltd., 1974.

Clairmont, Donald H. and Dennis W. Magill. Africville Relocation Report. Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1973.

Clairmont, Donald H. and Dennis W. Magill. Nova Scotian Blacks: An Historical and Structural Overview. Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1970.

Daugherty, Wayne and Dennis Madill. Indian Government Under Indian Act Legislation, 1868-1951. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1980.

Daugherty, W .E. Maritime Indian Treaties in Historical Perspective. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1981.

De Mello, Stan and Fred Wien. "An Overview of the Characteristics of the Micmac Labour Force in Nova Scotia, 1980-81." Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1984.

Douglas, W .A.B. and Brereton Greenhous. Out of the Shadows: Canada in the Second World War. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Forbes, Ernest R. Aspects of Maritime Regionalism, 1867-1927. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association Booklet No. 36, 1983.

Getty, Ian A.L. and Antoine S. Lussier, eds. As Long as the Sun Shines and the Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983.

Granatstein, J.L. Canada's War: The Politics of the Mackenzie Government, 9 9-45. Toronto: Oxford University Press,

Granatstein, J.L., ed. Twentieth Century Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Ltd., 1983.

Hall, E. Foster, ed. Heritage Remembered: The Stor~ of Bear River. Bear River, N.S.: Bear River New Horizons Centre, 19 I.

167

Canada: wo volumes.

Henderson, William B. Canada's Indian Reserves: Pre-Confederation. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affaris, 1980.

Hodgetts, J.E. The Canadian Public Service: A Physiology of Government, 1867-1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973.

Joe, Rita. Poems of Rita Joe. Halifax: Abanaki Press, 1978.

Leslie, John and Ron Maguire, eds. The Historical Development of the Indian Act. Second Edition. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1978.

MacDonald, A.A. Community Resources and Dimensions of Alienation on Indian Reserves. Antigonish, N.S.: Extension Department, St. Francis Xavier University, 1967.

Macdonald, Angus L. Speeches of An~us L. Macdonald. With a biographical note by the Honorable J.L. Ilsley. oronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960.

McGee, Harold F., ed. The Native Peo les of Atlantic Canada: A History of Ethnic Interaction. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 97 •

MacMillan, Dr. C. Lamont. Memoirs of a Cape Breton Doctor. Markham, Ont.: Paperjacks, 1979.

Moore, Dorothy E. Micmac Culture and the Multiculturalism Policy. Ethnic Heritage Series, No. 6. Halifax: International Education Centre, St. Mary's University, 1983.

Morton, Desmond. A Short History of Canada. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, Ltd., 1983.

Patterson, E. Palmer 11. The Canadian Indian: A History Since 1500. Don Mills: Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., 1972.

Pickersgill, J. W. The Mackenzie King Record. Volumes 1-4. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960.

Pickersgill, J.W. My Years with Louis St. Laurent: A Political Memoir. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 197 5.

Ponting, J. Rick and Roger Gibbins. Out of Irrelevance: A Socio-political Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada. Toronto: Butterworth and Co. (Canada) Ltd., 1980.

168

Pross,

Sayers, William c., ed. Sammy Louis: The Life History of a Young Micmac. New Haven: The Compass Publishing Co., 1956.

Upton, L.F .S. Micmacs and Colonists: Indian White Relations in the Maritimes, 1713-1867. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1979.

Weaver, Sally M. Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda, 1968-70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.

Whitehead, Ruth Helms and Harold McGee. The Micmac: How Their Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, Ltd., 1983.

Wien, Fred. Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Micmac in Nova Scotia. Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1983.

Articles and Essays

Carstens, Peter. "Coercion and Change." Ossenberg, Richard, ed. Canadian Societ~ Pluralism, Change and Conflict. Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice Hall, 1 71, 126-146.

Doerr, Aubrey D. "Indian Policy." Doern, G. Bruce and V. Seymour Wilson, eds. Issues in Canadian Public Policy. n.p.: Macmillan of Co. of Canada, Ltd., 197 4, 36-54.

Dunning, R. W. "Some Aspects of Governmental Indian Policy and Administration." Anthropoligica IV, 2 (1962), 209-231.

Dunning, R.W. "The Indian Situation: A Canadian Governmental Dilemma." International Journal of Comparative Sociology (June 1971), ii, 128-134.

Frideres, James S. "Racism in Canada: Alive and Well." Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology VI, 4 (1976), 124-145.

Gibbins, Roger and J. Rick Panting. "Contemporary Prairie Perceptions of Canada's Native Peoples." Prairie Forum II, 1 (May 1977), 57-81.

Granatstein, J.L. "King and His Cabinet: The War Years." English, John and J.O. Stubbs, eds. Mackenzie King: Widening the Debate. Toronto: Macmillan, 1977, 173-190.

Hall, D.J. "Clifford Sifton and the Canadian Indian Administration, 1896-1905." Prairie Forum II, 2 (1977), 127-151.

Harper, Allan G. "Canada's Indian Administration: The Treaty System." America Indigena VII (April 1947), 129-148.

169

Harper, Allan G. "Canada's Indian Administration: Basic Concepts and Objectives." America Indigena IV, 2 (1945), 119-132.

Heeney, A.D.P. "Mackenzie King and the Cabinet Secretariat." Canadian Public Administration X, 3 (March 1967), 366-37 5.

Jaenen, Cornelius J. "Problems of Assimilation in New France, 1603-1645." Bumsted, J.M. Canadian History Before Confederation. Georgetown, Ont.: Irwin-Dorsey, Ltd., 1979.

Jorgensen, Joseph G. " A Century of Political Economic Effects on American Indian Society, 1880-1980." Journal of Ethnic Studies VI, 3 (Fall 1978), 1-82.

Larson, Tord. "Negotiating Identity: The Micmac of Nova Scotia." Tanner, Adrian, ed. The Politics of Indianness: Case Studies of Native Ethnopolitics in Canada. St. John's: Institute for Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1983.

Leslie, John F. "The Bagot Commission: Developing a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department." Paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Meeting, University of Ottawa, June 1982.

Loxley, John. "The 'Great Northern' Plan." Studies in Political Economy 6 (Autumn 1981), 151-182.

Neatby, H. Blair. "Mackenzie King and the Historians." English, John and J.O. Stubbs, eds. Mackenzie King: Widening the Debate. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1977, 1-14.

Patterson, E. Palmer II. "Andrew Paull (1892-1959): Finding a Voice for the 'New Indian'." Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology VI, 2 (1976), 63-82.

Pickersgill, J.W. "Mackenzie King's Political Attitudes and Public Policies: A Personal Impression." English, John and J.O. Stubbs, eds. Mackenzie King: Widening the Debate. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1977, 15-29.

Razzolini, Esperanza Maria. "A Safe and Secure Asylum: Government Attitudes and Approaches to the Amerindian Problem in Colonial Nova Scotia." Honours essay, History 499, Dalhousie University, 1974.

Sharp, Mitchell. "Decision-making in the Federal Cabinet." Canadian Public Administration XIX, 1 (Spring 1976), 1-8.

"Some Personal Views of Today's Micmac People." Tawow: Canadian Indian Cultural Magazine V, 2. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, I 97 •

170

Thomas, Robert K. Steele, eds. ~M~a~·~o~ri~t~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Relations. Boston:

Titley, E. Brian. "Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs." Paper presented at the tenth annual conference of the British Association of Canadian Studies, University of Edinburgh, 9-12 April 1985.

Tobias, John L. "Protection, Civilization, As~imilation: An Outline History of Canada's Indian Policy." Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology VII, 2 (1976), 13-20. .

Tremayne, Terry. "The Marshall Family: 'We're Still Suffering'." Atlantic Insight, June 1984, 34-36.

Theses

Gordon, Alexander E., Gordon Granchelli and Gregory Johnson. "Welfare Dependency on an Indian Reserve: A Study of the Attitudes of Residents at the Micmac Reserve, Hants County, N.S., Towards Traditional Indian Values and Towards Welfare Programs of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development." M.A. thesis, Maritime School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, 1971.

Leighton, James Douglas. "The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada, 1840-1890." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 1975.

McGee, Harold Franklin, Jr. "Ethnic Boundaries and Strategies of Ethnic Interaction: A History of Micmac-White Relations in Nova Scotia." Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology Department, Southern Illinois University, 1973.

Olsen, John A. "Comparative Changes in the Status of Indians in Canada and the United States since World War II." M.A. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1979.

Steen, Sheila. "The Psychological Consequences of Acculturation Among the Cape Breton Micmac." M.A. thesis, Anthropology Department, University of Pennsylvania, 1951.

171

APPENDIX A

Cost of Centralization in Nova Scotia to 31 March 19 50

AGENCY

Welfare

Land Housing, incl. sawmill

Agency

Land Salaries Roadwork, etc. New Buildings and works

Schools

Salaries Buildings Equipment

ESKASONI

$ 27,885.00 399,835.39

50,791.79 19,548.12 52,217.81

52,789.97 110,920.52

12,325.49

$'726,314.09

SHUBENACADIE

$ 6,300.00 342,907.99

600.00 28,.591.11 11,926.04 38,409.23

45,762.11 92,101.53

$566,598.01

Source: Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa, file 201/1-1, Director of Indian Affairs to Deputy Minister of Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 2 May 1950.

172

APPENDIX B

Ministers and Directors Responsible for Centralization

I. Departmental Ministers

T.A. Crerar

J.A. Glen

J.A. MacKinnon

c. W .G. Gibson

II. Directors of Indian Affairs

H.W. McGill

R.A. Hoey

Major D.M. MacKay

- resigned on 17 April 1945 at age 65 over conscription and defence policies

- summoned to Senate

- resigned on 10 June 1948 at age 71 due to ill health

- resigned on 31 March 1949 at age 68 to allow for appointment of C. W .G. Gibson

- summoned to Senate

- resigned on 17 January 1950 at age 59 to allow for appointment of W .E. Harris

- appointed Puisne Jupge, Supreme Court of Ontario

- retired in 1945 at age 65

- retired in 1948 at age 65

- died in office in 1953

APPENDIXC

Indian Reserves in Nova Scotia

.6 New RossA. SI.Croox

.6 Penna I

.A.Woldcat

Medway RoverLJ.

.6

... Shubenacadie L\.Beaver Lake

""-~~'~''""'

Cole Harbour

A lnhaboted

.6 Unonhaboted

Source: Canada, Energy, Mines and Resources, National Atlas Data Base Map Series, Map No. NADM-2, "Canada-Indian and Inuit Communities Atlantic Provinces," 1984.

Note: "Pictou Landing" includes Fishers Grant 24 & 24 G & Boat Harbour West; MJll­brook includes Truro A, B & C; Bear River B includes Bear River A. Only Fishers Grant 24 is inhabited.

~

...:I ~