St. Paul's Hostel is now officially considered a residential school.

Local lawyer Laura Cabott, who's been working on residential school files from across the North, received word from Ottawa on Wednesday that the former Dawson City school is being added to the list of residential schools eligible for the Common Experience Payment.

The settlement has been approved by courts throughout the country for residential school survivors.

'I'm very pleased,' Cabott said in an interview, noting many of her clients are survivors of the school.

The settlement will see survivors of the residential school system from 1920 to 1997 receive a $10,000 payment for the first year they were at an eligible school, with another $3,000 for each year afterwards.

There are also provisions for independent assessments for survivors who experienced abuse, as well as for researching and documenting the history of residential schools in Canada.

Survivors currently have until Aug. 20 to decide whether to opt out the settlement. If 5,000 opt out, it could make the package become void.

Originally, the Yukon's list of eligible schools included Choutla in Carcross, Coudert Hall/Yukon Hall, Shingle Point/All Saints in Aklavik, N.W.T. and Whitehorse Baptist Mission.

The settlement also has a process where survivors of schools not on the list can request their school be added. It will then be considered.

Cabott noted that 1,200 requests have come in to have 310 schools added to the list.

She remained confident St. Paul's would eventually be added to the list since it seemed to meet the criteria of a federally-funded residential school.

While the federal government funded the schools, they were run by churches.

'They've been researching this one,' she said, adding from 1920 to 1943, it was funded by the federal government before being turned over to the territory.

Yesterday, after receiving the news that St. Paul's would be added to the list of eligible schools, she informed one of her clients from the school who's now in his 90s of the news.

'He's pretty happy,' she said, adding a number of former students from the school are now in their 90s.

Patt Delaney is among those former students who have been pushing for the school to be included on the eligibility list.

While she attended St. Paul's for one year, she said her push has been more for her relatives who were there for years.

'I'm just so happy about that,' she said when she heard that St. Paul's has now made the list of eligible schools.

Earlier this year, Delaney and her uncle Richard Dickson spoke of their experiences at St. Paul's.

Dickson recalled he and his brother being taken away from Burwash in 1927 to the school by an Anglican bishop and not returning to his family for eight years after all his other siblings had grown up and moved away.

Delaney remembered being served the remainders of turnip from previous meals. She noted by the time she arrived there, the conditions at the hostel had improved from her uncle's time at the facility.

Sometimes, she said, older students would sneak into the vegetable garden to bring back fresh produce for the others. It was the only time they were served fresh food.

Dickson recalled being beaten up once a week for no reason and seeing his brother get beaten up so much that it eventually crippled him for life. It was Dickson who cared for him in his final years.

'He died in my arms,' Dickson said in a previous interview.

Earlier this year, in her move to have the school included, Delaney sent the Assembly of First Nations as well as Yukon MP Larry Bagnell a letter which included the names and some signatures of former students of St. Paul's.

In doing her research of exactly who went to St. Paul's, she came across a letter written by a relative seeking a school to be established in Burwash.

'Something should have been done to begin with,' she said yesterday.

While she acknowledged there's a number of other schools that should be included but aren't, she noted she focused specifically on St. Paul's because so many of her family members went there.

'I'm sure they'll be happy,' she said of other St. Paul's survivors.

Being included now means the survivors of the hostel now can decide whether to opt in or out of the settlement, Delaney said.