It needs to be a day unlike any other day.
When the calendar flips over to Thursday, September 30, minds and hearts around the country are pausing in reflection, unable to avoid sad truths about Canada’s relationship with its past.
It marks the first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the date the government of Canada has established as a national statutory holiday. It is not a holiday everywhere; some must work, some see it as merely a day off.
For Canada, the day will be poignant and memorable. On the western banks of Lake Winnipeg, it is designed to be that way.
At Aurora Recovery Centre in Gimli, Manitoba, deep in Treaty No. 1 territory, the last day of the month is not just another day off. Oh, in some ways it may look normal – patients and staff have a program to follow. The search for recovery trudges onward. Dozens of patients will still rise for the day, asking for help to deal with deep issues that have tormented them and their families, sometimes for generations. Trauma. Addictions. Abuses. They will follow structure, attend therapy sessions, work on assignments. They remain focused on finding answers for recovery.
A dedicated staff – chefs, nurses, counselors, maintenance, patient care specialists and more – is also showing up on September 30. Compassionate, knowledgeable, resolute, they will walk alongside those they serve. Committed employees who know lives are in the balance.
But, on this day, there is much more.
Kevin Koroscil is one person who plays a major part in what Aurora Recovery Centre has in store for its patients and staff on Truth and Reconciliation Day.
It makes perfect sense. At age 58, he is considered a leading man — a keeper of traditions, of history and cultural practices, of ceremonies. Pipe ceremonies. Smudging. Sweat lodges. Fires. Drums. For eight years now he has been a Sun Dance Chief, and at Aurora he is entrusted by staff, patients, and hundreds of ARC’s family of alumni members as the centre’s spiritual advisor, one of Aurora Recovery Centre’s most respected teachers of Indigenous culture.
In this part of the country, home to 63 First Nations with the unique sounds of linguistic groups including Ojibwe, Dakota, Nehaiyawewin, Oji-Cree and Dene, and in the very home of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, the Indigenous components offered at Aurora have never been more needed.
Two weeks before the event, Koroscil is talking about the menu for the day with his boss, Aurora president Steve Low. They are making adjustments to the itinerary for the day in treatment to honour this important day. Both men are aware people can be triggered, affected by days of this magnitude, so every step out of the ordinary is done in consultation with team members. Staff will be prepared for any residual feelings that may come up during the day or afterward. Even small details, right down to the menu, are part of the equation.
“Food is always an important piece in connection and in ceremonies. I did ask our chef to put together a feast that might be considered a little more traditional,” says Koroscil.
In this case, a feast plate of stew and bannock, salad, fruit, berries. It is not perfect, but in the modern world of treatment with hospital level license and insurance obligations to be met, dietary regulations need to be observed.
“We are moving away from wild meats because it is a little harder to access ones that have been officially inspected and, because we are a facility, we have to honour that,” says Koroscil.
Aurora is certainly not a First Nations centre, in that it is not only for Indigenous people, nor does it offer strictly Indigenous programming. At its 45-acre site on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, the facility offers a long and comprehensive list of evidence-based treatment modalities. From individual and group therapy to Cognitive Behaviour, Dialectic Therapy, and 12 Step facilitation, for instance. Renowned experts in trauma, sex and pornography addictions, gambling addiction and gaming are part of the Aurora circle. Its New Dawn Family program is considered to be among the very best family programs in the country.
This is not your grandfather’s AA-and-the-Big-Book-or-nothing philosophy. This is sophisticated, evidence-based, best-practices treatment offered in the middle of one of Canada’s historically significant Indigenous areas.
“Aurora was spiritual long before I got here,” says Koroscil. “This land that we are located on, how important it is. There were ceremonies that were taking place here long ago, hundreds of years ago, just on the banks here. Our elders talk about them.”
He motions towards the low-to-the-ground, canvas-wrapped structure by the shore.
“That sweat lodge isn’t something new to this land. It was taking place right on the beach before. They would be set up and taken down daily because they had to hide it, but it has been here before.”
It is a calling for Koroscil, one he has lived his whole life to be able to provide. Born in Ottawa, his birth family of Metis descent, he was removed from his home during the infamous Sixties Scoop and adopted and raised by a loving, caring family, one he cherishes to this day.
Koroscil came to Manitoba early in life, and his resume of helping Indigenous and under-privileged children overcome their adversities is lengthy and admirable. With a background in Community Youth Care, he and a male friend were foster parents, four at a time, to at-risk adolescents for 15 years.
“We would take the young people that had been kicked out of every other possible placement. For us to have somebody with 27 placements before they got to us was pretty normal,” he says. “Most of them were kicked out of every school in the divisions. Behavioural, gang-affiliated, people looking for identity, people trying to figure things out. They were not all Indigenous, but a majority of them … most of the kids in Manitoba in care were Indigenous.”
He and Bernadette, his wife of 35 years, spent almost five years involved with a Moms and Babes program in Winnipeg while also raising their own two children. They now have five grandchildren.
Kevin would go on to do work with homeless populations at Siloam Mission, and was Coordinator of Aboriginal Services at Selkirk Mental Health Centre. He was a volunteer at Circle of Life Thunderbird House.
His path to helping the addicted was not from his own lived experience, though that could be debated.
“Some people would say, ‘Well, how do you know about addiction?’ Well, I have walked alongside people. I have sat with them puking and doing all the wonderful things that they do in active addiction, including seizuring. So, I had a pretty in depth, personal relationship with addictions.”
Nearly 25 years ago, he drove Bernadette to a sweat lodge ceremony. She was curious, he was not. As he dropped her off, he was asked to help set up. He had no idea what he was about to get into, how it would change his life. He had always been someone involved in faith, in spirituality, but his journey was about to change.
“Next thing you know, both Bernadette and I are in the sweat lodge and it blossomed from there. I felt safe in there. I felt that I could connect to a higher power without an interpreter and that was a big deal for me.”
For the next quarter century, he began the journey into his own spirituality and that of many Indigenous peoples. With teachers, mentors, elders taking him step by step into the broad realm of spirituality, Koroscil was like a sponge. Learning. Practicing. Living.
His journey into the culture of the spirit continued.
“It grew. One of my foster boys was going to dance and he asked if I would go and support him. I didn’t know what that meant, but I said sure. I showed up and right away I knew some people that were there. They held prominent positions in that circle, and they invited me into the circle, and I hadn’t been there for more than five minutes.”
“Next thing you know, I was doing things that I never could have imagined,” he says with a warm smile. “I was active in a Sun Dance ceremony as a first-time person walking in. And I stayed. Twenty-four years later I am still active in them, in four or five of them.”
Together with Koroscil, Steve Low is committed to making sure Truth and Reconciliation Day is not just a once-a-year event. They honour its principles every day. Not just in the menu on September 30 nor in the topics of the groups that will be held that day. Not just in the film they offer to patients, the highly acclaimed documentary We Were Children, the pipe ceremonies, or in the powerpoint presentations on the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It shows in the faces and hearts of the people at Aurora, those who feel and understand all too well the significance of the stories behind the reason for the day.
Like many at the centre, Aurora is taking September 30 personally.
“Winnipeg’s version of Recovery Day is also scheduled for September 30th,” Low notes. “A couple of weeks ago, I made the decision to pull our sponsorship and involvement of that event, as I cannot, at this stage, especially given all that has come to light in the past year, play a role in sponsoring any event that may take focus off of this very important day. This decision was important for me and has been met with favour from several Indigenous groups and individuals.”
For his part, Koroscil is dialed in on Truth and Reconciliation first and foremost.
“I think it is about raising awareness for people, to help them understand,” Koroscil says. “It is not just the patients, it is the staff, too. Raising that awareness as to why people are responding the way they are in certain situations. How do we help heal those things?”
Koroscil is quick to understand how, based on its geographical home, Aurora and its staff are in a unique position to be leaders in the Truth and Reconciliation movement.
“I am really grateful for our leadership team being very understanding of those events that have taken place in our history, as well as working towards that healing process. Things that I have presented in the past they have really been supportive of,” he says.
Blending the need for recovery with the poignant truths of this country’s colonial past is vital for the future, and Koroscil says he is blessed to be part of it.
“There has to be an understanding of all of this. Not only recovery, but also the Truth and Reconciliation piece. What does it mean? How do we move forward from it?”
“Ultimately, that is what you and I and the readers are doing right here. Raising awareness. We do it every day here at Aurora. It is a matter of continuing to do that. Not being afraid of what that means for people.”
By Jeff Vircoe