Case information

None.

Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

The facts as recited in the judgment of the Court of Appeal are as follows. The Appellant resided as a small child with his siblings and parents in a relatively remote area on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The Appellant attended the Christie Residential School located on Meares Island, about four miles by water from Tofino, British Columbia. The Respondent is a Catholic missionary order comprised of priests and brothers. Since approximately 1938, Oblate priests and brothers were in charge of the school. The Appellant and his siblings were in attendance at the school as residential school pupils in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the time material to this case, the education and social functions of the school were under the direction of the Respondent and whichever order of nuns was responsible for the education, supervision and care of the children attending the school. The federal government contributed with a per capita grant to assist in sustaining the fiscal operations of the school. Residential schools were required to adhere generally to the provincial curriculum and were subject to inspection by local education officials.

Saxey, the individual who was found to have regularly assaulted the Appellant, was a member of the Cheeleshat Band from the west coast of the island. The religious personnel who were called as witnesses by the Respondent at the trial indicated that there was no evidence that any personnel at the school during the relevant time detected any untoward behaviour of Saxey concerning the Appellant or any of the other pupils. The Appellant testified that around 1957, when he was in his second year as a pupil at the school, Saxey began luring him to his room in a building located on the school premises by promising to give him candy. He said that when he went up to the room he was sexually assaulted by Saxey. He testified that up until about 1962 Saxey continued to lure him to his room on the promise of giving him candy and performed numerous sexual assaults upon him. The Appellant did not bring this conduct of Saxey to the attention of anyone at the school. The Appellant graduated from Christie in 1965. The Appellant did not report the behaviour of Saxey in any detailed way prior to his interaction with police officers around 1995.

Saxey died around 1986 and was thus not available at the time when the allegations of assault first came to be made. The trial judge found that the Appellant was a credible witness and he accepted that a number of sexual assaults had occurred as described by him. He found vicarious liability against the Respondent, holding that it was liable as an employer for the actions of Saxey. Consequent upon this finding of liability, he awarded $233,400 in damages to the Appellant. The issue of alleged negligence on the part of the Respondent was not addressed by the trial judge. The Respondent appealed. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, setting aside the finding of vicarious liability and remitting the case to trial on the issue of negligent conduct.