A special place should be reserved in Hades for a couple of particularly abusive supervisors. 'Wikew,' a Sister of Charity at Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, appears in student recollections as a monstrous figure who made life for most of her charges sheer torment. Sister Mary Leonard, as she was properly known, was a very large woman who was in charge of the girls at the school. According to Isabelle Knockwood's recollections and those of other former students, Wikew was an ogre who delighted in inflicting arbitrary and unjustified punishments on her charges, frequently and with violence. Besides favouring some girls and systematically victimising others, she seemed to enjoy presiding over the soap closet in the refectory in which captured runaways were confined for long hours, being let out briefly to consume bread and water. She frequently lashed out at students' heads and bodies with her large fists, and she was also prone to use racially insulting language towards anyone who displeased her. 'It was not unusual for her to come running into the recreation hall,' recalled Knockwood, 'with her face red with anger swinging a skipping rope or whatever she could grab and yell, "Get out you little savages (or wild Indians, or heathens)."' The terror ended only when a girl, 'one of the "pets," not one of those who was continually being punished,' was caught with a knife in her mattress. She apparently intended to attack the sister in charge with the weapon. Whether coincidence or not, Sister Mary Leonard was not a member of the Shubenacadie staff the following year. However, her behaviour had been a major factor in creating a stultifying and terrifying environment: 'an atmosphere of fear of the unknown, the unexpected, and the reality that you could be next.'