Quebec is one of the provinces with the fewest students who died in former residential schools for natives, according to official records. With a little less than forty deaths have been documented in the archives, the province clearly stands out from the west of the country.
“If you look at volume 4 — the report for children missing or never returned home — from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), there are very few deaths in Quebec. For the western provinces, the numbers are gigantic,” notes Marie-Pierre Bousquet, full professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal.
Although boarders lost their lives to suicide or accidents during the era, the majority instead died of illnesses, especially tuberculosis. However, starting in the 1940s, there was an improvement in the provision of health care to Aboriginal people.
Indeed, the mortality rate linked to tuberculosis remained high until the end of the 1940s, and its decline coincided with the arrival of effective pharmacological treatments against the disease, according to the TRC report.
“There is then an interest from the health department of the Department of Indian Affairs, who want to bring down the frightening death rates. From there, the children will be tested and systematically vaccinated before entering school, ”explains the professor.
As 4 of the 6 boarding schools run by the Church were in operation from the 1950s in Quebec, the mortality rate of children attending the establishments was already on the decline. The only two boarding schools that received students before this date were those on the island of Fort George (now Chisasibi).
Although it is difficult to know how many Aboriginal children have disappeared under these circumstances in the province, the search for graves remains relevant, believes Médérik Sioui, historian and First Nations specialist. “That we find only one child, as long as less is enough.” It would demonstrate the importance of having done so. These are children who never said goodbye to their parents,” he laments.
A link in the system
For Mathieu Arsenault, assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Montreal, it is important to remember that the residential school system was only “one of the links in the Quebec colonial system”. This is also one of the reasons why the burial search movement is not on the same scale as elsewhere in the country, according to the specialist.
“Residential schools were one tool among others, like the health system, the child protection system, the sanatoriums… It’s this whole system that was intended to assimilate the First Nations”.
The Sixties Scoop, where Indigenous children were taken from their families without consent and placed in large-scale foster homes during the 1960s, is one example, according to Arsenault.
In Quebec, finding missing children must not only go through research on the sites of former residential schools, but also through the search for answers within other institutions, he notes. “There are children who died in residential schools, but there were others who, when they were sick, were sent to hospitals. Some were either sent up for adoption without the parents knowing or died and were buried in other communities.”
Next steps
For many, this search for answers is an inevitable part of the process of healing and reconciliation. For Jean-Claude Therrien Pinette, the head of the political cabinet of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam, the truth about residential schools can not only help survivors, but also other generations.
“It seems that for the 2nd and 3rd generations, it’s less tangible, this reality. These are traumas that we were not confronted with, but that we nevertheless suffered from the disorganization that it created in our families, ”says the one whose mother attended one of the institutions.
Indigenous delegates from around the country recently met with Pope Francis in Rome, who apologized for the role of the Catholic Church in residential schools. The latter must return to Canada this summer, from July 24 to 30.
The Grand Chief of the Cree Nation of Quebec, Mandy Gull-Masty, was present at the Vatican last month. If this first visit took place in “openness”, she hopes that more concrete actions will follow. “It’s not a visit from the pope that will heal the world, it’s really the things that will follow after his visit,” she concludes.