AKLAVIK - A residential school nun humiliated Margaret Pokiak-Fenton and forced her to wear bright red stockings while all the other girls wore grey.

Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, 74, and her daughter-in-law, Christy Jordan-Fenton, turned her experiences at the Aklavik residential school into a children's book called Fatty Legs. The book was published by Annick Press in the fall of 2010. - photo courtesy of Christy Jordan-Fenton

Now, 60 years after she left Aklavik's Immaculata School, her tormentors' favoured taunt is the title of her new children's book: Fatty Legs.

The book, launched late last month, is an illustrated chronicle of the true experiences that caused the young, strong-willed Margaret so much pain. But her eventual triumph over the nun - as she formulates a plan to get rid of the red stockings for good - symbolizes a promise of better things for today's children and their parents.

"It's mainly to give them hope that there always can be change, and when life is terrible, you always have hope," Pokiak-Fenton said from her home near Fort St. John, B.C.

Pokiak-Fenton, 74, grew up on Banks Island, where her father - also a residential school survivor - made a living as a trapper, often travelling with members of the Carpenter family from Sachs Harbour.

When she was eight, she begged him to let her go to school so she could learn how to read. Finally her father relented, and in her pursuit of an education over the next four years, Margaret felt repeatedly degraded.

She missed her family, forgot her Inuvialuktun language and even lost her appetite for traditional food.

She left school at 12 and later met "a cowboy" working on a DEWline site near her home. They got married and moved to his hometown in British Columbia's Peace River district in 1962. Pokiak-Fenton worked as a seamstress, telling stories to her children and later to her grandchildren, trying to teach them bits and pieces of Inuvialuktun. Bad memories of residential school stayed with her, but she never talked about those days.

Until, one day, she was driving into town with her daughter-in-law, writer Christy Jordan-Fenton.

"I told her about the experience I had at the residential school and how awful it was that they called me fatty legs, and she said 'Oh my goodness, can I write a book about that?' And I said, 'no!'" Pokiak-Fenton said, explaining it took a while before she was comfortable sharing her story.

"I didn't want my grandchildren to know I was naughty at one time," she laughed. "I didn't realize it (at first) but I had a weight lifted from me after having written that in print."

Now two years after work on Fatty Legs first began, Pokiak-Fenton gives readings at local schools and sells the book at the Fort St. John farmer's market. It has already made its way into Whitehorse libraries and both co-authors hope to distribute it to NWT libraries since Pokiak-Fenton still has many relatives in the territory.

She hopes her story can make a difference not only to young children, but also to other residential school survivors. She said she's already received a lot of positive responses.

"Adults read it too and it makes them have a lot of hope and somehow they get through what they've been feeling all along inside that they've never mentioned to anyone else. They're just so happy that someone had written something like that about the residential school," she said. "A lot of them aren't interested in school because they think there's nobody else like them.

"They don't feel like they should be in school and (they think) there's no hope for them, but they read my book."

She and her daughter-in-law are currently working on a sequel for Annick Press about young Margaret's experiences re-adjusting to life back with her family after leaving residential school in Aklavik. That book is due out sometime next year.

Pokiak-Fenton said her life hasn't changed much since she became a published author except that she feels more accomplished and she hopes her story will help others.

"I didn't want to have anything but the truth in there," she said.

"It was very hard to release that, and even to this day when I read some paragraphs in the book, it chokes me up."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.