CANADA
Toronto Star
By: Joanna Smith Ottawa Bureau reporter, Published on Tue Dec 15 2015
OTTAWA—More than 3,000 indigenous children and youth died in residential schools — many of them buried in unmarked graves — and those who had the power to prevent these deaths did little to stop it.
The heartbreaking details of those deaths are contained in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to be released Tuesday, which details the dark history and unsettling legacy of Canadian residential schools that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.
“Many students who went to residential school never returned. They were lost to their families. They died at rates that were far higher than those experienced by the general school-aged population. Their parents were often uninformed of their sickness and death. They were buried away from their families in long-neglected graves. No one took care to count how many died or to record where they were buried,” says the final report.
The 3,231-page final report — hard copies of which will be delivered Tuesday in Ottawa to federal government and churches who were parties to the class-action settlement that led to the creation of the TRC — includes a volume titled “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials” detailing the circumstances, when known, of the 3,201 students deaths between 1867 and 2000 it was able to record.
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