The newly discovered details about the death of this Indigenous boy — and the potential that other youngsters may have died in the orphanage and two nearby institutions for children — has prompted the Vancouver park board to order an archeological assessment of the land where these buildings once stood.
George Leask , with his older brother Henry and his father Tom . George is believed to be about eight years old in the photo, which would have been taken in the mid-1920s. Photo courtesy of Lisa ChastonThe popular three-hectare park, at Wall and Penticton streets, has a playground, off-leash dog area, field house with community programming, and a daycare.
Leona Brown, who is both Gitxsan and Nisga’a, was asked by the Urban Forest Foundation to be part of the project, partly because she is trained to investigate the history of lands and waterways so Indigenous people can better understand their culture. , written by historian Jeanette Taylor, who had interviewed Lisa Chaston, the granddaughter of George’s sister Mary.Article contentThe family history said George and his four siblings lived a modest life in Heriot Bay on Quadra Island. But their mother, a Haida woman, died of influenza in 1919 and, about five years later, their Scottish father drowned.
“With the tension and all the fraught nature of this — in some ways, I think, a painful but awakening era that we’re in — it’s good to be careful, that’s really what we’re trying to achieve here,” Irwin said. That is the right decision because it is not just sites of residential schools where unmarked graves could be hidden, said Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the UBC Indian residential school history and dialogue centre.
She also found a UBC research paper that analyzed the society’s annual reports and “discharge summaries” for the periods before and after the orphanage was built in 1906. It noted 21 children in the society’s care died between 1901 and 1917, and from 1922 to 1929 records indicated the deaths of another 33 children and nearly 200 who were sent to the hospital for various reasons.Article content
“The building in which the home is located is a fire trap,” the story says. “In this building are housed 150 children, and a recent surprise night visit there by the Vancouver police startled even hardened uniformed men when they found that all these children were left alone at night in this building without any adult guardian.”Article content
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