Jesus’ Sacred Heart this year coinciding with Mary’s Perpetual Help—
I should be overflowing with joy;
And here I am, standing by a commemorative plaque
Overlooking a building on a hill
Where the residential school once was
On Indian School Road.

The Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and Thérèse of Lisieux were three
Whom the children were taught especially to love[1]—
When the next day someone was locked in the cupboard
And the previous week someone had been propositioned by a Brother;
When next June someone will run away
And last year someone didn’t make it home.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help and St. Thérèse are two
Of the heavenly friends whom I identify with victims’ resistance to abuse[2]—
And here, on that hill, where the school had been,
Was a factory of torture and terror,
Rebellion and resistance,
Arrival and departure.

When parliamentary apology was made, one survivor wrote how
Of spiritual abuse there was said not one word[3]—
But their hair was cut, their language denied,
Their relationships with Se’sus and Ma’li filtered
Through turtle-shell layers of shame
And isolation.

You’d think one dread manufacture would be enough,
But after it burned to the ground
Straightaway on the foundation of the school went up a plastics factory;
And now I hear the owner speak of “building” on their “existing base”[4]—
Dear God, can he hear himself?
O God, make it stop.

It doesn’t stop. Out goes a truck to the highway,
Carrying milk bottles, which might then be recycled and recycled,
And perforated drain pipes, destined for hilly subdivisions.
Why did I come here?
There’s solemnity in half our fridges
And maybe buried in the soil of my own street.

But I came; on purpose I came
Around one side of the Bay of Fundy
And around again the other,
On this Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Se’sus
And the Perpetual Help of Ma’li,
To Indian School Road.

Shubenacadie
2025-06-27

[1] Isabelle Knockwood specifically singles out “a holy medal of Our Lady of Perpetual Help or the Sacred Heart or St. Theresa the Little Flower” as the only acceptable adornment for a homemade necklace at the school (Out of the Depths: The Experience of Mi’kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, 4^th ed. [Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2015], 77). The events alluded to in the rest of this stanza are all spoken of in Knockwood’s book.

[2] This is a reference to two of my blog posts on Marcel Văn, the first invoking Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the second the Little Flower.

[3] Cf. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 165–167: “I remember the day that [Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper apologized for the Residential Schools… Mr. Harper goes on to mention that some former students speak ‘positively’ about their experiences, but that their accounts are ‘overshadowed by tragic accounts of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.’ I notice that he leaves out spiritual abuse—nearly always omitted in assessments of the damage done by the schools.”

[4] This is a reference to a quote in an interview: Eastlink, “Scotia Plastics on Maritime Made – Eastlink Community TV” (YouTube), at 1:00.