Hayter Reed and the Nascency of Compulsory School Attendance for First Nations Children in Canada, 1891–1897

Abstract

The 1894 Compulsory Attendance Regulation under the Indian Act established a process for First Nations children in Canada to be separated from their parents and entered into a residential school, and the responsibility for this belongs to the then-deputy superintendent general of the “Indian Department” [the deputy minister], Hayter Reed. This instrument was not the true “compulsory attendance” that school operators had previously sought, but was strategically applied by Indian agents throughout Canada until being added to the Indian Act in 1920 and becoming applicable to each First Nations child in Canada. This regulation was intended to satisfy the legal requirements to bear pressure on parents to send or return their children to the existing First Nations schools in the 1890s, but typically focused on those parents that, for different reasons, were opposed to residential schools, such as band Chiefs or local leaders. This paper reveals how various parents, Indian agents, school principals, and Canadian law-enforcement officials treated the regulation during the years after compulsory attendance was first activated.