TORONTO (CANADA)
Wall Street Journal [New York NY]
April 17, 2022
By Michael Taube
A welcome and heartfelt apology for Catholics’ role in the country’s abusive residential school system.
Pope Francis has asked for forgiveness for the Roman Catholic involvement with Canada’s residential school system. His heartfelt contrition may bring some reconciliation for the indigenous people affected by this disturbing part of my country’s history and the many Canadians frustrated, saddened and embarrassed by it.
The gesture was long awaited by indigenous leaders and came after an intense week of discussions between Pope Francis and First Nations, Inuit and Métis delegations. Before an audience that included 200 bishops as well as indigenous delegates and their supporters in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, on April 1 the pontiff expressed “sorrow and shame for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, and the abuses you suffered and the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values.”
He didn’t stop there. “For the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church,” Pope Francis said, “I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon.”
French missionaries initiated an educational process of assimilating indigenous peoples in the 17th century, when Canada was known as New France. Day and boarding schools were run by Jesuits, Récollets of the Franciscan Order, and the Ursuline Monastery of Quebec City. The goal was to educate the natives in academic and religious subjects. Many families resisted because they didn’t want their children taken from their homes for long periods.
This strategy was largely abandoned by 1694, but it was restarted in the 1820s. The majority of these institutions were run by Catholic dioceses and communities, though a significant number were started by the Anglican Church of Canada and United Church of Canada. In 1820 John West, an Anglican preacher and chaplain for the Hudson’s Bay Co., started the Red River Academy, a day school aimed at evangelizing in Manitoba. The school extended its mission to include teaching local nonindigenous children. Methodists opened residential schools in Ontario in the early 1820s to promote Christianity and subsistence agriculture.
Canada’s residential schools operated for more than a century in every province and territory other than New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The biggest period of growth Canada’s residential schools was between 1867 and 1939. Starting in 1894, the government had the authority to take an indigenous child from his family and place him in a residential school. This law was reinforced in 1920 when attendance at a residential school became compulsory for indigenous children, a rule that ended in 1947. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has estimated that roughly 150,000 indigenous children were educated at these schools.
Conditions were apparently horrific. Multiple firsthand reports and accounts from former students describe physical, psychological and sexual abuse, malnourishment, corporal punishment, inadequate medical care and even scientific experimentation on students. The education and training many received in English or French was apparently inadequate, making it impossible for graduates to find work. Some lost their mother tongue, as speaking in an indigenous language was often forbidden.
There was also a troublingly high mortality rate. Truth and Reconciliation estimated in its 2015 report that at least 3,201 indigenous children died between 1867 and 2000 in residential schools or shortly after leaving, often from disease or malnutrition. Murray Sinclair, the indigenous former Manitoba judge who oversaw the report, has suggested the number could be as high as 6,000.
This history became more fraught with the discovery last year of roughly 1,700 suspected unmarked graves at the sites of 10 former residential schools in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Investigators used tools including archival research, interviews and ground-penetrating radar. Taken with previous discoveries, this put the unofficial suspected unmarked-grave total at 2,084.
The validity of this analysis is debatable. Earlier this year in a blog post for the Dorchester Review, University of Montreal historian Jacques Rouillard noted some reasons to doubt First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir’s announcement in May 2021 that an anthropologist had found evidence of 200 to 215 suspected burial sites at the site of a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. Most important, no actual remains were discovered there. The anthropologist’s claim is based on radar imagery of disturbed soil, and no excavation has been made at the site to determine definitively whether they are graves. This is also true of other sites found since the start of 2021, all of which were identified using ground-penetrating radar and haven’t yet been excavated.
Many indigenous leaders believe this preliminary evidence is enough, as do many Canadian politicians on the left and right. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the evidence at Kamloops as “a painful reminder” of “a dark and shameful chapter” in Canadian history.
Pope Francis is a Jesuit who strongly believes in social justice and his apology seemed to come from a real sense of personal responsibility for indigenous assimilation in New France and Canada. In an age when governments and public officials issue apologies with almost flippant ease, he clearly believes the church should be accountable for its role in the difficult history of Canada’s residential schools. For me and other Canadians, it’s greatly appreciated.
Mr. Taube, a columnist for Troy Media and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.