CANADA
Ottawa Citizen
[with video]
MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN
Published on: May 22, 2015
WINNIPEG – It was a failed social experiment stretching back to Sir John A. Macdonald that set the groundwork for decades of human misery.
The Canadian government, in line with a goal eventually described as a plan to “kill the Indian in the child,” established a system of Indian residential schools.
It began in 1883, when Macdonald passed a cabinet measure to create three residential schools in the West to be operated by the Catholic and Anglican churches.
The plan was announced in the House of Commons by Public Works Minister Hector Langevin, who said:
“In order to educate the children properly we must separate them from their families. Some may say that this is hard but if we want to civilize them we must do that.”
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