Abuse at Burnaby’s Willingdon School made inmate lose “humanity, hope, innocence, and joy”

This is Part 2 of a Burnaby Beacon series looking at the alleged abuses suffered by girls who were incarcerated at Willingdon School for Girls in Burnaby between 1959-1973. You can read Part 1 of the series here.

This story contains graphic details about physical and sexual violence, and incidents reminscent of those that occurred at residential schools, that can be distressing for some readers.

The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24/7 for anyone experiencing distress as a result of their residential school experience. You can reach them at 1800-721-0066.

P.S. (name withheld to respect the victim’s privacy) says her first experience with violence and abuse at Willingdon School for Girls in Burnaby was in the admissions unit, as soon as she arrived at the age of 13.

“There I was stripped naked by the staff of the school and vigorously scrubbed with what I believe was a delousing chemical. The chemical stung my eyes, the fumes were so strong that my lungs burned and breathing was difficult. The smell of the chemical they used to scrub my body has never left my memory—to this day I am haunted by the smell,” P.S. wrote.

“During this event I was completely naked and exposed … I was shocked, confused, scared, and embarrassed. My memory of this horrific experience is so vivid that although it happened over fifty years ago, it feels like it happened just yesterday.”

The details are part of an affidavit written by P.S. to support a proposed class action lawsuit in the BC Supreme Court seeking damages for those who were incarcerated in the provincially-owned and operated Willingdon School for Girls between 1914-1973.

The class action was commenced by a former detainee at the school, Joanne Wesley, in 2020 and a certification hearing is expected to be scheduled for the spring of 2023, according to counsel for the plaintiff Patrick Dudding.

Wesley’s notice of civil claim alleges that girls at the school were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, forced sterilizations, overcrowding, deprivation of basic human necessities like hygiene products and medical attention, and conditions unfit for human habitation.

None of the allegations have been proved in court.

Girls incarcerated for “incorrigibilty” and “unmanageability”

The correctional facility, moved from Vancouver to Willingdon Avenue near the current site of BCIT in 1959, held girls under 21 who were accused of a wide range of offenses—but many of them were not criminal.

Some were incarcerated for traits such as “incorrigibility,” “unmanageability,” and “sexual immorality,” and many of them were placed in the facility simply because they had a difficult relationship with their parents.

While at times, more than half the girls there were Indigenous—far disproportionate to the general population—the school itself was not specifically designed to hold Indigenous people, meaning that it’s not included in any other settlements involving Indian residential schools or day schools.

“The tragedy about it is that a lot of them were imprisoned for things like drinking, that were not offences or crimes if you were white,” Dudding told the Beacon in an interview.

“So you had people being taken away from their families—Indigenous girls being taken away—for something that wouldn’t get you taken away from your family if you were a white person.”

At the time, the home (and its predecessor in Vancouver, the Provincial Industrial School for Girls) was well known for its horrific conditions and for allegations of rampant physical and sexual abuse by staff and students.

“It does seem to me that things have [now] fallen a little bit out of the public consciousness, which I think is really to the detriment of these class members, because I think we all need to know what transpired there,” Dudding said.

“… What I can tell you is that the descriptions that [the survivors] have—it’s the sort of thing that no British Columbian would want to go through themselves and no one would ever want their children to go through. It’s as bad as it gets.”

The Third Dormitory

P.S., who is Cree-Metis, said in her affidavit that she was taken to Willingdon around 1969 after she was arrested in Washington State, where she was spending a month with a friend picking apples at an orchard. This was something many First Nations would do to earn extra money over the summer, she wrote. The First Nations family they had travelled with had dropped the young pair off at the orchard and planned to pick them up a month later.

But police showed up at the orchard and arrested them both, deeming them runaways because their parents were not with them. When they were taken back to Canada, her friend was sent back to her family’s reservation—but because her mother was a single, non-status woman who didn’t live on a reservation, P.S. was sent to Willingdon School for Girls.

P.S. tells the Beacon that she had never been charged with a crime nor stepped foot in a courtroom before she was sent to the facility—but that sending girls there “seemed to be something that the police and the courts did back then.”

She alleges the horrors began immediately.

“After I was scrubbed and my hair was hacked I was taken to the school doctor where a ‘medical exam’ was performed. The exam was horrific. I know I have repressed most of my memories of this terrible experience because of how traumatizing it was, but I do remember that it included a gynecological procedure to which I never consented, and which was never explained to me,” she wrote.

“As a young girl who had never been sexually active, this procedure was particularly horrifying, confusing, scary, painful, and traumatizing.”

P.S. says she spent the majority of the next three years incarcerated at Willingdon School for Girls.

She alleges that violence between girls inside the Third Dormitory, where she was placed after several escape attempts branded her a “troublemaker,” was commonplace.

P.S. wrote that the girls in that dormitory were the first people in her life to introduce her to the idea of selling her body and sexuality to survive. They would take off their clothes and make sexually suggestive gestures through the common room windows to male school employees or groundkeepers working outside, who, she claims, would give then them candy, cigarettes, or money.

“I was just 14-years-old when I first witnessed this. This experience taught me that it was normal to exploit my sexuality in exchange for things I needed or wanted,” she said.

“Inside the Third Dormitory, I learned about a place called Gastown from the older girls. The girls said it was a place where older men would give you food and a place to sleep.”

Escape attempts

P.S. became well acquainted with Gastown in the years she spent at Willingdon School for Girls. She made many escapes from the facility, sprinting up a long road to scale a tall, barbed wire fence that would leave her covered in cuts in her bid for freedom. She still carries many of those scars today.

From there, she would on three occasions hitchhike to her mother’s house in Lillooet—but the police would find her there and take her back to Burnaby.

“My mother had been diagnosed with cancer and I was desperate to see her. … This experience was extremely traumatizing, I remember my mother and I sobbing, desperately begging the police not to take me back to the school. I remember my mother grasping my body tightly in an effort to prevent the police from taking me away again.”

Knowing that the police were likely to find her in Lillooet, P.S. said she began escaping to Gastown instead, where she would often spend the night meeting older men in bars in hopes they would give her food or a couch to sleep on—many of them drug dealers or criminals.

She wasn’t the only one to attempt escapes—Wesley’s notice of civil claim asserts that at any given time, as many as 25% of girls meant to be incarcerated were instead classified as “AWOL”.

The persistent problem was also one well-known to BC politicians.

“The Vancouver City Police have catalogued case after case where girls from Willingdon School, at the ages of 16 and 15, escaped from that school, went downtown and immediately went into prostitution—an opportunity that did not exist in the small towns that they came from throughout this whole Province of British Columbia,” Burnaby-North NDP MLA Eileen Dailly told the BC Legislature in 1973.

“But as soon as they arrived in Willingdon they were made available for that prostitution market.”

When escapees were brought back, the claim alleges that they would be subjected to forced genital examinations by the school physician—who, allegedly, performed more than 450 genital examinations a year.

The Hole

Escapees would then be put into a solitary confinement cell known as “The Hole”—a small cement room with only a small window near the ceiling for light and slit in the door where food would be pushed through three times a day.

The room held a mattress on the floor and a toilet and sink unit with no other furniture. P.S. asserts she was never provided with any hygiene products, books, or anything else to pass the time—she could only talk through the slits in the door with other girls held in neighbouring cells.

Wesley alleges in her notice of civil claim that school staff would frequently ogle the girls through the slit in the door while they changed clothes or used the toilet, leading many victims to hold their bowel movements for as long as possible while being held in The Hole. Wesley says she developed irritable bowel syndrome as a result of this.

While most stints in The Hole lasted two weeks, P.S. recalls her longest punishment there as lasting six weeks.

“To this day I am amazed that I did not suffer psychotic episodes as a result of being locked in solitary confinement for such extended periods of time,” P.S. wrote in her affidavit.

“My memories of The Hole have never left me. I will be haunted by my time in those cells for the rest of my life.”

Although it was billed as a school, P.S. has no memory of ever attending a class at Willingdon—nor was she permitted to read books. Instead, she spent the majority of her time at the facility locked in her dormitory.

The only thing she remembers being taught are Bible verses, which would earn girls the privilege to watch movies or go to the pool occasionally. She says she now understands that there was a concerted effort at the school to indoctrinate Indigenous girls into Christianity.

“At all times while I was at the school the staff made me feel like a dangerous, scary, and worthless half-breed who needed to be socialized, cultured, and transformed into a white person,” P.S. said.

“I couldn’t understand why I was locked in a prison when I had never committed a crime. I verily believe that solely because of my Indigenous heritage I was branded as ‘bad’ and ‘savage’ and as ‘less than’ as soon as I arrived at the school.”

Wesley said that many of the girls at the school would hide their Indigenous heritage from staff, because revealing it would result in more severe abuse and “being singled out for cultural eradication by the school staff”.

Girls were forced to practice Christianity at the school, Wesley alleged.

P.S. says she was released from the school at age 16. By all accounts, she has led an incredible life since, earning her GED years later and going on to achieve success and respect in the academic world.

But the shadow of Willingdon School for Girls still lurks in her memory.

“My incarceration at the school destroyed my childhood and my sense of self-worth, and almost destroyed my life. I lost my humanity, my hope, my innocence, my innate joy, and my connection to my family as a result of my time at the school. … [Willingdon] completely derailed and changed the direction of my life,” P.S. said.

“While I have worked extremely hard to put my time at the school behind me I struggle constantly with feelings of self doubt and worthlessness. I do not believe I will ever be able to completely move past or recover from the devastating, permanent harm I suffered because of the school.”