Tears, anger, forgiveness mark end of residential school tour
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 | 9:47 AM CT
CBC News
Emotions ran high as a cross-Canada tour of church and aboriginal leaders paying tribute to residential school survivors wrapped up in Winnipeg on Monday night.
The Remembering the Children tour kicked off in Ottawa last week, and visited Vancouver and Saskatoon before its final stop in Winnipeg, where about 300 people assembled at The Forks national historical site.
"The Anglican Church of Canada has so much for which to be ashamed and so sorry," Rev. Fred Hiltz said at The Forks, reiterating comments he made throughout the tour.
Four times, in four cities, Ted Quewezance has cried hearing those words.
Quewezance, head of the National Residential School Survivors' Society, said he didn't expect to be so touched by the apologies.
"I took it as a personal apology to me for the wrongs that were done in residential schools," he said. "It goes down deep, eh? Something I never figured I'd experience or ever see. It's a long time waiting," he added, his voice breaking with emotion.
Hiltz said he also has been moved and humbled, hearing from former students like Quewezance, who suffered sexual abuse in a residential school starting at age five, and whose brothers, sisters and mother had similar experiences.
4 churches represented
"When we see the pain that some of our staff inflicted on young children, we have to hang our heads in shame and say we are sorry," he said.
"Part of that is to accept the hand of fellowship aboriginal people extend to us, and say, 'Can we walk together on a path of healing?'"
The United, Catholic and Presbyterian churches were also represented at Monday's event, as was the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
Both church and aboriginal leaders hope that's the spirit that will permeate sessions held by an upcoming truth and reconciliation commission when it's officially launched by the federal government.
Harry Delorme, who attended a residential school from 1955 to 1961, said he accepted the apology of the church leaders, and Monday's event was positive for him.
"It showed me, I guess, the turnaround of the churches," he said. "At that time, they couldn't do no wrong, and now they're sort of admitting that it was a wrong thing to do, and I think, to me, that was pretty good."
'Never forget'
But despite the olive branches extended by those involved in the tour, all acknowledge it will be a struggle for some to find reconciliation and healing.
Nancy Morrison, 69, spent most of her childhood, from age three, in a Catholic residential school in Kenora. Demanding a microphone at Monday's event, she expressed a simmering anger over her treatment.
"I came here especially … just to go and meet the people, the abusers, not only from my school, but from other schools as well, because my siblings, my uncles, my relatives, my friends went to a different school, and we were told not to have anything to do with them because they were probably the wrong religion," she told the crowd.
"I was beaten. We went through hell," she said. "How do you forget that?… I'll forgive, but I'll never forget."
Aboriginal leaders called the tour one step in a process to help former residential school students heal, but add that the next step is for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to issue a formal apology for the federal government's involvement in the schools.
