Dan Rubenstein - St. Michaels Residential School: Lament & Legacy

ST. MICHAELS
RESIDENTIAL
SCHOOL

OTHER BOOKS BY NANCY DYSON
& DAN RUBENSTEIN

Railroad of Courage

(Ronsdale Press, 2017)

ST. MICHAELS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL

LAMENT & LEGACY

NANCY DYSON
& DAN RUBENSTEIN

RONSDALE PRESS

ST. MICHAELS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL: LAMENT & LEGACY

Copyright 2021 Nancy Dyson & Dan Rubenstein

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency).

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Cover Design: Julie Cochrane

Paper: Ancient Forest Friendly Enviro 100 edition, 60 lb. Husky (FSC), 100% post-consumer waste, totally chlorine-free and acid-free.

Ronsdale Press wishes to thank the following for their support of its publishing program: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Book Publishing Tax Credit program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: St. Michaels Residential School: lament and legacy / Nancy Dyson and Dan Rubenstein.

Names: Dyson, Nancy, 1948 author. | Rubenstein, Daniel Blake, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200272535 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200272799 | ISBN 9781553806233 (softcover) | ISBN 9781553806240 (HTML) | ISBN 9781553806257 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Dyson, Nancy, 1948 | LCSH: Rubenstein, Daniel Blake. | LCSH: Alert Bay Student Residence History. | LCSH: Off-reservation boarding schools British Columbia Alert Bay History. | LCSH: Indigenous children Abuse of British Columbia Alert Bay History. | CSH: Native peoples British Columbia Alert Bay Residential schools.

Classification: LCC E96.6.A44 D97 2020 | DDC 371.829/9707112dc23

At Ronsdale Press we are committed to protecting the environment. To this end we are working with Canopy and printers to phase out our use of paper produced from ancient forests. This book is one step towards that goal.

Printed in Canada by Island Blue, Victoria, B.C.

to Saul, George, Leslie
and all the other children who
passed through the doors of
St. Michaels Residential School

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We want to acknowledge the guidance, editorial advice and patience of our editors, Ron and Veronica Hatch. Without their assistance, this book would never have gone to press. We also want to acknowledge the kind and generous spirit of Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, Ambassador for Reconciliation Canada and a survivor of St. Michaels. We cherish the friendship and encouragement he has bestowed on us. We also wish to thank Melanie Delva, Reconciliation Animator for the Anglican Church of Canada, and Mark MacDonald, First National Indigenous Bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada. Both showed sustained interest in our work and provided invaluable insights into the history of Canadas residential schools. We are also grateful to Dr. Laurie Meijer Drees, Professor in the Indiginous Studies Department at Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia, who helped us to understand what non-Indigenous Canadians knew about the residential schools prior to the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In addition, we wish to thank Dr. Linc Kessler, Associate Professor for the First Nations and Indigenous Studies program at the University of British Columbia; Sarah Holland, Director of the UMista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, B.C.; Ry Moran, Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. We also wish to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council in the form of a Recommender Grant and Kegedonce Press for their recommendation. We want to thank the Namgis First Nation Band Council and Anne Jackson for reviewing the manuscript prior to its publication.

A portion of the royalties received for this book will be donated to Reconciliation Canada and the Indian Residential School Survivors Society.

CONTENTS

1970
Nancys Story

2015
Dans Story

DAN AND NANCY , I read the entirety of St. Michaels Residential School: Lament & Legacy again last night. While a deep sadness flooded over me, followed by a few tears, I was inspired by the thought that there are good people like yourselves.

I am grateful and honoured that we are friends. Somehow, in my mind, we are bound by our common experience at Alert Bay and St. Michaels Indian Residential School. It was another time and we were in it and belonged to it. We are now in this new time together and the future looks much brighter.

This book is a must-read for all Canadians. It is honest, fair and compelling. It is a story that screams out for human decency, justice and equality. It also calls for Reconciliation and a new way forward! Two young, recently wed idealists arrive at Alert Bay on Canadas Pacific central coast to work at St. Michaels Indian Residential School. They hire on as childcare workers. Little do Dan and Nancy in their youthful enthusiasm know, they will be shaken to the core before too long. The couple, in their four-month blink of an eye experience inside the walls of this institution, are soon exposed to some ugly truths and grim realities suffered by little Indigenous children there. Many decades later, Dan and Nancy are introduced to the National Truth and Reconciliation Hearings sweeping the nation. They are deeply saddened and horrified to learn the fate of many of their charges. They mourn and weep for the loss and suffering of all those little children. They are now committed and fully engaged in advocating for Reconciliation.

Chief Robert Joseph, O.B.C., O.C.
Ambassador,
Reconciliation Canada
April 2020

FOR MORE THAN FORTY-FIVE YEARS, my husband Dan and I rarely talked about our arrival in Canada in 1970, when we were hired as childcare workers in Alert Bay, British Columbia, at the Alert Bay Student Residence. (Prior to 1969, the residence was called the St. Michaels Indian Residential School, and this name has persisted.)

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Reports were released. Like many Canadians, we were shocked by the findings. Over a hundred-year span, thousands of Indigenous children had experienced what we had witnessed at St. Michaels. Especially shocking were the stories of sexual abuse that had occurred along with the emotional and physical abuse we had witnessed. When we read the survivors statements and realized the lasting, tragic legacy of the schools, we felt compelled to share our story.

The first sentence of the TRC Executive Summary states, For over a century, the central goals of Canadas Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as cultural genocide. The survivors trauma continued well past the closure of the last residential school in 1996; that trauma continues to impact Indigenous people today and will impact future generations as well.