Tears, anger and painful memories are bubbling to the surface in Prince Albert this week.
Survivors of Canada’s residential schools have begun to tell their stories at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings taking place in the city.
Many former students say their childhood ended when they were taken from their families and put into the schools.
Paul Sylvestre attended the school in Beauval.
He says the path to healing is different for everyone, but there are some common threads:
“Most of the people in the north who are sexually abused, they find their healing through Mother Nature. That’s how I found mine.”
Emil Highway told the commission it was years before he learned to deal with his experiences, largely through a comment made by a healing facilitator:
” ‘When it comes to your parents’, he said, ‘. . . remember they, too, went to residential school. They too were beaten.’ And when he said that, it was like a light bulb went off in my head — and I said to myself: ‘I have to go see my father’.”
One survivor from Alberta, Lloyd Courtelle, says he has further been victimized by his inability to get proper compensation for the loss of his leg.
He lost the limb in a mechanical accident during his time at a school in southern Alberta, but he says the government has refused to include that in his compensation.
Commissioner Marie Wilson says she is pleased with the turnout from the survivors and other observers:
“Yesterday, we had a very significant participation of non-Aboriginal people here. I think at one point about a third of the room were non-Aboriginal people, and I take that as a very hopeful sign, as well.”
Wilson says the presence of non-Aboriginal Canadians is necessary in the healing journey and to ensure this type of thing never happens again.
Workers at the hearing are collecting tissues used by survivors.
They say it will eventually be burned when the TRC wraps up its work in a few years.