Marie Louise
“…A few years later, Alex and Isabel Gadwa bade a sad farewell to their eldest daughter Mary Louise who would be attending the Onion Lake Boarding School. She was to stay there for two years during which time she worked her fingers to the bone scrubbing hardwood floors and mending endless piles of worn-out clothes. She came home a hardy girl and the few words she had learned to speak in the English language soon faded as the summer breezes of the Kehewin valley touched her face….
The first years of their lives together were dominated by the need for survival. Each new day brought them together as they struggled to make it on their own. The plague of that year [1918] claimed the lives of many of their friends. The stronger men of the reserve who were not taken with the sickness dug graves for their dead friends. The death toll mounted until Toussaint and other men had to dig huge graves and hold mass burials for their departed. This was the flu that followed the white man’s World War of 1914 – 1918 and the epidemic was world wide. Although at that time the Indians were not aware of this.
When the first warm breezes heralded in the spring, sorrow hung heavy like an ocean mist and soon the April showers would drench the graves and coax the flower buds into blossoms. The rain mingled with the tears on the faces of the people whose friends and relatives had died. Some entire house-holds were cleaned out. In one household, Toussaint and the other men found both parents and two children dead. Only the youngest a toddler, was alive and trying to nurse on her dead mother’s breasts. They bundled up the baby and dropped the bodies of the family into the pine box coffins. …” Read more…