Our class trip to the Museum of Anthropology’s exhibit “Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices from St. Michael’s Residential School” was a moving experience that immediately invoked a sense of responsibility in me to have a well-informed understanding of Aboriginal history in Canada, so as to play my part in facilitating a reconciliation and to ensure that this type of prejudice does not repeat itself. I was particularly struck by the honesty, richness and layers of the exhibit that can be observed through a multitude of perspectives, using imagery, posters, letters, apologies, and books to emancipate those affected and give them a vehicle to have their sentiments heard and to be healed, as a visible body of people.

In particular, what struck me most was that there was two different entrances to the exhibit, which invoked different sentiments and perspectives to those whom entered the exhibit from each respective entrance.
1. One entrance to the exhibit commenced with a portrait of the various experiences of children who participated in the residential school system juxtaposed against apology letters written by various groups including government officials and religious bodies. This entrance instantly commenced a dialogue of the diverse body of experiences.
2. The other entrance to the exhibit commenced with a blackboard available for guests to write their thoughts down of the exhibit and the residential schools. The most common comment was “it is sad” or “it makes me sad”.

Viewing this blackboard upon leaving the exhibit, I nodded my head in affirmation of those who expressed the sad nature of the content we viewed. However, having read the term “sad” repeatedly on the blackboard made me question whether guests of the exhibit felt limited to writing that content was “sad” because that was the dominant perception expressed, rather than truly grappling with the rich, moving, and troubling nature of the exhibit.

It would seem logical for the blackboard to be the “end” of the exhibit, but since guests could commence their visit at the exhibit from the blackboard, I can’t help but question whether this would color their perception of the exhibit so as to construe the rich exhibit from the viewpoint that “it is sad”, rather than allowing visitors to formulate their own conclusions on the exhibit.

Thinking of this duality in the entrances makes me question whether popular perception and knowledge of the residential school system is much like the “black board” experience. Most people know that the residential school system is a part of our history and that it is sad, but how many of us Canadians know much about the various experiences of the children who partook in these schools and how it affected their families and communities, and the ripple effect it has had on our social fabric?

I find it incredible that such a pertinent part of our history that is as recent as 1996 has such limited discourse surrounding it in our society for those who do not seek it out. An integral part of any healing experience is discourse, so while it’s great that we have these exhibits available to us, perhaps we need to facilitate greater discussion around this historical event, instead of just simplifying it to “it is sad”.

Maggie de Vries’s memoire Missing Sarah: A Memoire of Loss is well versed and addresses thought provoking and under-represented discourse in her writing on taboo subjects such as adoption and identity, sex work, and addiction. In writing Missing Sarah, Maggie de Vries’s strives to:
make it real for [us], the reader[s]. Many Vancouver women are missing. […] If we can start to leave the gritty image of the sex worker behind and begin to see real people, real women, to look them in the eye and smile at them and want to know who they really are, I think that we can begin to make our world a better place for them and for us, for everyone (xv).

As a reader, I was incredibly entrenched in the memoire captured by Maggie de Vries, and I immediately withdrew from my ignorant view of sex workers after engaging in Sarah’s story. However, upon reviewing other texts and reading more closely into Sarah’s story, I began to notice that Maggie de Vries omitted certain details of Sarahs upbringing that could potentially cast a negative light on the de Vries family, and how they may have contributed to Sarah feeling like an ‘other’ in her own home, alienatied or being conscience of her ‘othered space’. This view was adopted after referring to Wally Oppal’s Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and viewing an article published by the Suzanne Fournier titled “Sarah de Vries: 1 of 20 women for whose murder Pickton will never be tried”. These sources both shed pertinent details surrounding Sarah’s upbringing that Maggie de Vries fails to address in her memoire of Sarah, withdrawing the reader from a fuller picture of Sarah’s upbringing. Oppal notes that “[h]er sister believes that Sarah was sexually abused repeatedly in her childhood by a neighbour”; however, Maggie recalls in Missing Sarah that “[s]everal boys and young men in [their] neighborhood got into trouble with the police periodically. One of them had been charged with rape. Did he hurt Sarah?” (Oppal 43) (de Vries 46). The former statement made by Oppal indicates that Maggie believes a neighbor sexually abused Sarah. Why does Maggie decide to limit her narrative to the question of “did he hurt Sarah?” instead of elaborating on the potential sexual abuse that the Commission suggests?

Another interesting point of consideration is that Suzanne Fournier claims that Sarah’s “ father, a University of B.C. science professor, appears to have adored de Vries, but called her “his little chocolate drop” and “nigger girl,” according to some of her friends who cite passages in the journals she kept all her life.” If this were in fact true, it would bring to light a knowledge gap to the reader regarding Sarah’s uphill battle with her identity, which she faced both in the public and in the private sphere, lending to her feelings of isolation and identity crisis. Evidently, Maggie seems to omit certain details of Sarah’s upbringing that may have caused Sarah to turn to the streets, which questions the honesty and integrity of Sarah’s narrative through the omission of these details.

While these considerations do not remove the reader from Maggie’s goal at large in writing Missing Sarah, which is shedding light to the issues surrounding such taboo subjects and integrating them into society with acceptance, it does take away from Maggie’s representation of Sarah, and inclines the reader to question the de Vries’s families devotion to help Sarah as an impressionable adolescent, overcome the internal pain she felt and the identity crisis she endured. As a reader, it was emotionally frustrating to watch Sarah enter into the DTES at such a vulnerable age, but it was more frustrating to read about how the de Vries family addressed Sarah’s disobedient nature. For example, Maggie recalls that when Sarah was stealing from her family, “dad would talk to Sarah about it. He tried to be patient, but it kept happening”, so the solution to Sarah’s problem was to place locks on every door in their home (39). Sarah at this time, was twelve years old, and her family felt that the most appropriate course of action to Sarah’s problem with stealing was to physically lock Sarah out of every room in her own home, which in turn, isolated her from her home and did in fact drive Sarah into the streets, running away again and shoplifting elsewhere.

I am left wondering if Maggie de Vries perhaps intentionally omitted these details for the sake of her own memories of Sarah and their family. How do you view de Vries’s narrative with these points of consideration in mind? How would a more encompassing memoire changed the way in which Sarah’s narrative is projected to readers?