Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
In a year of reckoning for the legacy of Canada’s residential schools, a new class-action lawsuit is exposing the alleged torment Indigenous people faced at medical facilities specifically built for them.
According to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia, these so-called “Indian hospitals” formally began in the 1930s as a way of tackling high rates of tuberculosis (TB) among Indigenous people, but were chronically understaffed and ended up using “experimental treatment” on their patients.
Ann Hardy is the lead plaintiff in a $1.1-billion class-action lawsuit against the federal government alleging “widespread and common sexual abuse” by hospital staff at these facilities, relating to her time at Edmonton’s Charles Camsell Hospital.
“I think that people need to know that this happened in our hospitals, it happened recently and we need to acknowledge it,” Hardy told CTV News.
“I know that sometimes Canadians think they're just hearing too much of it, and ‘Why can't we just get over it?’ and I think we're not going to be able to, in my case, until we fully expose that this happened.”
The Charles Camsell Hospital, the largest such hospital in Canada, began treating Indigenous people for TB in 1945 and ultimately closed in 1996. There is currently a radar search for possible unmarked graves on the property, similar to those investigations at the sites of former residential schools across the country.
Hardy was transported 700 kilometres from her home to the facility when she contracted TB in 1969. While at the hospital, Hardy said hospital staff sexually abused her and she witnessed the sexual abuse of other patients.
“The medical staff that would come in that was rooming this child would just pull the curtain across to separate us,” she said. “I could hear everything that was going on.”
“It was horrifying, just horrifying and I had to lay there and listen.”
According to the statement of claim, filed on behalf of survivors from 31 Indian hospitals across Canada, the patients were segregated from the rest of the population in “substandard, ill equipped, overcrowded and inadequately staffed” facilities that did not compare to other medical facilities of the time. The claim also alleges “widespread, common and systemic physical and sexual abuse,” including food deprivation, beatings with sticks, physical restraint for months at a time and requiring patients “to eat their own vomit.”
In addition, the claim alleges that patients were not given access to an antibiotic TB medication that became available in the 1940s, which would’ve allowed them to be treated at home.
“This case was commenced to bring to light the awful experiences thousands of Indigenous people who were segregated from the rest of the population and allegedly subjected to horrific treatment,” said Jonathan Ptak, a lawyer with Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto who filed the claim.
While the hospital is closed now, Hardy says the memories from her time there still haunt her.
“The sexual abuse that I carried with me for so many years, without being able to talk about it to anybody,” she said. “That had the most lasting impact on my life and probably coloured my judgement in so many ways.”
Maureen Lux, a history professor at Brock University who authored a book on Canadian Indian hospitals, said plenty other patients at these facilities faced similar torment.
“They would take children who wouldn't stay in bed and put plaster casts on both legs with a bar in between, so that they could not move,” she said. “Other children were physically restrained in their beds and this -- of course -- made children particularly vulnerable to staff.”
Lux added that patients were arrested if they tried to leave.
“Indigenous people were required to see a doctor, they were required to go to a hospital, and they were required to stay in hospital against their will until they were discharged,” she said.
The allegations listed in the lawsuit have not been tested in court.
In a statement, Carine Midy, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, said the government is “working collaboratively” with Hardy and her legal team to find a “meaningful resolution” to the matter and that the discussion are ongoing.
“The mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples is a tragic and shameful part of Canada’s history, whose impacts are still felt today,” she added in the statement. “Canada deeply regrets past actions and policies that harmed Indigenous children, their families and communities, and is committed to reconciliation and laying the foundation for intergenerational healing.”
“Canada is committed to resolving claims of this nature outside of the courts. Negotiated agreements and outcomes are preferred wherever possible as it allows the parties to go beyond the remedies that can be granted by the courts and explore concrete ways to address past harms.”
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
Spanish state prosecutors recommended Wednesday that an investigating judge shelve a probe into another alleged case of tax fraud by pop star Shakira.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
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.