TORONTO (CANADA)
CBC Broadcasting
March 17, 2019
By Ainsley Hawthorn
The spectre of Mount Cashel loomed large in my late childhood, both literally and figuratively.
My family moved to St. John’s from the west coast of Newfoundland when I was eight years old. It was October 1989, and a judicial inquiry’s hearings on the allegations of child abuse by the Christian Brothers had begun only one month earlier.
I enrolled in Vanier Elementary, a small school in the east end of the city. The classrooms for Grades 4 to 6 were in the back of the building, facing a broad field where we would spend recess and lunch.
At the end of the field, beyond a chain-link fence, stood the Mount Cashel Orphanage.
Even at our young age, my classmates and I shivered at the name “Mount Cashel.” We understood that secrets had been revealed, that children like us had been hurt by the people who were meant to protect them.
The orphanage itself was imposing but dilapidated. Looking up at it as a child, I had the impression that a great institution had fallen.
The Mount Cashel hearings rocked a province where more than a third of the population identified as Catholic. As the full scope of the abuse came to light, some disillusioned Newfoundlanders and Labradorians stopped going to church altogether.
Today, fewer than 19 per cent of all residents of this province attend weekly religious services, compared with 32 per cent in 1989.
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