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Letter to the Editor: Healing begins at the beginning

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I sit here on the steps of the St. Joseph’s Church in Stratford on Friday, June 4, at 2:15 p.m. Two hundred and fifteen – the number has become a household number. As the church bells toll, I try to fathom their meaning.

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The flags at half mast, the black ribbon adorning the Google website title page, the speeches and hand-wringing from Canada’s Parliament and even the toppling of John A. Macdonald’s statue are but mere platitudes meant to placate the disenfranchised many, and throw them off the scent of an issue that looms large.

The records of the residential schools are being withheld by church and government officials, and the records of the Independent Assessment Process, meant to resolve the claims of sexual and physical abuse and other wrongful acts suffered at the Indian Residential Schools, are to be destroyed over the space of the next 30 years.

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After the Second World War, Nazi atrocities came to light. The Nazis kept meticulous records, and as these originally belonged to the vanquished enemies, could be wrested from them by the allies and made available to the world for posterity and justice. The story of the residential schools is a different story. The perpetrators of assault, rape, infanticide and murder are amongst us, on this very soil, in our very “Home and Native Land. ”

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Somebody knows something. The criminals are hiding in the pages of church, government and Independent Assessment Process records. The “old boys’ network,” thick as thieves, rears its ugly bureaucratic head. If a 97-year-old former Nazi guard is still within the reach of the long arm of the law, so are the guilty parties seeking refuge in those documents.

Who do those bells toll for? In part, they toll for the 215 innocent children, but as well they toll for the individuals skulking amongst the pages of those records.

To withhold the incriminating evidence embroidered within the words of those archives is a convenient shirking of accountability. Healing begins at the beginning, for posterity and justice by dealing appropriately with the ones who initially opened the ugly wounds. Only then can we begin heal as a nation.

Dr. Yale Erenberg, St. Marys

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