As Long as the Rivers Flow (25 page)
“Take your time, Raven,” Joshua said. “When you’re ready, tell me what’s going on.”
Raven stared at the floor, struggling to find the strength to share her secret. When she began to sob, Joshua took her in his arms.
“That’s okay, Raven. Cry all you want and let me know how I can help when you’re ready.”
“It’s really hard,” she said. “It’s about the suicides. About the kids who killed themselves.”
“Yes,” said Joshua sharply. “What about the suicides? What’s it got to do with you? I hope you’re not thinking of doing the same thing?”
“It’s worse, Joshua. It’s worse than that. There was this suicide pact and I was part of it. There were four of us and we decided to die when we turned thirteen. Life at home was just so bad we didn’t want to go on living.”
Raven began crying again and when she calmed down somewhat, Joshua said, “I’m so sorry, Raven. It must have really been terrible. But please tell me more.”
“The others all went ahead and I’m the only one left and I’m no longer sure I want to do it. But if I don’t, I’ll be breaking my word to Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara. I’m so confused and I don’t know what to do. That’s why I’ve come to see you.”
Joshua was holding Raven in his arms as she was talking. He squeezed her even tighter, and when he released her, his eyes were full of tears.
“Raven, this is really serious and I’m glad you’ve come to see me. We got to talk this through. Although you’re only thirteen, you’ve got to help me help you.”
When Raven nodded her agreement, Joshua continued. “First, I want you to promise me you won’t do anything drastic. If you really feel like hurting yourself, you’ll come see me first. I’m not joking. Anytime of the day or night.”
“I’ll try,” said Raven. “But I don’t know how long I can hold out.”
“Let’s figure out what to do,” said Joshua. “In a way it’s a good thing you’ve come to me. This reserve has been rocked by suicide after suicide by young people just like you for far too long. But this current wave is heartbreaking. Never before have so many kids taken their lives in such a short time. We’ve been trying to put a
stop to it, but we didn’t know who was part of the pact. Tell me, are there any other kids involved?”
“No one else came in with us but there are probably others who are thinking about doing it.”
After a minute’s reflection, Joshua said, “You probably know that I can’t, by myself, solve your problems. No one can. I’m not even sure I can help you to deal with your mother since I had no luck when I tried to get her to stop drinking. What we need to do is to get everyone working together. Because this reserve is sick. And one of the reasons it’s that way is because the parents and grandparents of the children were taken by the government and raised in residential schools. Your mother knows all about this, since she was one of them.
“You were lucky to escape all of that, living as you did with your wonderful Nokomis. You also have a mother who learned her language and culture again when she returned from residential school. But the bottom line is that most of us who attended residential school were never taught to be good parents, and your mother is part of that world. They never say I love you to their kids, and you and your friends feel unwanted. But those are just my views. What we need is to get everyone together to exchange information and look at options.”
“But that won’t work,” Raven said. “Just holding another meeting where everyone talks forever and never comes to any conclusions won’t help.”
Joshua went to the window and stared outside for a long time, and returned to the couch.
“There is another way,” he said. “What do you think about holding a healing circle and inviting the priest who molested the mothers of the kids who killed themselves to come meet with us? His name’s Father Lionel Antoine. He’s also the priest who abused
your mother. It would be a long shot since the Church is having a hard time admitting its clergy did anything wrong and probably wouldn’t want him to come. He might even be dead.
“But if he is alive and he agreed to come, maybe your mother and the others will be able to have it out with him. Maybe he’d say he was sorry. Maybe the women he wronged can forgive him. And if they do, maybe they’ll be able to start to heal themselves. They might even be able to show some affection to you kids. I can’t think of anything that would do more to bring these suicides to an end. What do you think?”
“I’m all for it,” said Raven. “I just hope my mother agrees.”
“Let me handle your mother. I think our plan might just work. I’ve heard the archbishop of Quebec has a big heart and I’ll write to ask for his help. But keep it to yourself for the time being in case we can’t pull it off.”
The Church
S
HORTLY THEREAFTER
, Joshua sent the following letter to Archbishop Laframbroise.
Dear Archbishop Laframbroise,
I would like to introduce myself. I am the chief of Cat Lake First Nation, located 500 miles northwest of Thunder Bay in northern Ontario on the headwaters of the Albany River. We are proud Native people and our ancestors have lived in this area since time immemorial.
We have never met but I have been told that you are the head of the Catholic Church in Quebec. I am writing to you about something that is painful for me even to describe. The government in Ottawa working with the churches decided many years ago that they would take Native children from their parents and send them to residential schools to turn them into white people.
The people of my community had no choice and generations of our children were sent to a residential school
run by your church on James Bay. Many of them returned crushed in spirit after being harshly treated by the staff and losing much of their language and culture.
Could you find it in your heart to help our community heal itself? We need to meet directly with a priest, Father Lionel Antoine, to come to terms with our pain. He sexually abused many of our girls in those years. If he is not alive or does not wish to come, could you send someone who is wise and compassionate to sit with us in a healing circle. My goal is not revenge but peace, reconciliation and healing.
Yours Truly,
Joshua Nanagushkin,
Chief, Cat Lake First Nation
The morning Archbishop Laframbroise received Joshua’s letter, Bishop Thierry de Salaberry, the impeccably groomed cleric in his mid-thirties who helped him administer his archdiocese, had no idea his day would turn out so badly. As he did every day after mass, he ate breakfast alone in the dining room of his residence. Conscious of the dignity of his office, he insisted on eating on porcelain dishes using sterling silver cutlery on a polished mahogany table adorned with fresh-cut flowers.
His housekeeper served him freshly squeezed orange juice, crisp bacon, lightly poached eggs, whole wheat toast and orange marmalade, poured him a large cup of coffee, added cream and sugar, stirred it gently and handed him the daily newspapers. It was the time of day he enjoyed the most. He loved to drink his coffee slowly and to go through the morning papers, especially
Le Devoir
, favoured by Quebec intellectuals, at his leisure.
The bishop came from a prominent old Quebec family that counted many notaries and bishops in its lineage. It was a source of pride that he could trace his ancestry back to landowning nobility in Normandy, who had sent their sons across the Atlantic to become seigneurs in New France in the seventeenth century. As a youth he had attended the best classical college in the province. Afterwards, although experiencing no particular spiritual call, he decided to pursue a religious life and entered the seminary of Quebec.
Neither he nor his family, nor any of the senior members of the local clerical establishment, who were frequent dinner guests at his family’s elegant and well-appointed home, ever doubted that he was destined for greatness. He had been the most brilliant student at the classical college, mastering Greek and Latin with ease, and had excelled in English, French literature and rhetoric. His record of achievement had been the same at the seminary where his grasp of canon law and philosophy, in particular that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, had delighted his teachers.
After he was ordained, it was out of the question that he would be sent into the field as a missionary, or for that matter be assigned like most other newly minted priests to a rural parish. Instead, he became a personal aide to the archbishop of Montreal. And he carried out his duties with such discretion and good judgement that in short order he became a bishop and was assigned to the archdiocese of Quebec City with dozens of priests, most of them older than he was, under his authority.
This rapid promotion he considered his due and he expected to rise quickly to the top ranks of the Church. He had already mapped out a plan for that to happen. He would become a member of the Vatican diplomatic service and then, with his innate talent and winning personality, he would, he was certain, become an archbishop. After that he would become foreign minister to the Holy
Father himself. And then, who knew what might happen? If the bishop was to fulfil his destiny, however, he would have to be called to Rome, and for that to happen, he would need the blessing and recommendation of his superior, Archbishop Laframbroise. He did not think that would be a problem. The archbishop seemed to like him and depended on him for help in managing his archdiocese.
The bishop recognized that he was ambitious but did not consider that to be a bad thing in and for itself. After all, he sought advancement not for himself but for the good of the Church. He had already asked the archbishop to write to the Curia in Rome on his behalf, and Archbishop Laframbroise, admittedly with no great enthusiasm, had promised to give his request the attention it deserved.
In the meantime, Bishop de Salaberry had set out to charm and impress his superior with the depth and sophistication of his knowledge of international affairs, and was always on the lookout for opinions he could appropriate from the newspapers and offer up as his own in their monthly business lunches. This morning, however, he was unpleasantly surprised to see that the lead item in
Le Devoir
was a report that the police were making rapid progress in their investigation into the mistreatment of Indian children by members of the clergy who had staffed Indian residential schools:
For over one hundred years, the Canadian government sought to deal with the “Indian problem” by trying to integrate Natives into mainstream society through policies of forced assimilation. Generations of Indian children, as young as six, were taken from their families and sent to residential schools operated by the churches where many of them were subject to sexual and other forms of abuse by priests, nuns, ministers, pastors and other supposed caregivers.
The government has now announced that it will pay compensation to all those who attended residential schools and will establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to tour the country to compile a historical record and allow Indian survivors to tell their stories. The commission will not be a court of law, and will not have the authority to compel people who have abused children to appear before it.
The authorities are also pressing ahead as fast as they can to locate and prosecute individuals responsible for specific acts of abuse. Many of them are now very old, and it is important to bring them to justice before they die. All former students, of course, retain the right to launch lawsuits against the churches that staffed the schools.
The bishop set his unfinished cup of coffee aside and pushed back his chair. His morning was ruined. Archbishop Laframbroise had asked him some time ago to look into these accusations and to discuss the matter with him at one of their luncheons. The bishop had done his homework, but had not yet raised the issues with his superior. However, the two were scheduled to meet that same day and the archbishop, the bishop was well aware, would have read the same story. He would want to discuss the tiresome subject with him rather than the more interesting topic of his plans for his future.
Just before noon, the bishop rang the doorbell of the archbishop’s residence. The archbishop expected his visitors to be on time and would not have been amused had he been late. A silent, respectful nun opened the door and he stepped into the foyer. Everything within he knew well, the pervasive smell of lemon oil tinged with a
hint of mustiness, the quiet ticking of an antique grandfather clock, the expensive oil paintings of the Virgin Mary and the martyred Christ on the walls, and the private chapel off to the side of the staircase reserved for the use of the archbishop and visiting prelates from Rome.
After taking his coat and hanging it in a closet, the nun led him up the stairs to the archbishop’s dining room. His host, who was wearing a simple black cassock and clerical collar, was of medium height and slight build with warm but watchful dark brown eyes. He would have been content to have remained a parish priest all his life but his superiors had valued his quiet leadership, good judgement and management skills, and he had moved up in rank steadily through the years.
The archbishop motioned the bishop to take a seat at the small table for two that had been set up in preparation for the lunch. Today was macaroni and cheese day and ginger ale was the beverage. The bishop pretended to enjoy his food but was mildly irritated. He could not understand why his host did not provide more varied and elegant meals at these luncheons, one befitting senior clergy, especially someone like himself who one day might become a prince of the Church. But what could you expect from someone who served carbonated drinks at his meals rather than decent wine?
Over coffee, which was when the two discussed business matters, the bishop preempted his superior by going directly to the issue of the residential schools.
“Your Grace, I have, as you instructed, looked into the allegations of abuse by members of the clergy against aboriginal youth in the Indian residential schools we used to administer. It appears that many priests and nuns were overzealous in exercising their functions. Some, it appears, were even tempted into sin.”