"Indian Affairs and the Nova Scotia Centralization Policy"

INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE
NOVA SCOTIA CENTRALIZATION POLICY
by
LISA LYNNE PATTERSON
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University,
September 1985.
Examiners:

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY
Author: LISA LYNNE PATTERSON
Title: INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE
NOVA SCOTIA CENTRALIZATION POLICY
l)epartment: History
Degree: Master of Arts Convocation: Fall Year: 1985
Permission is herewith granted to Dalhousie University to circulate
and to have copied for non-commerical purposes, at its discretion, the above
title upon the request of individuals or institutions.
L?~-c;x Signature of Author
lo AiyL~ I'IBS
Date
THE AUTHOR RESERVES OTHER PUBLICATION RIGHTS, AND
NEITHER THE THESIS NOR EXTENSIVE EXTRACTS FROM IT MAY BE
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PERMISSION.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE CENTRALIZATION CONCEPT 11
III. MAKING THE DECISION TO CENTRALIZE 43
IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF CENTRALIZATION 63
V. THE CENTRALIZATION EXPERIENCE 99
VI. THE AFTERMATH 119
VII. WORLD WAR II: A WATERSHED IN CANADIAN
INDIAN POLICY 136
VIII. INDIAN AFFAIRS AND THE CENTRALIZATION POLICY 149
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
Cost of Centralization in Nova Scotia
to 31 March 1950
Ministers and Directors Responsible for
Centralization
Indian Reserves in Nova Scotia
161
171
172
173

i
ABSTRACT
The prelude to and the administration and aftermath of the relocation
scheme known as "centralization" together constitute a large segment of the
history of Nova Scotia Micmacs under the government of Canada. As a plan to
save the government money and promote the self-sufficiency of Indians by
controlling them and improving their education and health care, the attempt to
concentrate the province's status Indians at two isolated reserves was a failure.
In 1949, seven years after centralization began, the policy was abandoned with
half of the 2,500 Indians still on at least fifteen of their forty reserves and ten
off-reserve sites.
A wartime financial crisis had coincided with an increase in Canada's
Indian population causing the government to respond, in 1942, to long-standing
complaints about Nova Scotia Indians and the administration of their affairs.
Unavoidably perhaps, the method chosen was consistent with colonial philosophy,
the basis of the legislation governing Indians. In keeping with the contradictory
nature of the Indian Act, Indian Affairs maintained that removing the Micmacs
to remote central reserves equipped as "rehabilitative" institutions would hasten
their assimilation. A step in the continuum representing the diminution of
Indians' place in Canadian society, centralization also manifested Indian Affairs'
tendency to try to improve its efficiency and lessen government costs by
reducing the number of places in which Indians lived -- especially when disease
and assimilation were not reducing their numbers.
As effected, centralization proved to be a presumptuous, adventuresome
and completely inappropriate scheme reflecting the insensitivity, paternalism and
lack of expertise characteristic of the Indian administration of the 1940s.

ii
Although centralization had none of the attributes of an effective policy for
social change, the government was deaf to Indian and white protests against it.
Pressure to move to the Eskasoni and Shubenacadie reserves was kept up until
nation-wide social and political factors altered overall Indian policy. Only during
major national crises did Indians in Nova Scotia warrant the government's
attention. The result of the Second World War was that, after a century of
neglect, Nova Scotia Micmacs suddenly bore the full brunt of Canadian Indian
policy.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was made possible by the financial support of the Union of
Nova Scotia Indians and Dalhousie University. I would like to thank Stu Killen,
Harold McGee and Fred Wien for helping me select the topic, and also June
Lewis, Pauline Lewis, Barbara Sylliboy and Cliff Thomas for their assistance
with the interviews. Bruce Daniels and Dorothy Patterson supplied valuable
editorial comments. I remain indebted to these and many other individuals who
made the completion of this project not only possible but a pleasure.

1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Had any status Indians been living in Guysborough County, every county
of the province of Nova Scotia would have had a registered Indian population in
1942. As it was, 2,165 Indians were distributed among seventeen counties.
Shelburne County had the fewest, with only twenty-eight, and Richmond County,
with two hundred and forty-seven, had the most.1 That year, in the midst of the
Second World War, the Indian Affairs Branch of the federal Department of Mines
and Resources initiated a relocation scheme it called "centralization." Its goal
was to concentrate on the Eskasoni reserve in Cape Breton and the Shubenacadie
reserve on the Mainland all of Nova Scotia's registered Indians. By collecting
them at two central locations, the government expected to reduce costs for
Indian welfare, education and health care; ease local complaints; and give Indian
Affairs, the clergy and the RCMP greater control over Indian life.
By the end of the war, Indian Affairs' interest in moving Nova Scotia's
entire Indian population to two reserves began to wane. Barely half the required
number had been relocated when centralization was finally discontinued in 1949.
Only the Malagawatch reserve was vacated under the policy. The other
"outlying" reserves gave to the two central reserves many of their poor and
elderly as well as some of their natural leaders, skilled workers, returning
veterans and young families, but Eskasoni and Shubenacadie proved incapable of
supporting their expanded populations. Centralization affected Indian life in the
province more than any other post-Confederation event; today, its social,
economic and political effects are still felt.
The impact of centralization is part of the rationale for this examination

2
of the scheme's genesis, administration and eventual abandonment. In addition,
this essay will endeavour to relate the history of the centralization policy to the
history of Indian Affairs in Canada and that of Indian affairs in Nova Scotia.2 It
will consider the broader context in which decisions about Nova Scotia Indians
were made to show how centralization was affected by certain changes in
twentieth century Indian policy.
Heretofore, the historical experience of Nova Scotia Indians under the
government of Canada has not been a subject of scholarly enquiry. L.F.S.
Upton's Micmacs and Colonists discussed Indian-white relations in the Maritimes
from 1713 to 1867, but developments after 1867 have not been documented.
Centralization exacerbated the "invisibility" of Indians in Nova Scotia which --
probably as much as the uneventful administration of their affairs to 1942 -- may
have contributed to historians' lack of interest in them.
The Canadian government adopted the colony of Nova Scotia's system
for governing local Indians shortly after Confederation and continued it without
significant modification until the Second World War. Overseen by nineteen part-
time Indian agents, Nova Scotia Indians lived on about half of their forty small
reserves, moving about to work, hunt, fish and sell handicrafts. They also lived
on the outskirts of several Mainland towns and cities. Although complaints about
their lot were frequently aired in the House of Commons, the Minister
responsible in 1905 astutely replied:
••• it is in securing their livelihood that the Indians of
Nova Scotia wander from their reserves, and I would
take it that if the government exercised pressure to
keep them on the reserve the government would
thereby incur a moral responsibility to provide for their
support that it is not called upon to do at the present
time.3
Since the government had not entered into treaties with the province's relatively

3
few Indians, it perceived its obligations towards them in the most limited terms.
Minimal education, health care and relief were provided but, otherwise, the
Indians were expected to fend for themselves. Only when relief costs began to
soar did the government move to alter its administrative arrangements in Nova
Scotia. The concept of centralization was first articulated in departmental
memos during the First World War. Although there was a short-lived effort to
reduce the number of Indian agents in 1932, centralization was not really
attempted until the spring of 1942 when an Order in Council authorized the
concentration of the province's Indians at just two reserves.
Many gaps exist in the government's record of the centralization policy.
Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church has been unwilling to share whatever
records it may have pertaining to the scheme, and so far private papers and
newspapers have yielded little 'of value. If further sources are discovered it may
become possible to compare the progress of centralization on the Mainland and
in Cape Breton; however, with the material currently available, one cannot
quantify statements about how centralization affected individual reserves. The
dearth of specific information also makes it difficult to compare developments
at Eskasoni and Shubenacadie. Since the' likelihood of locating additional printed
sources is not great, future research may have to rely on oral history which
becomes increasingly difficult with the passage of time.
Indian affairs in Canada have been largely determined by the Indian Act
of 1876 and its subsequent amendments. Though modified in 1951, the sense of
the first consolidated Indian Act still influences almost every aspect of Indian
life. Consequently, it will be of benefit to consider some of the effects of the
Indian Act and the reserve system' before proceeding with the discussion of
centralization. For example, status or registered Indians
4
normally do not

4
receive services such as education, health care and housing assistance from
provincial and municipal governments as do other Canadians.5 Having given up
virtually all of their lands and resources to Canada, Indians are exempt from
taxation but, until 1960, they did not have the right to vote in federal elections.
Due to the reserves and legal framework that developed in the colonial era,
status Indians are unlike any other ethnic group in that they are a collection of
partial nations deliberately set apart from the rest of Canadian society.
Securing the co-operation and loyalty of the continent's indigenous
peoples made eminent strategic sense when the Europeans were first extending
their influence into North America. The French and British offered gifts and
protection to Indians willing to be their friends, business partners or military
allies. Agreements necessitated by British/French rivalries established
protection as the first tenet of British Indian policy. The Royal Proclamation
of 1763, which affirmed aboriginal rights to the land and made the government
the middleman in the settlement process, subsequently entrenched protection as
an inalienable concept.6 Later, when settlers began to occupy Indian territory,
further promises of goods, services and protected lands were made in order to
acquire land and keep the peace. Once the colonial population was well-
established the imperial government embraced, through legislation, the
missionaries' conviction that native North Americans should be converted to
Christianity and "civilized." Thus, the British government locked itself into a
paradoxical position with respect to Indians by virtue of its other obligation to
protect them.
Unable and unwilling to accept the prospect of a marriage between the
Indians' values, customs and languages and their own, the colonizers missed the
one opportunity that existed -- if only in theory -- to create a distinctively

5
Canadian, as opposed to Western European, identity here. The social attitudes of
nineteenth century Britain precluded the development of a full and fair
partnership with aboriginal peoples. When the Canadian government
incorporated British Indian policy into its Indian Act, that legislation became a
reflection of the prevailing belief in Anglo-Saxon racial and cultural superiority.
Most Indians were permanently shut out of Canada's social, economic and
political life as a result. Since the federal government continued to perceive
"the Indian Problem" as the failure of Indians to cease being Indian rather than
the refusal of white society to incorporate them, its efforts to solve the Indians'
predicament were limited to various strategies for their assimilation. Opinions
differed about how best to transform Indians into citizens, but doing so was the
only way the government could rid itself of its legal obligation to protect and
maintain Indians in perpetuity.
As will be discussed in Chapter Two, most Eastern and Central Canadian
Indians were r~legated to their protected lands by 1830.7 Since then, there has
been an ongoing debate over whether reserve life retards or promotes
acculturation. While successive governments did try to turn reserves into social
laboratories for purging Indian ways, the reserves functioned mainly as a refuge
for Indians and as a means of securing for the white man the freedom to exploit
Indian resources, and ultimately the Indians themselves. If any guilt was felt
about the establishment of these minority enclaves it was conveniently offset by
a strong sense of liberal paternalism. Seeing itself as the Indians' guardian, the
government felt it knew what was best.
8
Indians' views regarding their own longterm welfare were systematically
ignored in the formulation of the Indian Act and the policy that flowed from it.
9
It functioned as an instrument of social control by defining all aspects of the

6
Indians' relationship to Canadian society. Containing elements of some two
dozen different acts of the provinces, and in some cases overriding other federal
legislation, the Indian Act can be seen as a "constitution" for Indians that has the
force of the Criminal Code. 10
During the half century with which this essay is primarily concerned,
Indian agents were responsible for administering government policy on reserves.
In 1938 the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs expressed the view that:
••• one of the most important cogs in the wheel of
Indian administration is the Indian agent • • • some of ·
the necessary, almost indispensable qualities that he
needs are· firmness, sympathy and understanding, and a
little bit of missionary spirit. He must win the
confidence of the people he is looking after; for in
many respects they are like children.ll
Evidently, the government's perception of Indians had undergone little change
since the first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, explained that Canadian
Indian policy was "to wean" the Indians from their habits "by slow degrees" and
12
"absorb" them on the land. Official statements about the importance of
agents notwithstanding, the Nova Scotia experience also demonstrated that
Ottawa could be as patronizing towards its agents in far-flung locations as it was
towards the Indians in their charge.
The Indian agent's primary task was to promote agricultural self-
sufficiency on the reserve. Since reserve land was often ill-suited to agriculture
and most Indians had little desire to become farmers, agricultural efforts seldom
met the Department's expectations. Viable businesses and industries were also
difficult to establish because the legal straitjacket of the Indian Act curtailed
the infusion of outside capital into the Indian economy and made entre-
preneurial excursions beyond the reserve virtually impossible.
13
In 1981, the
average unemployment rate on Canadian Indian reserves was 68 per cent, with

7
the rate in Nova Scotia even higher.
14
Probably believing that Indians were likely to die out before they became
assimilated, the Canadian public remained apathetic towards them until after
the Second World War. Awareness of Indian conditions was so limited that
almost no public money was available for the types of staff, education and
programs that might have eased the entry of Indians into the wider society.
During the interwar years, therefore, Indian Affairs maintained what might be
described as a holding pattern.
Indian Affairs officials tended to regard themselves as the sole experts
on the subject of Indians. Frequently from military or religious backgrounds,
they lent an air of authoritarianism to a sector of government that, in all its
incarnations, was conservative and inward-looking. With Canadian Indian policy
flounderi~g throughout most of its history, those responsible for Indian welfare
felt obliged to keep up at least an appearance of wisdom and benevolence.
Things were in such a sorry state by 1939 that the Secretary of the Indian Affairs
Branch went so far as to credit his masters with the very existence of Indians:
For a time it seemed that they were doomed. But the
government determined that the race should be
saved.l5
In 1942, the coincidence of an increase in the Canadian Indian population
and a national financial crisis pushed the government to drastic measures.
Unfortunately, a legislative framework rooted in colonial practice restricted its
vision as well as its course of action. Since the Indian Act was based on the
dichotomy of protection and advancement, a plan which required further
isolation was duly selected to promote assimilation in Nova Scotia. After the
war, it became apparent to some that the government's various efforts to
eliminate "the Indian Problem" were being undermined by the nature of the Act.

8
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, changes in overall Indian policy precluded
the completion of centralization -- a scheme that by then had proven itself to be
not only presumptuous and adventuresome but completely inappropriate.
To show how Indian policy in Nova Scotia during the 1940s sprang from
the thinking of the past, the next chapter will trace the evolution of the concept
of centralization from colonial times to the Second World War. Chapter Three
will explain how and why the decision to centralize was made in the year 1942.
The outline of the policy's implementation in Chapter Four relies on the
available official record; and Chapter Five draws on oral history to fill in gaps in
that account. Some consequences of the relocation scheme, evident in the 1950s
and 1960s, are mentioned in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven provides an analysis of
the demise of centralization, and conclusions follow in Chapter Eight.

9
Notes - Chapter I
1 Public Archives of Canada (PAC), Indian Affairs, RG 10, volume 7758, file
27050-2, Pt. 2, ca. July 1942.
2 Indian affairs consists of Indian issues and problems as well as the
relationship between Indians and the government. Indian Affairs represents
any of the branches or departments of government that have been
responsible for Indian affairs. In the first six years after Confederation
Indian Affairs was associated with the Department of the Secretary of
State. In 1873 it was transferred to the Department of the Interior and,
although it became the Department of Indian Affairs in 1880, it retained its
association with that department by coming under the aegis of the Minister
of the Interior until 1936 when it became a branch of the Department of
Mines and Resources. Until 1950, when Indian Affairs was transferred to
the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indians were viewed in the
context of western development and, therefore, seldom commanded the full
attention of the responsible minister. D.J. Hall, "Clifford Sifton and the
Canadian Indian Administration, 1896-1905," Prairie Forum II, 2 (1977), 128.
3 Canada, Parliament, House of Commons Debates, IV (1905), 6515.
4 "Status" or "registered" Indians are persqns under the legal jurisdiction of
the federal Indian Act and named in a register kept by Indian Affairs.
Slightly more than half of the 300,000 status Indians in Canada are
descendants of Indians who signed treaties. Few treaties were signed in the
Maritimes, Quebec and British Columbia. "Non-status" Indians are those
who either were never registered or who lost their status through
enfranchisement or marriage to a non-Indian man. The 1981 census
recorded approximately 75,000 non-status Indians. Canada's 98,000 Metis,
the offspring of Indian and white (usually French) marriages, are often
associated with non-status Indians; however, it should be noted that persons
of mixed blood and even no Indian blood may also have Indian status.
Several thousand of Canada's 25,000 Inuit (Eskimos) are also governed by the
Indian Act. Together, status and non-status Indians, Metis and Inuit
comprise the 500,000 Native people enumerated in 1981. While this figure
represents 2 per cent of the total population, unofficial estimates take into
account the refusal of many Native people to be enumerated and place the
total number of Native people at well over one million. Less than 1 per cent
of Canada's Native population resides in Nova Scotia. As of 31 December
1983 there were 6,000 status Indians in the province. But, the elimination of
sexual discrimination in the Indian Act and the restoration of Indian status
to certain individuals by Bill C-31 could increase the number of status
Indians in Nova Scotia by as many as 5,000. Indian bands have until the
summer of 1987 to establish band membership codes. Canada, Department
of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Reserves and Trusts, Indian
and Inuit Affairs Program, Estimated Re istered Indian Po ulation by
Reserve as of December 31, 2 Ottawa, and Registered In ian
Po ulation by Sex and Residence for Bands, Res onsibility Centres, Re ions
and Canada for December 31, 983 Ottawa, 1985; and Micmac News, June
1984, 4.

10
5 Sally Weaver points out that the provision of certain services by the federal
government does not stem directly from the Indian Act but rather from the
assumptions upon which it is based. Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian
Indian Policy: The Hidden A enda, 1968-1970 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 198 , 9. John Leslie and Ron McGuire, eds., The Historical
Development of the Indian Act (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern
Affairs, 1978) is an important source of detailed information about the
evolution of the Act.
6 J. Rick Ponting and Roger Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance: A Socio-Political
Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada (Toronto: Butterworth and Co.
(Canada), 1980), 4.
7 Indian reserves were not established on the Canadian prairies until the
1870s.
8 Peter Carstens, "Coercion and Change," in Canadian Society: Pluralism,
Change and Conflict, ed. Richard Ossenberg (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice
Hall, 1971), 128, 137.
9 Hall, "Clifford Sifton," 136.
10 Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 8-9. The legitimacy of the Indian
Act has been cast further into doubt by the patriation of the British North
America Act and the adoption of a Charter of Rights.
11 House of Commons Debates, IV (1938), 3798-3799.
12 Leslie and McGuire, Indian Act, 191.
13 Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 21.
14 Canada, Statistics Canada, Canada's Native People (Ottawa, 1984) and Fred
Wien, Socioeconomic Characteristics of the Micmac in Nova Scotia (Halifax:
Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, 1983), passim.
15 T.R.L. Macinnes, "The History and Policies of the Indian Administration in
Canada," in The North American Indian Today, eds. C.T. Loram and T.F.
Mcllwraith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1943), 154.

11
CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CENTRALIZATION CONCEPT
Prior to its acceptance in 1942, the idea of concentrating all the Indians
of Nova Scotia on just a few reserves had a long and tortuous hi~tory. The
campaign for its adoption was waged within Indian Affairs for more than two
decades, even though the general principle of collecting Indians in a limited
number of locations for the convenience of the government and, paradoxically,
to further Indian assimilation had been established at least a century earlier.
Indeed, the 1942 centralization scheme may be seen as part of a continuum that
consisted of a growing population of settlers sweeping North America's
indigenous peoples into a diminishing number of piles. ·In terms of this historical
progression towards reducing the interspersal of Indians among whites, the act of
forcing Nova Scotia's Indians onto central reserves was somewhat overdue. Had
the government acted sooner it might have succeeded in eliminating most of
Nova Scotia's small reserves. But it waited too long; the Second World War
brought with it social changes that prevented centralization from ever being
completed.
The native people of Nova Scotia are members of the Micmac nation, the
name of which derives from their own word nikmaq, meaning 'my kin friends.'
Since they greeted European newcomers in this manner, the French, in turn,
addressed their indigenous allies in the area as 'nikmaqs.'
1
The Micmac language
belongs to the Algonquian family of twenty languages. Malecite, Montagnais,
Abenaki, Cree, Ojibwa, Delaware, Potawatomi and Blackfoot are the other
Algonquian languages that are spoken in Canada in the area bounded by the coast
of Labrador, the Rockies, Lake Erie, and Hudson Bay.

12
The Maritimes have been occupied by Indians for more than ten thousand
years. At least five hundred years ago, the Micmac people lived in small,
spread-out communities along the shores of bays, coves and rivers in the
Maritimes to best take advantage of the rich food resources available there.
With the establishment of the fur trade, they began to spend more time inland
trapping. The dependence on European foods that resulted increased their
susceptibility to famine and to European diseases. Within a century of Jacques
Cartier's first voyage in 1534, 75 per cent of the Micmacs perished.2
The baptism of Grand Chief Membertou and twenty members of his
family at Port Royal by Abbe Jesse Fleche of Langres, France, in 1610 signalled
the eventual adoption of Roman Catholicism by the Micmacs.
3
French
missionaries tried to collect their converts at a single settlement located
between present-day Halifax and Shubenacadie,4 but once Acadia was lost to the
British in 1713 they opted for either lle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island) or a
location in Isle Royale (Cape Breton). Since the Indians failed to co-operate, a
mission was set up opposite lle St. Jean at Antigonish to draw bothersome Indians
away from Louisbourg but to keep them close enough to heed a French call-to-
arms. That mission was moved to Merligueche (Malagawatch) in 1725, a more
secure location on the Bras d'Or Lake. Two years earlier the mission along the
Shubenacadie River had been reestablished for "tous les sauvages de l'Acadie,"
but the French failed to concentrate their Indian allies in either of these
locations. The Micmacs thus retained their mobility, using to advantage their
strategic position between the French and the British.
5
In 1749, the establishment of Halifax and the appointment of Governor
Edward Cornwallis heralded the creation of a full British colony in Nova Scotia
and the advent of Protestant supremacy there. On assuming office, Cornwallis

13
instructed both the military and civilians to "annoy, distress, take or destroy" the
Micmacs. Ten guineas was the reward for an Indian or a scalp. It was
Cornwallis' hope that eventually it would be possible to hunt the Micmacs by sea
and land until they either sued for peace or left the colony.6 In 1752, his
successor, Governor Peregrine Hopson, made a short-lived peace agreement with
Micmac chief Jean-Baptiste Cope that lasted until the arrival at Halifax of two
shipwrecked sailors bearing six Indian scalps. Peace was not restored until the
Royal Proclamation of 1763.7
An influx of United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution
(1776-1783) further disrupted Indian life in Nova Scotia. Wherever settlers were
established in the colonies, Indians found themselves condemned to "a twilight
existence" on the periphery of civilization.
8
Deprived of any means of economic
independence, Indians tht::refore became an "expensive social nuisance" for the
society that denied them entry.9 A Joint Committee on Indian Affairs reporting
on the situation in Nova Scotia in 1800 tried to be optimistic. It expressed the
conviction that:
•.• by the adoption and faithful execution of a rational
and judicious plan for locating these people in suitable
situations and inducing them to settle by reasonable
encouragement, and by withholding all public assistance
from those who would not comply with the terms
prescribed, that many, especially of the younger class,
might be made useful members of society, and the
condition of the whole much ameliorated.lO
The search for a sound and effective plan was to continue into the twentieth
century.
In 1820, some small parcels of land in Nova Scotia were taken into trust
by the government for those Indians disposed to settle.11 Even though some of
the areas had been previously frequented by Indians, they proved weak as

14
reserves. Encroachment by whites was a constant problem but the legislature
consistently refused to fund surveys or to provide farm training and implements
for the Indians.12 Faced with either starvation or the possibility of receiving
some meagre relief on these lands, some of the Indians were drawn to the
designated areas. The outline of the reserve system was therefore apparent in
Nova Scotia, as it was in the Canadas, by the mid-1830s. 13
A wave of philanthropic liberalism and the realization that some way had
to be fo.und to curb the expense of maintaining Indians combined to produce the
Colonial Office's first pronouncements about civilizing and assimilating Indians.
"Insulation leading eventually to amalgamation" became the preferred method in
Upper and Lower Canada in 1830.
14
The Nova Scotia government was less
moved by Indian matters; in 1834 it totally ignored a request from the British
House of Commons for a report on the condition of aboriginal peoples in Nova
Scotia.15 Meanwhile in Upper Canada, several settled In~ian communities had
been organized to train Indians in European ways. When Sir Francis Bond Head
became Lieutenant Governor in 1836, he decided these experiments were a
failure. Believing the Indian could never be changed, he attempted to reverse
the assimilation policy by proposing that all the Indians of Upper Canada be
removed to the islands of the Manitoulin chain where they could live out their
days hunting and fishing. Protests from missionaries and others committed to
civilizing Indians resulted in the rejection of Bond Head's scheme and the
reinstatement of directed culture change as British Indian policy.
16
"To protect
and cherish this hapless Race ••• and raise them in the Scale of Humanity"
became the official goal in the Canadas in 1838.
17
Finally, in 1842, "an Act for the Instruction and Permanent Settlement
of Indians" was passed in Nova Scotia as a result of petitions to Queen Victoria

15
by Micmac Chief Paussamigh Pemmeenauweet protesting Indian conditions in the
colony.l8 By this time, the administration of Indian relief in Nova Scotia was
already mired in patronage and corruption. Members of the Provincial Assembly
were also in the habit of looking the other way while white squatters tilled the
soil of Indian reserves. 19 Joseph Howe, appointed Indian Commissioner for Nova
Scotia in 1843, found the 22,050 acres of land reserved for Indians inadequate,
isolated and encroached upon. Five counties were entirely without any land
designated for Indian use.20 Nevertheless, the Provincial Assembly was not
eager to fund the establishment of supervised agricultural communities and it
refused to pay for the education of Indian children. Whites opposed Indian
children in their schools, and the Indians were afraid of losing their children to
the White Man's school.21 The whole situation was so discouraging that Howe's
successor, William Chernley, was forced to abandon the settlement plan in 1853,
concluding that, since the Micmacs were "fast passing away," the most that
could be done was to ease their last days by providing whatever relief the
province would allow them.
22
For their livelihood, the Micmacs made baskets
and did some farming, lumbering and logging. They still followed a seasonal
routine of fishing at the shore in summer and going inland in winter to hunt and
trap, but they were debilitated by disease and their access to their traditional
food sources was gradually being eroded.23
By the middle of the nineteenth century, doubts were being expressed in
the Canadas about the direction Indian legislation had taken. The Governor
General, Lord Elgin, questioned the government's wardship of Indians:
• • • the laws enacted for their protection, and in the
absence of which they fall as easy prey to the more
unscrupulous among their energetic neighbours, tend to
keep them in a condition of perpetual pupillage. And
the relation subsisting between them and the

Government, which treats them partly as independent
peoples, and partly as infants under its guardianship,
involves many anomalies and contradictions.24
16
An investigation of the Indian Department's operations in both Canada East and
Canada West produced a complete reorganization of the Department after Lower
and Upper Canada were united in 1840. Known as the Bagot Commission, it also
gave rise to further "civilization" legislation destined to form the basis of the
1876 Indian Act. Since the Bagot Commissioners mistakenly believed there were
no racial barriers to Indian advancement, they contended that Indian self-
reliance could be achieved by simply protecting Indian resources and improving
I d. d . 25n 1an e ucat1on.
This early denial of the racist character of Eurocanadian society is the
source of the most significant weaknesses in Canadian Indian policy. Today, the
racial barrier and the cultural differences between an individualistic free
enterprise society exploiting nature for short term gain and community-directed
Indian societies operating in greater harmony with nature both need to be
acknowledged before Indians can assume their rightful place in Canadian society.
The failure of past policy can be traced back to Canada's inability to accept
Indians as Indians. The efforts of every government since the 1840s were also
undermined by the fundamental contradiction of assimilation and protection.
John Leslie's conclusion about the Bagot Commissioners' Report is that while it
was
••• intended as a blueprint to .reduce operational costs
and make Indian people less reliant on government . . •
it became a cornerstone in the evolution and
development of a costly, permanent and expanded
Indian Department which not only would increasingly
intrude into, but regulate and control, the daily lives of
Native people in Canada.26

17
As will be shown, the same statement fits the Nova Scotia centralization policy
one hundred years later: although its intention was to reduce costs and increase
the Indians' economic independence, it increased costs and reduced their ability
to be self-sufficient.
In 1867, when the British North America Act gave the federal
government the authority to legislate on matters relating to "Indians and Lands
Reserved for Indians," Nova Scotia was relieved of its responsibility for the 1,600
Indians there.27 By then, the Micmacs had been in contact with Europeans for
more than three hundred years yet they still retained their own ideological
traditions and nomadic lifestyle. Their Christianity distinguished them from the
"heathen savages" of Western lore, but their conversion had not resulted in a
general acceptance of European ways. In fact, their Catholicism contributed to
their isolation in a mainly Protestant province.
Although Joseph Howe had railed against Confederation and was an
outspoken anti-Catholic, he joined the fede.ral cabinet in 1869 and became the
federal government's first Indian Commissioner.28 Considering his discouraging
experience as the Indian Commissioner for Nova Scotia in the 1840s and the
provincial government's desire for him to continue established practice, it is
perhaps not surprising that Confederation had little effect upon Indian affairs in
Nova Scotia.
29
The main duty of federal Indian Affairs' officials was the administration
of funds held in trust for Indians by the government. Nova Scotia Micmacs, who
constituted less than 2 per cent of Canada's Indian population, had no wealth. In
1895 only $226.51 rested in their trust account, probably revenue from the sale
or lease of some of their lands. They possessed little to covet, and they
presented no potential political challenge to the new nation. By contrast with

18
Indians in Alberta whose property and assets were worth $2,121.78 per capita in
1919, the real and personal property of Nova Scotia Micmacs was valued at only
$126.67 per capita that year.30 The government was acutely aware of the
differences between the circumstances of Indians in the East and those in the
West where the disappearance of the buffalo not long after Confederation was
blamed for Indian hardship:
The conditions in the maritime provinces are not the
same as in the Northwest; in fact the Indians in New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia do not receive any treaty
payments and the government does not take the
responsibility of their support as is the case of the
Indians in the Northwest) I
Maritime Indians were "expected to practically make their own living."32
Limited relief was provided only when "absolutely necessary.n
33
Around the turn of the century, the federal government's contribution
towards the education of Indians in Nova Scotia consisted of the operation of
twelve elementary schools. It did not conduct farm instruction as it did in the
West.34 While the Department was generally wedded to the "bible and plough"
approach to civilizing and settling Indians,
35
it acknowledged that since the
Micmacs lacked "land of a character to support them" as yeoman farmers "it
would be no benefit to give them farm instruction."36 Training Indians for work
in industry was out of the question. Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior and
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs from 1896 to 1905, believed that the
Indian lacked "the physical, mental or moral get-up to enable him to compete."
37
Moreover, his successor to 1911, Frank Oliver, considered educating Indians "to
compete industrially with our own people" (emphasis added) "a very undesirable
use of public money."38 In 1907, Oliver summarized the situation in Nova
Scotia:

.•• we have a number of isolated reserves with local
agents scattered all over this province. There are no
means of carrying on a general policy with regard to
them. The reserves are insignificant, the salaries are
small, and the agents really have no personal responsi-
bility.39
19
Until the 1950s, the Department had what historian Douglas Leighton
termed "an almost pathological fear of large expenditure." It was totally
unwilling to invest any money in creating a viable economy for the Maritime
Indians.l.j.Q Indeed, it resorted to every conceivable method of saving itself
money including deliberately hiring doctors who lived far away from the Indians
in order to curb the amount of medical attention they received.
questioned on this practice, the Minister's explanation was:
We have a constant struggle to keep down the cost of
medical attendance in the maritime provinces, because
the Indians themselves desire a doctor very often when
there is nothing the matter with them, and if we gave
them the least encouragement, the medical bill would
run up a high figure.l.j.l
When
This parsimonious attitude exacerbated the Micmacs' plight. It was impossible
for them to improve their situation with the resources available to them. The
sluggish Maritime economy, a hostile social milieu, and an inadequate system of
Indian administration ensured that they would continue to remain among the
poorest of Nova Scotians.
Although the lack of federal and provincial financial support contributed
to the deteriorating condition of Nova Scotia's Indians, one cannot assume that
an infusion of money would have reversed their economic situation or helped to
overcome the racist attitudes that were traditionally a part of the intellectual
outlook of Nova Scotian society. Until very recently, racial prejudice and
discrimination also prevented Blacks in the province from advancing significantly

20
b d h . . .. 1 d' d 42eyon t e1r 1n1t1a tsa vantage. Blacks were forced to settle on the
outskirts of white towns and villages, and as late as 1950 were expected to live
in segregated housing, were denied insurance, and were granted only limited
access to Nova Scotia schools, theatres and restaurants.43 The Blacks' social,
educational and employment opportunities were also limited by intractable
cultural attitudes, the conditions of settlement, and the nature of the Maritime
economy.44 Some Blacks, disgusted with the nominal freedom and racism that
governed their marginal exis.tence in Nova Scotia, "migrated whenever the
opportunity presented itself."45 Despite Governor Cornwallis's wish that Indians
would do the same, almost all remained well into the twentieth century.
46
The 1896 elections of Sir Wilfrid Laurier as Prime Minister and George
H. Murray as Premier began a lengthy period of Liberal hegemony in federal and
Nova Scotia politics during which it was easy for the federal government to
dismiss complaints in the House of Commons about the state of Indian affairs in
Nova Scotia. For example, the charge that reserve lands were being despoiled by
white lumbering operations prompted the rejoinder from Clifford Sifton that:
"The complaint we generally have from Nova Scotia is that the Indians are
cutting timber on other people's land."47 The Minister falsely claimed that there
was "practically no trespass on Indian lands."48 When Robert Borden, M.P.
(Halifax) urged the government to exchange, sell or dispose of Indian lands rather
than let them be ruined, the Prime Minister explained that, because the Micmacs
were scattered all over the province, it was virtually impossible to discuss the
surrender of their lands with them.
49
A few years later, J.E. Armstrong, M.P.
(Lambton, East) further criticized the government's role there:
The object of our Indian Department seems to be to
increase the number of officials and to squander the
money of the Indians and give them as little
enlightenment as possible.50

21
In 1914, at the outset of the First World War, nineteen part-time agents
and one full-time superintendent were in charge of Nova Scotia's 2,000 status
Indians. Departmental estimates prompted the observation that it looked "as if
the agents were wards of the nation and not the Indians."51 When it was
suggested that $1,000 be allotted to encourage farming, the government replied:
"Probably the Indians are so thrifty that they do not require very much
government assistance in that area."52 The next year, with proposed salaries
totalling $6,200 and In~lian relief at $8,000, the opposition charged "politicians
supporting the present Government" with exploiting "the necessities of the poor
Indians."
53
Patronage also raised questions about the quality of the agents,
doctors, teachers and suppliers the Indian Department employed.54
The partial destruction of the British army in 1918 produced an
unforeseen crisis in Canada. Since no one knew when "The Great War" would
end, the federal government suddenly had to muster all its resources in support
of the Allied cause. At home, inflation was soaring and so were costs for Indian
relief. All Canadians became subject to "anti-loafing" laws, and exemptions
under the Military Service Act were cancelled.
55
To fund the war effort, the
Unionist government of Robert Borden moved, as none before it had, to regulate
and intervene in the social and economic life of the nation.
It was in the spring of 1918, during this financial crisis, that the concept
of centralization was first expressed. At the behest of the Deputy
Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, an
investigation into the cost of replacing Nova Scotia's nineteen agencies with four
was launched. H.J. Bury, a departmental Timber Inspector, suggested that Scott
consider establishing just three agencies so the Department could "pay a salary
sufficient to secure competent men." The Superintendent of the Nova Scotia

22
agencies endorsed the idea of three, obsequiously adding that he had thought of
it before but had not submitted the suggestion as "such action by me might be
considered over officious."56 Calculations showed that a total of $200 per year
would be saved if three full-time agents replaced the existing superintendent and
nineteen part-time agents who were distributed roughly one per county. The
Assistant Deputy Secretary advised Scott to delay implementation of the scheme
until 1919.
57
As it turned out, the system of nineteen part-time agents overseeing
nineteen agencies remained untouched until 1932, the worst year of the
Depression.
58
The unexpectedly sudden end of the war in November 1918 very
likely reduced the government's desire to change its Indian Affairs arrangements
in Nova Scotia because, in peacetime, the need to save money was less urgent.
In any case, a major epidemic of influenza and the problems associated with
absorbing returning soldiers into the workforce heightened the public's hostility
towards Indians after the war. Their need for work and their poor health were
perceived as threats by other Nova Scotians.
The Micmacs were becoming more settled by this time. They lived both
on and off their reserves in frame houses they usually built themselves.
Frequently, they lacked title to the land they occupied, but most kept small
gardens and some livestock. A number lived on the edge of Dartmouth in an area
59
known as Kebeceque. They made their living in the "Indian way", relying
primarily on berries, moose, eels, chickens, gardening, preserving, and selling axe
handles and baskets. Mrs. Maggie Paul, who grew up in Dartmouth in a big house
built by her father, recalled that her family was never poor or hungry because
there were so many ways to earn a living "back then."
60
Indians at Kebeceque
had their lives permanently disrupted by the December 1917 explosion of a

23
munitions ship in Halifax harbour that killed some 2,000 people. In 1919, most of
the surviving Indians were moved to the Millbrook Reserve.61
Complaints about Indians living in "wretched shacks and hovels" along
the railway tracks and highways and on the outskirts of Halifax and Dartmouth
continued to come in to the Department.62 Timber Inspector Bury proposed that
Halifax County Indians be moved to the Shubenacadie (Indian Brook) reserve
because it was larger and better suited to agriculture than some other reserves.
The Indians refused to co-operate because it was too isolated.63 They preferred
to live near populated centres. Bury therefore brought about the expansion of
Colchester County's Millbrook reserve, sixty miles away from Halifax but near
Truro, to accommodate the Indians of Halifax County and "the remaining Indians
who have no fixed place of abode and who are constantly trespassing on privately
owned property." To finance the purchase of one hundred acres of farmland
adjoining Millbrook and the relocation of the "nomad Indians", Bury arranged the
surrender and sale of unoccupied reserves at Ingram River, Ship Harbour and
Sambro.64
Public complaints reinforced the Department's natural tendency to
concentrate Indians on reserves. If it could not reduce the total number of
Indians, at least it could be fully in control of their affairs and the cost of
maintaining them. Indian Affairs appeared oblivious to the possibility that
straying from the reserve might actually benefit some Indians and further
assimilation, the government's ultimate goal. Rather, it exhibited the
characteristic behaviour of a bureaucracy intent on perpetuating itself by
ensuring that its work is never-ending. The following statement by Bury
demonstrates the narrowness of the frame of reference within which most
officers of the Department operated:

• • • as soon as the Department can impress on the
Indians the necessity of realizing in cash, the value of
their unoccupied lands • • . and encourage them to
concentrate on lands (Reserves) where they are content
to live and become progressive citizens, the sooner will
the whole problem of Indian administration become
simplified and productive of good results,65
24
A dutiful civil servant, Bury was not one to give up on an idea he believed to be
in the best interests of the Department. For two decades, he doggedly presented
to his superiors the arguments that finally became the rationale for centraliza-
tion in 1942.
The Maritimes entered a prolonged period of economic decline after
World War I. Withdrawal of capital from the region caused 42 per cent of the
manufacturing jobs to disappear between 1920 and 1926. Even though almost 20
per cent of ·the population left the Maritimes during the 1920s, work in sawmills,
canneries, founderies, steel plants and with the railroad grew increasingly
scarce.66 When the Depression hit, Micmacs were the first seasonal and
unskilled workers to be fired. The demand for their wooden wares, such as
baskets, pick handles and hockey sticks, also dropped off,67 Had they been left
entirely to their own devices during the inter-war period, many Indians would
have gravitated, with other poor people in search of work, to Nova Scotia's urban
areas. The complaints about those who did, and Bury's desire to save the
Department money, caused the Timber Inspector to crusade for their removal to
distant reserves.
In 1920, New Glasgow authorities complained about smallpox among
Indians from the Afton and Cape Breton reserves living in shacks in the town.
68
That year Bury drew an astonishingly simple sketch showing how he thought the
Indian population should be organized. Using two maps -- a 'before' map showing

25
Indians scattered all over the province (by means of scattered dots, each one
representing fifty Indians) and an 'after' map showing all the Indians neatly
clustered into three groups, each in its own third of the province -- Bury again
recommended that three Indian agencies be established in Nova Scotia. The
employment of one full-time agent in each of three agencies and the elimination
of nineteen part-time agents would "over time," he argued, halve expenditures
for salaries. Since the part-time agents were paid only from $50 to $200 per
year and knew little of their charges, matters of consequence were being handled
by the Nova Scotia Superintendent or officials in Ottawa anyway, he explained.
Centralization was put forward as a "remedy" for the Department's problem of
not getting value for the money it was spending in the province.69
Bury contended that telephone and railway services would enable the
three agents "to discharge a considerable part of their duties." But, since
telephones were still not available at Eskasoni during the 1940s and railways
tended to run between towns rather than Indian reserves, it is doubtful that
either would have been much help to the agents. His calculations also failed to
take into account any costs which might accrue in relocating Indians. He made
no mention of how they might be housed or employed in the three suggested
locations.70 There was no response.
Bury persisted. Four years later, he presented a more elaborate
submission to the Deputy Minister which compared Nova Scotia's administrative
organization with that of New Brunswick. New Brunswick was already divided
into three agencies. Although the Indians there lived on more than three
reserves, the existing reserves were larger, more populated and fewer in number
than those in Nova Scotia:
Three agents in N.B. covering a territory which is a

third larger, and a population only 10% less
administered affairs during the ten months April 1st
1923 to Jan. 31st 1924 for the total sum of $27,754.14
whilst similar functions of 19 afents in N.S. cost
$49,716.39 during the same period/
26
Bury compared fourteen categories to demonstrate, for example, that medical
costs were 140 per cent greater in Nova Scotia, and that relief costs were 47 per
cent more. Costs could be "appreciably reduced," he wrote, "if better
supervision was exercised." He urged the Deputy Minister to consider, "in view
of the present agitation for economy," the reorganization of the Nova Scotia
administration so that it more nearly resembled that of New Brunswick.
72
Again,
no response appears on file.
Ten months later, the Department of Indian Affairs received the
following communication from a physjcian serving Indians on the Nova Scotia
Mainland:
Do away with all the small reserves scattered
throughout the Province, choose a good situation of
fertile Crown land, and collect all the Indians to it.
Make every Indian family build a small house, well, out-
buildings, garden, etc.; built to specification under
Government supervision. Build there a Community
Hall, a small Catholic church, a school house, etc. as is
found in Western Canadian mining towns. Insist on him
producing so much garden produce as to comfortably
supply his family; pork, etc. and I may say the Indian is
a pretty good farmer. Have a Government farm there,
as at the Poor Farms, with a large dairy and orchard,
help for which is to be hired solely from among the
Indians. Have an agency with a Priest or school
teacher, to supply American Tourists and sportsmen
with guides. Have another agency buy all canoes,
baskets, axe handles, etc. as made by the Indians and
such agencj to obtain the highest possible market price
for same.?
This was Dr. H.S. Trefrey's solution to what he called "the Indians Problem." He
elaborated by describing the conditions at Tusket and the "Gravel Pit reserve" on

27
the outskirts of the coloured settlement at Yarmouth. Though he wrote that his
plan "may read as fantasy," it. would appear, from comparing it with Bury's, that
the two had had discussions on the subject.
Bury escalated his campaign for centralization the next year. In a 1925
report entitled "The Indian situation in the Province of Nova Scotia as it exists
at the present time" he noted that, of a total Indian population of 2,040, only
1,500 were living on reserves. The remaining 540 were either drifting from place
to place or lived in "small, dilapidated shacks adjacent to urban centres such as
Sydney, Halifax, New Glasgow, Yarmouth and Inverness." Whereas Western
Indians had achieved "prosperity" through the Canadian government's policy "to
placate rather than exterminate," Bury pointed out that Nova Scotia Indians had
only "a few barren reserves, no timber limits of great value, no treaty annuities
and no provincial cash subsidy." Their trust fund, at $19.50 per capita, was lower
than that of seven other provinces. "With the exception of the Truro,
Shubenacadie and Whycocomagh Reserves where there [was] a certain amount of
land fit for agriculture, the remaining reserves [could not] be classified as
suitable for growing crops." Of forty-three reserves in the province, seventeen
were unoccupied. Bury made a plea for the establishment of a fund to which
proceeds from the sale of unoccupied and unsuitable reserves could be credited,
and expenditures for the purchase of central reserve lands charged. As before,
he recommended that the Indians be gathered around the three central agencies
depicted in his 1920 map.74
Two new ideas made their debut in 1925. Without abandoning his
comparison of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Bury now included the West as a
model:
Our organization of Indian administration in the

western provinces may rightly be regarded as being
productive of the best results, and until an organization
more nearly resembling this is brought into existence in
the province of Nova Scotia, we cannot expect any
appreciable improvement.?5
28
Largely through Bury's efforts, then, the system of Indian administration in Nova
Scotia, which had been a direct outgrowth of colonial relations, was destined to
be shaped in the twentieth century by developments to the West where more
Indians and larger reserves produced a particular style of administration. Since
the Department operated seventy-two residential schools throughout Canada,
Bury suggested that a residential school be set up at Truro, Nova Scotia, "where
the younger generation would be taught farming, trades and other
. ,,76occupatiOns.
Meanwhile, Deputy Superintendent General Scott's reply to Dr. Trefrey
gave the appearance that he was reluctant to embrace the centralization plan.
Admitting that it had "engrossed the attention of the Department for a number
of years," Scott wrote:
Our main difficulty is to induce the Indians to
concentrate as many of them appear to prefer their
present mode of life and resent any form of paternalism
which might tend to somewhat restrict their liberty or
repress their nomadic instincts.77
Throughout the 1920s, complaints about Indians continued to come in
from Nova Scotia. Until 1927, Indians at Sydney refused to leave their two acre
reserve on Kings Road, the present site of the Isle Royale Motel and the Sydney
Medical Arts Centre. Beyond the 1925 declaration of the Superintendent
General, Charles Stewart, that "we are going to try to move [the Indians] ou.t of
town," the story of the surrender of that reserve cannot be told here.78 In 1942,
almost two hundred Indians were living on the Membertou reserve just off

29
Sydney's Alexandra Street.
Charles Stewart held the most senior Indian Affairs post from 1921 to
1930. Under him, the power of the Superintendent General's office expanded
steadily during the 1920s despite a brief change of government that displaced
Mackenzie King's Liberals during the summer of 1926. By the time Bury
advanced his next petition for centralization in December 1926, the work of field
staff was being slowed by Stewart's wide and arbitrary powers. All decisions had
to be cleared through Ottawa.79 The curt tone of Bury's memo to Scott that year
may be indicative of the frustration that was being felt at all levels:
three agents on full time would:
1. Be more economical
2. Ensure more efficient administration
3. Tend to centralize the Micmac Indians of Nova
Scotia on three main residential reserves where they
can be given proper and effective supervision.80
Bury asserted that the "drifting" population comprised "at least 50% of the
Indians in the province" -- more than double his estimate the year before.
81
By this time, Indian ways had proven so tenacious throughout Canada
that Indian Affairs personnel had arrived at the view that it would take many
more generations to absorb Indians into the general population. Since none of
their efforts had produced the desired levels of assimilation and no immediate
solution to "the Indian Problem" was apparent, they becarne preoccupied with the
efficiency of the bureaucracy. Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, believed intermarriage, as well as
education, was required to purge Indians of their instincts and customs.82
Nevertheless, he suppressed any personal reservations he may have had about the
centralization plan and took it to the Minister. Scott recommended the change
"be made with as little delay as possible," suggesting 1 October 1927 as the date

30
for the policy to take effect. "I know there may be difficulties in carrying out
this project," he wrote, "but it is entirely in the interests of the administration
that it should be done." (emphasis added)
83
While Stewart did not approve centralization, parliament did approve
$35,000 for the establishment of a residential school at Shubenacadie. For
Stewart, the curtailment of Indian liberty was anything but a reason to hesitate:
We believe better training can be given the Indian child
in the boarding school than in the day school, because it
is very difficult to get him to be at all regular in his
attendance at the day school. We have him under
control all the time in the boarding school •••• 84
Realizing that something had to be done about the Indians' situation, Stewart
agitated, albeit with limited success, for larger Indian Affairs appropriations
during his tenure as Superintendent General.
When R.B. Bennett's Conservatives were elected in 1930, T.G. Murphy
replaced Stewart as the Minister responsible for Indian Affairs. Murphy served
as Superintendent General of Indian Affairs until the Conservatives were voted
out in October 1935. In Indian policy matters, one of the few differences
between the Liberals and the Conservatives was the latter's emphasis on
compulsory, as opposed to voluntary enfranchisement (loss of Indian status).
Scott felt compulsory enfranchisement was a desirable method of achieving
Indian policy aims. On his initiative, the Indian Act was amended in 1918 to
simplify the enfranchisement of off-reserve Indians, and in 1920 he successfully
guided the passage of another amendment that made enfranchisement
compulsory for certain Indians. The compulsory features of that legislation were
soon rescinded when the Liberals returned to power, but the Conservatives
reinstated them in 1933·.
85
R.B. Bennett's government was also willing to
consider centralization.

31
In December 1931 Bury reminded Scott of the benefits of installing a
"more efficient and modern system" in Nova Scotia.86 Without hesitation, Scott
presented the centralization proposal to Murphy at a time when the country was
descending still further into the Depression. He included the maps prepared
earlier by Bury, "our timber inspector who is familiar with conditions in the
lower provinces." Scott explained that he had first brought up the idea of "a
more businesslike administration in Nova Scotia" in 1918 and that he had been
unable to make any progress with it. In spite of Bury's maps showing the Indians
in three clusters, Scott suggested two agencies might be sufficient, thus
undercutting Bury's fourteen-year vision of three central reserves.
87
Murphy was fully receptive. On 31 March 1932, the services of all
nineteen part-time agents were terminated "for reasons of public economy."
Two full-time agents, C.J. McNeil of Antigonish and J.W. Maxner of Windsor,
were instructed to assume responsibility for all matters pertaining to Indian
relief, medical service, schools and administration. McNeil's district consisted
of Cape Breton plus Guysborough, Pictou and Antigonish Counties; Maxner's was
the remaining southwestern half of the province. Dramatic though it was, this
development proved to be no more than a passing aberration. In less than three
months, Murphy authorized the immediate reappointment of the nineteen part-
time agents and the dismissal of Maxner and McNeil.88
No explanation of this fiasco appears in departmental files. Had the
Minister failed to anticipate the political consequences of dismissing the
farmers, priests, doctors, merchants and tradesmen who had grown accustomed
to supplementing their incomes by acting as part-time Indian agents?
89
Scott
retired during the upheaval, leaving the Acting Deputy Superintendent General
to sort out the resulting confusion. By reinstating seven of the part-time agents

32
at lower than their previous salaries, replacing others, and handing the inspection
work over to Ottawa, the Department managed a saving of $580 on the salaries
projected for the two full-time agents. Therefore, when the Nova Scotia Branch
of. the Canadian Legion protested the unexplained dismissal of its members
Maxner and McNeil, the Department was able to reply that it had reverted to the
system of part-time agents as a cost-saving measure!90
During the summer of 1932, the Department's inspector for Ontario and
Quebec went to Nova Scotia to tie up loose ends and report on conditions there.
(There was no inspector of Indian agencies for Nova Scotia or the Maritimes.)
Unable to visit all the reserves, and probably forming his opinion from what he
saw on the Mainland, he concluded that Nova Scotia Micmacs were "indolent and
nomadic." Appalled that "they live on relief, marry in poverty, raise children
and look to the Government to provide for them," he recommended that Nova
Scotia Indians be organized into three large groups.
91
While his report may have
vindicated Scott's action, submitting it to A.S. Williams, the Acting Deputy
Superintendent General destined to remain second in command, ensured that
nothing came of it.
Major Harold Wigmore McGill became the Deputy Superintendent
General in the fall. A graduate of the University of Manitoba medical school and
a former member of the Alberta legislature, McGill remained head of the Indian
Affairs bureaucracy from 1932 until his retirement in March 1945. Under
McGill, investigations into the Nova Scotia situation continued until
centralization was attempted again in 1942.
An unsigned inspector's report submitted to McGill in June 1933
attributed the high levels of Indian relief in Nova Scotia to white attitudes, the
paternalism of the department and the nature of Indian legislation. Pointing out

33
that "our Department is sometimes forced by public opinion or other strong
influence to do things which it does not feel to be in the best interests of the
Indian," this inspector offered a stinging indictment of the "appallingly ignorant
public opinion" that prevailed in Nova Scotia:
The whole attitude of the white population is, why
bother with the Indians, .the Government is obliged to
look after them. Probably with the next breath they
are groaning under the so-called burden of extra
taxation and have not the intellect enough to realize
that their attitude with regard to the Indian is partly to
blame for these taxes.92
Indians were being boycotted from day labour in Nova Scotia; yet, the inspector
had no patience for the "indigent, immoral and arrogantly persistent Indian
beggar." He felt a full-time superintendent could "drive" the Indians to self-
support. Because "the relief problem ••• threaten [ed] to spread its tentacles if
not subjected to drastic action," he agreed it was time for a change. He believed
that concentrating the Indians on the best reserves would reduce the
Department's relief costs by eliminating a system of dispensing relief that was
. . 1 d 931rrat10na an corrupt.
Evidently, "the pressing need for economy and the further unavoidable
demand for reorganization of our own Department" prevented the author of this
J 1933 f . N S . 94 Th hune report rom returmng to ova cot1a. e next year, none ot er
than H.J. Bury, Supervisor of Indian Timber Lands, was required to tour the
province. He visited thirteen of the nineteen agencies and reported the specific
conditions at certain reserves to McGw.
95
In 1935, Chief Ben Christmas wrote to Member of Parliament Finlay
MacDonald to request a full-time Indian commissioner at Sydney. Through this
and many other petitions over the ensuing years, Christmas -- who was described
in the Halifax Mail as "one of the most intelligent and progressive

34
representatives of the Micmac race" -- discovered that it was impossible to
penetrate the wall of indifference that surrounded the Department.96 Indeed, it
was the Department's policy to ignore any communications from or originated by
Indians. When MacDonald tried to pursue Christmas's request, the Department
told him that the chief was "an agitator and troublemaker" and that it placed
little confidence in his representations.97
Centralization was recommended later in 1935 by E.L. Stone, the
Department's Director of Medical Services, and G. Armstrong of the Trust Fund
and Relief Branch after each toured Nova Scotia.98 As soon as the Liberal
government of Mackenzie King was reelected in the fall, McGill approached the
new Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, T.A. Crerar, with Bury's maps
showing the Indian population in three clusters. McGill advocated the creation
of three agencies by pointing out that, exclusive of education, annual
expenditures for a stable Indian population in Nova Scotia had risen steadily from
$8,000 in 1907 to $106,000 in 1934 without effecting any improvement in their
situation.
99
Crerar was wary. In light of the previous administration's bungled
attempt less than four years earlier, he was not about to take any action without
having further evidence.
To "report upon the practicability of combining the nineteen agencies of
Nova Scotia into two or more; each containing several reserves and each
administered by a full time agent" Crerar appointed Dr. Thomas Robertson.
100
After a three-month tour of the province, Robertson concluded that the
condition of Indians was due to matters beyond their control. The systematic
refusal of the provincial government and tl)e municipalities to hire Indians
created a sense of injustice and forced them to look to the federal government
for their support. Since the state of public attitudes and the Nova Scotia

35
economy limited the scope for Indian labour, he believed agriculture would have
to serve as the "back-bone" of the Department's plan to make the Indians of
Nova Scotia self-supporting. He recommended close and competent supervision
of agricultural projects, and the tying of federal public works grants to the
condition that Indians be given a fair share of the work thus created.
101
"Owing to the very bad condition of the roads," Robertson only visited
Sydney and Eskasoni in Cape Breton. Discussions with "the Indian Chief of Nova
Scotia" (probably the Grand Chief) and others convinced him that conditions in
the rest of Cape Breton matched those at the twelve reserves he had been able
to see. He felt Indian squatters on the Mainland were a detriment to the health
and morale of white communities; and, since the Department could not afford
sanitarium care for all the tubercular cases, he recommended the establishment
of an Indian hospita1. 102 During his visit, Robertson discussed the need for a
new administrative arrangement in Nova Scotia with Premier Angus L.
Macdonald and the principal of the Shubenacadie Residential School, Father
103
Mackey.
Robertson's final report endorsed centralization, noting that "quite a
number of Indians" would have to relocate. Though vague regarding the number
of Indians involved in the move, he submitted the following specifications for
their housing: ·
The houses should be built by the Indians themselves
and they should not be finished on the inside for
sanitary reasons. A house one and a half stories,
twenty by thirty, with eight windows and two doors,
sufficient for a family of five, built in this wao should
cost no more than $175 to $200 in Nova Scotia.l 4
Robertson's report did not bring about the implementation of centralization;
however his blueprint for the centralization house was followed in 1942.

36
By the time Robertson reported, Crerar's attention was being drawn to
larger problems. The Department of Indian Affairs was reduced, in 1936, to
branch status within a new department called Mines and Resources which
consolidated Mines, Immigration, the Interior and Indian Affairs. The change
was a cost-saving measure, and soon the expenditures of Indian Affairs were
drawing attention in the House of Commons.105 With the number of Indians
increasing by 1,500 per year and one third of them on relief, costs were spiralling
upwards. 106 There was a growing awareness that the root of the problem might
be the legislation governing Indian affairs. Crerar launched an internal review of
the Indian Act late in 1938, but the Second World War intervened.
Had there been no war in 1939, centralization -- on the drawing board
for twenty-three years -- might well have been shelved or at least reconsidered
within a revised frame of reference. But, the war triggered its implementation.
Although the scheme was an attempt to revise the administrative structure in
Nova Scotia that dated from colonial times, centralization turned out to be a
manifestation of attitudes and policy that had always governed Indian/white
relations in Canada and Nova Scotia. In accordance with the belief that proper
supervision, training and health care on reserves would make it easier for Indians
to join Canadian society at a later date, Micmacs were further isolated from it
by centralization. The weight of inherited policy and legislation pressed the
government into rash action during a moment of crisis identical to the one that,
in 1918, had given birth to the concept of centralization.

37
Notes - Chapter II
1 Ruth Holms Whitehead and Harold McGee, The Micmac: How Their
Ancestors Lived Five Hundred Years Ago (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing,
1983), 1.
2 Ibid., passim and E. Palmer Patterson, II, The Canadian Indian: A History
~e 1500 (Don Mills: Collier-Macmillan Canada, 1972), 58.
3 Cornelius J. Jaenen, "Problems of Assimilation in New France, 1603-1645,"
in Canadian Histor Before Confederation, ed. J.M. Bumsted (Georgetown,
Ont.: Irwin-Dorsey, 97 , 2 an MicMac News, April 1985, 31.
4 Wallis and Wallis in H.F. McGee, The Native Peo les of Atlantic Canada: A
History of Ethnic Interaction (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974, 127.
5 L.F.S. Upton, Micmacs and Colonists: Indian-White Relations in the
Maritimesj 1713-1867 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
1979), 31- 5.
6 Ibid., 52.
7 W.E. Daugherty, Maritime Indian Treaties in Historical Pers ective (Ottawa:
Department of In ian and Northern Affairs, 9
8 Ibid., 44.
9 John F. Leslie, "The Bagot Commission: Developing a Corporate Memory
for the Indian Department," paper presented at the Canadian Historical
Association Meeting, University of Ottawa, June 1982, 2.
10 Public Archives of Nova Scotia, MSS Documents, vol. 430, doc 33 1/2.
11 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 65.
12 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 87.
14 Leslie, "Bagot Commission," 3-5.
16 Patterson, Canadian Indian, 120-121, 139-140.
17 J. Rick Ponting and Roger Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance: A Socio- olitical
Introduction to Indian Affairs in Canada Toronto: Butterworth, 1980 , 5.

38
19 Esperanza Maria Razzolini, "A Safe and Secure Asylum: Government
Attitudes and Approaches to the Amerindian Problem in Colonial Nova
Scotia," Honours essay, History 1+49, Dalhousie University, 1974, 98-101 and
Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 87-88.
20 William B. Henderson, Canada's Indian Reserves: Pre-Confederation
(Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1980), 23; Upton,
Micmacs and Colonists, 91; and Patterson, Canadian Indian, 116. Ninety-
nine years later, in 1942, only one county had no Indian reserves, but just
19, 788 acres comprised the forty existing reserves. PAC, RG 10, vol. 775.8,
file 27050-2, Pt. 2, ca. July 1942.
22 Ibid., 92-94.
21+ R.W. Dunning, "The Indian Situation: A Canadian Governmental Dilemma,"
The International Journal of Comparative Sociology (June 1971), 128.
25 Leslie, "Bagot Commission," passim.
28 Desmond Morton, A Short History of Canada (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers,
1983), 76.
29 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 96-97 and 172.
30 Ibid., 172-174.
31 House of Commons Debate, IV (1905), 6536.
32 Ibid.
33 House of Commons Debates, IV (1904), 6939.
34 Ibid., 6940.
37 Ibid., 6956.
38 D.J. Hall, "Clifford Sifton and the Canadian Indian Administration, 1896-
1905," Prairie Forum II, 2 (1977), 134.

39
39 House of Commons Debates, IV (1906-1907), np.
40 James Douglas Leighton, "The Development of Federal Indian Policy in
Canada, 1840-1890" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Western Ontario,
1975), 275.
41 House of Commons Debates, LIV (1901), 2759.
42 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis W. Magill, Nova Scotian Blacks: An
Historical and Structural Overview (Halifax: Institute of Public Affairs,
Dalhousie University, 1970), 36 and 79.
43 Ibid., 34 and 40. In 1966, 2,500 Blacks were concentrated on the fringe of
eleven major Nova Scotia towns, and 5,000 lived within a twenty-seven mile
radius of Halifax. Ibid.
44 Ibid., 97.
45 Ibid., 112.
46 Examples of current racial attitudes in Sydney, Nova Scotia, are cited in
Terry Tremayne, "The Marshall Family: 'We're Still Suffering'," Atlantic
Insight, June 1984, 34-36.
47 House of Commons Debates, LIV (1901), 2758.
49 House of Commons Debates, VI (1903), 13781.
50 House of Commons Debates, VI (1907-1908), 11023.
51 House of Commons Debates, III (1914), 2476.
52 Ibid.
53 House of Commons Debates, II (1915), 1310-1312.
54 House of Commons Debates, III (1914), 2479 and II (1918), 2235.
55 Morton, Short History, 155-157.
56 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Assistant Deputy Secretary to
Deputy Superintendent General, 18 June 1918.
57 Ibid.
58 Each of Nova Scotia's eighteen counties had its own. Indian agent except for
Antigonish and Guysborough Counties which shared one, and Hants and Cape
Breton Counties which each had two. With these exceptions, there was one
Indian "agency" per county. Canada, Department of Mines and Resources,
Indian Affairs Branch, Annual Report, 1941, 175.

59 Interview with John Abram, Millbrook, 1974--75.
60 Interview with Mrs. Maggie Paul, Eskasoni, 1974--75.
61 Interview with John Abram, Millbrook, 1974--75.
40
62 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764--1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 23 April
1919.
63 Ibid.
64 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 30 May and
11 August 1919.
65 Ibid., 30 May 1919.
66 Ernest R. Forbes, Aspects of Maritime Regionalism, 1867-1927 (Ottawa:
Canadian Historical Association, 1983), 18.
67 Upton, Micmacs and Colonists, 172-173.
68 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3222, file 541,4-32, Rev. J.D. MacLeod to Secretary of
Indian Affairs, 31 May 1920.
69 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 27 February
1920.
70 Ibid.
71 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Deputy Minister, 14 February
1924-.
72 Ibid.
73 PAC, RG 10, vo1 3220, file 536,764-1, Dr. H.S. Trefrey to Indian Affairs,
Ottawa, 20 December 1924. Note: Hereafter, "to Indian Affairs" will be
used to describe all correspondence addressed to Indian Affairs'
headquarters in Ottawa.
74 PAC, RG 10, vo1. 3220, file 536,764-1, "The Indian situation in the Province
of Nova Scotia as it exists at the present time," by H.J. Bury, 1925.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.
77 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Deputy Superintendent General to
Dr. Trefrey, 3 February 1925.
78 House of Commons Debates, V (1925), 4980.

41
79 Daugherty, Maritime Indian Treaties, 52.
80 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Scott, 16 December 1926.
81 Ibid.
82 E. Brian Titley, "Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian
Affairs," paper presented at the tenth annual conference of the British
Association of Canadian Studies, University of Edinburgh, 9-12 April 1985,
5-8.
83 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Deputy Superintendent General to
Minister, 6 May 1927.
84 House of Commons Debates, III (1928), 3828.
85 Titley, "D.C. Scott," 12-16 and Ponting and Gibbins, Out of Irrelevance, 13.
86 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to Scott, 18 December 1931.
87 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Scott to Murphy, 24 December 1931.
88 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 17 February, 10, 17,
18 March and 25 June 1932.
89 Dr. C. Lamont MacMillan, Memoirs of a Cape Breton Doctor (Markham,
Ont.: Paperjacks, 1979), 172 and House of Commons Debates, III (1932),
2699-2709.
90 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 25 June, 15 and 22
August and 12 September 1932.
91 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Report to the Acting Deputy
Superintendent General, 31 August 1932.
92 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Inspector to McGill, 26 June 1933.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Bury to McGill, 18 June 1934.
96 Evelyn Tufts, "Sydney Invites Everyone to Celebration," Halifax Mail, 27
July 1935, 19.
97 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Christmas to MacDonald, 18 January
1935 and Indian Affairs to MacDonald, 11 February 1935.
98 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1, Correspondence, 29 August, 15
October, 19 November 1935.

42
99 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, McGill to Crerar, 22 November
1935.
100 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-1(2), Correspondence, 7 March 19J6.
101 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 1936
and Robertson to McGill, 27 March 1936.
102 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 19-36.
103 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to McGill, 22 April and
19 March 1936.
104 PAC, RG 10, vol. 3220, file 536,764-2, Robertson to Crerar, 9 June 1937.
105 House of Commons Debates, I (1937), 672.
106 House of Commons Debates, I (1937), 637 and IV (1938), 3792-3793; and
Canada, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch,
Annual Reports, 1937, passim.

43
CHAPTER III
MAKING THE DECISION TO CENTRALIZE
The Second World War and the sudden increase in Canada's Indian
population intersected in time to produce the conditions that led to the adoption
of centralization. To see how these two factors accounted for the acceptance of
the scheme, one must look beyond the particular circumstances of the Indian
administration in Nova Scotia for it was the general outlook of Indian Affairs and
the personalities concerned with it that permitted the wartime desire for
economy to so profoundly affect Indian affairs in Nova Scotia.
One day after war was declared in Europe, a joint University of Toronto-
Yale University conference began at the Royal Ontario Museum to discuss, in an
informal and unofficial way, "The North American Indian Today." According to
the editor of the conference proceedings, sessions continued from 4 to 16
September 1939 in "an atmosphere of realization that problems of contact in
North America were contingent upon the war."
1
The participants included Indian
Affairs officials, social scientists, business and religious leaders, educators, and
Indians from both Canada and the United States, but it appears that the
Canadians were not particularly influenced by American practice. Operating as
they were within a system fraught with contradictions, the Canadian officials
gave every indication that they were more or less resigned to the situation in
Canada.
The Indian Affairs Branch acknowledged the remoteness of its goal of
"final and more or less complete assimilation of the Indian population into the
white communities."
2
According to Director McGill, it "indulge [d] in no
expectation of bringing about a complete regeneration in the course of a single

44
lifetime."3 Seeing themselves as "dealing with a race only recently removed
from .•. the stone age,"4 Branch officials concluded that the Indian was not
suited to the "white mold."5 And, since the government was not willing to give
Indians the freedom to determine their own future, the Branch hoped to "direct
the energies of the Indian into channels more or less related to those of his
former life."6 Training was provided in practical courses such as agriculture,
auto mechanics and domestic science.7 In keeping with the desire to preserve
the Indian "as a useful, competent and picturesque entity,"8 occupations such as
farming, fishing, hunting, work in the forest industry, and handicrafts were
encouraged.9 Although the declared intention of reserves was "to render possible
a continuous and consistent administrative policy directed towards
civilization,"10 integrating Indians into the larger society was, at best, a
secondary objective. By 1939, the Branch's primary goal was to keep Indians on
reserves and "to make life on the reserves as attractive and satisfying as
possible.1111 In reality, reserve life meant living by the whims of legislators and
administrators which included prohibitions on Indian political and cultural
practices such as the Potlach, the Sundance and even the wearing of traditional
festive clothing.
12
Given that the Branch did not expect Indians to be "rehabilitated" within
the foreseeable future, it felt obliged to assure the Canadian taxpayer that the
cost of maintaining them would not become "unduly burdensome."13 By way of
explaining the higher relief rates in the East, it noted that only in the Maritimes
and Quebec had Canada failed to give "adequately from her lands to provide for
the welfare of her Indian population." (emphasis added)
14
In 1939, the annual per
capita outlay for Indian welfare in the Maritimes was $34.51 in Nova Scotia,
$35.46 in New Brunswick, and $37.26 in Prince Edward Island compared to a

45
nation-wide per capita average of $8.70.
15
That year, when Public Affairs: Journal of the Institute of Public
Affairs, Dalhousie University, Halifax requested an article on the Maritime
Indian population the Branch refused. 16 And when welfare expenditures leapt by
$5,528 -- $3,707 of it because of Nova Scotia where the Depression hit Indians
especially hard -- the Department did move to cut costs. In May 1940 Indian
agents throughout the country were instructed to make "physically-fit, able-
bodied Indians" work for any relief they received. 17 The costs of the country's
involvement in the Second World War strengthened the Branch's commitment to
economy, and this development coincided with greater concern about Indian
conditions.
The Canadian Tuberculosis Association's warning that:
Indians are a menace to the White people in their
respective provinces, and Indian reserves are a source
of infection from which adjacent White settlements
have become contaminatedl8
must have alarmed many Canadians. Although Indians constituted only 1 per
cent of the population, the Association pointed out that their deaths accounted
for 11 per cent of the national death rate from tuberculosis. Indian deaths in
Nova Scotia, however, comprised only 1.4 per cent of the province's total deaths
from the disease, which was a far cry from rates in the West as high as 43 per
cent.19 Nova Scotia's overall death rate due to tuberculosis was twice that of
the rest of the country, however. Since Maritime sanitarium facilities could not
even meet non-native needs,20 Indians with tuberculosis were entirely without
adequate care. Indian Affairs had not acted on Dr. Robertson's 1936 suggestion
to establish an Indian hospital in Nova Scotia, therefore the decision to
centralize was partly a response to the public outcry about Indian health

46
conditions.
The Department also received complaints about Indian affairs in Nova
Scotia from its own staff. Reverend D.J. Rankin of Iona, who had been
responsible for about a hundred Indians in Victoria County until another
clergyman took over in the 1932 shuffle, found himself acting again as part-time
agent in 1939. He wrote to Ottawa urging, among other things, that land title
disputes be resolved; that "unscrupulous profiteering" by suppliers be stopped;
and that Indian agriculture and handicrafts be encouraged.21 Rankin claimed he
had been begged to take on the task of supplying relief to the Indians at Middle
River (Wagmatcook) because he was already "looking after them spiritually."
The dismissal of the previous agent for "partisan politics" had apparently
diminished local interest in the position since it was thought to be a sop to "mere
supporters of the party in power instead of [a job for] the most competent,
honest and capable man." Patronage and corruption were standing in the way of
22
the Department's work, he wrote.
Wartime conditions heightened the appeal of centralization. The
unemployment that had plagued the Maritimes since the end of the First World
War continued into the Second. Thousands of Nova Scotians were out of work.
Sixteen hundred able-bodied young men were looking for work in Sydney alone
during April 1941, and white "relief camps" had sprung up on the fringes of many
Mainland towns.23 Since work for Indians was virtually nil, a plan that offered to
move them away from urban centres and make them self-sufficient could only be
attractive.
The war made it difficult for the Branch to retain medical and
educational staff. Teachers were in short supp1i4 and a change in financial
arrangements had eliminated band funding of the ten Indian day schools in Nova

47
Scotia.25 Consolidation was a way to relieve staffing problems and reduce the
public appropriation for school maintenance and salaries. If the Indians lived in
just two locations, the Branch would also require fewer doctors on its payroll.
Transportation problems were exacerbated by the war. Many roads still
had not been paved in Nova Scotia, and the dirt roads were frequently
impassible, especially in Cape Breton.26 Since wartime vehicle shortages
compounded the problem of getting from one place to another, stricter
supervision of Indians by fewer agents required the Branch to overcome the
problem of distance between the reserves.
The political climate in Ottawa also made centralization an attractive
means of dealing with a complicated set of problems in Nova Scotia. To begin
with, the Department of Finance dominated the government's outlook.
27
Whereas Canada had entered the war anticipating limited liability, by late 1940,
Finance Minister J.L. Ilsley was predicting expenditures of $28 billion for fiscal
year 1941 -- over half the national income. Should the British position
deteriorate any further, Prime Minister King feared "a greater burden than the
people of Canada can be led to bear."
28
Charged with finding money for the war
effort through tough fiscal policies, Ilsley was a dour Nova Scotian who, in the
opinion of King, had a very narrow mind. With respect to international problems
at least, he bore a colonial attitude.
29
Presumably, someone with these views
would not find a scheme like centralization unpalatable.
Supervising Indian Affairs were T.A. Crerar and his Deputy Minister,
Charles Camsell, both born in 1876 (the year of the Indian Act) and educated in
Manitoba. Crerar had led a rural agrarian movement during the twenties, and
Camsell's father had been a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Since
King felt Crerar was "losing his grip" during the war, Crerar may have been more

48
than ordinarily dependent upon his civil servant advisors for policy guidance.30 In
any event, the main role of cabinet ministers was to decide whether or not policy
proposals were politically feasible.31 According to King's Principal Secretary,
Arnold Heeney, cabinet meetings were "incredibly haphazard" before the war
and, although minutes were kept more regularly after 1939, "the tradition was an
oral one, and recommendations of ministers were seldom rejected and very few
records were kept."32 Given that King had been reelected by an overwhelming
majority in March 1940 on the sole issue of the war, it is unlikely that Crerar
encountered much resistance to centralization when he presented the idea to
cabinet. Moreover, he had natural allies in Ilsley and Angus L. Macdonald.
Macdonald, the premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1954 except while
he was serving as King's Minister of National Defence for Naval Services (1940
to 1945), was Crerar's golfing and drinking partner.33 In private, the two reveled
in their common Scottish ancestry through an exchange of light-hearted doggerel
verse that, for example, regretted that Shakespeare was not a Scot.34 In public,
Macdonald's limited sensitivity to Indians was revealed in a "toast to Canada"
that advocated tolerance between the nation's "four great races": the English,
the Irish, the Scottish and the French -- the latter deserving credit because it
had "tamed the savage Indian."35 Along with Ilsley, Crerar and Macdonald
constituted the core of the resistance in King's cabinet to proposed social
welfare programs.36 Considering the government's overriding preoccupation with
the war, one would not expect these three key Ministers to oppose
centralization, a scheme that promised to cut Indian relief costs and promote
self-sufficiency.
Within two months of the May 1940 directive to tighten Indian relief,
Crerar collected the cost figures for Nova Scotia and obtained the assurance

49
that, although three agencies in Nova Scotia would cost 50 per cent more than
the existing arrangement:
.•. in the judgement of the officials of this branch who
have investigated the situation, this increase should be
offset many times over in saving on relief costs and
furthermore we should get better value for our money
· in improved services to the Indians and a betterment of
their conditions.37
Crerar then wrote the Nova Scotia cabinet ministers, Macdonald and Ilsley, on
the necessity of reorganizing the Indian Affairs administration there "as soon as
possible." The increasing cost of Indian relief and the Department's inability to
direct its agents or control the prices of supplies made change "imperative," he
stated. He explained that the part-time agents could either be replaced by three
full-tiiT_le agents or the teachers at the ten Indian day schools could be
transformed into teacher/agents also responsible for the purchase and
distribution of supplies. While he expressed concern that it might be difficult for
only three agents to supervise the distribution of relief, nowhere did he mention
relocating Indians. In fact, he acknowledged there would be an increase in
administrative travel expenses whichever option was chosen. The primary
motivation for the reorganization was clearly the reduction of relief costs.
Crerar anticipated "considerable objection" by local storekeepers and their
Members of Parliament to the dismantling of the patronage system, but almost
no space was devoted to any benefits the Indians might derive from this
administrative change or their possible reaction to it.38 Macdonald quickly gave
approval in principle to the reorganization.39
Some nine months later, Crerar corresponded with A.S. Macmillan, the
incumbent Nova Scotia premier, explaining that "more urgent problems in
connection with the war ••. had prevented any definite action from being taken"

50
so far. Appending a copy of his earlier letter to Macdonald and Ilsley, he now
proposed "to consolidate the present agencies into two or three groups and
secure new areas of land to which [the Indians] might be moved and where
conditions might be more favourable for the Indians to become self-
. "40supportmg.
Advised by Crerar that provincial cooperation would permit speedy
action "to improve the physical welfare of Indians," Macmillan replied five days
later saying he thought the idea "practical." "[T]here are plenty of vacant lands
where they can be placed" he pointed out, but the plan was likely to meet with
some opposition from the Indians who "have the habit of spending their time
loafing around the towns."
41
Macmillan also expressed his willingness to meet
with a "senior officer of the Branch" whom Crerar intended to send to Nova
Scotia to study the problem "from every angle,"42 and to facilitate the necessary
negotiations, requesting only that the officer see him before meeting with the
Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests and the Farm Loan Board.43
W.S. Arneil, the "officer of the Branch" selected for this task, had no
previous experience with Indians. He was chosen by Crerar for his familiarity
with land settlement work.44 Prior to joining Indian Affairs in January 1941,
Arneil had been with the Soldier Settlement Board for nineteen and a half
years.
45
His five-week inquiry was mere window dressing on a ministerial
directive shaped by more than two decades of pressure from the Branch.
The Indian Affairs Director was briefed by the Deputy Minister regarding
Crerar's intentions on 1 May 1941. McGill was reminded that Dr. Robertson's
1936 recommendations regarding Nova Scotia had not been given serious
consideration by Council, and was told that "the Minister is desirous that the
whole problem should be gone into most thoroughly so that when the report is

51
made it will be possible to arrive at some definite decisions as to what should be
done."4-G Arneil was to report on conditions in each agency paying particular
attention to: the health and welfare of the Indians; their means of livelihood;
the amount of relief issued; the quality of medical and educational services
available to them; the type of land in each reserve; the character and
qualifications of Indian Affairs' employees; and the condition and replacement
cost of government-owned buildings. Arneil was to suggest ways "whereby the
welfare of Indians might be improved and th~ cost of relief and administration
reduced." He was also to examine "the Indian problem" in Prince Edward Island
where the suggestion had been made to move all the Indians to Lennox Island.4-?
Arneil's ten-page "Investigation Report on Indian Reserves and Indian
Administration," submitted 23 August 194-1, was not particularly thorough, but it
found its way to the predictable recommendations: that all .Indians receiving
relief should be established at two large reserves, that the remaining reserves
should be sold, and that the few Indians not receiving relief and those opposed to
centralization should be enfranchised. Given Nova Scotia employers'
predilection for hiring white workers, Arneil conceded "there was no immediate
solution for ••. the Indian problem" there. He described centralization as "a
step in the direction of a solution that in my judgement could be worked out over
a period of years." Replacing the nineteen part-time agents with two full-time
agents would eliminate "neglect and faulty administration," and concentrating
the Indians at two locations would relieve the Branch of the necessity of hiring
medical personnel in every county. It would also facilitate the provision of
improved medical services, and eliminate the health and moral hazards posed to
white communities. Isolating Indians in remote locations would reduce the
number of illegitimate children and the Branch's support costs for them, and

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