John Curran
Northern News Services
Published Monday, February 18, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - In Norman Wells a plaque hangs on Louie Edgi's wall commending him for graduating from the Grollier Hall residential school in 1990.

Like many former Grollier Hall students, Louie Edgi has been denied his common experience residential school payment because there is no record of him attending the school. He is seen here holding up the plaque he got when he graduated from Grade 12 there as well as a yearbook that proves he lived in the Inuvik residential school. - photo courtesy of Louie Edgi

On his kitchen table sits a letter from Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada informing him he's been rejected for his $16,000 common experience payment because there's no record he was there.

"It's very frustrating," he said. "Every time I called they said they were still processing my application and then I got this letter."

He's not alone either. Many former Grollier Hall students have been getting similar rejection letters around the Sahtu and Beaufort Delta regions.

Verna Pope, also a Norman Wells resident, said she called Grollier Hall home from September to November 1997 and got the same letter as Edgi.

"I can't understand why there's no record of me - I was there in the era of electronic records," she said. "There are people who were there in the 1960s and 1970s, back when they used paper, who already got their payments."

Even her husband, Jim Pope, received his common experience payment. He was at Grollier for half a year in the 1984-85 school year.

His time at the school was a difficult period in his life.

"It started me drinking a whole lot," he said.

He managed to turn his life around and eventually became a certified millwright while working with Imperial Oil in Norman Wells. Presently he's employed by De Beers Canada.

"I very rarely drink now, I'm a chronic smoker," he said chuckling. "That's my drug of choice."

His wife's situation has been especially difficult, he said, because the family was part way through some home renovations and now they're stalled waiting for her $10,000.

Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada will reportedly accept sworn affidavits from someone else who attended the school at the same time to prove residence at Grollier. The government body will also allow former students to use photographs to back up their claims.

"My difficulty is having to track this stuff down on my own," said Verna Pope. "I don't know where to turn."

In Edgi's case, he's lucky enough to still have an old yearbook from Samuel Hearne Secondary school issued during his final year at the residence.

"It has one picture of me as part of the Grollier Hall drummers group," he said. "I've got to pack that and my plaque off to them and see what they say."

Failing that, he does have one more option courtesy of an old friend in Inuvik.

"I remember Louie (Edgi)," said Joe Lavoie, who used to be a supervisor at the boys' end of the residence.

Lavoie spent 14 years working there as a contractor for the Beaufort Delta Education Council (BDEC). He isn't surprised to hear another former student is having problems proving they went to school there.

"I've been getting dozens and dozens of phone calls from people in the same situation," he said. "I've been trying to send them in the direction of BDEC."

The problems surround Grollier's lack records trace back to its demolition in 1999, he explained.

"When they bulldozed the building, one of the guys doing it called me and asked if I wanted all of the records, trophies and pictures that were still inside," he said. "I told him they weren't mine to take and that they belonged to the Department of Education."

When the building was torn down, he said emotions surrounding the abuse that occurred there were still quite raw and many people wanted to get rid of everything related to the place - right where it sat.

"They destroyed a lot of the records," said Lavoie, estimating there may have been as many as 1,000 students' files ruined in the process.

There would have been another copy of the information that he and his relatives who also worked as contractors at Grollier - including his brother Eddie Lavoie who was the administrator there for a number of years - submitted to BDEC, but they too may have been destroyed accidentally.

"They gave us a list of who was coming to the school and we would let them know who arrived and each month we had to let them know who left and who was still there in writing," he said. "I heard some of their files got wet and moldy in storage."

In some cases he said he'd be more than willing to attest to when certain students were at the school as a last resort, but he can't do that for everyone.

"There were probably 1,000-2,000 students who passed through Grollier Hall while I was there," he said.

"I know Louie (Edgi) was there, but the exact details for everyone - I can't say for sure."

At the education council, superintendent Dennis Parsons has only been on the job since 2004 so he can't comment on anything that happened prior to then.

He did say he has been overwhelmed by waves of former Grollier students looking for proof of their education.

"We've been getting 30, 40, 50 phone calls a week for the last few weeks," he said, adding he's trying to get people to contact Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada directly.

"There's no central repository for these records."

Representatives of the federal body overseeing the payments did visit Inuvik last summer and went through files in a number of different locations looking to fill in gaps in Grollier Hall's history.

"They would be able to tell you what years they might be missing," he said.

Prior to press time a spokesperson from Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada was not able to say which years of Grollier Hall records were incomplete, but she said rejection letters are not necessarily the government body's final answer.

"There is a reconsideration process and an appeal process for those former students who have been denied," said Valarie Hache, media relations co-ordinator, adding the former is done informally while the later is much more structured and generally used as a last resort.