CANADA
Edmonton Journal
By Brent Wittmeier, Edmonton Journal April 12, 2013
EDMONTON – Rick Chapman has seen it in childlike whimpers, afflictions hidden under heavy-duty addictions to alcohol, drugs and solvents.
An Anglican pastor with Edmonton’s ecumenical Inner City Pastoral Ministry, Chapman’s work puts him in full view of the brutal daily effects of residential schools. Roughly 60 per cent of Edmonton’s homeless have an aboriginal or Métis background, Chapman said, many directly touched — or a generation removed — from the trauma they experienced there.
“They tremble, they shake, they cry when they have to talk about what actually happened to them,” Chapman said. “The person may be 40 years old, but you’re really talking to a person who’s engaged in a history that happened to them when they’re young. And this history has not been resolved yet.”
About 100 Edmonton pastors and church leaders gathered at Trinity Lutheran Church on Friday to listen to Marie Wilson, a former journalist with CBC and one of three commissioners with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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