They were barely teenagers, taken away from their homes and families, and left to die in miserable conditions during a pandemic.
Jane Baptiste, 13, Georgina House, 14, David Lightning, 14, and Sarah Soosay, 13, died just over a century ago.
They were among numerous students and staff at the Red Deer Indian Industrial School who succumbed to the 1918-19 Spanish flu.
The four young people are buried at the Red Deer Cemetery, where a small remembrance ceremony was held Thursday.
But many of their classmates, who succumbed to pneumonia from the flu or other illnesses, lie in unmarked graves on the former school site, across the river from Fort Normandeau.
“They packed them into dormitories with poor ventilation, so they were killed by the dozens,” when a bacteria or virus circulated, said Lyle Keewatin Richards, a member of the Remembering the Children Society. The group is dedicated to the reclamation and preservation of Indian residential school cemeteries and history in Alberta.
While Indigenous students, who were brought to central Alberta and as far away as northern Manitoba, also died of tuberculosis, small pox and scarlet fever, Keewatin Richards noted there’s a particular poignancy in memorializing the young lives lost during the last pandemic at this time of COVID-19.
He feels it’s also important to remember that these children were victims of this country’s past genocidal assimilation policies. They were forced to leave their families and suppress their language and culture.
Red Deer’s acting mayor and historian, Michael Dawe, wishes everyone’s attitude had broadened towards minorities over the past century. But given the ongoing protests over last month’s death of a black American man under the knee of a police officer, he knows intolerance persists.
On a personal level, Dawe was “shocked” to recently learn about the discrimination experienced in recent years by his Metis cousins.
“It was a real reminder that we talk about moving ahead with reconciliation, but this is not past…. the road ahead is still really long.”
And the damaging legacy residential schools carries on.
Richard Lightning, a nephew of the deceased David, attended Thursday’s ceremony as a survivor of multi-generational trauma.
His father, Albert, had attended the Red Deer Indian Industrial School with his younger brother David.
Richard believes his father, who had to dig graves for his deceased classmates, learned to repress his emotions — especially after David’s death.
“My father never told me he loved me,” said Richard, “because he never learned how to.”
Richard was later forced to attend the Ermineskin Residential School from the age of six.
He remembers trying hard to connect with his biological parents during summer breaks.
“My surrogate parents were the nun and the priest.”
When she was a child, Richard’s youngest daughter, DeAnne, would point out to him a commercial that asked parents, “Have you hugged your kid today?”
To his credit, Richard would hug her, she recalled.
“Even though I’m not a huggy person,” responded her father.
The Red Deer Indian Industrial School was operated from 1893 until its closure in 1919 by the Methodist Church. Dawe said it was built by the government with poor heating and sanitation and scarce resources.
Students expired so frequently, that a government inspector rated it as having the highest mortality rate in Canada.
Dawe asked the 35 people who gathered for Thursday’s ceremony to picture what it must have been like to be young and dying far from your parents.
And what was it like for parents to have no contact with their child — until a letter arrived informing them of their boy or girl’s death?
In a concluding prayer, Ross Smillie, a minister at Sunnybrook United Church, asked for the Creator’s forgiveness for those who are intolerant. “They forget that the diversity of language and race (on Earth) is His gift” to us.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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