Recently, we were dumbfounded by the horrific news out of Kamloops of the discovery of 215 children’s bodies that were interred on the grounds of the old Residential School. How is one expected to absorb this tragedy?
I don’t believe that anyone can comprehend the pain and anguish the families of these children must have felt so long ago and are now reliving today.
Try to imagine what it must have felt like, and how you would have reacted, if government officials literally plucked your child from your arms, or stormed your home and took all of your children, taking them to a place, that in some cases, were unimaginable distances from you and your family.
Then try to imagine inquiring about your child’s or children well being, only to be told that they had run away from the school, and that no one knows where they are.
Imagine if you can, what it feels like, to find out decades later, that they had actually died, and had been laid to rest in an unmarked grave after passing from some unknown or undocumented cause.
On June 1, Carstairs Bancroft United Church chose to acknowledge these lost souls, and so on very short notice eight members of our church gathered outside the church at 2:15 on Tuesday afternoon and rang the church bell 215 times to commemorate each child.
On Sunday our service began with 215 seconds of silence to again acknowledge these little ones. What is most disconcerting, is that this discovery is not the ending but rather just the beginning.
Present to help ring the bell were Reverand Maria Szabone Berces and Attila Szabo, Bruce and Joyce Ing, Lynn Martens, Lorretta Rusnell, and Marnie and Don Holmes.
Don Holmes,
Carstairs
