Residential School Goes from Tragedy to Triumph
For more than half a century, the hated brick building of the St. Eugene Mission swallowed up native children and spit them back out, traumatized and damaged from their years of family separation, cultural assimilation and worse.
Even after the Catholic-run residential school closed its doors for good in 1970, deep physical and emotional scars remained.
As the abandoned building deteriorated, most natives wanted it torn down. But the old school, whose three storeys loom over the reserve of the St. Mary’s Band of the Ktunaxa Nation Council, did not succumb to the wrecker’s ball.
Instead, in a
