Ontario. Methodist, Anglican and Catholic pupils will be taken to the appropriate church in the city every Sunday morning. Catholic pupils also receive religious instruction Friday afternoons from 2 to 2:30 p.m.
The next is difficult to read and more difficult to know. Mamo has read this part twice and has discussed it with Agnes and Dermot. She knows it is a rule that must be complied with, but it bangs in discord inside her head as she forces herself to read again:
Pupils will not be permitted to go home for Christmas. If children are taken away at that time they will not be permitted to return until next fall. There is a good reason for this rule. It is impossible for a majority of the pupils to go home for Christmas—the distances are too great and the cost too much. If some went home, others would be rendered discontented and unhappy. Moreover, the work in the classroom would be greatly interfered with. If all or a large number went home, some would be almost sure to bring back contagious diseases, as frequently did happen in years gone by before this rule was made. Of course it is a great deprivation for you not to have your child with you at Christmas but this is one of the sacrifices love must make.
It is enough. An institution of rules and more rules. Mamo lets the papers slide to the floor. How can she not see the child for nine full months? And Christmas away! She herself has pushed the parents to send the child to school. She closes her eyes and makes no attempt to stop the tears from pouring freely down her cheeks.
Chapter 4
A number of years ago I visited a large school for the deaf, and taught all the pupils to use their voices. In a few cases the effect was decidedly unpleasant, the voice resembling somewhat the cry of a peacock.
Alexander Graham Bell
Belleville, Ontario
After the heavy doors close behind her, she is taken to the dormitory and shown to her bed. It is the second Wednesday of September. At the residential school that houses 271 students, Grania O’Neill is last to be admitted, last to arrive. She looks around her and begins to cry, and she cries for the next two weeks. “Don’t cry,” say the adult lips around her. “Be a good girl and don’t cry.”
No one but the hearing staff has to listen to the outflow of wails and miserable snufflings that escape her body. During the last three days of this period, she cries without sound. Her classmates see but do not interfere, remembering their own arrivals. There have been other new students and other tears, but Grania is the only child who cries without let-up for two weeks.
On September twenty-seventh the house mother pulls down the covers to wake Grania as she does every morning, and continues on to the other beds. Ceiling lights are on. It is five-fifteen. Grania has been dreaming that Father is in the doorway of his office. His lips distort as he calls out, “Where are you, my darling?” He turns away as Grania wakes, even though Grania shouts after him and tries to make him see that she is not lost.
She sits up, leans against the metal bed frame and decides that she is finished with crying. She flattens her unhappiness the way she and Tress once pressed leaves inside Tress’s book The Faeries and placed it high on the closet shelf. She gets up and follows the other girls to the hall and to the bathroom. She never sheds another tear at the institution, not during all the years she is a student. The whites of her eyes redden severely from time to time, but never again is Grania known to cry.
What she does not see is the bound ledger, the Descriptive Register of the institution, where several facts were recorded the day of her admission.
Date of Birth: May 25, 1896
Birthplace: Deseronto, Ontario
Cause of deafness: Scarlet fever, age five
Hearing loss: Total
She was vaccinated against the smallpox in 1903, has no offensive disease, and there are no other cases of deafness in the family. Her father, last name O’Neill, is the
The next is difficult to read and more difficult to know. Mamo has read this part twice and has discussed it with Agnes and Dermot. She knows it is a rule that must be complied with, but it bangs in discord inside her head as she forces herself to read again:
Pupils will not be permitted to go home for Christmas. If children are taken away at that time they will not be permitted to return until next fall. There is a good reason for this rule. It is impossible for a majority of the pupils to go home for Christmas—the distances are too great and the cost too much. If some went home, others would be rendered discontented and unhappy. Moreover, the work in the classroom would be greatly interfered with. If all or a large number went home, some would be almost sure to bring back contagious diseases, as frequently did happen in years gone by before this rule was made. Of course it is a great deprivation for you not to have your child with you at Christmas but this is one of the sacrifices love must make.
It is enough. An institution of rules and more rules. Mamo lets the papers slide to the floor. How can she not see the child for nine full months? And Christmas away! She herself has pushed the parents to send the child to school. She closes her eyes and makes no attempt to stop the tears from pouring freely down her cheeks.
Chapter 4
A number of years ago I visited a large school for the deaf, and taught all the pupils to use their voices. In a few cases the effect was decidedly unpleasant, the voice resembling somewhat the cry of a peacock.
Alexander Graham Bell
Belleville, Ontario
After the heavy doors close behind her, she is taken to the dormitory and shown to her bed. It is the second Wednesday of September. At the residential school that houses 271 students, Grania O’Neill is last to be admitted, last to arrive. She looks around her and begins to cry, and she cries for the next two weeks. “Don’t cry,” say the adult lips around her. “Be a good girl and don’t cry.”
No one but the hearing staff has to listen to the outflow of wails and miserable snufflings that escape her body. During the last three days of this period, she cries without sound. Her classmates see but do not interfere, remembering their own arrivals. There have been other new students and other tears, but Grania is the only child who cries without let-up for two weeks.
On September twenty-seventh the house mother pulls down the covers to wake Grania as she does every morning, and continues on to the other beds. Ceiling lights are on. It is five-fifteen. Grania has been dreaming that Father is in the doorway of his office. His lips distort as he calls out, “Where are you, my darling?” He turns away as Grania wakes, even though Grania shouts after him and tries to make him see that she is not lost.
She sits up, leans against the metal bed frame and decides that she is finished with crying. She flattens her unhappiness the way she and Tress once pressed leaves inside Tress’s book The Faeries and placed it high on the closet shelf. She gets up and follows the other girls to the hall and to the bathroom. She never sheds another tear at the institution, not during all the years she is a student. The whites of her eyes redden severely from time to time, but never again is Grania known to cry.
What she does not see is the bound ledger, the Descriptive Register of the institution, where several facts were recorded the day of her admission.
Date of Birth: May 25, 1896
Birthplace: Deseronto, Ontario
Cause of deafness: Scarlet fever, age five
Hearing loss: Total
She was vaccinated against the smallpox in 1903, has no offensive disease, and there are no other cases of deafness in the family. Her father, last name O’Neill, is the
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