60 years after he ran away from residential school, survivor searches for woman who helped him
CBC
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Sixty years after he ran away from a northwestern Ontario residential school, a survivor is hoping to reunite with the woman who helped him all those decades ago.
Gordon Beardy, 71, is now chief of Muskrat Dam Lake First Nation, about 450 kilometres northwest of Kenora, Ont. In 1996, he was the first Indigenous person in Canada to become an Anglican diocesan, or senior, bishop.
But as a child, he was forced to attend Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora — the school he ran away from in the spring of 1962, at age 11, with three friends.
That school became notorious when another boy, Chanie Wenjack, died while trying to run away in 1966.
"There's horrible things that happened there. Sometimes, I don't talk about it," said Beardy.
"There were many things you were strapped for, things that normally you wouldn't strap somebody [for]."
He didn't feel recognized as a person at the school, he says, and in the spring ran away because he wanted to return to his parents in Bearskin Lake First Nation — more than 500 kilometres northeast of Kenora — who loved and cared for him.
Beardy and his friends walked for two nights to Redditt, Ont., a township nearly 30 kilometres north of Kenora. The boys hid during the day and walked at night, Beardy says.
But when he grew tired and collapsed from exhaustion, he got separated from his friends. Alone, Beardy waited in a dark corner of the train station in Redditt, planning to hop on the next train regardless of where it was going.
But then a woman with a dog appeared. She pointed out her home to Beardy and told him to come by if he needed anything.
"At that point, I wanted to die," said Beardy. Reluctant but hungry, he eventually went to the woman's porch.
She and her husband gave Beardy a sandwich, but he initially refused to enter the house, fearing the police would be called to take him back to the school.
But the woman pleaded for him to come into the house, so he did.
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This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
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