Les bas du pensionnat

by Christy Jordan-Fenton

See below for English description.

Margaret supplie son père de la laisser aller à l'école des étrangers. Il finit par accepter. Mais avant, il met sa fille en garde : comme l'eau façonne la pierre, les étrangers vont façonner son esprit et le rendront étroit.



Au pensionnat, Margaret ne tarde pas à faire la connaissance du Corbeau, une religieuse au nez crochu et aux doigts longs et osseux comme des serres. Bien vite, le Corbeau se heurte à la fillette au tempérament fort. Pour lui montrer à quel point elle lui déplaît, le Corbeau distribue des bas gris à toutes les filles... sauf à Margaret qui en reçoit des rouge vif. La fillette devient aussitôt la risée de toute l'école.



The moving memoir of an Inuit girl who emerges from a residential school with her spirit intact.



Eight-year-old Margaret Pokiak has set her sights on learning to read, even though it means leaving her village in the high Arctic. Faced with unceasing pressure, her father finally agrees to let her make the five-day journey to attend school, but he warns Margaret of the terrors of residential schools.



At school Margaret soon encounters the Raven, a black-cloaked nun with a hooked nose and bony fingers that resemble claws. She immediately dislikes the strong-willed young Margaret. Intending to humiliate her, the heartless Raven gives gray stockings to all the girls -- all except Margaret, who gets red ones. In an instant Margaret is the laughingstock of the entire school.



In the face of such cruelty, Margaret refuses to be intimidated and bravely gets rid of the stockings. Although a sympathetic nun stands up for Margaret, in the end it is this brave young girl who gives the Raven a lesson in the power of human dignity.



Complemented by archival photos from Margaret Pokiak-Fenton's collection and striking artwork from Liz Amini-Holmes, this inspiring first-person account of a plucky girl's determination to confront her tormentor will linger with young readers.



Original Fatty A True Story

Kindle Edition

Published August 15, 2023

About the author

Christy Jordan-Fenton was born on a farm in rural Alberta. Her only dreams were to be a cowgirl, to dance with Gene Kelly and to write stories. As a youngster, she barrel-raced, rode on cattle drives, witnessed dozens of brandings, and often woke up on early spring mornings to find lambs, calves, and foals taking refuge in the bathroom.

Her parents divorced when she was seven, and she moved to town. She remembers the strange noise of the traffic at night and would describe the experience like moving to a foreign country. Luckily, she was blessed with a stepfather who loved the outdoors and often took her and her brother on day-long bike rides, and fishing and camping trips. From a young age, she was very aware of how his experiences as a Native affected both his life and the lives of her step-siblings. She has been passionate about Native rights ever since.

Christy attended a rural high school in Ontario with a population of 500 students collected from six different communities. She preferred a dance studio to the classroom and composed volumes of poetry during math classes. She also managed to read nearly every book by Mordecai Richler before graduating. Most of these were read by stealth during lectures.

Having had her head filled with too many lost generation romantic notions, she joined the infantry reserve and spent the next few years traveling from base to base. She was then accepted to Norwich University (VT) in the Corps of Cadets to study Peace, War and Diplomacy. While there, she was part of the Mountain Cold Weather Special Operations Company, played rugby, and often rode crazy carpets down the school’s ski hill.

She was awarded a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship and used it to study at the University of Queensland in Australia. She then returned to the United States where she worked developing a leadership challenge program for disadvantaged youth, and taught wilderness survival; however, unable to shake the travel bug, she left to spend a year in South Africa. Her fondest memories are of reading stories to street children at night.

Western Canada called her home and she traveled across the prairies working in the oil patch and riding bucking horses, before meeting her husband and settling down. They now live on a farm outside of Fort St. John, B.C., and have three small children, a handful of chickens, two rabbits, three dogs, a llama, and enough horses to outfit a small town.

A desire to raise her children with a healthy sense of self-esteem brought her back to her passion for Native issues. She is eternally grateful to her Inuvialuit mother-in-law for sharing her residential school experiences and was thrilled when the opportunity came for her to write about them in Fatty Legs (Fall 2010).

For Christy, dreams do come true. She is a student of natural horsemanship, is a performing cowgirl poet, and her work has appeared in Jones Ave., a quarterly devoted to poetry and reviews. She is currently working on several children’s stories, a novel for adults, and a short story collection. She has yet to dance with Gene Kelly.