Angus Gardiner, Violet, and Minister Carolyn Bennett at the symbolic demolition. Photo courtesy Wanda Daigneault, Facebook
A demolition plan is in place for a building in Ile-la-Crosse that holds a lot of painful memories.
The Ile-a-la-Crosse Boarding School boy’s dormitory is the last standing reminder of years of abuse and mistreatment by boarding school staff, and it closed its doors to students in the 1970s.
Mayor Duane Favel said village council decided about a year ago to demolish the building, but put that process on hold while they reached out to the new federal government that was elected in November.
The intention was to ask the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to visit Ile-a-la-Crosse, speak with the school’s survivors, and participate in a symbolic demolition.
“We wanted to bring some closure I guess to the survivors. We just didn’t want to knock it down without informing anybody, so we wanted to go through the best process which would assist healing and reconciliation,” Favel said.
That happened last week when the building was hit hard by a sledgehammer held by Carolyn Bennett and two former boarding school students in this symbolic demolition.
A village council meeting was held last week to review the events of that day, and members voted to put out a tender for companies to bid on the physical demolition of that building.
“It’s time now for that building to come down,” Favel said.
After the boy’s dormitory was closed, it was given a new use as the Northwest Alcohol Addictions Centre, which was in operation until about
2009 or 2010 when the health centre started taking on the addictions treatment.
“The irony of that is, a lot of the people that attended this school and suffered trauma and negative experiences were the ones coming there and trying to address some of their addictions issues, which for me it just doesn’t work. And obviously it didn’t work for a lot of people that attended there,” Favel said.
The tender for demolition will be handed out in coming weeks, and at that time village council will give the company a timeline for removing the building from Ile-la-Crosse for once and for all.
The convent, where girls would stay, was on the site of the current health centre in Ile-a-la-Crosse and was demolished to make way for that construction.