Caldwell explains.īefore the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. “We don’t acknowledge what it takes to make use of those resources,” Ms. Everything in the archives is available to the public, but it can be challenging to navigate them without training. That’s when she thought of harnessing the records housed with the LAC. A few years ago, she began talking with local community members about new services the VPL could offer – particularly in an effort to engage in reconciliation with its Indigenous clients. Would anyone pick up, and would they remember him?Īriel Caldwell, librarian at Vancouver's Britannia branch, started the Kith and Kin program before the pandemic.Īriel Caldwell is a teen-services librarian at the Britannia branch. For the first time in decades, he phoned home. As he peeled back layers of paperwork, he was surprised to find that his family was still there. When he heard about the Kith and Kin program, he jumped at the opportunity to try to retrace his steps back to Muskeg River. Delorme grew roots in Vancouver, his mind started to wander back to his childhood. He now works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, not far from the Britannia branch.Īs Mr. Instead, he drifted from one city to the next, working construction and carpentry jobs until, inevitably, “I’d get in a fight, and that was it – I’d be gone.”įor 20 years, he struggled with addiction before getting sober in 2002 and training as a counsellor. Once he was old enough, he discovered big cities such as Edmonton and Calgary. But residential school broke him down over time, he says, and broke down his connection to his heritage, as well. Delorme remembers being somewhat nomadic, moving from place to place hunting and trapping with his family. Delorme holds the death certificate recording his older brother's death.īefore he was taken away, Mr. But a program at the Vancouver Public Library’s Britannia branch – located in the heart of the city’s most concentrated Indigenous population – is helping people like Mr. So for much of his life, he knew almost nothing about his family. Around 1968, his family was forced to settle in Grand Cache and, like so many Indigenous people of his generation, he was taken away to a residential school. Delorme was born in Muskeg River, Alta., to a band of Métis with Cree roots. His older brother had died, and Marvin had inherited his name. Delorme’s parents had always told him he’d had a twin – but as the death certificate proves, it wasn’t a twin at all. “I just found this last night,” he says, shaking his head. Marvin Delorme is holding a death certificate for a child named Marvin Delorme, issued on – less than two months after this Marvin Delorme was born.
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