InteriorNEWS THE
108th Year - Week 23
•
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
•
www.interior-news.com
•
PM 40007014
$1.30 (gst included)
Residential School survivor Matilda Wilson, 65, with a picture of her three brothers James, Charles and Joe at the Lejac Indian Residential School. The Hazelton-born Gitxsan woman lived at the school for seven years.
Alicia Bridges photo
TRC report: Survivors struggle to reconcile past By Alicia Bridges Smithers/Interior News
Matilda Wilson remembers the kindness of the conductor the day she and three of her siblings boarded a train from Hazelton to the Lejac Residential School near Fraser Lake in the mid-1950s. “I just remember crying a lot because I didn’t want to leave my parents but they put us in the train,” said Wilson. “The conductor that was there ... he knew all about all the kids going to boarding schools and he
would try to confide in us and tell us that we were going to be okay.” When she got to the school the staff removed her clothes and marched her to the showers. They cut her hair, gave her the number four to be used in place of her name and explained the school rules. “The first thing they told us: we’re not allowed to speak our language,” Wilson told The Interior News last week. “I did not know how to speak too much English in the first place because we always used our language at home.
“We learned pretty fast how to speak English because they would strap us or hit us if we don’t really understand.” Wilson, now aged 65, said she and her siblings were all sent to the residential school at the direction of the local Catholic priest. She said the RCMP threatened her parents with jail time if they refused to send the children to Lejac, so they obliged. Wilson boarded at Lejac for seven years. She has memories of staff pulling her hair and ears and squeezing their arms so hard they had bruises, and of always being
government but it really did a lot of damage to them and to us,” she said. Wilson herself struggled with alcoholism in adulthood. There were occasions when government agencies removed her own children from her home. She overcame her addiction through counselling and professional treatment but many of her friends lost their lives. “I hear some of my friends that committed suicide,” she said. See PRIORITY on A3
GLENWOOD HALL Past, present and future celebrated at summer solstice events.
POPPING IN AT POP UP ART STUDIO Main Street Studio owner explains her business concept.
EAGLE SPIRIT OIL PIPELINE SUPPORT Eagle Spirit Energy is gathering support for northern oil pipeline.
COMMUNITY/A11
SPORTS/A11
THREE RIVERS/B6
Friday- Sunday Only! see last page in A
hungry. “It’s very painful just to think of things like that, you know, even at 65 it’s still fresh memories even though it’s a long time ago it keeps on,” she said. When Wilson returned to live in Hazelton at age 12 her parents had fallen hard into alcoholism. She said they tried to pull their lives together when she and her siblings returned from school, but the family was broken. “It’s a good thing my parents were respectful people, they just accepted the consequences and they just listened to the
Nabob Gastown Grind Coffee 375 gram
$ 2/
7
00