Survivors of St. Michael's Indian Residential School host demolition ceremony

St. Michael's Indian Residential School entrance, with two students on the driveway, Alert Bay, B.C. is shown in 1970. (Library and Archives Canada)

VICTORIA - A crumbling red brick building that has been a haunting presence for thousands of British Columbia aboriginal children who say they faced physical and sexual abuse at the site is set for demolition.

Many who attended St. Michael's Indian Residential School in the remote northern Vancouver Island village of Alert Bay see its demolition as the removal of a cancer that had been eroding the community for years.

A day-long survivor ceremony hosted by Alert Bay's Namgis First Nation is scheduled for Wednesday, where aboriginal and non-aboriginal leaders and Anglican Church officials will gather at the school grounds.

St. Michael's survivor Robert Joseph says he was six years old when he arrived at the residential school from nearby Kingcome Inlet on the Lower Mainland.

He says he left St. Michael's a broken person at 19 years old, but now at 75 years old he travels the country as Reconciliation Canada's ambassador delivering a message of healing and hope.

Joseph says St. Michael's cast a dark shadow for decades and he's looking forward to its removal.