The schoolhouse is being demolished because it’s in poor condition. Decisions haven’t been on what will happen to the site.
On Friday, about 250 WSÁNEĆ students, staff and community members gathered around the one-room Tsartlip Indian Day School, next to WSÁNEĆ Leadership Secondary School, for a decommissioning ceremony.
Joanne Claxton, 91, remembers the building fondly as a place where she and a group of other women successfully turned the federal government away from discontinuing education services in the community in the 1970s. But for some, it was a place of painful memories that came up every time they drove by 7449 West Saanich Rd.One of her earliest teachers was someone whom she only knew as Sister Guadalupe, who singled her out for abuse, she said in an interview.
XEMXIMELEḴ Dan Sam, 88, a former day school student who now sits on the WSÁNEĆ School Board’s elder advisory circle, said the school helped some of his classmates who went on to study at St. Louis College in Victoria.“My memory isn’t that good, I’ve been around for a while … but I know in my heart we had a good time here,” he said. “We accepted the teacher and the Father and what they were trying to teach us.
Another incident, which happened shortly before the school became fully band-operated, involved teachers strip-searching students after fundraising money was believed to have been stolen from the school, he said. “There wasn’t really much we could do about it, because the teachers were under the authority of the Department of Indian Affairs,” he said.“When the principal opened the drawer, the envelope hooked the top and it got pushed to the back,” he said.
Sampson said that people who knew what happened kept their mouths shut. “I was really happy to know that none of the kids told who did it, because we never, ever wanted them to be punished for it.”
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