By MICHELE MANDEL
Nov 2, 2007
Just 12, Sandy Campeau remembers cowering in his school's shower as his "so-called child care worker" rained blows on his body with a hockey stick.
He was four hours away from his home on
And for that, he was pummelled with a stick.
"He was a psycho," recalls Campeau, now 36 and living in
"I just remember screaming and sitting in the shower after he beat me up, too scared to come out."
Like so many other First Nation children over the last 100 years, he had been taken away from home and placed in a residential school by a federal government intent on assimilating him into Canadian society.
GESTURE OF REGRET
But instead of an education, he and too many others were left with scars from physical and sexual abuse that last to this day.
Now, after all these years,
Campeau, though, is still waiting. And with each passing day, his anger grows.
"When we owe the federal government money, they want it now and they come at us hard," complains the unemployed insulation installer who quit school at 15. "But when they owe us money, they can take their time."
Campeau is from the Yellow Quill Saulteaux First Nation, the third generation in his family to be taken away and forced into a residential school. His mother still has a burn scar, he says, that runs from her knee to her underarm from being scalded in bath water by the nuns who ran her school.
"The way she looks at it, she was tortured," he says.
They never spoke much about her time there or indeed his grandmother's. He only knows that its lasting effects left his mom unable to parent properly.
"If you're removed from your home and forced to learn a different culture and a different language and you're beaten all the time, how do you learn to be a parent? If you're beaten to a pulp and taught to be ashamed of who you are, what can you pass on?"
'IT WAS TERRIFYING'
He remembers he was about 8 when he was first taken from home and dropped off at the school four hours away. "It was terrifying. At that age, kids are mean, you get picked on. I remember being told by the nun to kneel on a hockey stick in the corner because I'd been crying.
"She said, 'Why are you crying? We're here to help you.' "
Instead, the decision to house young aboriginal Canadians in church-run residential schools was, as former justice minister Irwin Cotler said, "the single most harmful, disgraceful and racist act in our history."
As part of an epic $1.9-billion federal admission of guilt, all former students are now eligible for a "common-experience payment" based on the number of years they spent in the schools. With $10,000 paid for the first year and $3,000 for every year thereafter, the average cheque is expected to be $28,000.
Campeau filed his claim on Sept. 20 -- as did his wife and siblings -- and expected his cheque more than a week ago.
But every day, his mailbox is empty and no one in his family has received anything, either.
'DOING WHAT WE CAN'
It turns out
Christmas, though, is fast approaching and Campeau had so many plans for spending his windfall: A new sofa, TV and toys for his five children that he could never afford before.
"I just want my kids to be kids," says Campeau, who came east in March to start a new life. "I know money can't buy happiness but toys can make them smile."
Most of us would take it in stride that
But we haven't lived his traumatic childhood or struggled with memories that haunt him to this day. And so for a survivor, this delay is much more than a bureaucratic slip-up, it's another governmental body blow from a hockey stick.
"For a lot of us living under the poverty line, it's unacceptable. Something has to be done."
Because they've waited for justice too long to be told the cheque is still in the mail