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VICTORIA Survivors of native residential schools on south Vancouver Island are preparing to share their heartbreaking stories of abuse.

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has made its way down the island, and is in Victoria Friday and Saturday ready to listen.

And the commission is hoping you are too. The event at the Victoria Conference Centre is open to the public.

Today digital stories called "resistance narratives" put together by students were screened at UVic. The students researched the schools and the terrible things that were done to children there for more than a century. "Both of my parents went to residential school, both of them passed away when I was a lot younger for sure based on the impacts of residential schools through addictions, and part of my story is because of their passing I grew up in foster care" says the event's coordinator AsmaNaHi Antoine.

At the Victoria Conference Centre Friday and Saturday, we will hear stories of abuse so terrible, it may be difficult to imagine it all happened here in Canada on our watch. But it did. And Vancouver Islanders to this day are still living with the pain.

In Duncan last month, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission event was at times almost unbearable. "...his actions of sex abuse went on for the duration of the school year...and he made nightly visits to me.... but my brother would not cooperate. So he ran to the window.....and jumped out of it" recounted one survivor.

It's difficult to hear and even more difficult to tell. The commission hopes that more Canadians will listen, learn, and then celebrate the Aboriginal culture we tried to take away.

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