Canada has a sordid past with abuse

With the victory in the courts by our Native population, we now are turning attention to residential schools for other segments of our population.

Recently, the Ontario Provincial Schools were served notice of a class action case filed by their former students. The large majority of the students who attended those schools (Robarts, Sir James, Drury, and Jules) are deaf. Like the Native students, many people with disabilities weren’t offered much of a choice and forced to attend those schools, hundreds of kilometres away.

There, they were subjected to abuse and exploited. Being a vulnerable segment of our population with difficulties in communicating, the abuse went on for the longest time. Many of those who have done the abuse are dead or gone, but the scars still remain.

We Canadians do not have a proud history. We have abused people who welcomed us onto their lands. We have abused people who we should have taken care of, and we still aren’t taking care of our people.

It is my hopes that when the stories of abuse done to the deaf population, as well as any other students attending those schools, are made public, Canadians will start to pay better attention to those people with disabilities. I also hope that the mainstream media will pay attention to the case. 

Travis Morgan
Whitefish