The Night before Christmas: Port Alberni, 1946

A True Story

Kevin Annett reciting this poem:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Rez School,

not a child was stirring, for those were the rules.

No stockings were hung on the cold walls so bare,

for joy and deliverance would never be there.

The children were clinging in fear to their beds,

while visions of floggings danced in their heads.

Matron in her kerchief and Caldwell in his cap

had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

when up on the stairway there rose such a clatter

they sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.

Moonlight on the edge of the long, stone stairwell

gave the luster of mid-day on whom the glow fell.

When what to their wondering eyes should appear

but a young girl named Maisie, awash in her tears,

with a mournful expression so heartfelt and sick,

that they knew in a moment it was not St. Nick.

She had a thin face and a tiny, shrunk belly

and her knees quaked in fear like a bowlful of jelly.

She was dressed all in rags, from her head to her foot,

and her clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.

As she saw Caldwell coming, his eyes flashing hate,

Maisie knew in a moment what would be her fate.

As she sprang to escape, and was turning around,

Up the stairs came Caldwell with a furious bound.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

and kicked the young girl, who fell with a jerk,

and toppled downstairs with a thundering crash,

and lay on the floor, like a pile of trash.

Then he sprang to the phone, to his team gave a whistle,

and away the corpse flew like the down of a thistle.

And he said, “From our graves to our church archives’ walls,

there hide away, hide away, hide away all!”

Then the Christians exclaimed as truth vanished that night:

“Merry Christmas to us, for might always makes right!”

Maisie Shaw, age 14, was murdered by Principal Alfred Caldwell (above) at the United Church’s Alberni ’Indian residential school’ on Christmas Eve,1946, as witnessed by Harriett Nahanee. (below)

Harriett’s public naming of the crime 29 years ago this month began our movement that exposed and prosecuted crimes in the ‘Indian residential schools’. She acquired this publicity by attending a demonstration Kevin Annett had called at the BC head office of the United Church, to protest his illegal firing without cause after he exposed residential school murders and land theft in Port Alberni, BC.

Harriett Nahanee (right) with Kevin Annett at a December 1998 church protest

But the crime and the coverup of the Canadian genocide continues!

The blood of children does not wash away!