Dave Moczulski

419 Hill Street, Our Lady of Czestochowa Polish Church

 

My name is Dave Moczulski and I’m standing in front of the Lady of Czestochowa church on Hill Street in London. I recall at a time in my Grade Eight class at St. John’s, I was in detention. I had to stay within the classroom and the classroom just happened to be situated on the girl’s side of the school because at that time they had separate boys and girls sides. So during this recess and my detention, I had the windows open to the school. There was no air-conditioning back then, it was just wide-open windows. And I remember inadvertently talking to some of the girls that were down, playing the games out in the schoolyard. Well, my teacher at that time…a nun…came into the classroom at the wrong time and caught me talking to the girls outside, dragged me into what then was called the Gestetner Room, today it would be a photocopy room, and she proceeded to give me additional lashes with the strap because I was talking to the girls on my detention hall. It just seemed that I got a double dip of the punishment on that given day.

Within all of our friends, if you had an opinion or you had a joke and you gave that opinion or a joke to a teacher, discipline was the answer back then. And, my teacher in Grade Eight at St. John’s, a bunch of us went to the convent to see her, a bunch of us school kids. She remembers going to teaching school and being taught or instructed on how to give the strap and she says that “we would (laughs) we would be in jail now if we practiced the same thing today as they did back then.” But she remembers specifically them teaching them how to hold the wrist and come down with that strap to inflict the pain on the palm of the hand. That was really interesting to get that perspective from her, but lovely woman and no irregards [sic] for the times that she spent strapping me all the times we were in school.

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