Kuper Island

The team tracks down the last person to ever see Richard Thomas alive at Kuper Island Residential School. Donnie Sampson was just 10 years old at the time and has disturbing memories of the day — that include a familiar and problematic name from the past. Host Duncan McCue takes the results of the investigation back to Richard’s sister Belvie who must decide what to do next. In Penelakut, the community rallies around their children — the new generation, the adult survivors still healing, and all the ones who never came home. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/kuper-island-transcripts-listen-1.6622551

The children who attended Kuper Island Residential School faced a terrible aftermath trying to process what happened. The abuse they suffered there often coloured their relationships with family and community — with devastating results. Meanwhile, the team learns one of the perpetrators from the school spent his later years being taken care of in relative comfort — all paid for by the Oblates. They demand to know why. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/kuper-island-transcripts-listen-1.6622551

We explore what really happened during a 1990s RCMP task force investigation triggered by the high number of allegations of sexual abuses at the Kuper Island Residential School, and track down a former staff member who witnessed the horrors firsthand. We learn one of the abusers at the school, Brother Glenn Doughty, is still alive. We try to reach him and learn troubling information about his whereabouts. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/kuper-island-transcripts-listen-1.6622551

An archaeologist uses the stories of survivors and a ground-penetrating radar machine to pinpoint where children who died at the Kuper Island school were buried, sometimes in places where no one ever wanted them to be found. And we explore how the Hul'qumi'num people honour their ancestral dead, and why this work is important when it comes to unsettled spirits and unmarked graves. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/kuper-island-transcripts-listen-1.6622551