I once owned the hotel in Pemberton. Pemberton BC is beside Mt Curry FN. The population is mostly FN. I spoke with some natives about the Residential Schools. They spoke highly of them. They said without them they would have been illiterate.
That may be true but when there was a first nations' protest across the country with road blockades and such, my family passed through the village of Mt Currie, and young kids were trying to throw rocks at our vehicle as we headed north to a campsite in the Coast Mountains. Those kids are now middle age adults.
I was there at that time. FN hate us. With a passion. The locals warned me ‘you can be super friendly, eat lunch, drink beer, but they hate you. Don’t ever forget it. And never be alone after dark in Mt Currie’.
A FN friend of mine said ‘Why do you all get nice houses and we don’t.’ He was outraged and mentioned a big logger/rancher with a big spread. I explained we bought and or built our homes. He wanted to know what it cost. This was early 80s. I used my Vancouver house as an example. $180,000. $45,000 down. Mortgage of $135,000 at around 11%. He said that was impossible. No one can save up $45,000. No one can pay $1500 pm payments. He believed me sort of. He thought the government gave everyone a house and gave FN lousy ones because they were racist.
My journey began in probably around 2008. I was contracted to transcribe interviews. Now with the passage of time I cannot remember if this was interviews in prelude to a settlement -- it must have been tied to a monetary award somehow but I cannot remember and at the time I wasn't very aware of much in that vein. I transcribed probably 300 interviews that took place before some arbitrator of some kind -- or group of arbitrators, that were interviews of claimants telling their stories of abuse et cetera in various residential schools. This being my first exposure to such a thing, and having grown up quite close to a reserve on the Saanich peninsula and counting band members amongst my childhood friends (no more, that's for sure. they spit on us), I recall being very upset at the outset in working on the first few interviews, and crying and feeling disgusted with myself as a Canadian. By the 300th I felt quite different. Probably by the tenth I started to wonder what was going on. Many of the interviews were pretty much exactly the same as the ones before and after, so clearly some coaching had gone on. There were never any witnesses named and rarely the name of an alleged perpetrator -- if there were that person was long dead and not able to respond to any claims. There was never anything approaching cross-examination or anything like that. A lot of the interviews came from the Lethbridge area where I read later that a particular law firm had been fined or disbarred or something for infracations relating to this claim or whatever it was. Much of the time what was described as "abuse" were simply disciplinary measures that i encountered as a school child in the 60s and 70s. Nothing more.
By the end of my 300 interview job, I was quite cynical and started to do some more research, which has lasted until today when it seems more and more people are wondering what really is the truth.
An interesting sidenote: the current Chief Justice of BC, Leonard Marchand, rumour has it that he became quite a rich man as a lawyer doing IRS work... one has to wonder how his background might affect decisions in BC (which is in the process of being given away by the current government to various native groups, bit by bit, with no public engagement at all.
Hi Alison, Can I refer to your comments here in other articles? Other research colleagues might also want to do so. Pls let me know. Thank you, Michelle
sure you can. I signed an NDA all those many years ago, but I don't recall specifics like names anyway. Of interest were several interviews with men who had attended a RS in Prince George. They spoke highly of their time there. They had a PE teacher who took them on trips to play soccer and hockey at other places. The teacher and his wife had them to their home for dinners and holidays. There was nothing negative at all in these interviews (so I'm not sure if they got money for that or what was the deal). Anyway, the name of the teacher was John Furlong, who later went on to be the CEO of VANOC and also was later accused by a disgruntled journalist and a former RS attendee of abusing said attendee at a school that Furlong was never at. Mr. Furlong was forced to defend himself in BCSC less than two months after his wife was killed in a car accident. The attendee got himself thrown out of court for being, well, obnoxious, putting it lightly.
I once owned the hotel in Pemberton. Pemberton BC is beside Mt Curry FN. The population is mostly FN. I spoke with some natives about the Residential Schools. They spoke highly of them. They said without them they would have been illiterate.
That may be true but when there was a first nations' protest across the country with road blockades and such, my family passed through the village of Mt Currie, and young kids were trying to throw rocks at our vehicle as we headed north to a campsite in the Coast Mountains. Those kids are now middle age adults.
I was there at that time. FN hate us. With a passion. The locals warned me ‘you can be super friendly, eat lunch, drink beer, but they hate you. Don’t ever forget it. And never be alone after dark in Mt Currie’.
A FN friend of mine said ‘Why do you all get nice houses and we don’t.’ He was outraged and mentioned a big logger/rancher with a big spread. I explained we bought and or built our homes. He wanted to know what it cost. This was early 80s. I used my Vancouver house as an example. $180,000. $45,000 down. Mortgage of $135,000 at around 11%. He said that was impossible. No one can save up $45,000. No one can pay $1500 pm payments. He believed me sort of. He thought the government gave everyone a house and gave FN lousy ones because they were racist.
TRC is an industry, much like addiction. Good luck fixing it. Too much money to be made.
My journey began in probably around 2008. I was contracted to transcribe interviews. Now with the passage of time I cannot remember if this was interviews in prelude to a settlement -- it must have been tied to a monetary award somehow but I cannot remember and at the time I wasn't very aware of much in that vein. I transcribed probably 300 interviews that took place before some arbitrator of some kind -- or group of arbitrators, that were interviews of claimants telling their stories of abuse et cetera in various residential schools. This being my first exposure to such a thing, and having grown up quite close to a reserve on the Saanich peninsula and counting band members amongst my childhood friends (no more, that's for sure. they spit on us), I recall being very upset at the outset in working on the first few interviews, and crying and feeling disgusted with myself as a Canadian. By the 300th I felt quite different. Probably by the tenth I started to wonder what was going on. Many of the interviews were pretty much exactly the same as the ones before and after, so clearly some coaching had gone on. There were never any witnesses named and rarely the name of an alleged perpetrator -- if there were that person was long dead and not able to respond to any claims. There was never anything approaching cross-examination or anything like that. A lot of the interviews came from the Lethbridge area where I read later that a particular law firm had been fined or disbarred or something for infracations relating to this claim or whatever it was. Much of the time what was described as "abuse" were simply disciplinary measures that i encountered as a school child in the 60s and 70s. Nothing more.
By the end of my 300 interview job, I was quite cynical and started to do some more research, which has lasted until today when it seems more and more people are wondering what really is the truth.
An interesting sidenote: the current Chief Justice of BC, Leonard Marchand, rumour has it that he became quite a rich man as a lawyer doing IRS work... one has to wonder how his background might affect decisions in BC (which is in the process of being given away by the current government to various native groups, bit by bit, with no public engagement at all.
Hi Alison, Can I refer to your comments here in other articles? Other research colleagues might also want to do so. Pls let me know. Thank you, Michelle
sure you can. I signed an NDA all those many years ago, but I don't recall specifics like names anyway. Of interest were several interviews with men who had attended a RS in Prince George. They spoke highly of their time there. They had a PE teacher who took them on trips to play soccer and hockey at other places. The teacher and his wife had them to their home for dinners and holidays. There was nothing negative at all in these interviews (so I'm not sure if they got money for that or what was the deal). Anyway, the name of the teacher was John Furlong, who later went on to be the CEO of VANOC and also was later accused by a disgruntled journalist and a former RS attendee of abusing said attendee at a school that Furlong was never at. Mr. Furlong was forced to defend himself in BCSC less than two months after his wife was killed in a car accident. The attendee got himself thrown out of court for being, well, obnoxious, putting it lightly.
How do we, can we, fix this bloody mess?
Thank you VERY much for your ongoing work to bring this to light in such exhaustive detail, Michelle.
And is there any true reconciliation to be had? Will it be possible to breach the walls of all this mis- and dis-trust?
Who benefitted?