Hugs, smiles at residential-school reunion

Enlarge Image

Sadie North (right), a survivor of a residential school, meets with Betty Ann Caldwell, a former guidance counsellor who showed her kindness at school in the 1960s. (WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ) Photo Store

FAR from the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for First Nations residential schools, a survivor and her daughter's meeting in Winnipeg became a private reunion with a guidance counsellor from her school days.

There was no anger, no bitterness. Only hugs, coffee and memories.

Oxford House Cree Nation resident Sadie North is a 64-year-old grandmother and her days in Portage la Prairie at an Indian residential school are 50 years behind her.

But she never forgot the counsellor who befriended her and the homesick Cree children from Manitoba's north.

North said she remembered Betty Ann Caldwell because of her kindness, and for months she looked forward to the reunion, which was arranged by her daughter in Winnipeg.

Caldwell welcomed North and her daughter into her highrise apartment overlooking the Assiniboine River for coffee. The two fell into each other's arms as North stepped off the elevator.

"Your voice was familiar," Caldwell told North as the women embraced.

They last saw each other in 1967, 45 years ago.

In the 1960s, Caldwell, now 81, was a guidance counsellor at the Portage la Prairie residence where aboriginal children lived while they attended public school.

"I didn't look at them as anything but kids, and I loved them," she said.

In 1965, when she was 15 years old, North was sent south from Oxford House, 575 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, with several other children.

She'd never been away from home. Never been out of sight of the boreal forest and a life that cycled around the seasons, not the minutes and hours on a classroom wall.

After two lonely years in Portage, North returned home in 1967. She worked in the local nursing station until she married. North and her husband, Gilbert North, raised six children, including an adopted son.

North's daughter, Sheila North Wilson, said she heard about Caldwell growing up. Like her mother, she feels she owes a debt of kindness to the former counsellor.

"I would say it's because of her kindness to my mom that I and my siblings got through school," said North Wilson, a communications officer with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

The importance of an education was a legacy Sadie North thanked Caldwell for at their reunion.

"In my mind, the loneliness was the worst, and I remember you coming in at the residence in the study hall. You would walk around helping people," North said. "You made me feel comfortable. You helped me with my books."

That kindness was so rare, North said. Her first day at school she recalled as a humiliating series of events, ending in the school principal ripping a treasured scarf off her head. Then her long black curls were cut off.

"Your presence, the feeling I had, it was OK. You encouraged us. You helped us. It was not once. It was many times," North said.

Caldwell clasped North's hand gently as the Cree grandmother recalled her school days.

During the visit, Caldwell pulled out photos of hundreds of kids she helped in the decade she worked at Portage: faded snapshots of skinny boys with gangly arms and legs, girls with shy smiles giggling together.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Social ills blamed on schools

FOR over a century, more than 100,000 aboriginal children were sent to residential schools, many forcibly removed from their families for months at a time.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered an apology in 2008 for the abuses of residential schools, and 80,000 survivors shared compensation in the largest class-action settlement of its kind in Canadian history. It was worth nearly $5 billion, including $1.9 billion for payments to everyone who attended the schools.

Survivors reported they were forbidden from speaking their native languages or practising their culture in a bid at assimilation. Many are still being compensated for brutal acts of sexual, emotional and physical abuse.

Aboriginal leaders blame family breakdowns and a host of social problems on the schools' legacy.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed under the terms of the compensation settlement, is examining the impact on the cultural fabric of the nation.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 3, 2012 B1