said Councillor Sophie Lockhart, principal organizer. 
By James Wastasecoot
Former students of Mackay School in Dauphin, Manitoba came together Aug 30 – Sept 1, 2024 to catch up, remember and share their experiences as well as to chart future endeavours. “The gatherings help us to deal with issues in our lives and being together helps us to discuss how we were affected by the residential school system,” said Alice Bear who works with Peguis Child and Family. “ It is a start to understanding ourselves.”
This year’s gathering was smaller than previous years. Thirty four turned out to the venue at the Dauphin Friendship Centre, the actual Mackay School site not being available. “But it doesn’t diminish the importance of these meetings,” said Bear, who is also a board member of the Mackay Residential School Gathering Inc., the charity which the former students began in 2010. “It’s important that we continue to make progress and we reach out to other groups in the future.”
Duke Beardy, former chief of Split Lake Cree Nation said: “It was good to hear people’s sharing of their experience, it’s part of the healing process. We need to remember the bad experiences, we also need to say the positive things about it, we can share with the younger generations.”
The Mackay School Gathering Inc was established in 2010 to support survivor healing and to build ogranizational capacity. A board of directors was formed which spearheaded gatherings and led initiatives. One such activity was getting involved with the Mackay School Paintings repatriation project which concluded in 2020. The project was returning student paintings which were preserved by then volunteer artist, Robert Aller, who taught at Mackay and other schools in Canada during the 1960’s. His family donated the paintings to the University of Victoria who subsequently contacted and worked with a number of residential school survivor groups to return the paintings to their creators or their families. With the help of Keewatin Tribal Council and University College of the Noth, a repatriation ceremony was held at Thompson, Manitoba in 2018 where the surviving student “painters” and/or family members received the return of the paintings. The Mackay group of paintings were reproduced on banners which were put on display in the Friendship Centre hall. Many survivors chose to have their paintings to kept by the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg.
Clara Kirkness, chair, of the Mackay Residential School Gathering Inc. Said: “Most of the people that I talked to said, ‘I want to visit my former residential school friends. None said to me: ‘I want to heal.’ Although, it helps us all in our journey of life.
There are impacts of intergenerational effects of residential school experiences. This is evident when there is sharing of family dynamics.”
Kirkness said there are opportunities for survivors to access funds for gatherings. “We need to utilize our own people who are resources, with computer knowledge.”
The Mackay Residential School in Dauphin opened in 1957 and was administered by the Anglican Church of Canada until 1969 when it closed. The federal government continued to operate the school as student residences, Spence Hall and Scrase Hall, until 1988.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, established following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, co-chaired by Peguis band member, the Hon. Murray Sinclair, has the following on its website: “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) concluded that residential schools were “a systematic, government- sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples.” The TRC characterized this intent as “cultural genocide.””
The Gathering was made possible with donations from organizations including Anish which is owned by Eva Fontaine and EJ Fontaine.