CANADA
The Province
BY ELAINE O’CONNOR, THE PROVINCE OCTOBER 6, 2013
Twenty-five years ago, Barney Williams Jr. was on a car trip with his wife when he came to a fork in the road. His wife told him to pick any direction he wanted to go. Williams froze, then sobbed behind the wheel.
His fear, born from years in abusive residential schools, was any choice he made would be wrong, and he would be punished for it.
“Everything I did, I was beaten for,” he said. “They told us: ‘You are never going to amount to anything. You’re a savage. You’re stupid.”
Williams was five when he was sent from his home in the Tlaoquiaht First Nation reserve near Tofino to Christie residential school. He was one of at least 150,000 children across Canada who were placed in residential schools.
Students were beaten for speaking their language. For four years, Williams was abused by a priest. At his Kamloops Roman Catholic high school, he was abused by a nun.
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