CANADA
Times Colonist
They found the bodies in the slush and ice of Fraser Lake. Four children, aged eight and nine, lying according to Canadian Press reports huddled in each others arms “capless and lightly clad,” frozen in the final dark embrace of a January night. The temperature was -30 C.
Maurice Justice and Allen Willie were eight years old. Johnny Michael and Andrew Paul were nine. All four were runaways from the harsh confines of the church-run Lejac Residential School. It was Jan. 2, 1937, when their bodies were found roughly six miles from the school and less than one from the Nautley Reserve, which was their believed destination. They had just wanted to go home.
On Feb. 19, the Times Colonist published another CP story, this one bearing the headline “Residential-school deaths topped 3,000: study.” The “study” is being conducted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with research manager Alex Maass making public preliminary residential-school-death lists. To date, the count stands at 3,000, but Maass told CP it would undoubtedly rise as she and fellow workers continue their search through thousands of archived documents. The true count will never be known, because annual reports on school deaths ceased in 1917. Maass says it had obviously become policy to no longer report them.
While the preliminary report is careful to name disease the largest single killer of residential school children, Maass notes: “The schools were a breeding ground for TB. Dormitories were incubation wards.” And never more so than when the great influenza epidemic swept the world in 1918-19, and infected children were left in school dormitories to become innocent carriers of death.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.