While P.E.I. didn’t have any Indian Residential Schools, former students of Indian Day Schools experienced the same kind of horrors faced by Indigenous communities elsewhere in Canada. Students who say that the federal campaign of assimilation, including the eradication of Indigenous languages and culture, is very much a part of P.E.I.’s history.

P.E.I. had two of these Day Schools in Rocky Point between 1915 and 1922 but most children were forced to attend the day school on Lennox Island, taught by Catholic nuns and priests, as well as lay teachers who were not members of religious communities. Jessica Doria-Brown brings us the stories of three former students of the school.