Why I Speak Out
Personal Recollections From A Former Indian Residential School Student
The following piece written by Mark DeWolf, a retired teacher of English language, literature and drama, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was first published in another Substack newsletter on December 17, 2022.
DeWolf is also the co-editor of an important collection of original essays about Canada’s Indian Residential Schools titled From Truth Comes Reconciliation (2021)
In the beautifully composed essay below, DeWolf documents his personal experience attending St. Paul’s Anglican Residential School on Alberta’s Blood (Kainai) Reserve where his father, an Anglican priest, was the principal between 1953 and 1963.
His carefully detailed recollections, reproduced here with his permission, debunk many of the downright preposterous myths arguably rooted in mass psychosis suddenly peddled as being truthful by people looking for unearned and undeserved government handouts (“rent seeking”) decades after the last boarding schools closed.
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