By Staff
April 19th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
Each day the Globe and Mail publishes a short piece on the second page about an event that was historically significant,
The piece today is something that was certainly significant and something we should be ashamed of and work to change the terrible mistake that was made.
Another tragic chapter in Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous people began on this day in 1884 with an amendment to the Indian Act that created residential schools. The change cemented in law the existing boarding schools run by religious groups.
The residential schools’ intent was to end the “Indian problem” by separating children from their parents, and erasing native cultures to assimilate them into Canada. An estimated 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and sent to the schools funded by the federal government and the churches.
Physical and sexual abuse, hunger, forced labour, neglect and illness were all parts of the system, victims told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which began in 2008. “We got taken away by a big truck.
I can still remember my mom and dad looking at us, and they were really, really sad looking,” said Alma Scott, taken to a school in Manitoba at the age of 5. “They were there to discipline you, teach you, beat you, rape you, molest you, but I never got an education,” Elaine Durocher said of the Roman Catholics who ran the school she was sent to in Saskatchewan.
The last residential school closed in 1996.
