After passing out from a cocktail of pills, Sally awoke to find
a friend dead beside her. She knew she had to change. She was
only 15. It would not be an easy path. She’d spent her early
years in and out of shelters, cared for by a mom who was a drug
addict. Sally’s education had been sporadic. She could neither
read nor write. When she was 14, the Children’s Aid Society took
her away from her mom. She fled the Oshawa group home where
she’d been placed; on the streets she turned to drugs. But
seeing her friend dead was like a slap in the face. “I felt like
an adult, it was so hard I blamed myself for his death. I knew I
had to change my life.” Change began with learning to read.
Illiteracy is a common thread in the stories of troubled
aboriginal youth like Sally. Manitoba Justice Murray Sinclair,
the appointed chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada, and a judge for almost 25 years, estimates
three-quarters of the offenders who appear in Canada’s courts
are functionally illiterate. Abori