In the memory of many residential school students, the worst aspect of the care they received was the absence of emotional support and nurturing by staff. The second most frequent and bitter recollection of former students concerns food, the lack of it, and its inferior quality.

      From the earliest days of the modern residential schools until they were phased out, the deficiencies of school food were the source of complaints and protests. Rumours of inadequate food at the schools were rife on the Sarcee reserve in 1896, and in the spring of 1919 the chief of the Onion Lake reserve in Saskatchewan visited the Catholic institution there to investigate student reports of insufficient food. And as late as the 1960s a former student who was working at Indian Affairs headquarters categorised the food he and his mates had been subjected to at the Mohawk Institute as 'disgraceful.' A former student of the Alberni school dismissed the fare he had experienced as 'rarely fit for swine.' Judging by the earliness, frequency, and similarity of complaints, there can be no doubt that residential school food was substandard.

      A number of factors compounded the food problem. One was the insistence of missionaries on providing themselves with separate eating facilities and food superior to that served to the children. In exceptional cases, such as Alberni early in the century or the Mohawk Institute in the 1930s, the principal and his family insisted on private dining facilities. As not infrequently happened at the schools, the principal of the Mohawk Institute had the milk obtained from the school's herd separated, most of the cream sold in town, and choice items for his own table purchased with the proceeds.