Larry Loyie (1933-April 18, 2016) is honoured at the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre with the Loyie Brissenden archive. The centre is located in the central campus, opposite the well-known clock tower.
Larry Loyie (on left, altar boy in white cassock) at St. Bernard Mission residential school, Grouard, Alberta, circa 1945. Larry Loyie wrote four books related to his life and the history and effects of residential school on survivors.
The new Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre opened April 9, 2018. The important centre represents B.C., Alberta, NWT, and Yukon survivors.
In a public area there are comfortable couches and two digital kiosks where visitors can put on headphones and listen to Larry’s extended interview on his life and six years in residential school (created by the High Prairie Oral History Project, 2011). There are six additional computers for research.
The University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre opened April 9, 2018, on the Vancouver UBC campus.
Each of Larry Loyie’s books is featured on the centre’s website (not loaded yet but soon) with a cover, description, and library link. Much more can be added, and will be. Thank you to the centre’s archivist Elizabeth Shaffer for her splendid and untiring work.
Archivist Elizabeth Shaffer (left), with Larry Loyie’s partner and co-author Constance Brissenden; Trude Huebner, who produced the Pen to Pen tour of Ora Pro Nobis, Pray for Us, Larry Loyie’s play about his residential school years, to British Columbia federal prisons in February 1995; Larry Loyie’s son Brad Loyie of Surrey, BC.
Larry Loyie’s 30 years of research into Indigenous traditions and history, as well as residential school and its survivors, will be accessible on the centre’s website in the coming months.
Copies of Larry Loyie’s books, Residential Schools, With the Words and Images of Survivors, and Two Plays About Residential School (both from Indigenous Education Press, www.goodminds.com), were featured at the opening.
Larry Loyie wrote two additional books about his years living a traditional life followed by six years in residential school: As Long as the Rivers Flow (Groundwood) and its sequel Goodbye Buffalo Bay (Theytus). All books are in print.
