Sorrow not enough
The refusal by Pope Francis to apologize to victims of abuse at Indian residential schools in Canada is striking hard at survivors and their families in the Atlantic region. Abuses at these schools have been well documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). What is equally well known is the role of the Catholic Church in operating those schools.
A papal apology is one of 94 recommendations made by the TRC. During a visit to the Vatican last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally asked the Pope to consider such a gesture. So far, the answer is no. The refusal by the Pope is hard to understand — and unacceptable.
A recent letter from Canadian bishops says
Pope Francis has not shied away from recognizing injustices faced by Indigenous peoples, but he can’t personally apologize for residential schools. The pontiff offered apologies to other victims of church abuses around the world but has trouble doing the same thing in Canada. Why?
The Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, the only one in Atlantic Canada, saw more than 1,000 children from across the region placed there. The apparent purpose was to “take the Indian out of the Indian” — to assimilate a sovereign nation.
What happened at Shubenacadie was cultural genocide. Girls and boys were taken from their homes and thrust into a foreign world — with poor living conditions, corporal punishment, over-crowding, forced labour, hunger and a ‘white’ curriculum. Children were punished for speaking Mi’kmaq. Physical, mental, sexual and other abuses suffered by children will forever be a stain on this country. A crucial step towards forgiveness and reconciliation is a full apology from the Pope to Canada’s indigenous peoples.
An Atlantic Mi’kmaq chief is speaking out, calling on the Pope to promote healing. Brian Francis of Abegweit First Nation is keenly aware of community members who were victims of abuse and the tragic effect it had on their lives. It didn’t stop there. Children, grandchildren and families of survivors also suffered. It’s a tragic legacy which continues today. The Pope’s refusal is a re-victimization of those who suffered in Shubenacadie.
The church failed its flock for 37 years there and is failing them again.
This week, Canadian MPs voted 269-10 to extend a formal invitation to Pope Francis to apologize in person to Indigenous Peoples. The Pope hasn’t ruled out a visit to Canada, but in the meantime, is encouraging Canadian bishops to continue working with Indigenous Peoples on reconciliation. That’s not good enough. Church sorrow is not enough. Canada apologized for the schools in 2008 and other Christian denominations all did the same.
The Commons motion should start the process for Canadian bishops and pontiff to do the right thing. Pope Francis should come to Canada and deliver the long overdue mea culpa in person. A basic tenet of the church is forgiveness and repentance of sin. The residential school tragedy offers the church an opportunity to practise what it preaches.
What was it like about 120 years ago, in the 1890s, along the old military road between Kentville and Wolfville, the section of highway designated today as Highway 1?
Well, with thanks to Edmond J. Cogswell, we do have some idea of what it was like then on that stretch of road, much of which today is taken up by the sprawling village of New Minas.
In 1894, on a Sunday morning, Cogswell decided to walk to Wolfville after being detained in Kentville. Cogswell recorded what he observed on the walk and, two years later in a regular feature he wrote for Kentville’s weekly newspaper, the Western Chronicle, he described what he saw.
But first, before he wrote about his walk, Cogswell tells us that Highway 1 began as an Acadian road that ran “near the dykes and intervals of the Cornwallis River,” and was eventually amended to merge with a military road running easterly towards Windsor and south towards Berwick.
“One of those long pieces of road was through what is called New Minas,” Cogswell concluded, adding that “where the present village was built” the road was altered many times as land was cleared and settled.
“I have often passed through New Minas,” Cogswell wrote of his walk, “but I never realized what a pretty little place it was until being detained in Kentville by business on Saturday.”
Cogswell was a judge of probate and his “business” could have been his involvement in court proceedings. At the time, he was 56 years old and he must have been in good condition for his age to walk 10 kilometres.
“I walked down to Wolfville (in the autumn of 1894) the following next morning. As I walked slowly along I carefully noticed the place (New Minas) and its quiet beauty impressed me very much. The next thing I noticed was that the people of New Minas had wisely turned their attention to apple culture, and had most shrewdly availed themselves of the proper localities, as the little runs and flats near the brooks were covered with luxuriant apple trees …. I think one of the finest sights I saw was a perfect sea of red and rosy apples on a flat in Charles Turner’s land, and in one or two other places.”
There were few, if any, retail stores in New Minas at the time of the walk but this wasn’t the case with Kentville or Wolfville, which makes one of the observations Cogswell made puzzling. As he walked along, Cogswell was struck by the “usual number of vacant stores. I do not think there is another country place of its size that has so many stores in it, vacant and occupied, as Kings County. They fairly swarm. But New Minas is too close to Kentville and there is too little back country and its stores are empty.”
As he left New Minas and strolled through Greenwich, Cogswell could see the railway line and the bridge on the Cornwallis River at Port Williams. The view inspired another puzzling observation regarding this bridge and Wolfville.
“The building of the Cornwallis Bridge, destroyed the old shipping port,” he wrote, “and sent the trade down to Mud Bridge (Wolfville).”
The “old shipping port” could have been a reference to Kentville. However, the town was never known for being any sort of port and there are no records indicating it ever was a destination for ocean shipping. At best, one or two ships were built in a yard within the current town limits and this doesn’t appear to qualify Kentville as a port. Perhaps before the “Cornwallis Bridge” was built, the occasional ship went up to Kentville on the tide and that likely was it. Of course, Cogswell could have meant that the bridge eliminated Port Williams as a commercial port but this isn’t likely.
It’s interesting to note that Cogswell referred to Wolfville as Mud Bridge. Wolfville was adopted as the official name of the town in either 1829 or 1830 (it depends on which source you consult) and it’s odd that in 1894, Cogswell was still using one of its old names. Mud Creek was another name he sometimes used.
Kentville was Cogswell’s departure point but he had little to say about the town except for what is mentioned above about its stores. He did note that people had been searching the area in and around Kentville, hoping to find sites where the Acadians had buried valuables, and that two caches might have been found. Cogswell described the condition of the road in the hollow at the east end of Kentville as “marshy” and he found it annoying to have to cross it.
In Cogswell’s time, Elderkin Brook, the stream that ran through the hollow, was tidal, a condition that existed until the trail to New Minas was upgraded to a highway and an aboiteau was installed. But even today, the tides have been known to back up, block the aboiteau and flood the highway. In Cogwell’s time, this was a twice daily occurrence.