Connie Walker
Connie Walker is the host of Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s, which you can listen to in full on Spotify. Follow her on Twitter here.
The newest season of Stolen is incredibly personal for you. Was the story about your father with you for a long time?
No, I just learned of the story of my dad pulling over a priest who had abused him at residential school a year ago. Last May, my brother shared it in a Facebook post. I remember how sick I felt when I read it. I never knew that my dad had been abused by a priest. It was incredibly painful to learn about but it also helped me understand my dad in a new way. We had a difficult relationship. My dad was physically abusive to my mom when I was a kid and I witnessed that violence. That childhood trauma shaped me and our relationship and when my dad died in 2013, I felt like I’d lost my chance to repair our relationship.
How hesitant were you to share something so personal?
I think I was more nervous for my family than for myself. I always feel a responsibility to the people who trust me to help tell their stories and when those people are in your family, that responsibility feels even greater.
My family was so generous with me — helping me get to know my dad in a new way but also sharing with me their own experiences in residential schools. Those interviews were incredibly sensitive, they were things we’d never talked about before so I wanted to make sure they were ok with everything throughout our reporting.
How did the story change from when you envisioned it to the final version?
This podcast begins as a very personal story about my father’s experience at a residential school in Saskatchewan and the abuse he endured at the hands of a priest. However, I quickly realized that this story was actually much bigger than me and my dad. When I set out to find the priest who abused him, I quickly realized that there were other survivors in my family and in my community who were also abused. Our investigation grew, and our goals for the podcast changed. We wanted to expose as many abusive priests, nuns and staff members of St. Michael’s that we could. It took months of reporting but what we were able to uncover about abuse at St. Michael’s was shocking and horrifying.
Can you remember a particularly emotional day you had reporting?
There have been so many emotional days, it would be hard to pinpoint one. Bearing witness to what children endured at St. Michael’s has made this the most difficult story I’ve ever covered. But nearing the end of our season, I’m mostly left with a feeling of gratitude. We spoke to 28 survivors about their childhoods at St. Michael’s, through their voices and memories, we were able to reconstruct the school, to get a glimpse inside, to more fully understand what they went through as children. We wanted to amplify their voices and to create space for them to tell their own stories in Episode 4 - “Not A Place To Be.” It’s heartbreaking, infuriating and one of the most powerful pieces of audio that I’ve ever heard. It’s an episode that I’m still thinking about on a daily basis.
What do you hope this show accomplishes?
I hope that listeners walk away from their podcast with a better understanding of the truth about what children endured at St. Michael’s and other residential schools in Canada and the US. That in learning my dad’s story, they can empathize with what survivors have gone through, not just at the schools but in the decades after they left, they have been haunted by that trauma, and unable to get justice for the crimes committed against them. And the fact that it is 2022 and we are just learning this truth is shameful. Survivors have been carrying these stories on their own for their whole lives, we have a responsibility to listen, to learn the truth and until we can do that, we can’t talk about reconciliation.
Thanks, Connie!