Canada’s darkest secret is being exposed; more importantly, it is being exposed with our younger generation.” Those were the emotional and difficult words of Eugene Arcand, residential school survivor and keynote speaker at Canada Youth 2014. Arcand shared his experiences, past and present, with more than 400 youth who were gathered at Brock University in July.
CY featured a whole day, captioned “Becoming Neighbours,” that focused on teaching youth about what has happened with our native communities and helping them understand what needs to happen in the future.
Teaching youth about the church’s sometimes dark past with Canada’s First Nations is important for reconciliation to be reached. “At some point in their lives they will come to a crossroads,” Arcand told the Record. “It is better when you get to those crossroads that you are armed and ready.” Arcand shares his story not to seek pity but so people may understand. He applauds the churches who have come forward to educate their communities and their young ones.
General Assembly Moderator Stephen Farris, who recently represented the Presbyterian Church as a witness at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s national event in Winnipeg, shared that sentiment. “There is no question about it,” he said about youth involvement in reconciliation. “There is that old saying that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
The Presbyterian Church in Canada was involved in running residential schools from the mid – 1880s until 1969 (when the schools became the full responsibility of the federal government) and is now struggling with that truth. It is something that casts a bad light on the church, but according to Farris it needs to be understood.
“Sin has a real consequence that lasts,” Farris told the Record. He paraphrased Exodus 20:5 in describing the continuing effects of residential schools saying, “the sins of the father are visited on the children to the third and fourth generations.”
Families of the survivors are affected by the learned abusive behaviours of the survivors. Arcand has seen first – hand the break – up of families, and credits his wife for holding their own family together. He tries to tell his grandkids of what happened to him, and what happened to their parents because of him. “We have to stop that cycle,” he says of the abuses that are still occurring today.
Arcand hopes technology can be used by youth as a road to reconciliation. The new ways of communication can help educate younger generations and help to build relationships with each other and open the door to the native community.
Arcand never thought residential schools would become a public issue. He never thought there would be an apology. But what has already been done is not enough, according to Arcand, and he isn’t confident that there will be true reconciliation in his lifetime.
Still, he tries to remain hopeful.
“We always have hope, whatever we do is about hope,” he said. “It can’t get any worse, it can only get better.”
About Elizabeth Keith
Elizabeth Keith is a journalism student at Carleton University, Ottawa. She was the Record's summer intern.
