After gravesite was flooded out, Trent student wanted to do right for ’60s Scoop great-grandma

Family selling belongings, raising funds to install permanent marker to honour ‘amazing woman’

By Bill Hodgins Reporter | Feb. 10, 2023

From
family stories handed down, and from whatever research she’s been able
to uncover, Kayl Commanda knows her great-grandmother’s 49 years were
shockingly sad.

Beatrice Commanda —
Kayl’s mother’s grandmother — was a victim of the infamous “’60s Scoop.”
The term refers to the mass removal of Canadian Indigenous children
from their families into the child welfare system, in most cases without
the consent of their families or bands.

Beatrice
lost her children, scuttled away to residential schools and foster
families near the Nipissing First Nation, where she would eventually die
at the age of 49. Family members marked her grave with a simple wood
cross, vowing to at least keep her legacy alive. 

But
Kayl, a student at Trent University in Peterborough, says the sadness
didn’t end there. The property where Beatrice was buried flooded one
year and the wooden cross, as well as her burial location, was lost.

“My grandmother remembered attending the funeral,” says Kayl, who also uses the name Opichi — the Anishinaabe word for robin.

“The
issue that happened was that the Nipissing cemetery was flooded …
obviously, it wasn't exactly a wealthy community at the time, so all of
the gravestones were just OK.” But the flood took many away.

Kayl
says the family had great difficulty in finding exactly where Beatrice
was buried, but eventually her remains were located. They were able to
put a bouquet of flowers on the site.

“But
now we're trying to give her a proper headstone because she was an
amazing woman, from what we hear,” she says. “She had a major injustice
done to her, having all of her children taken away.”

It’s
an expensive undertaking, but it’s one the family is determined to
accomplish. Kayl says they started by selling family belongings,
reaching out to relatives to see if they could spare some items. Kayl has also started a GoFundMe page, generating close to $3,000 so far.

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