CANADA
The Globe and Mail
WENDY STUECK
ALERT BAY, B.C. — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Feb. 18 2015
Josie Hanuse was five years old when she first came to St. Michael’s Indian Residential School, an imposing brick building in Alert Bay, B.C., off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
On Wednesday, she was back, carrying the same suitcase she’d been given as a parting gift by her parents in 1967, and sharing tears and embraces with other former students who had come from around the province and beyond to witness the symbolic demolition of St. Michael’s.
“I was one of those children who never came home,” Ms. Hanuse said after an emotional ceremony that included heavy equipment destroying the school’s front porch and the opportunity for former students to hurl rocks at the decrepit building’s façade.
The ceremony – punctuated by sobs, singing, prayers and drumming – was a symbolic watershed for former students such as Ms. Hanuse. It was also a reminder of the lasting, multigenerational impact of residential schools and the ripple effects in First Nations communities, decades after most schools have closed and years after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology in the House of Commons in 2008.
Ms. Hanuse, for example, didn’t go back to live in the home where her parents had carefully packed the little suitcase for the journey they did not want her to take. By the time she left St. Michael’s at 14, her mother was dead and her father was deemed unable to care for his children because of his alcohol abuse. Ms. Hanuse went into foster care and began a cycle of drinking, gambling and drug addiction that ended 17 years ago, when she began what she calls her “healing journey.”
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