*My note: it's not enough, but it is a start.....
By Sue Bailey, The Canadian Press
PM's apology bittersweet for former students who endured horrific abuse OTTAWA - For three decades, Willie Blackwater suppressed the pain. At age 39, he released his torment when a compassionate RCMP officer named Al Franczak asked if he'd ever been sexually abused.
What poured out was a horrific account of repeated rape and beatings 30 years earlier at the Port Alberni Residential School on Vancouver Island.
Blackwater's courageous revelations, along with those of 17 other former students, helped seal some of the very first related criminal convictions against Arthur Henry Plint, a sadistic dormitory supervisor.
They also bolstered the class-action claims that would ultimately lead to a massive compensation settlement and a historic apology to be offered Wednesday in Parliament.
Blackwater will be in the House of Commons when the prime minister finally stands to atone on behalf of all Canadians for what so many terrorized, isolated children endured.
Ottawa conceded 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the defunct network of federally financed, church-run schools was rampant. But no prime minister has ever officially apologized.
"I have a lot of mixed emotions," Blackwater said. "I'm looking forward to it, yet fearing it due to maybe wrong wording or whatever.
"But I think it will be one of the humongous chapters in my life that will help bring completion to a lot of...my trauma - and the trauma I've inflicted on others - from the residential school legacy.
"It's got to come from his heart," Blackwater, now 53, said of Stephen Harper's statement to be delivered as 10 native guests encircle him in the Commons. "That's where we as aboriginals talk from, it's from our heart.
"We will hear the difference."
Daily parliamentary business has been called off for the apology beginning just after 3 p.m. ET, to be followed by opposition response but no statements from native leaders.
Liberal MP Tina Keeper, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba, led off Tuesday's question period pleading with the Conservatives to reverse their contentious refusal to allow such reaction in the Commons.
"For many aboriginal people, the apology tomorrow will be one of the most emotional moments of their lives," she said in a rare turn for a backbench MP as lead questioner. "But they must not be voiceless."
Harper inspired catcalls from the opposition benches, citing parliamentary tradition for his refusal to allow an immediate aboriginal response for the official record. He further advised rival parties not to "play politics" with the somber event.
Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl urged Keeper to treat the apology with the "gravitas it deserves."
It will be followed outside the chamber with a ceremonial signing, music and a chance for former students to be heard.
Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine, who has spoken publicly of his own sexual abuse in residential school, was still hoping Tuesday that Harper would change his mind.
Nonetheless, he put a bright face on what has been a tense several days of negotiations with a government accused of not treating the apology with the respect required.
Fontaine planned to start Wednesday off with a sunrise ceremony near Parliament Hill.
"I'm optimistic that the apology will be sincere, honest and good, not just for the survivors but for the country."
Counsellors will be on hand in Ottawa and at about 30 events planned in most provinces as former students gather to watch an apology that could trigger horrendous memories, Fontaine said.
Blackwater, now a married father of a son and daughter he adores, was just 10 years old when he arrived at the Port Alberni school.
His ailing grandmother, who cared for him when his own mother died while he was a toddler, was pressured by government officials to enrol him and his brothers in the school.
Blackwater was swiftly singled out by Plint. He recalled how the potbellied, chain-smoking dorm supervisor awoke him in the night, saying he had an emergency phone call from his father.
Blackwater would testify years later about how Plint led him into a bedroom behind his office. Plint forced him to perform oral sex and, days later, raped him, inflicting "the worst pain I ever felt in my life."
Those attacks would go on at least monthly for the next three years. When Blackwater sought help, he was beaten by Plint so badly it kept him quiet for the next 30 years.
Franczak, who retired from the RCMP two years ago, first interviewed Blackwater as part of a task force researching the earliest reports of abuse at Port Alberni.
"To this day I keep thinking how could we, as a society ... allow this to happen?
"I don't get it."
Plint was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for sexual attacks that went unchecked for decades.
The United Church, which ran the school, apologized in 1998.
Blackwater is among those who received undisclosed settlements for damages. He has tried for years, he says, to make amends for the viciously angry, hard-drinking man he became in the years between Port Alberni and the pioneering court case.
He has been sober since 1996, and is now a support services supervisor for the Sto':lo Nation health department in B.C.
"I'd be lying if I said I feel okay and I sleep all right. I still have the rare nightmare, and I still display a lot of the habits I was taught in residential school - the outbursts of anger, frustration and stuff like that.
"But I'm learning."
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080610/national/bc_native_apology
