Her father Jean-Roch also had health problems. Unable to provide for his family, a social worker took his other four children to the Immaculate Conception Orphanage.
Martin is 10 and Lyne is 11 when they enter the cruciform home run by the Little Franciscans of Mary. From day one they say they are suffering an ordeal. Nuns accuse them of making their parents sick and tell them they must pay for their sins. They kept their word, Martin recalls.
The Chicoutimi Orphanage operated from 1931 to 1968.
Photo: Radio Canada
The one who made a career in music for more than two decades was shaped by the mental and physical cruelty of the nuns. It was a prison, a kind of concentration camp, assures the 65-year-old.
It was the end of the world. It’s like being in a house of horrors, explains his sister Lyne Simard.
In the orphanage, when the brother and sister wet the bed, the punishments follow one another, be it slapping with a belt or beating with a beater. The more we cried, the more they gave us, Martin recalls.
More than 12,000 children who have been abandoned, orphaned or placed in care for various reasons such as a parent’s illness have passed through the Immaculate Conception Orphanage.
Photo: Saguenay Historical Society/SHS-P002-S07-SS1-P09998-1
One day Lyne saw a naked little girl being humiliated and brutally beaten by Franciscans. This scene sent him into emotional shock.
It wasn’t human. They ripped her pajamas from her back and beat her with spoons, a wooden spoon and a metal spoon. After that I don’t remember anything. It was a total blackout, says the 67-year-old. Traumatized, little Simard runs along the walls and tries to be forgotten. The systematic violence and physical assaults of some Reverend Mothers so oppress her that she tries to end her life.
“I wanted to die. I didn’t want to go through this anymore. I tried to choke on a pillowcase. »
— A quote from Lyne Simard, orphanage survivor
Something broke inside. When I got out of the orphanage, I was diagnosed with depression. It was too much for me, Lyne laments. She recalls that her father could not believe that such a young child could receive such a diagnosis.
Martin and Lyne Simard took steps to learn more about this episode in their story, which has remained taboo. According to official documents, they would have stayed in the orphanage for about three months.
Photo: Radio Canada
Martin tells that one day he was forced by God’s representatives to eat his vomit. At one meal, the nuns served coleslaw, which Martin enjoyed. And when he dared to ask for more, the sisters wanted to teach him a lesson by serving him a huge bowl. I threw up and had to eat it, he reveals in disgust. He is convinced that this memory, which still makes him sick, will haunt him for the rest of his life.
He has long hidden this story from his relatives, who misunderstand his disdain for food. For years, Martin secretly ate sandwiches in his car during office lunches. That left its mark, he says. The horrors of the orphanage made her uncertain. Even today he feels that his recovery is far from complete.
New testimonies of abuse at an orphanage, this time by nuns, appear in Chicoutimi and Quebec. Two children from the Simard family, Martin and Lyne – René’s siblings – talk about the abuse and the hell they experienced. Reporting by Priscilla Plamondon-Lalancette
saved by music
Martin and Lyne took steps to learn more about this episode in their history, which has remained taboo. According to official documents, they would have stayed in the orphanage for about three months. Her stay, however, felt like an eternity. After an hour it was already too much, emphasizes Martin. It was their family members who got them out of there after learning about the abuse they were subjected to.
Imagine those who stayed long, it’s horrific. There are some who didn’t get away, Lyne points out. The sisters left broken children. Several survivors lived in poverty and with mental health problems. Others took their own lives because they couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The rest of us got away with it because we had love after orphanage, Lyne explains. The Simard family was closely connected. It was this love of family and music that saved her.
From left to right: René, Lyne, Martin, their mother Gabrielle holding Nathalie, Jean-Roger, her father Jean-Roch, Régis and Odette Simard.
Photo: National Archives of Quebec, Télé-radiomonde, October 9, 1971
Shortly after the children left the cursed orphanage, the Simards moved to Île d’Orléans.
Their shared passion for music makes the siblings believe in better times. The flayed souls then buried their heavy secret to bear. Music should forget the worries of life, says Martin. We were there to entertain people. What we experienced remained hidden, he explains.
We started singing in the church on the Île d’Orléans. We’ve done funerals, weddings, baptisms. It didn’t take long for René to become popular, Lyne recalls.
The life of the Simards then changed a lot. With their famous pudding ritornello Laura Secord, Les P’tits Simard captured the imagination and have become Quebec’s favorite children.
It’s been 56 years since they left the orphanage. But it was only recently that Lyne and Martin realized they weren’t the only ones who had endured the agony of the nuns after hearing the stories of other survivors.
They decided to tell their story publicly to get rid of their suffering, but above all to help those forgotten by the Catholic orphanage system.
In search of justice
The story of the Duplessis orphans caused a stir in the 1990s: the first to be recognized by the government were the children wrongly treated as mentally retarded in orphanages converted into asylum. This deception of church and state made it possible to get more money from Ottawa.
In 2001, Quebec established a national reconciliation program and paid an average financial aid of US$25,000 to wrongly detained orphans.
Other Duplessis children who were mistreated and abused in orphanages were recognized under a second version of the program in 2006. Victims can receive $15,000 on the condition that they have lived in these facilities for at least two years.
Tired of the struggle, many survivors have accepted these sums, which they consider ridiculous and which represent neither compensation nor compensation for the abuse suffered.
The Congregation of Little Franciscans of Mary, whose motherhouse is in Baie-Saint-Paul, was responsible for the orphanage of the Immaculate.
Photo: Saguenay Historical Society/SHS-P002-S01-D1549-P02
The 5,500 Quebecers who received this aid were required to sign a waiver that prevents them from suing the government and religious communities. However, the Catholic Church did not pay a dime for the victims.
However, like Lyne and Martin Simard, 2,200 orphanage survivors received no recognition from the government. They fell through the cracks of the system because the criteria of the national reconciliation program do not take into account the harm done to children and its consequences. They didn’t live long enough in this welfare facility.
Luckily we didn’t stay there for two years because we might not be around to talk about it anymore, Martin jokes.
In order to seek justice, they are therefore part of a class action lawsuit that has failed in the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal and is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. However, they are aware that money can never erase the evil done to them by the Franciscan Sisters.
The nuns, dignitaries and benefactors of the orphanage when it opened in 1931.
Photo: Saguenay Historical Society
Sorry from the church
The nuns whom the Simards describe as torturers have since died. They demand an apology from the Church and the community of Little Franciscans of Mary who have never asked forgiveness from the victims.
Like many survivors of Catholic orphanages, Lyne and Martin followed the Pope’s visit to Canada closely in the summer of 2022. They rejoiced that victims of Aboriginal boarding schools finally received the Vatican’s long-awaited apology.
But their feelings were mixed, for the high priest said nothing about the orphanage abuse scandal that was the result of the complicity of church and state. However, the Duplessis orphans have been approaching the Vatican for years.
The orphans of Duplessis are people who could never live a normal life and will die soon, Martin saddens. We were and are dust under the carpet.
It cannot be said that Quebec protected the Catholic Church and religious communities by requiring survivors who received financial assistance from the National Program for Reconciliation with Duplessis Orphans to sign a release.
Martin and Lyne set out to shed light once and for all on the fate that was reserved for children in the orphanage system.
The Little Franciscans of Mary declined our interview requests. After the publication of this article, the community responded on their Facebook page.
The Franciscans say they were touched and dismayed to hear the testimonies from Radio-Canada. We welcome these painful echoes with respect and empathy, they write.
The Franciscans say there were about 600 nuns in their community at the time the orphanage closed in 1968.
Today, the Quebec community has 43 nuns whose average age is 83, they mention.
The Little Franciscans of Mary ensure that their mission is to educate young people in the faith, to care for the poor, to help the elderly with tenderness and to welcome unconditionally the abandoned.
The Simards’ testimony and other chilling stories from Catholic orphanage survivors will be presented as part of the report Sacrée impunit, which will air Thursday at 9pm on ICI TÉLÉ’s Enquête program.