The tally begins
With a lifelong interest in genealogy, I believe in record keeping. I mean, the whole of our society is based on keeping track of those around us. Births, deaths. The inbetweens. All of our true institutions depend on the sanctity of our system. That’s why the ongoing news leaves me aghast.
Right now, we’re trying to tally up the individual graves attached to the Canadian “residential school” system. And the numbers are frightening. I mean, I’ve been around schools pretty much all of my life. I’ve had some experience with the school residence system (not to be confused with residential schools). We took great pride in sending the kids home to their parents, be it at the end of the day or the end of the semester. No graves. Not even unmarked ones.
Those in charge of the residential schools and the related graves feign ignorance; almost to the point of saying “Well, how did THOSE get there”. Hold on!
I can’t stretch my belief system far enough to think that the Catholic Church didn’t have records. They recorded everything, including what a visiting priest might have worn at supper. Compulsive record keepers. So, let’s look at the numbers from right now.
The numbers (since the beginning of May, alone) show 215 anonymous graves in BC and another 751 in SK. Take note: these are unmarked graves, not mass graves. This was a crime perpetrated over a period of time. There are others. And given the way that the church marks the graves of their own (priest and nuns) shows that there really were “us and them”.
We’re going to learn more, going forward. This may be, as many believe, “the tip of the iceberg”. Only time will tell if the great ship of Rome will be wrecked in the collision.
