Before we start the show, we want to let you know that this episode contains references to violence and sexual abuse against children. Please take care while listening. Where I come from, the open plains are broken up by gravel roads that intersect every mile or so and small paved highways linking tiny town to tiny town. Looking at night on these roads, it can feel like you're the only person around for miles and miles. And on the nights where there's no moon, it's dark and heavy and quiet. If something happened out here, it might never be discovered. One night in the late 1970s, something did happen. Two men met out here in the darkness. Their chance encounter felt like fate because they had met before, but under very different circumstances. One of those men was my dad. He was a police officer in rural Saskatchewan. My dad was driving alone in his patrol car when he spotted a set of tail lights, swirving ahead of him in the darkness. He flipped on his lights and the car pulled over on the side of the road. My dad got out of his cruiser and walked up to the driver's side window. He motioned for the man inside to roll it down, and as he raised his flashlight, he realized he recognized the man behind the wheel. He knew that face, those eyes, the white collar under his chin. And he saw the man recognize him too. For a moment neither of them moved. When my dad opened the door, grabbed the man by his collar and dragged him out of the car. He hit him again and again until he was tired and out of breath. My dad walked back to his patrol car and drove off into the night, leaving the man crumpled on the side of the road. There were no witnesses. The only people who knew what really happened were the two men who were there. But this is how I imagine the story. It's a story that my father told that was later told to me, hearing it has changed the way I think about my life. Because the man who my dad beat up that night was a priest. A priest who abused him in residential school. I'm Connie Walker from Gimlet Media and Spotify. This is Stolett, surviving St. Michael's. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, okay. I am just arriving in Duck Lake. And I'm on my way to meet my brother, Hal, at his house, which actually used to be my dad's house. If I can find it. I think I've actually only been there like a couple of times. That's kind of weird, I guess, maybe to not know where your dad lived. It's around four o'clock in the afternoon on a warm summer day in August. I've just pulled on to a small highway in central Saskatchewan. As I drive, there are fields of wheat on either side and big stretches of open sky. I know this place. I used to live here, but I haven't been back in a long time. The road I'm on connects the small town of Duck Lake to the Beardys and Okamas' creonation. This is my dad's home. And my brother, Hal, lives here now. He's the one who first told me the story of my dad in the priest. So that's why I'm here to ask him about it. Okay, this is a road called Constable Cameron Road. My dad would have been Constable Cameron, but this road is actually named after my sister. Who was also Constable Cameron. She followed in my dad's footsteps. And I'm pretty sure they lived down this road. He lives down this road. It's a pretty big hint. My dad's name is Howard Cameron. He's my father, but I didn't know him very well. My mom and I used to live here with him, but they split up when I was seven and we laughed. I didn't see or hear from my dad until I was a teenager and came back to the reserve to visit. But whenever I would come here, I wouldn't stay with my dad. I would stay with my godparents, my auntie Lois and my uncle Ernie. The first time I came back to Beardies, I was 14, old enough to ride the bus alone. My auntie Lois and uncle Ernie picked me up from the bus depot and I stayed with them. When they asked me if I wanted to see my dad, I kind of felt like I had to say yes. And then while I was here visiting them, I would have a visit with my dad and my brother and sisters, including Hal. By then, my dad had a new life with a new wife and four more children. I remember walking into his kitchen and immediately being surrounded by little kids and having them all hug me and call me sister. Hal was one of them. Okay. That. This has to be it. As I pull up, I see Hal waiting outside for me. Like most camera, he's obsessed with golf and he's holding a club, practicing his swing. Oh nice. Okay, hold on a minute, I think. Is your dog friendly? Oh yeah, he's gentle giant. He's a little bit like skittish of new people, but once he warmed up, she's like, "I'm fine." How are you doing? Good. Went well for the past like last week, it's like medicine picking season. Yeah. So like I went all last week picking. Kind of medicines are you picking? Today went over sweet gas. Oh my God, it smells so good already. Wow. So we picked, a prick probably with this, it'll be over 20 braids so far. We walk over to a cluster of birch trees, inside is a small fire pit. Hal says our dad built this setup, including the wooden benches surrounding the fire. He lights a pipe as we sit down. This is so nice out here. It's nice to be able to just be in a nice little secluded spot. Fire's not really going anywhere here and it's nice and quiet. Hal is 32. His full name is Howard Cameron Jr., which is fitting because Hal really takes after my dad. They look alike with their jet black hair and brown skin. But Hal's very different than my dad was at his age. He's easy going and gentle. A few months ago, Hal shared that story about my dad beating up the priest on Facebook. And as soon as I read the post, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I called Hal on the phone. And then I decided to come home with a microphone. But interviewing your brother is kind of weird. What is your job? Cultural resource support work here. That is basically just. We'll kind of sit back for the East Mom. It's a blend. Are you really quick? Do you think you'll stay here? I don't know. The truth is, I haven't spent that much time with Hal. I'm 12 years older than him. We didn't grow up together because we have different moms. And it feels like we had different dads too. My dad and I were pretty close. So I was always kind of by his hip and we spent so much time together. So I remember lots of doing things with him and taking me a sweet glass picking and things like that. I remember having the heart to the late dad. The way Hal talks about our dad feels foreign to me. I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable even calling him dad. Not just because I didn't spend much time with him. But because the man I remember didn't feel like a dad. I only have a few memories of him from when I was a kid and I don't think any of them are good. Some are hazy impressions of his presence of what it felt like to be near him. Like I can picture him sitting in a velour armchair, one that swivels or rocks. He's watching TV and eating radishes out of the bag. His jaw muscles clenching with every bite. I remember how tense I felt. How small and quiet I tried to make myself when he was around. How I tried to avoid whatever it was that would set him off. There are also memories that are very clear. Most of them are at night. When I'd be woken up by his bursts of anger, the sounds of his violence filling the house, filling my head. I remember flashes running away from him. Me and my mom dipping into alleys, hiding from him, trying to get to the safety of a relative's [BLANK_AUDIO]
So when he and my mom split up when I was seven, it was a relief. It was like we escaped. And as an adult, I didn't see my dad very often. When I did, I could see that he had changed, that he was a different father to my younger brothers and sisters. But I was cautious. Whenever I saw my dad, he would tell me that he loved me, but we never talked on the phone, and we only saw each other once every few years. My memories of him from my childhood were enough to make me want to keep my distance. And I've kept that distance from my dad. But there's something about the story of him pulling over the priest that feels like a clue. One that could help me figure out why he was the way he was. Yeah, I don't know. Actually, I don't know how the conversation came about, but I remember we were driving and then he started talking about how he saw a vehicle driving on the highway and it's kind of swarving. So he figured that they're impaired. How says it was about 10 years ago that my dad told him the story? So he pulled them over. When he walked up to the window, asked for their identification or driver's license, he recognized him as being one of the priests that, and he said, one of the priests that abused me in residential school. He ended up like taking them out of the vehicle and beating the shit out of them. In that moment, I guess he just didn't care what the consequences were. And what did he say happened? He thought for sure there would be a call to his commanding officer and that would be at the end of his career. But there's no call or anything came in. What was his mood when he was telling you that? Like no regrets, no remorse for what he had done. And this was an instance where justice was taken into our own hands. I felt this like pride. I almost thought I wanted to like, "Wore your cry. I could feel like you had that pride." I can understand why Hal feels pride when he thinks of that story, but that's not what I felt. I felt sick because immediately I thought of my dad as the boy he was at residential school. Did you get a sense of what kind of abuse he endured? He shared about like he did like, like experience like sexual abuse. That was my fear when I read Hal's post. When I first heard it was a priest, my dad pulled over. I knew my dad went to a residential school, but I never thought about what it was like for him, which is surprising. Given the amount of time I've spent reporting on what happened to children there, they were called schools, but the focus wasn't really education. They were funded by the federal government and most were run by the Catholic Church. It was a perfect union. The government wanted to quell indigenous resistance and continue its colonization of Canada, and the church was eager to indoctrinate as many indigenous children as it could. Residential schools became machines of assimilation. They separated indigenous kids as young as four years old from their families and communities to get rid of the Indian problem, to strip away our culture, our language, our very identities. There were more than 100 schools that operated for over 100 years. Generations and generations of kids were forced to go. There were at least 20 residential schools in Saskatchewan alone. One of them was the St. Michael's Indian residential school in Duck Lake. I think that's where my dad first crossed paths with the priest who abused him. I drove past it on my way to househouse. It was a big red brick building, three or four stories high. It always looked to me like an abandoned hospital, like something out of a horror movie. St. Michael's was one of the last schools to close in 1996. And then the truth about residential schools began trickling out about the rampant neglect and abuse that happened inside school walls. Abuse often inflicted by the priests and nuns who ran them. Very few were ever held responsible. In 2008, Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Thousands of residential school survivors testified about the physical and sexual abuse they endured and other horrific discoveries came to light. At some schools, nutritional experiments were carried out on children. One school used a homemade electric chair as a form of punishment. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that what happened in residential school was cultural genocide. In last spring, ground penetrating radar found what are believed to be the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the Cameloup's Indian residential school in British Columbia. It made international news and it seemed like people were finally starting to pay attention to what survivors have been saying for decades. It's been said that there's not a single indigenous person in Canada who's not been touched by the legacy of residential schools. And I know that's true. I felt it the moment I heard it. But I've never connected the dots in my own family. I've done this reporting for years. But when it comes to individual schools like St. Michael's and individual stories like my dads, there's still so much that's unknown. It's like the biggest open secret that we just don't talk about. But my brother, Hal, saw how residential school haunted our dad throughout his life. He told me it came up in unexpected ways that even the most mundane things would remind him. I remember we started walking up steps and there's like that black metal or that cage kind of step. Yeah, and it kind of like echoes when you step on it. I got to the top and I was going to open the door and I looked back and he was like at this top step and he was like, he had the railing. He was like kind of like hunched over and like looking down like focusing on something. And he kind of gathered and himself and he went in but then on the way home he told me that that was a trigger for him because that was the same stairs that they had at the residential school. So when he heard it he brought them back because I would remind him that he was going back in there. And I was like, holy fuck, just imagine what this upstairs did to him. Learning that what happened to my dad at residential school followed him his whole life. Learning that he was sexually abused by a priest. I can't unhear it. I can't ignore it. I tried. But now I'm here sitting with my brother Howell at my dad's old house feeling like I need to understand how the father I remember was impacted by the priest who abused him. Did he tell you who the priest was or anything about him? No, he didn't know or maybe he did. I just didn't like remember the name but no. Yeah, I've only just created this image in my head of what this person looks like. What do you imagine he looks like? He's in black and white. Like I don't even see a complexion. There's just like this black and white film but it just has this like dark room glasses. Very pale white hair. And there's like really big intense eyes. Like you see people who have like just hate in their eyes like that. Now that's how I imagine the priest too. One of the last times I visited my dad was when I brought my six-week-old daughter home to meet my family. There's a photograph from that visit that I love. My dad's smiling with his mouth open and looking up at me while cradling my daughter in his arms. His hair is black but starting to grey on the sides. He looks strong and healthy. Eight months later he was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer and we came home to see him again. By then he'd already lost a lot of weight. I remember he was very sick but he sat up with us at the kitchen table and held my girl in his lap. By February he was in the hospital and we were called in to say goodbye. He was only 58 when he died. I saw him three times that year. It was the most I'd seen him since I was a kid. I had always imagined that at some point in my life I would take the time to get to know my dad, to talk to him, to reconnect. And he died. I thought I lost that chance. And I came to accept that my life was a dream.
my understanding of him and our relationship was going to stay the way we left it. But now it feels like a door has been cracked open, like there might be a chance to write a new story for me and my dad. I feel like the answers are here for me if I want them, but I know unearthing this story will also unearth a lot of painful memories, not just for me, but for my family. I need their help to find out more about what happened to my dad, and it kind of feel like I need their permission. Is that your garden? How nice. What are you growing? In the box here, I have a bit. Oh wow. What are you gonna do with your beats? I wanna can them. I love can. After leaving house, I drive over to my auntie Ivy's house in the reserve. My dad was one of 15 Cameron kids. My auntie Ivy is one of the younger siblings, but she's become sort of a family caretaker. The one everyone turns to when they need help. She takes me over to her gazebo where there's a table and chairs set up. - Can I have some of this too? - Yeah, awesome. - The coffee and the thermos there, the tea and the tea. - A few minutes later, my auntie Leona arrives with her grandkids. - How are you? - My auntie Leona lives just across the road and must have heard we were having a visit. My aunties look alike. They both have big smiles and long, long dark hair. My auntie Ivy keeps hers in a braid, but my auntie Leona's is held up by a breath and flows down her back. - Yeah, our hair is in the Linus. I can have my hair down. - No? - It drives me insane. - And I can have my hair up like that. - I mean-- - In a braid, you know? - No. - It just drives me nuts. That's the only way people can tell us a part. - My auntie Ivy's house was built behind another house that I remember well. My cook and Mary's house, my dad's mom. We lived with my cook and Mary for a while when I was little. The yard where the grandkids are playing now is the same one that I played in and the same one that my dad played in when he was a kid. - I remember the one time. I don't know what the heck was going on, but anyway, there was an argument. - Somebody was standing on the porch, go get her on the steps. - We're here at this house. - My auntie Ivy tells me about a time when my dad and my uncle Ernie got into an argument. - And Ernie grabbed the mop that was sitting in water, slapped his person. (laughing) - Your dad grabbed his gun and Ernie was running zigzag down the road. (laughing) So he wouldn't get you. - Even her and all you want. The ability to laugh about things that are dark is a gift that all creep people seem to have, especially in my family. We're talking about my dad as a boy, taking a gun and shooting at his brother, my uncle Ernie. He's the uncle I used to stay with when I came home. He's my godfather, and in some ways, I was closer to him than to my dad. My uncle Ernie died last year, also of lung cancer. My auntie say that he and my dad were a lot alike. They were a few years apart in residential school. And after school, they both joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I don't know much about that period in my dad's life. Other than it was around the time I was born. - Do you know why my dad joined the RCMP? - No, I think he just, that they were doing a recruiting thing. - A few years ago, the RCMP tweeted out a photo from its archives. It was of my dad. It was jarring to scroll past a picture of him in my Twitter feed, but I instantly recognized him. In the photo, he looks just like my little brother. He's standing next to an old police car in his uniform. He has one hand on his hip, and he's looking very serious. His eyes are narrowed, and his jaw muscles are clenched. I retweeted the picture and a bunch of people responded with questions, like when was the photo taken? Where was he stationed? Which division was he in? I couldn't answer any of them. And now when I look at it, I have my own questions. Like was this taken before or after he beat up the priest? - Did you guys see how status about my dad when he was an officer and he pulled over a priest from residential school? - He told me the story, but not at the time. - Yeah. - What did he say about it? - Well, he just, it was kind of proud of himself because of what he did. - I just see how proud I was. - I don't really remember the total story, though. - Telling that story is a big smile. - Did he ever say who it was, which priest? - No, I don't remember the priest. My brothers, they didn't really talk about things that happened like even to this day they don't talk about what happened to the resident in his school. - No, they just don't want to talk about it. (soft music) - I can understand that feeling of not wanting to talk about painful memories from your childhood 'cause for a long time, I didn't want to talk about the memories I have of my dad. I think in part because I'm still dealing with them. I still sometimes have dreams of being chased, of trying to get away from some imminent danger. I wake up with my heart racing and fear and adrenaline coursing through my body. Despite the lingering effects of his anger on my life, I've never fully understood where that came from in him. But it seems like having a microphone is giving us all permission to talk about things we've never talked about before. - I remember my dad drinking when I was a kid and that he was very, he was mean. - Abusive. - Yeah. - Yeah, very short temper. - Yeah. - I had to be very careful of what you said or did because yeah, he would fly off the handle like that, you know? - Yeah, even when he was sober. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - Like my kids don't know what we went through. - Mm-hmm. - And they need to be educated. I don't know how they're gonna get it. I don't know how, what's gonna be the outcome of this. - But I think that's our error as parents because that's what we were taught. - I never told them anything about residence school. - All of my dad's brothers and sisters went to the St. Michael's Indian Residential School. This is the first time I've heard any of them talk about it. - And I think that's where we went from. - Man. What we suffered, they don't know about. - Yeah. - And what we had to endure, that wasn't ours. They don't know about. - So, it's not like that to just try and be just to not think about it on like to affect your life. - Yeah. - But the thing about trauma is that it doesn't often stay buried. It keeps popping up and one of the ways to heal is to talk about it. - It's the trauma that caused a lot of heartache. - Yeah. - And they always wonder why. - Well, now you know. - Why is something to you? - Yeah, I should let you guys go inside. It's getting cold out. - No, I'm okay. - Are you cold? - No, I'm okay. I'm all right. - The kids all go inside and I know I should let my aunties go in too, but I don't want to leave. Learning the story from Hal and hearing my aunties talk about my dad is helping me realize that his life went beyond my bad memories. But there's more to his story. - He had to find that and he had to work on it to become who he was. - Because he was a very humble at the age. - Yes. - Not the mean Howard that I knew growing up. He was very gentle, especially with the kids. Like I couldn't believe that a lot of patients he had with the kids and I said, "What? That's not the Howard that I grew up with." - I'm soking up every story. Every insight my aunties are giving me. Talking and laughing and crying with them as the light fades to black, I'm starting to see what I've been missing. My dad, my family, this place. And I'm going to find out that what happened to us is part of a far bigger story than I realized. It's pitch black when I finally leave my aunties house and get into my car to drive the hour back to my hotel in Saskatoon. - Oh my God. Okay, it is 10.41. I got to my auntie, I, these at 6.45 I think. So I was there for like four hours. It was just so hard to describe how I'm feeling because it's such a mixture of emotions. And that I feel like it feels amazing on one hand because I feel like I'm remembering a part of myself with every conversation. And talking with them, it feels familiar. And then also obviously the people that were talking to me
talking about with my dad, my cook-a-marie. Those were people that I spent a lot of time with and I was closer to, but who I then really kind of lost when I was seven and we left here. And so it feels so good to kind of be reminded of them and reconnect with them all in a way. But then it's also just so sad because because my dad passed away and the only way I can get to know him now is through these interviews and these conversations with people who knew him better than I did. My dad was stolen from me because his childhood was stolen from him by residential school but also by a man in a black robe. Their lives first intersected at residential school when my dad was a boy in the priest of grown man and then they collided again years later, one night on the side of a dark road in Saskatchewan. My dad's life was cut short when he passed away in 2013. But what happened to this priest? Who was he? And can I find him? This season on stolen, surviving St. Michael's. I was so used to get nothing in the morning running outside praying with my dog, going to visit my grandparents and all that was taken away. Did you understand any English when you arrived? Nothing at all Connie. Nothing. They wanted to kill the Indian in me they sure did. He's one of that setting with the section of the views by a priest. Did he say a priest? Hmm. I said you know what? What? Tell me something. I tracked you down. What is this? It looks like they're photos of boys and dressing. You sometimes lie? Are you lying to me now? Stolen, surviving St. Michael's is a gimlet media and Spotify original production. The show was hosted and reported by me, Connie Walker. Additional reporting by Betty Ann Adam. Reporting and producing by Chantal Belgrichard, Max Green, and Anya Schultz. Our supervising producer is Alan Frankman. Our editor is Devon Taylor. Our consulting editor is Heather Evans. Additional editorial support from Lydia Pullgreen, Rayhan Hermancy, Jonathan Goldstein, and Sayid Tijon Thomas. Fact checking by Naomi Bar. Original music by Emma Munger, Chris Dirkson, and Raymond Cameron. Goring sound design and mixing by Emma Munger, music supervision by Liz Fulton. Legal support from Iris Fisher, Natalie Russell, Whitney Potter, and Rachel Strong. If you have information that you'd like to share about St. Michael's Indian Residential School in Duck Lake Saskatchewan, you can write to us at
[email protected]. If you're a survivor or intergenerational survivor of Canada's Residential School system, and you need help, there's a 24-hour support line you can call. 1-866-925-4419. And if you or someone you know is dealing with physical or sexual violence, you can find resources in your area by going to spotify.com/stolen. Thank you for listening.
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