Fontaine - Broken circle: the dark legacy of Indian residential schools: a memoir

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I extend my thanks to the following people.

To my dear friend and cousin Phil Fontaineour discussions, talks and reminiscing through all the years of my life have lifted my spirit and been therapeutic for me. Your ability to recall details is extraordinary and has helped me to fill in many missing pieces.

To Rosa Walker and all the staff at the Indigenous Leadership Development Instituteyour support, encouragement and love over the years have been invaluable.

To Barney (my elder) and Katrina Williams, and to Mitzi from Tsow-Tun Le Lumyou gave strength to me and to my wife during my hearing and afterward, helping me find my voice for my story.

To Tracey and the other therapists who helped me over the yearsalthough we didnt travel to the depths of my experiences, you helped me begin to acknowledge that my experiences were real.

To my old schoolmates, my extended family and friendswe shared our journeys and supported each other with love and faith in each other.

To Father Guy Lavallee, for your support when I was a young boy at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School while you were training there as a supervising assistant. You have enhanced the priesthood as you have become the spiritual leader you were meant to be. I treasure our friendship.

To those priests of St. Ignatius Parish in Winnipeg who have held my faith and trust for the last 28 years even during the most difficult days of remembering my experiences at residential school.

To Roger, one of my former bosses, who in his ignorance helped me to understand very clearly that the five-day-a-week boarding school he attended was an experience of privilege and not anything like the Indian residential schools I lived through.

To Phyllis, one of two old dears in the map room at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in Winnipeg, and to Jackie at the Manitoba Map Sales office, for your patience, experience and professional help.

A very special thanks to Vivian Sinclair at Heritage House. You saw my dream and my yearning to help other survivors through telling my story, and made it possible through your unique interest, personal stewardship, expertise and commitment. You also understood and supported the vision that it would help Canadians understand the true intent and consequences of Indian residential schools in Canada.

APOLOGIES

F or the few survivors who accepted Prime Minister Stephen Harpers apology in the House of Commons on June 11, 2008, I hope and pray that it helps in their healing journey. Even most of the Canadians who questioned the validity and sincerity of that event admit that it validated the historical reality of the Canadian governments having tried to extinguish Indians in Canada. The apology doesnt take away the memory, pain or indignityor affect my healingbut the words will live forever as part of Canadian history. They acknowledge that my experience was real, that great hurt did happen and that society was robbed of the potential of its first citizens.

All those years after my own experience, of being told that my race and status were less than those of other Canadians, that Id never be able to do what any normal non-Indian Canadian could, I was engaged in an internal battle. But a spark within me, fanned by my early years at home, kept me alive, telling me that I was just as good even though my subconscious always convinced me I was inadequate and led me to try to prove that.

In rare cases in my past, Id had a chance to say I was sorry to whoever had depended on me and Id harmed. These apologies never changed a situation, however. My intentions were always good, but I never tried to demonstrate that Id make things right or better. But my apologies did make me feel better and gave me a false sense of freedom from the consequences of my wrongdoing.

In my years of dealing with residential school syndrome, and remembering the people who ran those schools, Ive tried to forgive their meanness and abuse. I hadnt encountered the possibility of pardon until one day at The Forks, a favourite gathering place in Winnipeg. The issue of residential schools was a hot topic. Some churches had genuinely become quite concerned about what the schools had done to Indians in Canada. Discussion with the United Church had led to its apologizing to the Indian people of Canada.

On that rainy October day in 1991, Indian chiefs and survivors, each with a representative of that church between them, stood in a circle with their hands locked in the traditional show of friendship. As the much-anticipated event got underway, church officials launched into their apology. As they said and on behalf of the United Church of Canada, we church bells directly across the river began to toll. Everything stopped, and around the circle there was a feeling of divine presence. The irony is that the bells were at St. Boniface Basilica, a Roman Catholic institution, and were tolling for the United Churchs apology.

At that moment I realized that no apology could make me feel better, and I decided that I didnt need one. The moment did make me feel better about the Church itself, but watching politicians congratulating United Church officials just reinforced my belief that apologies wouldnt help me feel better. It wasnt an apology to the survivors; it was a way of making people in the United Church feel better. Only later in my healing journey did I understand that although I didnt need an apology, I had begun the process of forgiveness myself.

Healing is not easy, and it never ends. Although Indian residential school was my life for 12 years, I was fortunate to have been part of the family of Schall and Therese Fontaine, and blessed to have had such loving grandparents and parents up to the age of seven. The strong family values and teachings I received as a child were not taken away from me, and they sustained me through my years at school and beyond. As a child at school, I lay awake at night remembering and reliving in my mind the joys of my preschool family life. As a young adult trying to find my place in the world, I was able to surface from the self-destructive after-effects of residential school because of those values and teachings. In later years and now, I often bring myself back to the trusting child, a child who cherishes those relationships that are the foundation of my life.

When I became a father at age 24, I imagined how I would feel if my child were taken away from me at age seven. I knew that I would do anything to protect her, to keep her safe, to pass on to her the gifts of family strength, trust and love. I did my best, as did her mother, also a product of the Indian residential school system. Yet as individuals, and as a young couple, we were living with the barriers of mistrust and dysfunction from our residential school experiences. Our daughter, Jacqueline, endured these barriers. As a young child, she experienced the effects of our behaviours, lifestyles and problems. Although we both loved and supported her, she practically grew up on her own.

My relationship with my girl was founded on a strong love but was held together by only a thin thread during my darkest years of dealing with the grief and chaos of my residential school experiences. As I began my healing, I saw that she had gone beyond the age of seventhe age at which I remained emotionally and psychologicallyand had attained a maturity that I was only beginning to discover in myself. My relationship with her mother did not survive the tragedy that was playing out in each of our lives; however, we have each gone on to find ourselves and our places in the world.

Jacqueline was a loving child, in spite of the psychological and emotional instability in our home. She matured into a loving young woman, independent and successful in her own right, perhaps more in spite of us than because of us. She has learned to accept and to move on with her life. In forgiving, she has demonstrated both grace and generosity of spirit. Today, as from the day she was born, she is the treasure in my life. Our family unit is strong with the loving support of her dedicated husband, Ron, and their two boys, Sage and Hudson.