ROCKY VIEW COUNTY— Calling for the formal renaming of George McDougall High School, a group of community members appeared at the Rocky View Schools Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday (June 17).
Kim Cheel and Robbie White formed the delegation which made the request of the board.
“George McDougall was a Methodist missionary who was of Scottish descent and moved to Alberta to do some missionary work, and in doing so he founded an orphanage and a day school right around 1873,” White said. “The Indigenous Day Schools were what preceded Residential Schools, and eventually that Day School did become a Residential School.”
According to thechildrenremembered.ca, a website operated by the United Church of Canada documenting the history of Indian Residential Schools in Canada, the children who attended the school reported poor and infrequent meals and insufficient clothing for the harsh Albertan winters.
Parents at that time reported their children returning home from the Day School “half-frozen.”
However, the overwhelming majority of the complains were in regards to the severe punishments which often amounted to physical and sexual abuse.
In May of 1953, according to a report filed from the principal of the Morley Residential School, all 32 boys abandoned the school after “severe disciplinary action” by the matron of the facility, the website claims.
Community members hired lawyers and lobbied government and church officials to address the mistreatment of the children at the school, but officials often discounted the complaints.
White said there were several reasons that the delegation was requesting the name change at George McDougall High School.
McDougall’s legacy of being the founder of the Residential School, the mistreatment of the children that attended it, and his lack of ties to the Airdrie community where George McDougall High School resides should all discount him from being the namesake of the high school.
“We don’t think it’s appropriate to honour someone that contributed to some genocide, some cultural destruction. We really think that any school, landmark or monument should be named after people we do want to honour,” White said.
He added there have been nine confirmed deaths at the Morley Residential School. White said he felt that there could be more discovered in the future.
Cheel said that the delegation wanted to see the name change, but also for Rocky View Schools to develop and implement a policy through which the board can have a formal process of changing these names.
She noted that when considering new names, the board should account for the populations who are included in the group of stakeholders which the board of trustees represents.
She said she wanted to remind the board “to be mindful, too, of who can be impacted by naming if the decision is made to name it after a person, to remember that stakeholders include settlers and Indigenous populations. Airdrie is very much a settler town so a lot of the decisions have been made by settlers, but there are a lot more considerations and knowledge keepers that need to be considered when we make such honourifics. Including them at the table is very important,” she said.
In the wake of the 215 children found in an unmarked burial site at the former Kamloops Residential School in Britsh Columbia, there have been many apologies made both officially and unofficially, Cheel said. She addeede she would like to see real action taken following those gestures.
“If change isn’t made, apologies are empty,” she said. “They’re preformative … We teach kids this, don’t say sorry unless you’re going to change your behaviour. Change is the next step after an apology and it’s the next step in Truth and Reconciliation.”
