Residential School Riot

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Tasting Freedom

One evening 60 years ago, some 100 students at the Edmonton Indian

Residential School took control in a little-known riot

Written by Wawmeesh Hamilton

Oct 15, 2021

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

In her three years at the Edmonton Indian Residential School, Helen Johnson figures she opened hundreds of cans of Spork.

Working in the school’s cafeteria, it was her job to dole out small portions of the foul-smelling meat for her fellow students to eat — paltry meals that left Johnson with hunger pangs and painful migraines.

“It was like a place which was worse than the jail, I think. At least they had meals every day, three meals a day,” she said. “We’d eat pork, pork, pork every day. Tons of pork.”

They’d have other meals, too. Lumpy oatmeal in the morning. A single egg at lunch. But all the offerings were meagre, and every meal was supplemented by Spork.

Staff meals, on the other hand, consisted of chicken, pork chops, steak and other choice cuts of beef. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Bread and butter. Jam. Dessert.

One May evening in 1961, her anger about that disparity reached a breaking point.

She had had enough.

So when a staff member left the cafeteria early, leaving Johnson and her friend, Maria Douglas, unsupervised, they took advantage.

Hauling the boxes of Spork into the school’s hallway, they started throwing the cans against the wall. Curious students stopped to watch their breakfast, lunch and supper fly through the air.

​Listen to the radio documentary about the 1961 riot at the Edmonton Indian Residential School.

In the ensuing hours, what followed was a full-scale riot that saw approximately 100 students overpower an outnumbered staff, taking over the school until police put down their resistance.

The riot may be the only one in Canadian residential school history.

“Me, I felt like I had power,” Johnson said of that night. “I felt, ‘I have to have the power that was taken from me,’ and I felt good about it.”

Edmonton Res school

The Hallway

Johnson’s anger had been building for much longer than she realized.

At age 12, she and her older brother had been taken from their home in Lax Kw’alaams, in northern British Columbia. The pair were first brought to St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay, on Vancouver Island.

She was issued a number: 134. The number became a student’s identity, emblazoned on their books, equipment and even clothing.

Johnson spent three years in Alert Bay before being moved 975 kilometres away to the school near Edmonton, where a lot of Indigenous children from northern B.C. were moved. Right away, it looked all too familiar.

“I felt really sick inside because the colour of the school was the same thing as Alert Bay,” she said, describing the drab, red brick building.

Helen Johnson. (Ben Shannon/CBC)

Located on the city’s outskirts, in the town of St. Albert, the Edmonton Indian Residential School was managed by the United Church of Canada, operating from 1924 to 1968. The building housed both boys and girls, aged six to 17, in separate wings.

By the 1960s, the students lived at the school, but were bused into town to attend classes at a local public school. Early mornings, evenings and weekends were spent studying, doing laundry and cleaning the facility. Physical abuse was common, particularly if a student was caught speaking in their home language.

On that fateful morning, after they tired of tossing the cans of Spork, Johnson and Douglas started unpacking boxes of staff provisions — bread, butter, jam, apples, oranges and other treats — and started feeding it to a growing throng of fellow students.

Johnson said she felt for the younger students, sometimes too small to fend for themselves, and gave them their food first, telling them to go hide and eat it, before anyone tried to take it away.

“A lot of them were laughing, a lot of them were hollering — like ‘Yahoo! Way to go,’” she said. “They were happy.”

The Riot

There is much more to this story; it's a great read right to the end.

Alert Bay, Prince Rupert (top left), Edmonton (top right)