The Oblates ran 48 of the 139 Indian Residential Schools across the country that were funded by the Canadian government but run by Christian churches. The schools were blatant, violent, tools of assimilation – Canada wanted to clear the land of Indigenous people, and the churches wanted to save those whom they perceived to be savages, to indoctrinate as many new members to the Christian faith as it possibly could.
Bev went to the Kamloops school from Grade 1 to Grade 12. She left in 1961, and for years, used alcohol to numb her pain, keep at bay what she saw and experienced. “I don’t have too much memory of there,” she said softly. “I went to the visitors reunion of the students who went to Kamloops and … a lady came and asked my name. I told her and she started crying. She said, ‘You are still alive. I used to look after you’ … I understood what that lady said. She looked after me.
The Stó:lō Nation has an official record of George Peter Williams. Their registry has his parents’ names, his date of birth and death, and a note that he’s buried in the Skwah cemetery. But no one knows what happened to him or how he ended up there. At the end of the mostly blank record, a printed line reads: “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Before she passed away, my mother wanted to find answers as to what happened to Roderick,” Gary recalls. “It was the last thing she wanted.” Gary’s son Justin says it was a spur of the moment idea to travel to Kamloops last year to bring the missing children’s spirits back. Because the Williams family are the keepers of much of the canoe teachings in Skwah, they decided to bring their canoes to retrieve their loved ones. “We would take them as far as we can,” Justin says, “and they could go home from there.”
After the news broke, Canada woke up. For months, Canadians bought orange T-shirts that said, “Every Child Matters,” shrines of tiny shoes appeared on the steps of provincial legislatures, at former schools and in town squares. Statues of Sir John A. Macdonald and other “founders” of Canada were boxed up or torn down. Canada Day lost its meaning.
Boys study carpentry and girls study practical sewing at the Kamloops residential school in 1958-59, about a decade before the school would be taken over by the federal government. It closed in 1978.It wasn’t until this past month that the family finally learned something about Roderick: Historical records discovered by the Wall Street Journal pointed to him having been buried in Victoria. “Return of Death of an Indian” is how the sparsely informed death certificate for Roderick Charlie reads.
The Post's frontpage for Saturday, May 28, 2022.
I'm still waiting for an answer to my question. What did these children die from?
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