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.

KEEP READING

Conflicting court views on legal fees leave '60s Scoop lawyers in limbo

BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: AUG 15, 2018

TORONTO — Class-action lawyers who secured a landmark $750-million compensation deal for Indigenous victims of the ’60s Scoop have been left in fee limbo amid conflicting views as to how much they deserve.
Under the settlement, which required separate approvals from both Federal Court and an Ontario court, Ottawa agreed to pay $75 million to the law firms involved.
The lawyers further agreed to split the fees 50-50 between the two groups — one group comprising the Toronto lawyers who began the case in Superior Court in 2009, the other comprising three firms who pursued their action through Federal Court.

In June, Federal Court Judge Michel Shore approved the $37.5 million earmarked for the lawyers in his court. The amount was “fair and reasonable” and amounted to less than 10 per cent of the overall global payment, said Shore, who had helped mediate settlement discussions.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Edward Belobaba, however, took a much dimmer view of the fee deal.
He delivered a blistering indictment of the agreement, calling $75 million in fees rich beyond reasonable and the system for compensating class-action lawyers broken. He also railed at the split, saying the Federal Court lawyers simply didn’t deserve anywhere near half the total, or $37.5 million.

“This decision was a bolt of lightning on this topic,” said Kirk Baert, who represents one of the three groups of Federal Court lawyers.
Belobaba did sign off on the class-action settlement, but only after the lawyers on the Ontario end agreed the fee issue would be resolved separately. The Federal Court lawyers, however, balked at re-opening the arrangement.
“Why would class counsel, after the bargain has been struck and after we’ve lost all our leverage by going for a settlement approval, agree to take less?” Baert said. “The answer is: We’re not going to.”
Still, in light of the change to the Ontario deal, the national lawyers headed back to Federal Court to again secure approval for their end of the class action.
As Shore had done previously, Federal Court Judge Michael Phelan signed an order on Aug. 2, with the agreement of the parties involved, approving both the settlement and $37.5 million in fees for the lawyers in his court.
According to one source who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the matter, Belobaba had expected a full hearing in Federal Court on the lawyer fees. After receiving Phelan’s order on Aug. 3, the source said Belobaba began asking for details about what Phelan’s decision had been based on.
Days later, Phelan wrote the Federal Court parties to ask for “submissions on the current motion for approval of fees.” Two days later, he further wrote that nothing in his order “should be taken as either explicitly or implied approval of counsel’s fees.”
“His directions have left a little bit of confusion,” Baert said. “(But) these fees have now been approved twice. It’s done.”
A telephone conference with Phelan and the lawyers involved aimed at clarifying the situation is set for Thursday.
Belobaba appears to be awaiting the outcome of those discussions before deciding how much the Ontario lawyers deserve.
Morris Cooper, who along with Toronto lawyer Jeffery Wilson was instrumental in reaching a settlement in the Ontario case, said Belobaba should accept that the national lawyers have been awarded $37.5 million and approve the same amount for the Ontario group.
“I’m hopeful he will conclude that we shouldn’t be penalized if he’s dissatisfied with how the Federal Court has dealt with it,” Cooper said. “That would be grossly unfair in our view based on his own findings that we were the ones who did everything and deserve at least twice as much as them.”
Baert, who called Belobaba’s views “mystifying,” said it would be up to the legislature or appeal courts to make any changes to how class-action lawyers are compensated. The judge’s view that fees should be calculated differently for settlements over $100 million makes no sense, Baert said.
“Class actions don’t happen in a vacuum,” Baert said. “Law firms bring them and they pay for them. So when they do their jobs, they should get paid and they should get paid what the defendant agreed to pay.”
The fee issue has no bearing on how much will be paid to victims of the ’60s Scoop — Indigenous children who lost their cultural heritage after being taken from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families. Each will receive between $25,000 and $50,000, depending on how many file claims.

#SixtiesScoop Settlement

There is Now A Settlement

The two Courts have approved the settlement.

Please contact the class proceeding administrator, Collectiva at 1-(844) 287-4270 for more information regarding the claims’ application process.

The settlement provides free legal assistance to all inquiring survivors or claimants.
If you are a member of the Brown v Canada class, please call the law firm  Wilson Christen LLP at 1-866-360-5952. 
If you are not part of the Brown v Canada class, you may call any one or more of these three law firms for free legal assistance:

Klein Lawyers LLP at (778) 654-7171

Koskie Minsky at 1-(855) 595-2626

Merchant Law at 1- (888) 567-7777

If your inquiry is about the Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation, please wait for a separate announcement from the Foundation about the work it will be doing.
All of us, at this website, who have walked this journey for many years, apologize to all survivors for the confusion and alienation so many have experienced in consequence of the workings of the class action legal process.
Ontario Brown v Canada Sixties Scoop Claim Litigation Committee

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Open Letter on the Ontario Sixties Scoop Class Action Settlement

Dear Community Members,
The fight for justice has been a long one. We launched the class action lawsuit for Ontario Sixties Scoop survivors in 2009, but we have been fighting for justice for much longer than that.
We know there is misinformation and false speculation about the proposed national Sixties Scoop settlement. We are addressing this issue to ensure that everyone has the correct information.
What this settlement gives us, in addition to money, is a healing foundation.
This foundation will be run by an Indigenous Board and Indigenous Executive Director. Its goal is to help families become whole again and to prevent any child, in the future, from going through what we went through. True wealth is the freedom from oppression. This is for our children and our grandchildren, and they need it and deserve it.
People also want to know who was consulted about this agreement. As the lead claimant in the only certified Sixties Scoop case in the country, I have listened to thousands of survivors. This is a journey we have taken together. We have learned from each other and supported each other. All of these stories I carried with me into the negotiations with Canada. The other representative plaintiffs carried with them their stories and their communities’ stories as well. We all stood behind Minister Bennett together when the settlement was announced.
With your stories in our hearts – we fought. Because of our stories in our hearts, we won. We could not have done it with out you.
I know this journey has been hard. We have the opportunity to move forward with this settlement, which includes a healing foundation. It is our foundation.
We want to ensure that all your questions are answered with facts. Please visit www.sixtiesscoopclaim.com to find correct information.
Thank you, Tcimigwitc,
Marcia Brown Martel
Lead Claimant, Ontario Sixties Scoop Lawsuit

Email: thesixtiesscoopclaim@gmail.com
Phone: 1-866-360-5952 ext. 217

Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim

About the Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim + Registration as a Class Member

About the Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim + Registration as a Class Member

About the Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim

The Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim (www.sixtiesscoopclaim.com) is about an agreement between Canada and Ontario that resulted in a lost generation of Indian children.

The children were “lost” because they lost their cultural identity, family, extended family, community, language, spirituality, traditions and customs of their First Nations’ communities. Canada turned a blind eye to the protection of the identity of the Indian child when it entered into an agreement leaving these children to be dealt with under Ontario child protection and adoption laws without regard to their cultural identity.

The Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim holds Canada to its constitutional responsibility for the protection of the cultural identity of the Indian.

Some writers, commentators and survivors, say that what Canada did was intentional, that by turning a blind eye through the agreement with Ontario, a generation of Indian children would be assimilated into mainstream culture.

Some international NGO observers argue that what took place was a form of genocide,identity genocide, carried out by the Canadian government.

In the meantime, register here if you are one of the survivors of the lost generation of children of the Sixties Scoop.

Registration as a Class Member

The “Class” Definition

In Brown & Commanda v. Canada [2013] ONSC 5637, [2013] O.J. No. 4381 (S.C.J.), the Honourable Justice Edward Belobaba defines the “class” for the Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim as follows:

Indian children who were taken from their homes on reserves in Ontario between December 1, 1965 and December 31, 1984 and were placed in the care of non-aboriginal foster or adoptive parents who did not raise the children in accordance with the aboriginal person’s customs, traditions, and practices.

Therefore, to be a member of the class, you are a person who:

1. is an Indian, and

2. was removed from your Indian reserve, and

3. was removed from your Ontario reserve between December 1, 1965 and December 31, 1984, and

4. was placed in the care of non-aboriginal foster or adoptive parents, and

5. those non-aboriginal foster parents or adoptive parents did not raise you in accordance with your aboriginal or Indian customs, traditions and practices.

If you cannot remember or you don’t know enough information to know if you qualify as a “class” member, should you still register?

The answer is “YES”. Please register.

If you don’t know or don’t remember any information as described in the examples below, please register.

You may qualify even if you don’t know or remember the information you might think you need to know or remember.

READ ON and if you fall into any of the following 12 examples then doregister as a class member:

(1) If you can’t remember or don’t know the date when you lived on a reserve, but can only remember the date when you were placed in a non-aboriginal foster or non-aboriginal adoptive home, register. It does not matter that you cannot remember the date when you lived on a reserve.

(2) If you can’t remember or don’t know the date when you were place in a non-aboriginal foster or non-aboriginal adoptive home, but can remember when you were removed from your Indian community, register. It does not matter that you cannot remember or do not know the date when you were placed in a non-aboriginal foster or non-aboriginal adoptive home.

(3) If you can’t remember or do not know the dates of either events, can’t remember or do not know when you lived on a reserve or when you were placed in a non-aboriginal foster or non-aboriginal adoptive home, register. It does not matter that you cannot remember or do not know the dates of either event.

(4) If you can’t remember or do not know the exact dates, or even the year when it happened, just approximately some time during the 20-year period, register. It does not matter that you cannot remember or do not know the exact dates of either event.

(5) If you can’t remember or do not know where you ended up, the place of your foster home or adoptive home, register. You don’t need to know or remember where you were placed.

(6) If you can’t remember or do not know the name or location of your original reserve, register. You don’t need to remember or know the name or location of your reserve as long as it was in Ontario.

(7) If you can’t remember or do not know if you were a status Indian when you were removed, register. You don’t need proof of your Indian status to register.

(8) If you went from an Indian residential school to a non-aboriginal foster home or non-aboriginal adoptive home, register. We intend to include you as part of the class.

(9) If you were born as an Indian and did not ever live on a reserve, but went directly to a non-aboriginal foster home or non-aboriginal adoptive home, register.

(10) If you were removed before December 1, 1965 but placed in a non-aboriginal foster home or non-aboriginal adoptive home any time between December 1, 1965 and December 31, 1984, register.

(11) If you don’t know whether where you lived was an official or registered Indian reserve, register. It does not matter whether you know whether the First Nations community was or was not an official or registered reserve.

(12) If you know you were not a status Indian when you were removed, and then placed in a non-aboriginal foster home or adoptive home, but you identity as a Canadian aboriginal person, for example, a Métis, register. Indicate this fact on the registration form.

Letting Others Know About this Website and Registration

After you have registered, send out notice to anyone else you know who might want to know about the Ontario Sixties Scoop Claim (www.sixtiesscoopclaim.com). Brown and Commanda started this case believing that all persons who were affected would come forward and begin the long road of healing from the pain of being the lost generation of children of the Sixties Scoop. Please share this page.