Île-à-la-Crosse residential school to be torn down

To give closure to the community and survivors, the former residential school in Île-à-la-Crosse is being torn down tomorrow.

Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett visited the residential school in Île-à-la-Crosse in early fall, in the first of many steps towards reconciliation.

Not all survivors were happy with the visit from the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. One survivor of the school, Edna Daigneault, said she didn’t attend.

“[Bennett said] something about money, and I think money, how will that help our deep scars?” Daigneault said. “I can’t show her my scars that I’ve learned to hide all my life when she jumps in her plane and gets to leave and I stay here and have to deal with my issues.”

At five years-old, Daigneault said she was physically removed from her home and family and brought to the residential school.

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Besides Christmas, Daigneault said she was never allowed to see her family.

“I could see my mom and dad down the lake with the boat, but I could also see the priest shaking his head and I knew that meant, ‘No, you can’t see your child,’” she said. 

She said the experience was traumatic, and 50 years later she still feels the effects.

“It didn’t hold me down though,” she said. “It was traumatizing when I was a kid, but they taught me how to read and write and that’s what makes me a teacher today.”

Daigneault said she would like to receive compensation for the 14 years she spent at the school, and wants healing centres built in the North to help other survivors.

Île-à-la-Crosse Mayor, Duane Favel said he was proud council could give people of the region an opportunity to come and listen to the Minister as she offered some closure to survivors before the structure is knocked down.

First opened in 1860, the building which stands today isn’t the initial structure. In fact, it’s the third according to Favel. The first two structures, Favel said, suspiciously burnt down.

The current building closed in the mid-1970s and served as a drug and alcohol abuse centre for some time after, which Favel said was an ironic fate.

“The only way [survivors] could deal with their addictions was to go back to the very same place they suffered the trauma and abuses,” Favel said. “A lot of the addictions people have are direct results of the issues they had there.”

The structure is set to be demolished Feb. 22, at 9 a.m.

cswiderski@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @coltonswiderski