I toured St. Joseph’s Mission School shortly before it was torn down.
Walking through the huge school, stuck out in the middle of nowhere south of Williams Lake, was a little eerie; to say the least.
There seemed to be a sadness to the place, not because it was being torn down but because of what had happened there. St. Joseph’s was a residential school. Like many residential schools, it had its share of priests who sexually abused the young native students. It closed in the 1980s and was torn down in the mid-90s.
As I walked through the deserted halls and looked at some of the secluded cubby-holes and closets in the building, I couldn’t help wonder if a native boy or girl had been abused on that very spot.
Big old empty buildings always echo and if you let your imagination go, you could almost hear the screams.
News last week that Bishop Hubert O’Connor died in Toronto brought me back to that trip to the mission. I’m sure the news of his death brought a lot more people back there and their memories would be more vivid and less pleasant than mine.
While some will mourn Bishop O’Connor’s passing, many natives around Williams Lake likely will not.
Charged and convicted of rape and indecent assault against two native women, the O’Connor case became a flashpoint in the debate over the church’s role in residential schools. O’Connor is a prime example of how badly the church has reacted to sexual assault at residential schools.
Through a series of trials, appeals, and jail time, O’Connor steadfastly maintained his innocence, claiming the sex was consensual. O’Connor fathered a child with one of the women.
To add insult to injury, was the attitude that the worst of his crimes was breaking his vow of chastity. Rape and abusing a position of authority seemed secondary.
The incident is also a black mark on the church. In keeping with practices in other areas of simply moving priests involved in such dalliances, O’Connor was never publicly sanctioned by the church. He was, up to his death, Bishop Emeritus of Prince George and retained the Catholic honorific of ‘most reverend.’
However, at least there was some closure. O’Connor apologized at a traditional native healing circle in 1998. Some feel that he only participated in the healing circle to avoid a third trial and possibly more jail time. That doesn’t matter. If you’ve ever participated in a healing circle, you know how powerful they can be.
O’Connor’s healing circle was staged in three parts. In the first stage, O’Connor was confronted by one of the women he had abused.
She told him how his actions had affected her life and he apologized. Thirty-eight people took part in the second phase. Members of the victim’s family and elders told of the pain they had endured because of O’Connor, specifically, and the residential school system, in general. O’Connor apologized to them as well.
Then, more community members joined in and written apologies were presented by O’Connor and Bishop Jerry Wiesner, on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church.
Knowing a lot of the people involved, there won’t be any rejoicing with news of O’Connor’s death. That’s not their way.
But there will be sadness with the reminder of the residential school system and how wrong it was.