TRANSCRIPT

AS - Ada Summers, interviewee / LR - Lyn Royce, interviewer

AS: Um... when I... when I lived here in St Catharines, it was fine. Like with... I finished... I went to... finished Grade 4 here. Then my Dad got another job in the Falls, so we moved to Niagara Falls and that's when he got all his kids all back together. And uh, it wasn't until I moved to Niagara Falls that I experienced the prejudism [sic], with the... the 'N-word' and this kind of thing, and I... of course, I was a scrapper, so I was constantly fighting... 'Meet ya... meet ya after school across from the school yard... meet ya down there by that pole... ' I got the strap a few times for it, but, uh... yeah. I had uh, one teacher, uh... he was actually the principal who taught Grade, Grade, uh, 5... no, uh, Grade 8 at the time. So what happened, uh, I got in a fight and he was going to punish me for it. So I said 'I'm not takin' the strap if she don't take the strap, she started it' - kinda thing. So he's gonna strap me, in front of the class, a set an example. So as he brought the strap down, I brought my hand up and the strap hit him across the face.

LR: [in background] Oh, my gosh...

AS: The class was on the floor in tears.

LR: [in background] Oh, my gosh...

AS: So then all he did was call my Dad; you know, and tell my Dad what happened. So my Dad asked me and I told him. He said, 'Well, I told him I was gonna punish you.' So my dad punished me. It was 4 sheets of newspaper rolled up and that's what I got slapped with [chuckles]. So he actually kept his word, he was going to punish me.

LR: Right... right. But it doesn't sound like it was too severe.

AS: 4 sheets of newspaper rolled up? Coupla' cracks with it? Nah... My Dad never hit us. That was...

LR: [in background] That's good...

AS: ...that; that was our spanking. If we really did something really bad, that was 4 sheets of newspaper. And he counted the sheets, too [chuckles]. Of course, we screamed and hollered like he was killing us.

LR: Oh yeah...

AS: That was a standing joke for many years as we grew up