 I came here when I was 8 years old from Ross River and I never knew cruelty until I came here. The history started when I was 5 years old for me. It took me right from moderate to bush. I can't speak my own language. When I got here I didn't speak one word in English. I just didn't understand the language. They started building this in a residential school in 1948-49. It was open in 1950s. I was only 5 years old when I came here. It's still with us today, the impacts that we never really dealt with. Being born and raised here in Lorepost, I've always heard the stories about the residential school. My grandmother, my mother spent a little bit of time there. It's always just been the stories of the negative effects. We lost our identity, who we are as a people. We lost being in touch with the land. It's a dark cloud that's been held over our people for way too long. As I see it now, it goes on from generation to generation. 4 or 5 generations down, that's how far that school affects our people. But it's not only us as Casca people. Other First Nations around us got infected by the school. So it's a bigger issue because it branches out so far. It's like a root of a tree that affects so many people. We've used this building as an administration office for all services in our community. Our post office was there, our health and social services programs. If we didn't have that building, we wouldn't have anything. So it was almost our hand was forced to have to use something that was such a negative impact on our people. So this spot here, when I got into office, my desk used to be right here. And the chiefs before me, this is where they had to work out of. And we're actually standing in what used to be one of the old classrooms for when this building was used as a school. To see that it's broken down into what it is now and just the skeleton of what it used to be, I'm pretty excited to finally have this building gone and for our people to start healing. It's been a long time coming. The residential school has been a fight since 30 years, 30, 40 years. And here we are going forward. I would love this to bring healing. Our post could be a happy memory instead of a bad memory for a lot of people. Residential school still has an impact to this day, I believe, on all the generations and generations to come. My parents survived that and now I have to break a cycle that I was forced into. So a new building in the community like that to bring all the young people to learn and heal. I think it will be great. We're looking to have this be the heart and soul of our community, having a place for social programs to happen. Our economic development arm will be in the building. Our post office will be in there. We're hoping for a service Canada to service BC office. But most importantly, it will be a safe place. Considering the new buildings replacing a residential school, we'll give the people something to be proud and happy to enter every day. A new building of our own design, of the Casca design, it will be liberating. It means a lot for the people here and for myself to start new. You know, to start living our life again. A new beginning to be then again, to put that past behind us to look forward. In 2012, gathering around the fire captured the beginning of our closure and healing. That was long overdue for a lot of us from attended Lord Post residential school. Now the removal of this building will honour the ones who passed, especially through our presence and endeavours. And hopefully it will complete our closure and assist our ongoing healing, not be a reminder of the current.