Old wounds reopened after residential school monument vandalized in North Vancouver

A monument in North Vancouver dedicated to survivors and victims of the St. Paul's Residential School has been vandalized, reopening old wounds for members of the Squamish Nation.

The memorial has stood near the intersection of Forbes and Sixth Street for nearly six years.

It features a male figure stretching out its arms in welcome, but as of this week, the ceremonial figure's arm is missing below the elbow.

"The monument itself recognizes and celebrates, acknowledges our survivors and commemorates the ones we've lost, the children we've lost at the residential school itself," said Wilson Williams, an elected councillor for the Squamish Nation. 

Williams says the First Nation found out about the vandalism from the artists who created it.

He says the news was particularly upsetting to his community in the wake of the Williams Lake First Nation announcing earlier this week that it had identified 93 sites of "potential human burials" on the land surrounding a former B.C. residential school.

"It definitely triggered some of our families," he said. "It's like creating an open wound again."

The missing arm has yet to be located.

Williams says a police investigation into who vandalized the monument is underway and he is working with the Integrated First Nations Police unit of the RCMP.

The Squamish Nation has reached out to the North Vancouver School District and the Archdiocese of Vancouver which runs the St Thomas Aquinas School where the St Paul's residential school grounds were located, in the hope of working together to repair the monument.

"We're working on a work plan to finish it and a strategy around protecting it in the long term," said Williams. "I think it's been a great piece, a monument that not only our students go to, but our survivors and our families connected to the survivors and those we've lost as well."