Forest renewal

It costs time and money to spend
money when it comes to |
enhancing our forests. \NEWS AS

Honing their skills

Cream of the coaches

Culinary students saute, roast
and grill as they train for
competition. \COMMUNITY B1

WEDNESDAY —
MARCH 6, 1996

Eighteen local coaches have been
nominated for Coach of the Year
honours.\SPORTS B7

RD =

93¢ PLUS 7¢GST
VOL,’ NO. 47_

Hate graffitti linked to students

By JEFF NAGEL

RACIST MESSAGES smeured on a
local native family’s car Thursday night
have been linked to a group of students
at Caledonia Secondary School.

A car in the driveway of Clarence
Nyce’s Thomhill home was wrapped in
toilet puper, one side was kicked in, and
messages were written in felt marker
saying ‘Kill all Indians’, ‘KKK’, ‘Nig-
ger’, and “WANR’.

That last word — ‘WANR’ — also
appeared amid similar graffiti last week
above the urinals in a Caledonia wash-
room. Only there the initials were
spelled out — “Whites Against Native
Rights”,

Also there were was a swastika and the

phrases “Indians Die, Love White Boy”
and “Kill the Mizeer.”

Nyce’s son Zac believes he’s the target
of the vandalism and of a campaign of
harrassment by a few students at school.

Zac makes an unusual fashion state-
ment that his teachers say makes him
somewhat of a target.

He wears face paint, chains, and
sometimes handenffs and a straitjacket.

“He doesn’t deserve this,” says native

home schools coordinator Charleen
Stokes. “TI don’t think anybody does,”
Caledonia principal Geoff Straker says
to some extent Zac would be targeted for
looking different regardless of his
nationality.
“He dares to be different,” said Straker.

* Bur the racism is another matter.”

Straker sitid he believes there are about
15 or 16 kids in the group harassing Zac
~ and he says three or four of them are
likely the perpetrators. “Three or four
kids out of a population of 650 — that
seems to be where it's coming from.”

Straker said it’s the first time he's seen
the slogan *Whiles Against Native
Rights’, although one student there told
The Standard he'd seen it last year at
Skeena Jr. Secondary.

Leslie Dickson and Tim Phillips — 1wo
Caledonia students who help publish a
student newspaper there — say the group
putting up hate gralfiti is small and not
representative of the school.

“Most people say they’re idiots,”

Phillips said. “I think it’s probably two
or three people.”

“Two or three who would write it — but
more who would agree,” says Dickson.

She said a larger number of students
resent native students who will have tree
access to university and college.

“People say it’s not fair they’re geting
money for university and computers and
other students aren't.”

Both Dickson and Phillips believe their
generation is generally more tolerant
than their parents’ generation.

The racist attitudes of some of the Cal
students are likely the product of their
parents’ fears and frustrations, they said.

Straker agrees.

“What you see here is a reflection of

the community,” Straker said. “We’re
going to be a small microcosm of what
happens out there.”

“All the problems of alcohol, drugs,
poverty and people relating to one
another — they’re all going to flow into
this building,” he said, “We can’t put a
coccoon around our building.”

Clarence Nyce ts seeking a meeting
with the school board about the incident.

“This has gone beyond vandalism — it’s
open racism and it’s disgusting,” he said,

Terrace RCMP. Staff Sgt. John
Veldman said the incident of vandalism
is under investigation, but he was reluct-
ant to cull it racist.

“Is it racism or did it happen because
someone doesn’t like someone else?”

@ Coming through!

’S ALL DOWNHILL from here. Or at least that's what this on a.Monday or Tuesday, you'd better bring a sled too, because
youngster is hoping. She was at Shames recently and decided you won't be doing any skiing. Because of budget constraints, the

she'd rather go sledding than skiing. And if you go up to Shames

ski hill will be closed those two days for the rest of the season.

Roger's struggle to forgive

By KATHLEEN BRANDSMA
OGER GRAY is 52 years old.
He hasn’t had a drink in cight
years. He’s learning what it’s like
to live on bis own.

He’s learning how to let go of his anger.

And he’s learning how to forgive the man
who sexually abused him aver and over again
when he was just five years old.

Roger Gray now lives at the Kitsumkalum
band reserve, but was a student at the Port Al-
berni residential school on Vancouver Island
from 1949 until 1952.

For an entire year his dorm supervisor, Arthur
Plint, forced Gray ta perform sexual acts on
him. The one time Gray tried to refuse, Plint
beat him with a strap and forced him into sub-
mission.

Gray says the abuse went on nearly cvery
other day. He says he was too embartassed to
tell anybody about il, and scared of what would
happen to him if he did.

In March of 1995 Plint was sentenced lo
eleven years in prison after being convicted of
numerous charges of indecent assault.

Fifteen of the students who he assaulted —
Gray included — have since launched a magsive
lawsuit against Plint, the federal government,
the United Church of Canada and three adminis-
trators.

The case claims unspecified damages.

It was federal government policy at one time
to remove native children from their homes and
place them in the church run residential schools,

Gray was taken from the Nanaimo Indian

One man’s story of life after residential school

Hospital and placed in the school in 1949.
He didn’t get out until 1952,
Aud his family never knew where he was.
Gray was in the hospital recovering from a
broken leg when he was removed.

He'd had an accident while living in the Nass
some time earlier and been shuffled from hospi-
tal to hospital until he ended up in Nanaimo,

By that time, he says, tuberculosis had set in,

“If | can’t forgive my abuser
for what he’s done, I'll never
get rid of my anger.”’

his whole leg was in a cast and he was unable to
move at all, To this day, that leg is shorter than
the other one, and Gray walks with a very pro-
nounced limp.

“I was walking by the time they took me to
the school,’ Gray says. ‘‘But because of my in-
jury I had to go to a rest period,”’

During those rest periods, Gray says he was
left in a big, empty dorm by himself and that’s
where the abuse occurred,

Gray says he lived at the school for four years,
and not once was he ever allowed off the

grounds.

“Kids who had rich parcnis would send
money so they could go home during the holi-
days,’’ says Gray. “But my mom was on wel-
fare and she didn’t know where I was.’”

So every time Christmas or Easter came
around, Gray would be among a handful of
other students who stayed at the school.

“I can remember how very, very lonely I
was,” he says. '‘l would go up to my room and
cry because I was so very lonely.”

In 1952 Roger was finally rescued when a boy
who knew him tan into his sister Rose, and
asked if she had a brother named Roger.

The boy told Rose that Roger was at the
residential school, and another member of the
family then sent money and Roger went to live
with his family in Cedarville. They later moved
to Terrace, but Gray asked to go lo the residen-
tial school in Edmonton because bis mom was
drinking quite heavily at the time.

He finished his high school days there, many
under the influence of alcohol,

Gray started drinking when he was 14, and
also did some pot, heroin, acid and cocaine.

Before he finally went for help in 1988 be
Married twice, abused both women, had four
children, racked up three impaired charges, and
spent two weeks In jail for supplying liquor to a
minor,

Continued Page A12

School can’t
meet demand

PARENTS OF children at Uplands Elementary School
are blaming people from outside the bench for enrolling
there and contributing ta the school’s crunch for space.

More than 100 parents turned up at a public meeting
Monday night aimed at finding ways of mmnning the school
in the face of increasing demand as more subdivisions go
in on the bench.

All space in next September’s kindergarten classes filled
up immediately during pre-registration last Tuesday. Some
parents lined up as early as 6:00 a.m. to make sure their
children got into that school.

Several parents told Monday night’s meeting that they
believe too many people from outside the school’s catch-
ment area - the bench — are enrolling there. That's not
allowed, but there’s widespread suspicion that people are
using relatives’ and grandparents’ addresses on the bench
to enrol their children there.

Uplands principal Dawn Martin said she’s tried hard ta
keep people from enrolling from outside the bench, but
added she needs names of the offenders if she’s to crack
down on them.

“Come and tell me who they are so | can do something
about it,” she told the crowd, “I’m not going lo go to peo-
ple’s houses, knock on the door and muke sure they sleep
there, but I'll do my best to make sure they’re in our catch-
ment area.”

At the heart of the issue is the perception among many
Terrace parents that Uplands is the place to be -- and inner
city schools like E.T. Kenney Primary and Clarence
Michiel Elementary are to be avoided,

The income levels and ethnicity of that neighbourhood —
and not the quality of the teaching ~ are what's behind that
perception, said trustee Stew Christensen.

“These things go in cycles,” he said. “There was a time
when Clarence Michiel was tie school of the district.”

For the short term, they’re proposing to add a portable
classroom and have two teachers split a 30-student class to
offer 51 kindergarten spaces next fall at Uplands.

But school board officials concede it will be harder to
satisfy demand in 1997 and 1998 as the bench population
continues to grow.

Requests for a second bench elementary school at the
corner of Marshall and Soucie — denied for the last three
years — have now been labeled “high priority” by the edu-
cation ministry. But even so, superintendent Frank

Hamilton snid only 30 per cent of the projects that made
last year’s high priority list got the final go-ahead. He said
completion for September 1998 was possible, bul “very
optimistic.”

Big development
kept hush-hush

A GIANT COMMERCIAL development on Keith
Ave. is being kept under wraps, although city coun-
cillors will debate tomorrow whether to grant a
rezoning.

Plans at cily hull indicate the building would be
more than 37,000 square feet in size ° und include 230

parking stalls.

Property owner Glen Saunders says he has a tenta-
tive deal with out- -of-province developers, but it
hinges on u successful rezoning and he doesn’ t want
to disclose the type of store.

“I can’t say who itis at this point,” he said.

A building thal size wouldn't be as big as Safeway
(46,000 square feet) bul would be bigger than
Overwaitea (28,100 sq. fl.) and double the size of the
new SAAN store (18,000 sq: ft).

The property in quéstion is the four acres behind
Saunders’ Kermodei Trading outlet on Keith,
‘Saunders-wants the land rezoned from uti-family
residential to commercial. Councillors debate the
request at (omorrow’s planning committee meeting,