Was having to take a routine weekly shower the group sexual abuse Phil Fontaine and his Grade 3 classmates endured at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School?
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By Nina Green
Was having to take a routine weekly shower the group sexual abuse Phil Fontaine and his Grade 3 classmates endured at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School?
According to Fontaine himself, it was.
Fontaine's 2005 class action lawsuit
On 5 August 2005, Phil Fontaine filed a class action lawsuit in Ontario and Alberta (see attachment) for the purpose of enabling a lobby group, the Assembly of First Nations, which had nothing to do with Indian residential schools or the lawsuits against the federal government and the churches, to become the principal party in the negotiations for what became the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
The filing was in response to a letter from then Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler stating that the AFN would not play a central role in the settlement negotiations. Fontaine apparently felt betrayed by Cotler's letter, as he had reached a deal with Prime Minister Paul Martin in Rome in April 2005 when he was part of a delegation attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II, a deal which had been ratified by an accord signed by Fontaine and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan in May.
The deal reached in Rome in April 2005 is described by historian JR Miller in Residential Schools and Reconciliation (see pp. 135-6):
A major factor in propelling the government towards making an agreement to settle abuse suits arose in the spring of 2005, when Pope John Paul II died. Prime Minister Martin invited, among others, Phil Fontaine to be part of the official party that attended the funeral in Rome. Early in the delegation's visit, Martin invited Fontaine to join him, his wife, and some others for dinner. During the meal, Martin grilled Fontaine about aspects of a possible new approach to residential school issues, as front-bench Conservative stalwarts Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and Rob Nicholson carried on a separate conversation at the table. The prime minister challenged Fontaine, asking if an expensive comprehensive settlement would "solve the problem." The chief responded that it would not solve all the residential school problems, "but it will recognize and accept that harm had been done." After a bit Martin looked at Fontaine said, "Look. Okay, Phil. We'll get this done."
Miller's source for his account was an interview with Phil Fontaine in Winnipeg on 20 March 2015.
As noted above, when the deal threatened to fall apart because of opposition from the Ministry of Justice and Department of Indian Affairs officials, Fontaine filed a class action lawsuit on 5 August 2005. According to Miller, the filing of the lawsuit had an immediate effect. Fontaine and his partner, Kathleen Mahoney, crashed a settlement negotiation meeting and took over the negotiations. Miller writes on pp. 125-6:
When the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the AFN's legal counsel unexpectedly turned up at a meeting of high-powered lawyers and federal government officials in 2005 to participate in negotiations to settle all aspects of the residential school issue, they came with a surprise for the other attendees. As introductions were being made, they requested that they go last. Looking around the room, they saw dozens of senior bureaucrats, church representatives, and only one other survivor gathered for the critical discussions. With the exception of the two litigant-survivors, the only people who were officially invited to the meeting were government litigants, lawyers, and church representatives. When the national chief's turn arrived during introductions, he said, "My name is Phil Fontaine and I'm the litigant in a class action we just filed for forty million dollars." It was only as a litigant that Fontaine, arguably the former student who had done more than any other to push the issue of schools abuse forward since the early 1990s, and his counsel could be part of the most important negotiations over the legacy of residential schools that had yet taken place. . . . Today, the country is living with the results of the IRSSA more than a decade after the fateful meeting to which Mahoney and Fontaine had invited themselves on behalf of residential school survivors.
Miller cites as his source an interview with Kathleen Mahoney in Calgary on 14 May 2009 in which she stated that she had notified the chair of the meeting, former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci, of what she and Fontaine intended to do.
The result of the negotiations chaired by Justice Iacobucci was an Agreement in Principle dated 20 November 2005 (see attached copy autographed by several of the participants)
.
The results of the eventual Settlement Agreement, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its aftermath, are beyond the scope of this discussion.
However the abuse issue mentioned by Miller can be briefly explored here. What was the 'issue of schools abuse' that Miller says Fontaine had 'done more than any other to push forward since the early 1990s'?
Fontaine's claim of group sexual abuse at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School
The origin of Fontaine's claim that he had endured group sexual abuse at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School had its origin in an incident in August 1990 which had nothing to do with residential schools. It was the summer of the Oka crisis, and in an article in the Winnipeg Free Press on 25 September 1990 Fontaine, then the head of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, predicted dire consequences if aboriginal grievances were not addressed:
All hell will break loose if Canadian governments continue to ignore aboriginal grievances, the leader of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs warned yesterday as natives dismantled their Peace Village at the Manitoba legislature.
"If governments don't pay attention, then what happens is something we're not going to be responsible for," Phil Fontaine said.
"We will not muzzle our people, we will not restrain our people, we will allow our people to take the steps they have to take," he said.
He warned that confrontations like the one in Oka, Que., could be repeated across Canada.
Immediately above that article is an article headlined 'Two priests removed after sexual abuse allegations' in which Father Claude Blanchette, spokesperson for the St Boniface diocese in Winnipeg, explained that Archbishop Antoine Hacault of St Boniface had set up a committee on 17 August 1990 'to hear complaints of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy after two former St Boniface parish priests were charged with sexual offences involving an altar boy during the 1960s'. Blanchette stated that Archbishop Hacault had also 'appointed a special investigator to look into the complaints to determine whether they are well founded or not'.
Fontaine contacted a member of the committee, Father Raymond Beaudry, and met with Beaudry and Blanchette on 30 October 1990 in a bid to ensure that the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs would be part of the committee process (see attached Winnipeg Free Press article of 31 October 1990).
After apparently securing assurances from Beaudry and Blanchette that the Catholic Church would not openly challenge his allegations, Fontaine was interviewed later that day by the CBC's Barbara Frum. In that interview, Fontaine shocked Canadians by claiming he had been sexually abused in an unspecified way at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School (see attached transcript of the Frum interview).
Fontaine refused to provide details of the alleged sexual abuse, but made the extraordinary claim that every boy in his Grade 3 class had endured the same sexual abuse:
Barbara Frum: Did you talk to [Father Raymond Beaudry and Father Claude Blanchette] about abuse to yourself as a person?
Phil Fontaine: Well, that was one aspect of the discussion we had, but it also covered other areas, other forms of abuse that occurred in this particular institution. We talked about physical abuse, we talked about psychological abuse, deprivation, and of course sexual abuse.
Barbara Frum: What form of abuse were you talking about in your own case?
Phil Fontaine: Well I, that's something that's, as you well understand, incredibly delicate, sensitive, and very, very much a private matter. And I just wanted to determine if the church would be prepared to address the issue of abuse and residential schools. And I’m quite satisfied with the response that I had from the two church officials that we met with today. And they understand that what I had to speak about is based on personal knowledge.
Barbara Frum: I heard you say in an earlier interview today that often the abuse was administered in groups. What was the nature of that abuse?
Phil Fontaine: I was asked if, how prevalent this was, and to illustrate my point I had suggested that if we took an example my Grade Three class, if there were 20 boys in this particular class, every single one of the 20 would have experienced what I experienced.
It seems clear from Fontaine's statements that he had sufficiently alarmed Beaudry and Blanchette with his claim that the sexual abuse was widespread — in fact almost universal, since every boy had to go through Grade 3 at some point — that the Catholic Church would not challenge his assertions.
So what was the sexual abuse that Phil Fontaine asserted happened 'in groups' to every boy in his Grade 3 class?
It was not until 15 years later, in his aforementioned statement of claim in the class action lawsuit filed on 5 August 2005 which allowed the Assembly of First Nations to take control of the residential schools settlement agreement negotiations that Fontaine provided details. In paragraph 8 of the statement of claim, he alleged:
8. Chief Fontaine was taken from his family when he was 6 years old and attended Fort Alexander Residential School in Fort Alexander, Manitoba from 1951 to 1958. Chief Fontaine's experience at residential school involved, but was not limited to, the following: being removed from the care of his parents, family, and community, being actively discouraged from speaking his native language, Ojibwe, being repeatedly sexually and physically abused by being made to disrobe and bathe in the presence of the priest, being slapped, strapped and poked, being repeatedly told by nuns and priests that he, and his peers were, "savages" and "evil", being repeatedly made to eat food off the floor in the presence of his peers, while being taunted by the nun, and being given inadequate food, health care, and education.
Had Fontaine told Barbara Frum in 1990 that he and his entire Grade 3 class had been sexually abused as a group 'by being made to disrobe and bathe in the presence of the priest', Frum would certainly have pressed him for further details of such an extraordinary claim. The deliberately chosen language - 'made to disrobe', 'bathe in the presence of the priest' - conjures up salacious voyeurism.
But what does that language really mean? What could it mean, since Fontaine asserted unequivocally to Frum that every boy in his Grade 3 class was subjected to it?
It seems clear Fontaine was referring to the fact that every week the boys in his Grade 3 class had to put their dirty clothes in the laundry, take a shower, and dress in the clean clothing provided to them for the coming week, and that this activity was necessarily supervised by an adult to ensure that the dirty clothing was properly put in laundry bags, that the boys showered without mishap or mayhem, and that each boy got the right clean clothing for the coming week. It was a routine procedure, and there was nothing sexually abusive about it.
Canada has been under a cloud for 35 years because of Fontaine's cryptic allegations to Barbara Frum, and the cryptic allegations in his 2005 statement of claim.
It will be a relief for Canadians to learn the truth. There was no sexual abuse. The 'group' sexual abuse that Fontaine and his Grade 3 classmates endured was a routine weekly shower.
Thanks for reading. For more on this author, read Mistake which has been made in the recent exhumation at Woodstock
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Excellent research, as usual. I disagree with the conclusion. In the 1990 Frum interview it seems clear to me that Fontaine was referring to sexual abuse, and not showering. He was deeply ashamed by his own behaviour. He appeared to be saying that he had been sexually abused by older boys, and then became an abuser himself. He said all the boys in his class experienced this. Sexual abuse by boys from dysfunctional families was a common feature in residential schools. People should watch the interview and form their own opinion. The statement of claim 15 years later was just the only claim he could manufacture that fit the “priest as abuser” narrative that AFN wanted told. It was a laughably weak claim, and would not possibly have succeeded in court.
Phil Fontaine - a liar - a cheat — is a prime example of how the fat chief get fatter, and the poor Indians stay poor — I am 60 plus years old now and I remember in 1975 Phil Fontaine clearly saying “ now is the time for us to have reverse discrimination against the white people “ as he sat with my father, having coffee, and I was only “to be seen and not heard. “ Phil is a disgusting, vile, dishonest, pathetic excuse for a chief.