Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish holds third memorial wake to pray for children lost at residential schools

An opening Mass was held June 1 next to the tipi set up on St. Mary Parish grounds, as Our Lady of Guadalupe Indigenous Parish again held a four-day memorial wake to pray for children who died at residential schools, for their families and communities. (Photo by Kiply Lukan Yaworski)

Posted By: Kiply Lukan Yaworski June 7, 2023

By Kiply Lukan Yaworski, Catholic Saskatoon News

For the third year, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish — the Indigenous-Métis Catholic parish in Saskatoon — organized a four-day event at the beginning of June to pray for all the children who were lost at residential schools, for their families and communities.

“We hold the wake to honour the lost, those who died, those who survived but never returned to their families and communities, and those who returned home lost (spiritually),” explains pastor Fr. Graham Hill CSsR.

Once again a tipi was set up on the grounds of St. Mary Parish, where Our Lady of Guadalupe worships each Sunday afternoon, and once again prayers, hymns, and ceremonies were offered throughout the four days — along with a welcome and a listening presence for any who passed by or stopped in.

This is the third year of a four-year commitment by the Indigenous parish to hold a four-day memorial wake to pray for those lost at residential schools in Canada.

Parish Elders, parishioners, neighbours and friends gathered at the tipi on the church grounds from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, June 1, Friday, June 2, and Saturday, June 3,  before concluding the event on Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023, with celebration of afternoon Mass at St. Mary Church.

The four-day memorial opened June 1 with a pipe ceremony, as well as singing and drumming by the Fiddler family (the Cree Canaries) along with an opening Mass celebrated on the parish grounds by Bishop Mark Hagemoen, joined by Our Lady of Guadalupe pastor Fr. Graham Hill, CSsR, St. Mary pastor Fr. Kevin McGee, and Our Lady of Guadalupe Deacon Paul Labelle.

The event started in June 2021 in the wake of news reports about the unmarked graves found at the former site of a residential school in B.C., and will conclude next year, in June 2024.

The parish made a commitment to hold a four-day memorial event each year for four years to pray and to honour all those children who were lost or hurt at residential schools. “We committed – our community of Our Lady of Guadalupe has committed – to four years, to be out here together on that sacred ground, to pray together; to pray, pray, pray,” said Debbie Ledoux, parishioner and recently-retired Parish Life Director.

At the second annual event in 2022, Our Lady of Guadalupe pastor Fr. Graham Hill, CSsR, described his answer to a friend about why four days of prayer were being held again. “I explained to him the traditional way of doing things in cycles of four,” Hill said of the plan to hold the event over four days for four years. “But we also do it again because we don’t want to rush. We don’t want to rush this. We sit in the pain. We want to listen to people’s stories, we want to journey with them. That is important work.”

He added that cycles of four acknowledge “the connections of everything in life, such as the four seasons; the four stages of life; the four directions; the four elements; the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual; and the relationships of the seen and unseen worlds.”

Related: Memorial Wake first held in 2021 -LINK

Related: Second year of Memorial Wake – LINK

Related: July 2022 Walking Together event held in Saskatoon to hear papal apology via video

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[Kiply Lukan Yaworski is the communications coordinator for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon – rcdos.ca]