Re: Why have we honoured a residential school advocate? (St. Albert Gazette, Your Views, Dec. 1).
I congratulate the Gazette on its ongoing and unique efforts to educate readers about the rich history of this region.
It is true that Bishop Vital Justin Grandin played a significant role in the development of residential schools. It is also true that Bishop Grandin played a significant role in the negotiation of several treaties on the Prairies, including Treaty 6.
Grandin lived closely with the Indigenous and Métis people of this region and feared that their very existence was threatened by the decimation of the plains bison, their major food source, as well as new and deadly diseases and the whiskey trade that came with the white settlers.
Grandin became convinced that the only hope for the future lay in the education of Indigenous children away from their families and traditional culture. Of course we recognize today that this thinking was horribly misguided. And this is a truth for which Grandin’s religious community, the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate, apologized in 1991 and repeated in a very moving presentation at the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in Edmonton in 2014.
Grandin was also a fierce advocate for the rights of francophone Catholics to have their own schools, so it seems natural to honour that part of his legacy with the naming of a Catholic school. Erasing his name from a school or a community might help deny a part of the history of this region, but what would it accomplish in the service of reconciliation?
I would encourage the writer to examine what happened at the Grandin LRT station in Edmonton when complaints were raised about a mural that depicted Grandin standing alongside a nun holding an Indigenous child. The answer was not to remove the mural, but to add two new ones alongside it that celebrate First Nations culture.
All of us need to be committed to reconciliation with our Indigenous sisters and brothers, and learning from our history is an important part of creating a positive path forward.
Yes, let us name the truths of the past. And let us also name what we are doing to make things right.
Lorraine Turchansky, chief communications officer
The Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton
