St. Mark Church Prince Albert. There has been an outpouring of remembrance across Prince Albert, the North and the nation following the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school site in B.C. (Nigel Maxwell/paNOW Staff)

By Glenn Hicks

lost children

‘We weep for our children’ : PAGC wants Feds to compensate Timber Bay School survivors

Jun 2, 2021 | 7:00 AM

The Grand Chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council says the horrific discovery in B.C. last week, shows there can be no rest until the search for the children who never came home from residential schools is done.

And Brian Hardlotte adds now is the time to pressure the federal government again to ensure survivors of Timber Bay School, north of Prince Albert, are compensated. This is despite the failure of previous legal attempts to have it deemed a residential school.

Reflecting on the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the former Kamloops Residential School—found thanks to the use of ground-penetrating radar—Hardlotte told paNOW he sometimes thinks politicians are still in denial about the dark period in Canada’s history.

Politicians in denial?

“We weep for the children we could not protect…this is a sad reminder of Canada’s genocidal actions against Indigenous people.

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“Sometimes I think the government really doesn’t believe themselves, even though there was an apology by the Prime Minister,” Hardlotte said. “It’s real. This is evidence of what genocidal actions were done against Indigenous people by the government.”

Hardlotte said the PAGC supports the FSIN’s plan to conduct radar ground searches at Saskatchewan’s residential school sites, including the former schools in Prince Albert, Sturgeon Landing, La Ronge and Timber Bay.

This last location on the local list remains a very serious issue with the leadership across the North. Hardlotte said the events of recent days as well as the need for the federal government to act in accordance with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls To Action makes it imperative they support the survivors of Timber Bay School.

“It has to be brought back to the table, it’s as simple as that, the leadership demands that,” Hardlotte explained. ”At this time what comes to mind is the fight with the federal government to have Timber Bay School recognized …the evidence is there…and it brings up the case of 10-year-old boy Bobby Bird who ran away from the school in the fall of 1969.”

A human skull was found nearby by a hunter seven years later and in 1999 it was ultimately identified through specialist DNA testing to be Bird’s.

In 2017, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld a previous court ruling that the Timber Bay children’s home was a residence for young people who received their education off-site and was not operated by the Canadian government directly. The decision followed years of legal moves.

Court documents referred to the facility housing roughly 50 children annually during the school’s 42-year history until its closure in 1994.

‘Inability to admit genocide’

Michael Swinwood is a lawyer with Elders Without Border, which fought the unsuccessful case against Ottawa on behalf of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. He says the outcome of the case hinged on technicalities and he firmly supports the call to take another look at the matter and let survivors have the same federal compensation as those from recognized residential schools.

“There’s an institutional bias in the country [which] revolves around the inability to admit to genocide,” he told paNOW. “Unfortunately, what we have to end up with is uncovered graves in order to bring to the attention of the public—and one would hope that it has an impact on the government—to come to the realization of how deep and profound the problem is and has been ever since contact 500 years ago.

“When residential schools were put in place, it was the consciousness of genocide that promoted that kind of activity. They may have called it assimilation but it was far worse than that.”

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glenn.hicks@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @princealbertnow