St. John's School

From its fledgling start in 1894 with six boarders, the St. John’s Mission Wapuskaw School doubled its residential enrolment within two years and expansion continued. By 1903, the government had recognized St. John’s as a boarding school eligible for per capita grants based on an authorized enrolment of fifteen. This date is often taken as the time of the school’s establishment. In the early years, St. John’s School also accepted a few day students, mostly non-native children of local settlers. Farming activity commenced soon after the school’s founding and about 12 acres was under cultivation or used as pasture—about a quarter of the total school land owned by the Church. Unlike its Anglican sister schools at Whitefish Lake and Lesser Slave Lake, the Wabasca School suffered the ravages of multiple outbreaks of tuberculosis, especially prior to World War I.

At Lake Wabasca, and throughout the area of the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Agency, the Roman Catholic Church was also active, having established six boarding schools and registering the vast majority of native and Métis children in its schools. In 1901, St. Martin’s Catholic Boarding School opened at Wabasca-Desmarais, 8 km south of the Anglican mission. Intense rivalry continued between these church missions for many years.

In 1911, the Diocese of Athabasca assumed responsibility for St. John’s School when it signed an agreement with the government which detailed Ottawa’s funding contribution and the Church’s obligation to maintain the facilities and supply staff. The Church Missionary Society continued to provide grants to the school until 1923 when operation was transferred to the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (MSCC). The MSCC, through its agency the Indian and Eskimo School Commission, had also taken over most of the other similar Anglican Indian residential schools in Canada.

During the 1920s, the Church was hard pressed to make all the needed repairs to St. John’s School, as well as the other two schools in the region—St. Peter’s at Lesser Slave Lake and St. Andrew’s at Whitefish Lake. These three residential schools were small and outdated. In 1926, Indian Affairs first proposed the amalgamation of all three with a large new school to be constructed at the St. Peter’s site. However, the Bishop of Athabasca opposed the plan, fearing the closing of the schools at Whitefish Lake and Wabasca would leave the remaining Catholic schools as the preferred institutions for children formerly attending the Anglican schools. MSCC pressed Ottawa for money to be spent on the existing schools for short-term relief. The Lesser Slave Lake School closed in 1932, with most students relocating to Whitefish Lake, which was closer.