Eventually, out came the story of when his mother was a new eight-year-old arrival at the Birtle residential school, open from 1888 to 1970. The nuns caught her speaking her native Salteaux.
“They ran toward each other to hug each other,” Pratt said. “The priest went up to them and spanked them very hard.”Stories also eventually began to dribble out from his father about life at theopen from 1889 to 1949. The school placed a heavy emphasis on students developing agricultural skills at the nearby agricultural research station — skills that served William well later in life, after the Second World War, when he got his own farm.
And only in later years, in the 1990s, when others started to come forward with their own similar stories, did Pratt’s mother and father address the sexual abuse they suffered.