It was out-of-class time that Billy found more challenging. For one thing, he was among the smallest boys in his age bracket. Bigger boys soon learned that Billy’s shorter stature was not an invitation for them to push him around. When one pinched him on the back of the neck one day, Billy responded with a swift kick and ran away. He needn’t have run. Where Billy kicked the boy ensured that the boy wouldn’t feel like running after him for a long time. 

        “It’s not that I was trying to prove anything,” Bill asserted. “At least I don’t think so. I didn’t think anything about being smaller. I just didn’t like other guys pushing me around.” 

        During his annual two-month holiday, Billy found little change on the reserve. Sometimes there were new babies at home. It was nice to make their acquaintance but, being away ten months of the year made it difficult to really get to know them as younger siblings, at least until they joined you in school. 

        When Billy entered Grade IV his school program changed. Half of the school day was spent in the classroom. The other half was spent in farm work. Each student was assigned chores which helped run the whole school-owned farm operation. Working in teams of two, the students cleaned the barns, pitched hay from the loft to the feeding bins, sorted vegetables in the root cellars, fed the pigs, and milked the cows. Learning farm skills as they worked under the direction of an instructor, the boys also learned other skills, among them the ability to supplement what they considered to be their meager food supply. 

        The school food was nutritious and often tasty. But there never seemed to be quite enough. Perhaps it was because he was a growing boy. Perhaps it was boredom or frustration. But, like most of the two hundred kids attending the school, Billy always seemed to be hungry. So he could understand why a previous bunch of students had gone to the trouble of feeding one of the pigs chop with a large portion of broken glass mixed in. 

        “As the story goes, the pig died quickly,” Bill recalled. “It was thrown over the fence into the bush with no post-mortem.” Shortly after the dead pig was tossed over the fence, a fair-sized group of students sneaked under the fence. Rescuing the dead swine, the boys carried it deep into the bush, far away from the school. There, they butchered the pig, made a fire and sat down to a royal feast. 

        “Nothing so drastic happened when I was in school,” Bill admitted. “But my friends and I learned how to stash potatoes in hidden corners of our clothes when we came off the harvest fields. We got stuff from the root cellar and the kitchen, too. We roasted the potatoes in the furnace room.” 

        The boys also learned how to snitch wheat from neighboring granaries to fry in flat pans as a good midnight snack. They also became adept at shooting rabbits with a slingshot and occasionally catching fish, which they then cooked in a place near the school called “Indian bush.” Maybe it wasn’t hunger for food which drove them. Maybe it was hunger to prove self-reliance, to get in touch with a way of life closer to that which they had left on the reserve. Whatever the driving force, these activities provided Billy and the other students with a whole set of learned skills.