It was on Sept. 2, 1963, that RCMP officers from the Lytton, B.C., detachment and a supervisor from St. George's residential school for native children arrived at Terry (Coyote) Aleck's home.

'They had a paddywagon come up to my grandmother's house,' said Aleck, 47. 'I was seven years old.'

The RCMP officers said they were taking the oldest son and would arrest anyone who stopped them.

'And that was my introduction into a school system,' Aleck told several hundred high school students in Whitehorse yesterday morning. He was one of two men to tell the teenagers about persecution they faced because of their race.

After being taken away to school, Aleck wouldn't see his parents for eight years until his father arrived and took him to Seattle, where 'bigger demons' waited in the form of drugs and street life.

In the Anglican Church school's basement, the youngster's head was shaved and his clothes taken, replaced with a uniform. He was then left in the junior dorm.

'And I bawled my eyes out because I didn't know where I was, what was going on.'

His first two years were 'OK,' said Aleck. He learned how to stay in line, 'mind my Ps and Qs,' make beds 'Army style' and how to pray.

Then he moved up to the intermediate dorm, where residence supervisor Derek Clarke reigned. That man would later be jailed for sexual abuse against boys in his care.

'That's when the troubles began,' said Aleck, who was one of Clarke's numerous victims.

'I was at his whim anytime and anywhere. That's the horror of my journey,' he said. 'I basically just survived ... day to day. I became docile, somebody existing.'

As punishment, boys who misbehaved scrubbed stairs and toilets, sometimes with toothbrushes. Other times, a studded, leather strap was used on them until they cried. If the boys didn't cry, they were strapped until they did.

It was 1987 when Aleck stepped forward and reported Clarke to the RCMP, the first of seven to do so. But it wasn't until the survivors fired their first law firm after their case languished in the courts for a decade and hired a new one to sue the government and the church that the legal part of his journey finally came to an end this February with a win.

His entire life story is available for public viewing in the court documents, said Aleck.

Though it was incredibly painful to relive the memories, it felt good to step forward and put an end to Clarke's abuse. Being drug and alcohol free for the last 17 years also feels good, he said.

Getting to a place where he could feel good about who he was took detours through drug addiction, broken marriages and attempted suicide.

In 1969, Aleck's father took him out of the residential school and took him to Seattle.

Five years later, St. George's fired Clarke, but never reported the abuse. Five years after that, the school closed, burning to the ground a year or two later.

By then, Aleck was back in Lytton and a member of the first nation's council. The elected leaders opted to build an elders' home on the now-empty lot where the residential school stood.

The elders questioned why they would build there, but he'd buried his own horrors from St. George, and didn't 'clue in' why an available piece of land shouldn't be used, Aleck said.

'This is a demon ... a big demon our people are facing,' he told the students.

At that time, in the early 1980s, Aleck was married and sober, attending Alcoholics Anonymous. But his anger 'squeaked out,' he said, and one day he returned from a trip to find his belongings thrown out of the house.

That summer of 1985 he fell off the healing road, and started a relationship with a woman who partied and drank, too. He used pot, then sold it, then used cocaine.

He woke up Dec. 7, 1986, with booze, pot and coke in his room and the working end of his .30-.30 rifle in his mouth.

'All I had to do was reach down and push that trigger,' he said. 'It was just an arm's length away.'

Putting the gun aside, he asked himself, 'What am I doing? What is this all about?'

For the first time since he left St. George's, Aleck got on his knees and prayed, asking the Creator for a sign.

Aleck didn't know the reserve's drug and alcohol counsellor had a key to his apartment.

'Five minutes later I heard the door open. I smiled my drunken smile and said, Thank you. You've just saved my life.''

The counsellor flushed his drugs and booze down the toilet, and Aleck walked the 17 miles from the reserve into Lytton in the middle of the night. Despite the north wind and mid-winter weather, he refused rides from people who stopped to help him.

The counsellor he'd asked for help from got him into detox, and then into a two-month treatment program in Vernon.

The only man in his otherwise all-female talking group, Aleck was picked out two weeks later in front of the larger treatment group as someone who wasn't working on his problems.

'Boy, that popped my bubble,' he told the several hundred high school students in the F.H. Collins gym. 'I realized, Wow, I got busted. I can't hide anymore.''

The next four weeks were incredibly intense as he started tugging on his demon's tail. He recalls letting loose on a boxing bag for a solid 50 minutes, scaring the women in his group and the counsellors who couldn't believe so much rage was in such a small package.

He speaks highly of the counsellors and elders who've helped him over the years, and who he continues to go back to when he needs help.

One counsellor had him go to the Thompson River, pick up a rock and give it a name rage, anger, etc. ó, and throw it in the water.

A counsellor, knowing the RCMP were investigating Clarke but couldn't get any victims to speak out, talked Aleck into telling the police about Clarke's abuse.

'They said thank you, we've been waiting for someone to step forward,' Aleck said of the RCMP.

After three hours of painful disclosure in the Lytton RCMP detachment with two police officers, Aleck thought it was over.

But another counsellor prodded the young man further, urging him to take on the federal government and the Anglican Church, 'a tall order for this little human being.'

That precedent-setting lawsuit would take years. Meanwhile, Aleck lost friends to suicide or vehicle crashes. Some had disclosed their abuse, but didn't have anyone to support them through that painful process.

It's still a painful process for Aleck, who is separated from his current wife and his two daughters, 11 and 13.

A family violence counsellor, he was a 'perfect role model to the community,' but not within his own home, said Aleck.

'I was a mean son of a gun,' he said. 'They left me last May.'

It was an opportunity to take a look at himself again, work on his problems. He attended a treatment program on Vancouver Island for people under post traumatic stress, learning from elders and medicine people, drumming and doing sweats.

It was at this time his daughters asked to hear him speak publicly about his story. Despite all the disclosures, court proceedings and school talks, he'd never told them about the sexual and physical abuse he suffered.

'They were in awe,' said Aleck. 'They realized where I was coming from, the pain I was dishing out to them, where it all started.'

It was only then that he really started connecting with his children. He doesn't know if he'll get back together with his wife, but he noted when they separated, they both took off their rings and put them in a safety deposit box.

Before this trip North to the Yukon, his wife retrieved their rings for them. Aleck was wearing his yesterday.

Residential school abuse is a multi-generational issue, he told the students, pointing out they were born the year St. George's closed.

'This issue is going to be regurgitated over and over again.'