I was very interested to read the article of December 1, in the Vancouver Sun "The Frontier Apostles of the North - The accusations behind John Furlong's libel suit date back to a different time and place".
In the 1940s and 1950s, when my father was in the Canadian Air Force, I changed schools more than 12 times in 12 years. In all the schools I attended, none of them Catholic, the strap was the main method of discipline. If you ask anyone who went to school in the 40s, 50s, 60s and possibly the early 70s, if they ever got the "strap", they will almost certainly tell you that they did - and more than once.
For example, in one school I attended on a military base, the teacher gave one stroke of the strap for each spelling mistake. I can remember watching as she lined the children up across the front of the classroom; from the very young ones to teenagers (there were several grades in her class). Then the teacher started at one side of the room, strapping her way across the room to the end of the long line. I never got the strap, but I hated going to that school. I'm sure each of this teacher's students suffered emotional and psychological trauma. A friend tells how children in her public school class got the strap for being late for school after the school bus got stuck in the snow.
After being strapped in school, some children were punished again (sometimes with a belt) at home.
Many millions of dollars have been awarded in law suits because of "abuse" in residential schools. If those who attended non-residential schools decided they should also be compensated for the abuse they suffered in public schools across Canada, where would all the money come from?
Even though, in our society today, these methods of punishment are deemed extreme and unacceptable, it is unreasonable that anyone should get compensated for discipline that was the accepted norm in schools at that time.
Diane Fuller
Prince George
