A photo from 1974 of the Timber Bay Children’s Home at Montreal Lake. (Mennonite Heritage Archives photo)

By Nigel Maxwell

Raising awareness

Woman renews call to have former Timber Bay school named residential site

Sep 2, 2022 | 2:00 PM

A woman who once attended the Timber Bay Children’s Home is prepared to go the distance to have the former building declared a residential school.

To help raise awareness around the issue, 60-year-old Yvonne Mirasty has organized a special walk, that will commence Saturday afternoon at the old mission site. Mirasty anticipates the attendance of at least 30 people.

“We need to get heard here,” she said.

The school, known as the Timber Bay Children’s Home, ran from 1952 to 1994 but has been denied designation as an official Residential School because federal funds were transferred to the Province of Saskatchewan and paid the church to run the school rather than directly from the federal government to the church.

Timber Bay School has also been denied designation because it is not found within the borders of a reserve but lies just 18 km outside Montreal Lake Cree Nation.

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Numerous court challenges have been made to acknowledge the school by survivors over the past 20 years to no avail.

“Why are we not being recognized because we went through all that trauma through that school and it was so awful,” Mirasty explained.

Yvonne Mirasty is hoping for a good turnout this weekend. (Submitted photo/ Yvonne Mirasty)

When asked to provide examples, Mirasty recalled long walks to school in the wintertime, sexual abuse, and being exposed to hard labour.

“We were like slaves. We had no choice but to do all the cleaning and I remember as a little girl I had to climb on top of a furnace and wash it. It was awful,” she said.

Mirasty also recalled being forced to eat the food they were given or face punishment.

The walk this weekend is not the first of its kind. Last December, a non-Indigenous 21-year-old man from Saskatoon began the over 300km. trek on snowshoes to Timber Bay to deliver “The Forgotten Pair of Moccasins”.

Through deep snow and bone-chilling windchills, B’yauling Toni made the journey in the hopes of having the former School recognized as a residential school. Mirasty was among the former students there to greet him when he arrived. For Mirasty she explained her biggest frustration is when she asked what happening and was told over and over again it was still in the courts.

“It’s been at a standstill for how many years and we are getting tired of not being recognized,” she said.

Recently Mirasty retired from teaching and had been most recently been working at Pelican Narrows. She explained the treatment she was exposed to as a young girl, did have an impact on the way she approached the job.

“I feed my students all kinds of goodies; like my desk drawer was full of stuff so they never go hungry because I used to be hungry so much,” she said.

The four-kilometre walk is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell