Stamp prices rise for the third time in five years amid financial woes for Canada Post
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
While the Vatican has refused to release residential school records, it isn’t the only body suppressing the racism and abuse experienced within these institutions.
The Canadian government destroyed 15 tons of paper documents related to the residential school system between 1936 and 1944, including 200,000 Indian Affairs files.
From the age of four, Mike Cachagee attended three separate residential schools in northern Ontario. But there are few records to prove it.
"All the records of me going there, my attendance, everything was at the hands of my captors -- the Church and Canada," Cachagee said in an interview with CTV National News from Goulais River, Ont.
Cachagee says he was sexually and physically abused while at the Church-run, government-sponsored institutions, and saw former classmates unceremoniously buried in front of his own eyes.
"It was very inhumane," Cachagee said. "You've got 70 or 80 or a 100 in assembly with a child in a wooden box. No one mourning, no one crying."
With records being either destroyed or withheld, many children who attended Canada's residential schools have become ghosts of history.
In Kamloops, B.C., the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) only has records for 51 children ever dying at the residential school despite the remains of 215 being discovered last week.
The Catholic Church administrated many of Canada's residential schools, including the one in Kamloops, as did the Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches for more than 120 years.
Despite previously meeting with Indigenous leaders, there has been no papal apology on Canadian soil – one of the calls to action in the TRC's final report released in 2015.
Residential school survivors say the lack of accountability is adding to their trauma.
"To apologize from the church's leader would acknowledge the truth and once truth is accepted and truth is told, then we move to reconciliation," Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said.
Archbishop J. Michael Miller of the Vancouver archdiocese said Catholic organizations should address their role in the schooling system and release their records.
However, the Archdiocese of Regina isn't waiting for Rome.
Archbishop Donald Bolen issued a statement on Thursday on the Archdiocese website apologizing for the "hurt and decisions of our Church" both presently and in the past.
Bolen explained to CTV News that the apology was necessary given Saskatchewan’s history of residential schools.
"Because the legacy of suffering connected to residential schools in this province and in this diocese is so deep," Bolen said.
While the Catholic Church hasn't apologized for the abuses endured by those who attended residential schools, one religious group did so years ago.
Rev. Carmen Lansdowne is a member of B.C.'s Heiltsuk First Nation. She is also minister of the First United Church, an inner-city ministry of the United Church of Canada.
The United Church formally apologized in 1988 for its role in operating residential schools.
"I don't think I could have become ordained if we hadn't apologized," Lansdowne said.
More than a dozen lawyers across Canada on Thursday formally requested that the International Criminal Court investigate the Vatican and the Canadian government for what they say constitutes crimes against humanity.
But with a majority of the remaining residential school records still in the hands of the Catholic Church, experts say getting the ICC to hear the case will be challenging.
--
If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419
Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
Italy's mafia rarely dirties its hands with blood these days. Extortion rackets have gone out of fashion and murders are largely frowned upon by the godfathers.
After his adopted parents died, Dave Rogers set out to learn more about his birth mother. DNA results and a little help from friendly strangers would put him on a path to a small town in England.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush money trial has fined him US$1,000 for violating his gag order and sternly warned the former president that additional violation could result in jail time.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
AI tools can offer recommendations, answer questions and 'talk' with users. But some users are using them to recreate the likeness of the dead.
Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine and Moscow warned that tensions with the West are deepening.
The Israel-Hamas war has led to a spike in 'violent rhetoric' from 'extremist actors' that could prompt some in Canada to turn to violence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.