A really good release’: Survivors take hammers, rocks to former residential school – Times Colonist
Oct. 15, 2025
“They gave me a sledgehammer. I went to town,” says Cecil Sabbas, who was at the Christie Indian Residential School for eight years.
MEARES ISLAND — Shattered glass. Wailing cries soothed by traditional drums. Wood cracking as the digger excavator tears into the roof of the old Christie Indian Residential School, releasing decades of bridled sorrow and anger.
“They gave me a sledgehammer. I went to town,” Cecil Sabbas, 74, said with a laugh. The Hesquiaht First Nation member was at Christie for eight years.
“As I was hitting it, I said, and pardon my language, ‘Take that, you mother—-!’ Every hit I did. Take that. When I finally finished and demolished it, I said, ‘F—- you!’ I totally obliterated it,” he said.
