Columnists
Conform, reform, reconcile, denial
So many emotions, none of them good. We’ve had just over two weeks of eye-opening revelations and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. I’m afraid, as humans, we’ll become insensitive to the horror of what will be “unearthed” over the next weeks or months and years. For certain, someone thought the horror of the residential school system could be buried in a field, but here we are watching as the truth is unearthed. When I was a child I was vaguely aware of Residential schools. Oh, I’m sure the grown-ups in my life didn’t call them “residential schools”. Likely they had some gussied up name, like boarding schools. We were told, rather vaguely, about those “schools” and how the “schools” were good for “Indians” because they were savages who didn’t have schools like ours in their neighbourhoods. I remember asking my parents if residential schools were like reform schools and was told they were, in a way. I knew you had to be a bad kid to end up in a reform school. In the school yard we all knew at least one kid who went to reform school, or so we bragged. I didn’t know anyone, really, but I figured there were a couple of kids at St. John’s who would have been likely candidates for reform school, Savages that they were. We were fed a steady diet of how “Indians” needed to get on the white bus, learn to speak English, wear shoes, live in houses, have indoor plumbing and put the feathers and pow-wows to bed. Yep, that’s what we were told. We were kids. Even our Faith and Freedom Readers, movies and documentaries told us “white was right and non-white was bad”.
Like most kids, I bumbled my way through the elementary school years, watching Magic Bow street safety films strips and hoping I didn’t have to be the bad guy in a rousing game of Cowboys and Indians in the school yard. I didn’t mind letting people know I was Italian/Irish/Canadian, but only knew “Indians” as “Indians”. Generally, I didn’t give too much thought about the “Indian kids” who were told they needed to learn to behave and conform. I was a little kid and that wasn’t about me. At St. John’s, in Weston, the principal was a meanspirited Catholic nun. She was pretty handy with a strap when a student didn’t conform or made spelling mistakes or giggled in Church or spoke with an accent she couldn’t understand. Classroom teachers were famous for using the pointer across a kid’s shoulders or throwing chalk and erasers when the pointer wasn’t “at hand”. Within moments of finding my desk in Grade One, I learned to behave in class. Oh, yes I did. St. John’s was a far cry from kindergarten life at Melody Road School. No one warned me about the harsh reality of Catholic school. The thing is, at the end of the day, we all went home to our families. Some of the immigrant kids suffered verbal abuse, strapping and lots of push-n-shove in the school yard, but they, too, went home to their families at the end of the day. We went home. By the time I was in the sixth grade I was a bit more vocal about how some teachers treated students who weren’t what they considered “normal” or white enough. But at the end of the day, me and my big mouth did go home. No matter how much I protested in class, I went home to my family when the final bell rang.
As a parent, I struggle with comprehending the pain of losing a child to a so-called religious and educational system. Where was the goodness or the education in legalized abduction, the hidden abuses and tortures, the murder and the lies? How was it possible an innocent child could be snatched from the embrace of their family, and community, never to be seen again? To me, it has become the stuff of nightmares. Yet, as much as I want to say I had no idea about residential schools, I did know they existed. I did know, in my heart, how cruel “we” were, and continue to be, to people who are different from what someone has taught us is “normal”. We were trained to be on the lookout for “differences”. We were encouraged to mock, hurt, exclude and torment “different”. We, as a society, we were so afraid of different, we systemically train(ed) our children to be on the lookout for “different”.
Right now I’m not sorry many communities are forgoing Canada Day celebrations, but I am a bit sorry to be a Canadian. But being sorry doesn’t make it all better.
Comments (0)