CANADA
The Globe and Mail
DIRK MEISSNER
VICTORIA — The Canadian Press
Published Sunday, Feb. 15 2015
A crumbling, omnipresent red brick building has been a haunting presence for thousands of British Columbia aboriginal people who say they faced physical and sexual abuse at the site.
Many of those who attended see the planned demolition of St. Michael’s Indian Residential School as the removal of a cancer that has been eroding the remote Vancouver Island community of Alert Bay.
St. Michael’s, operated by the Anglican Church from 1930 to 1975, has been the focus of heart-wrenching community debate for decades. Residents and survivors have tried to decide whether to leave the ominous empty hulk of a building as an example of past wrongs, or knock it down and remove it from sight and, hopefully, memory.
The first church-run residential school in the Alert Bay area dates back to 1882.
A massive survivor ceremony hosted by the Namgis First Nation is scheduled for Wednesday on the school grounds to celebrate the demolition of St. Michael’s.
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