Residential school survivor visits Saskatoon memorial to 215 children

Tears began rolling down the cheeks of Julie McAdam and her daughter Miriam on Monday as they walked toward the steps of St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in downtown Saskatoon.

Lining each step was a pair of small shoes, some so small they could fit in the palms of their hands. A few stuffed animals, balloons and other things a child might find happy or comforting were also left behind.

The display is one of many across Canada paying tribute to 215 children whose remains were found buried at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Julie McAdam recalled being taken away from her parents when she was about five years old and placed in the St. Michael’s Residential School in Duck Lake in the 1960s. She remained there for seven years before she was taken to a day home.

“From one abuse to another,” she recalled. “The day school had a nun that was very abusive. She used to choke … and hit with a yardstick, those wide straps (or) some kind of a belt. We had to hold out our hands and she’d hit us.”

Miriam said her mother doesn’t talk too much about what happened, but she’s grateful she has a mother who made it through some very dark years.

“My mom could have been one of these kids. My mom could have been one that never came home. And she came home,” Mariam said through her tears. “We wanted to come here ’cause this is like a huge symbol of the kids that never got to come home.”

McAdam said when she returned from the day home, she tried to take her own life several times.

“It just breaks my heart thinking I’m so lucky that … I believe in the Creator and all through those years I believe He protected me so I would have a future. It breaks my heart that these children never did get to see their future,” she said.

Those children were brothers, sisters, sons and daughters — and their loss is profoundly disturbing, said Mariam. She hopes to see how society can learn from what happened.

“I’m trying to seek out how I can properly acknowledge what happened and move on from this — kind of break the cycles,” she said.

“This affects our family and our future generations. From the experiences my mom went through, I see all the dysfunction in our family and I’m actively trying to learn to stop the cycles from happening in our family.”

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon has issued a statement indicating the memorial will remain for the next few days “in solidarity with other memorials and events being held by schools, our provincial and federal governments and other organizations.”

According to Bishop Mark Hagemoen: “I join with my brother bishops in B.C. and beyond with expressing on behalf of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, my sadness and sympathy to Chief Rosanne Casimir and the Tk’emlups tc Secwepemc First Nation who are mourning the loss of young people upon the discovery of 215 unmarked graves.”

Hagemoen said plans are also underway for a prayer service in the coming days.

Memorial at the legislature

Hundreds of shoes also covered the steps that lead up to the Saskatchewan legislature Monday — colourful shoes and ones with cartoon characters on them.

There were some stuffed animals as well, along with notes of remembrance placed inside shoes or chalked on the sidewalk, and one lone orange balloon blowing in the wind.

All day, people came and went, leaving their tokens and stepping back to take a long look at the shrine.

One woman said she was from the community the children were from but she couldn’t be there, so she came to the steps.

She left a pair of shoes and a teddy bear. She said she was there to honour the children and to show they won’t be invisible anymore.

A woman named Kendra was at the memorial alone in the morning, but said she planned to bring her children back at night and place shoes along with the others.

“We can’t pretend. It just keeps getting swept away and we just can’t deny it anymore,” said Kendra. “This is one of the most powerful displays of remembrance that I’ve ever seen.”

Kendra isn’t Indigenous but said she feels it’s important to start feeling the pain of residential schools so they can start to contribute to healing.

“There’s no other option than to face this and start having all people — settlers, non-Indigenous folks — really need to start to wake up to what’s happening in Canada and talk about the genocide that has existed (and) that Indigenous folks have known about for a long time,” said Kendra.

— With files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick