Radar search of Manitoba residential school bringing back ‘nightmares’ for survivor

A Manitoba residential school survivor says radar search found 241 anomalies at the school she was forced to attend as a child.

Susan Caribou, who’s made two difficult journeys back to Guy Hill Residential School this summer, says the results of the radar search brought back a flood of emotions and triggers.

“I still have a hard time talking about residential school because now I am wondering out of the 241, if some of those were my friends that didn’t make it home,” she told CityNews.

Caribou was five years old when she attended the Catholic-run school that opened in the late 1950s. She was at Guy Hill, which is 25 kilometres northeast of The Pas in northwestern Manitoba, from 1970-1978.

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Forty-five years later, she’s back – but it wasn’t easy.

“I had a lot of nightmares when I got back,” Caribou said.

“I still have a hard time talking about residential school, even though I’m on my healing journey.”

Caribou made the journey with other residential school survivors.

Shirley David attended residential school for 13 years in British Columbia. She is now a therapist with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society. She is currently going through her own journey and says she’s a thriver, not a survivor.

“Everybody has a trigger, but we deal with it in different ways,” said David. “We can’t judge anybody about their triggers. It depends on their history, their healing journey, and what happened to them in residential school, so we have our own truths, we have our own stories.”

Angela White, with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society in B.C., says it’s extremely important to continue to provide 24/7 accessible supports for survivors across the country.

“Finding the safe spaces to grieve, and when I say grieve, it’s to grieve the loss of their families, the loss of their childhood, grieving the loss of their innocence and grieving the loss of being torn away from their communities,” said White.

Caribou says she is learning things about herself that she never knew before – and is planning a third journey at the end of August.

“A lot of us are still living the residential school life in our own homes,” said Caribou. “It affected our children and is now affecting our grandchildren.”