A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words
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Well, good gracious afternoon, everybody. So great to have you here. Jan Arden Podcast. Julie Van Rosendahl joins us again today. Adam Karsh. Boy, it just feels like June is going by like a rocket. And I mean, I feel like that's kind of been the vibe the last, I don't know, 16, 17 months is I feel like.

It's always Wednesday, and then it's suddenly Thursday, then we're in the weekend, and then it's like, oh my gosh, it's Sunday night, and we're going into another week. So here we are in well into the third week of June. It's kind of bittersweet because I know that the three of us are going to be looking at our calendars on like the 18th of August going, how did it become the 18th of August? So I don't know about you guys, but it's really interesting.

going by quickly. It's like a bullet train. Every day I have to stop and think about what day it is, what month it is. Is it fall or spring? I know the seasons are changing. Actually, no, it's full on summer now. Well, it's so short here. And I think that's why

Maybe Canadians are so lamenting, you know, the COVID restrictions. And it's because not only are we dealing with that, but it's not like California. We're not in L.A. where it is that endless summer. Although Californians will always tell me, my friends that live in L.A. and San Francisco and San Diego, oh, my God, I miss the seasons.

I miss the season so much. So we do definitely have that trade-off of spring, summer, winter, fall, which are extraordinary. The foliage, the plants, the smells. I like winter.

I do too. Yeah, I do. But it is, it's going by quickly. And plus, I love the flowers. It's all of it. It's gardening. It's the whole thing. I want to get right to the story. Julie was very fortunately able to join us kind of last minute, but she has had some incredible, really kind of mystical, coincidental, serendipitous, call it what you will,

I'm going to let Julie tell this story, but when she texted me a few nights ago about, you're not going to believe what happens when everyone, when anyone ever prefaces, you're not going to believe what's happened. I love going, Oh man, I can't wait to read this email. Yeah. Yeah. Because to me, it usually is something really great. And Julie has just had a really lovely experience that lifts your heart up, kind of lifts you into this,

place of, gosh, there is magic going on in the world. And coincidence, is it just coincidence? Or is it really divine intervention? Is it very deliberate? So this involves a painting. And I'm just going to let our lovely pal, Ms. Ben Rosendahl, just take it from here and go back to the beginning, because this story has been unfolding for you a little bit. But I don't want to miss out on where this started, Julie. Okay.

So it started with me procrastinating, you know, not doing my work, going on Facebook, looking at the, you know, my inbox of messages. And there was a message. I don't always see the ones that come from people I don't know, you know, the message requests. Yeah. I went into the message requests, you know, answering questions, looking at my messages. And there was a message from a woman.

named Melissa Polly and she posted a couple pictures of a painting one one of the painting one of the signature of the painting and said do you know anything about these I I just bought this painting at a goodwill for a dollar and I did it reverse right I did a reverse google image search on the signature and came up with a post that I had made on Instagram last remembrance day of my my

My dad's dad, my grandfather's, it feels funny saying grandfather because he died before I was born, but he still is. Yep.

My grandfather's painting of poppies that he painted in Flanders. They lived in Belgium. My dad immigrated to Canada in 1950 and his family. And so I posted this painting of poppies from Flanders that my grandfather painted in 1947 at the age of 24. And the signatures matched. F. Van Rosendahl.

So F. Van Rosendahl, very distinct signature, stands for Franz Van Rosendahl. So she sent it to me and I recognized it instantly. It was a, it is a bouquet of flowers, roses in a vase. It's an oil painting. It's very much in the Flemish style. And, and it, it, it,

it looked instantly familiar partly because I had seen another painting that's similar of his, um, that's much smaller. And, uh, but my parents don't have it. They only have the one painting of the poppies from Flanders. And so, so she says, I was like, that's yeah, that's clearly him. That's my grandfather. Where are you? And she's like, I'm in Cincinnati. Where are you? Like in Calgary, Alberta, how the, um,

H-E double hockey sticks. Did it get in Cincinnati? I have no family connections to Cincinnati. All I know of Cincinnati is that I love WKRP. Loved it. I know they put chili on their spaghetti there. That's about all I know. So that's enough. That's enough for me too. I often do enjoy chili on spaghetti, especially when I don't know what to eat, but carry on.

So, so we, we, you know, do this, this back and forth. She's showing me closeups of the painting. It's very, it's big. It's bigger than the poppy painting. It's got a very ornate old wood frame says made in Italy in the, on the back. There's no date on it. So, you know, I, I instantly called my mom. I didn't tell my dad right away because it was his 75th birthday that weekend and father's day. So I didn't tell him right away. And, you know, we, we,

And since showing him, he didn't recognize it. But going back and forth with Melissa, I was like, can I buy it from you? She's like, well, of course, I'll send it to you. So she packaged it up and mailed it. Apparently, it's arriving tomorrow. I've been tracking the package. And so for my dad's birthday on the weekend, I printed off a picture of the painting and

And I'm going to hold it up because we're on Zoom here. So I got to show Adam, if you haven't seen it. It's very, it's beautiful. It's, you know, yellow and white and red roses. It's thick paint. My dad says he recalls his father painting with a palette knife. So it's very thick. And yeah, so I packaged up the, you know, the image of the painting and gave it to my dad. And it's been very long.

It's been amazing. It's sort of bittersweet though. There's more to the story that I haven't told yet. What a wonderful, I want to hear a little bit about the, the, your, your grandfather's name. France. Yeah. And, and there, there's, there's another little piece of this that makes it, you know, one step further into the mystic. Which piece? Well, just for the name France and, and, and, and Frank and, and it just, there's just. Oh, right. Yeah.

Yeah, so Frank, so Herb Tarlick, played by Frank Bonner, on Davio Carapy, died that day, which is just a sort of bizarre little... So when my dad's family moved to Canada, they moved to Windsor, Ontario. They lived in an apartment above a tailor shop. And so the Twitter thread about this brought up the family of the tailor who owned the shop that my...

dad's parents rented from when they were growing up, when he was growing up in Windsor, Ontario, which is another bizarre part. And then someone on Instagram who I've been going back and forth with about, you know, baking, she said, that's my sister. That's my dad. That's my grandfather's building. So all these great connections that social media has, you know, allowed to happen facilitated, but it's,

So when they moved to Canada, a lot of people called him Frank because Franz was, you know, not as common, I guess, in Canada. So they were calling him Frank. And yeah, so the other part of the story is that there aren't a lot of happy memories that my dad has about his dad. This will make a difference, I think, in many ways. But it really was. And then now you've had...

Once again, if we go back to Buttergate, Julie has a tendency in the last few months to have these stories picked up by publications from all over the place. Yeah. So this story has once again been picked up and you have been doing interviews about, you know, the $1 painting from Cincinnati that was connected to your family. You know, you almost want to,

put one of those little cameras, a GoPro on your grandfather's painting where it's gone this last, you know, 80 years.

And that's the mystery, right? So I started talking to my cousin who lives in the, in the U S on that side of the family and about how, how it came to be in Cincinnati. So, so my grandfather disappeared in a small plane on his first solo flight off of Hawaii before I was born. So the late sixties, right? So we, he just never, they never found him. There was no wreckage. So I, I,

I knew this, we all sort of knew this. He just disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. He had left my dad's family. My dad and his sister were actually left to their own devices as young teenagers.

My dad lived in a boarding house and worked in an ice factory for a long time, put himself through school. And so he left. He apparently went to Vegas. So we've been doing all this sort of, you know, what do you know about this? What do you know about this? And so my cousin said, you know, I seem to recall there being some speculation that he

it was all a hoax because they never found any of the plane or any evidence of his disappearance. And so now we're thinking like when was this painting painted? Was it, we're assuming that it was between the time he left the family and those 10 years. My dad doesn't recall it coming from Belgium. They had not a whole lot of possessions coming from Belgium. In fact, I have one of his old wooden boxes that they packed all their things in and it's like two bread boxes big.

And, and so we think it was in that stretch, but you know, so he, there was another family involved. We're learning a little bit more about that. We don't think he had any other kids, but did he disappear? Like what happened to him? We don't know. Well, I think that he's with Amelia Earhart. Could be. They are, they are just in their early 120s and they're living together.

they're living quietly and happily on an Island somewhere and they're painting with Bob Harris. Yeah, probably just doing wonderful paintings. Listen, we have so much to talk about this show, but if you want to see the painting, I know Julie held it up for Adam and I, you can go on to at dinner with Julie on her Instagram. I know she's posted some stuff there and she's also dinner with Julie on Twitter and go on there. Take a look at the

painting leave some comments for julie anyway thanks for regaling that story i've got a bunch of stuff to talk about jan arden podcast we'll be right back welcome back to the jan arden podcast i'm here with julie and adam

These kinds of stories, I think, provide us with a lot of opportunity. Myself, personally. We, you know, we're talking a little bit about that on the break. But, you know, just, you know, it gives us an opportunity to re-examine things that kind of get, that fall through the cracks. Especially when we're, where we come from. I, myself, personally, have spent the last, well, year and a half since COVID started, writing a lot of music about people.

my descendants. Like, that's just what happened. That's just what unfolded. I didn't intend for it to happen. But I, you know, I'm very, I'm very curious about my family lineage. And of course, coming from a Mormon background on my dad's side,

lineage is hugely important to the Latter-day Saints, you know, keeping records of who belongs to who. And it's almost of a biblical nature of who begat, who begat, who begat. I mean, there's, you know, entire chapters of the Bible dedicated to all you'll read for like five hours is who came from who. Like they kept such records.

These were oral records until they were finally written down hundreds of years later. But I digress. Like my mom's mom had, you know, she was one of 17 children. And I'm just dying that there's this.

Well, those stories are certainly not uncommon. When you look at the turn of the century, you know, the late 1800s, and it wasn't just immigrant families. And I remember talking to my grandmother. She said, well, they needed workers on the farm. And I would be like, I don't even, I can't believe you just said that. But they did. They needed physical laborers.

Well, and I just finished reading a book about British home children and the tens of thousands of children that were brought over from, from Britain and sold to, to farms who needed cheap labor, free labor. So, I mean, I don't even know what to say to that, Julie. I know that, um,

Lauren Hawley, if you're listening to this, because I know Lauren has long been working on a project about just that. Lauren is such a gifted actor. She's living with her family in Oakville now, just outside of Toronto, but you would know Lauren from...

picket fences and dumb and dumber. And I'm cherry picking little bits of her career. Obviously, her very kind of tumultuous relationship with Jim Carrey. But I ran into her in my one flight that I've taken in the last year. She was at the airport in Vancouver, and we just had a bit of a chat. And she told me about this project of, you know, British home children.

I know, it's so zany to think about, but when you think about slavery in this country and really all the different facets of it, I think there's the obviously horrible stories of the African-American people

African people that were enslaved here as well. And, but a lot of those stories where they did need laborers and, and I'm just starting to learn about those British kids coming over. There's a website. You can look at the ship manifests. And so I did because my, my mom's side, my grandparents were from, from Britain and there are a lot of woodles on the ship manifest. And that's my family name on my mom's side.

Uh, but yeah, you know, I have a, I have a 15 year old who's very curious now about his background. And so, you know, my dad has been disconnected from his family, uh, back in Belgium because of some drama that, you know, occurred with my grandfather connected to this painting. And so I've never had relationship with my Belgian relatives, you know, I would love to have somewhere to stay if I ever went back to Belgium, but so he's been, he's been researching, you know, connecting on Facebook, social media and, and,

relearning Flemish, which was his first language. And yeah, I think a lot of people during the pandemic have become very nostalgic and are digging through the old photos and really sort of reconnecting with their pasts. Well, I mean, being a descendant, you know, and having the opportunity to look back and realizing that through these extraordinary circumstances that here you are in 2021 still standing after thousands and thousands of years. And it kind of, I don't, I'm not haunting. I'm

it is flabbergasting to me to picture the women, especially all your descendants standing one behind the one behind the other over this horizon, like going back 25,000 years. Oh yeah. It's amazing. And I, and I do like thinking about it, but like I was saying, I ended up writing a lot about

My dad and coming to the realization at my age, almost 60 years old, where

you know, these are just people trying to make their way through the world. They're not exclusively your parent. Yeah, that's true. You know, they're not just your parent. Like when I was growing up, I was like, these are the people that are supposed to look after me and do everything for me and make sure that I'm okay and provide me for everything. And it wasn't until much later where I really thought about

My dad's journey, his idea of what God was and mortality and being broke and how he felt and dealing with addictions. And he had a whole bucket full of stuff. And I never considered any of it. I just felt like, no, you are supposed to be dealing with me. And he didn't know what to do with us. My dad had no idea what to do with kids. Yeah.

Well, and I've always been really impressed that my dad is such a great dad. He's such a great supportive involved dad and he didn't have a good role model, you know, but hearing those stories. And I think it's important to tell those stories because you, you have such a deeper understanding of the people you're with, you know, and your family and your friends and, and what sort of shaped who they became, you know, their experiences, right.

And so sometimes we need, you know, we just need to ask more questions of each other and learn those things or have paintings show up that act as a catalyst to have these discussions. No, for sure. You know, this certainly isn't a painting story, but I remember just getting little snippets of things from ancestry.ca. I remember like a hundred years ago, I went on there and I did the trial period and I was looking through things and I still get these little

shots. We found a match for you. And of course I always click on them because I'm like, Oh, who, who is it? It's always my dad's side. And I knew about my dad's grandfather a little bit traveling up from Utah, the Mormons, like I said, they settled in Cardston and built the Mormon temple there. But anyway, when I clicked onto his name, Hiram,

his birthday is the same day as mine, March the 27th. So I don't know, I just sat there, I was clicking through my computer sitting in bed. And I just thought of all the days, you know, March the 27th, he was born. And I'm thinking, here's somebody I never knew that didn't know me, that is responsible for me walking around on the planet. And, you know, genetics really is such a funny thing. And

I just was having this conversation with a friend of mine like two weeks ago about, you know, we have our green eyes or brown eyes or the skin tone or how tall we are, short we are. We have all these things that are delivered through us, you know, through DNA. But I often think about the memories that have traveled through time and, you know, that kind of information, um,

like the whole idea of deja vu and feeling like you were someplace that is so familiar. Yes. And I think about it as, is that somebody, an ancestral memory that somehow like dust sifts through the air, you know, when you see that a beam of sunlight with particles floating around, like, are we able to have that memory?

delivered to us and not really even understand what they are, why? I agree. Or unexplained fears, you know? Sure. Why? Were they somebody else's? Exactly. Did something happen and, you know, in a past life or to somebody else? Like there's so many fascinating layers that, you know, we don't understand and it's,

it's amazing what the possibilities are to me, you know? And I think that's, that's the really unique thing is to entertain those possibilities. And, you know, when people talk about their spiritual or religious beliefs, they're,

I don't think it's up to us to, you know, point this long finger at them and going, that's not right. That's not what it is. I believe in this. And this is the one true thing. And the one I, I hate that human beings do that to each other. And I hate that we've spent tens of thousands of years fighting over whose God is bigger than, Oh my God's bigger than yours. My God's righter than yours. My God's truer. And obviously,

I don't, you know, it doesn't matter who you are. We really don't know all the pieces. Nope. Anyway, we'll be right back. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast.

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Just relax, take it easy. You're still young, that's your fault. There's so much you have to know. Find a girl, settle down. If you want, you can marry. Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy. Welcome back. I'm Jan, I'm Julie, Adam. We are a band.

And we're about to play our new song called, what were you saying about your sister? If you're just joining us, we're talking about ancestry. We're talking about descendants. We're talking about those magic connectors that sometimes we overlook. But, you know, at certain points in our lives, we're given these opportunities to re-examine family, to re-examine old wounds, to re-examine our

things that felt unjust and that we were you know wrong you know someone done us wrong and you know you get to a point where you're like how long do I carry this around so um Julie's whole story about the painting and and you know her dad not really having much of a relationship with the guy at all her dad's now you know trying to travel back a little bit and uncover and find those connectors again so what were you going to say about your sister

Well, we were talking about these sort of unexplained connections that we have to people. And so my sister, when we were young, had this recurring dream that was very specific. It was about, you know, going outside in the middle of the night and there was a big hole in the street in front of our house and she would go down into this hole and, uh,

ghost would come out of the wall of the hole in a long nightgown holding one of those candles, you know, one of the candle holders that you used to, you know, carry around the house. Anyway, in a nutshell, that was her dream. And when my niece, her daughter was little, and my niece was very tuned into things. She would see people and things and, you know, all kinds of stuff. But she, one morning, she told her mom about this dream that she had, and it was exactly the same dream.

It was the same dream, you know, which just, it gives me goosebumps just, just talking about it again. But yeah, you know, there are just all these parallels. Right. Soon after my, my grandmother on my mom's side died, my sister and I were in the kitchen and we were at the counters, but with our backs to each other, cause the counter was sort of L shaped and, and just, you know, working away, cooking, making dinner or whatever. And

All of a sudden we both had this clear feeling, sensation, smell. I don't know what it was, but we both turned around and looked at each other and said, grandma's here. Like it was so, it was clear as day and it was out of nowhere. We weren't talking about it. You know, it wasn't just these things, you know, they happen. We just have to be open to them. I think we've been so conditioned to always want proof. Oh, believe it when I see it.

There's something that happens to the human heart as it gets older and it lets go of whimsy and it lets go of the idea of endless possibility because we're so rooted in, you know, we're always being told to be realistic, right?

From the time we dare to dream something as a child, you know, you got to be more realistic because if you're thinking of going into that, you know, the chances of you getting anywhere. I mean, I can't tell you how important it was for me to have parents that never once uttered those words to me to be realistic. They, you know, mom would say, well, why not?

Well, sure. You're just as good as anybody else. And it's not about that anyway. It's just, you just have to be determined. So those are the parents that I had, and I'm sure they were very frightened for me going into entertainment. I'm sure they just thought, God, what is this kid going to be up against? But yeah, I love those stories that the idea of endless possibility, the idea of

You know, life isn't static. It never is. And I don't think our time before here was static. And I don't think it's going to be afterwards. I think that energy is so permanent. There's just, there's gotta be some kind of permanence, but I love that you felt your grandmother, you know, looming around. I certainly feel my mom all the time. My dad too, a little bit more lately. I think he sneaks into my mind more than I care to admit that,

Just because I did have a contentious relationship with him. Yep. I know. And I have to work on forgiving him. And I have to work on going forward. And he's been gone six years now. And I never knew him. I did not know him. Yeah. At all. Yeah. I couldn't even talk to him. So I'm envious when you talk about your dad, Julie. I know. I know. I really won the lottery when it came to my parents. Like, I really did. You know? And it's hard to...

I mean, relationships with your parents are complicated even when they're good. Right. But I have so many friends and know so many people who have had tough, complicated relationships with their parents or they've lost their parents early on. And yeah, I really, I really lucked out with mine. Well, I, you, you see that all the time, you know, father's day just came and went and, you know, there's lots of comments about,

which this year really surprised me because normally I don't like reading through Father's Day comments because they're very glowing and people post pictures and, you know, my dad, this and that, what a great granddad. And obviously that was never my experience, although that I was proud of my dad. He was one of the hardest working people I ever saw. He set that example for me. He could fix anything, do anything. He was extremely clever. I think I wrote on my Instagram page that he could fix anything in the world except for himself.

Like he just, he just didn't know how to put the bricks back in that wall. So he just carried it around. It felt like disappointment to me. He just carried around disappointment, but I absolutely know that he loved me. Yeah. And I, I don't doubt that for a second. He didn't really say it. I think he said it once. But you know, that my mom stuck it out with him still, still,

makes me roll my eyeballs almost out of the back of my head. Like what, I guess that was a time and a place. I, you know, there's so many relationships during 60s, 70s and 80s that kind of, they just went through it. Well, what do you do? You can't leave them now. I'm 70 years old. Am I supposed to leave them now? No. And that was the time, right? The generation you just, you didn't, it was such a, so scandalous to split up. And remember when they called

families, broken families, broken homes. Yeah. What the hell is that? When the parents split up, they come from a broken home, you know, and, and I'm so glad we've gotten past that and realize that if you're in a bad relationship, you should probably leave that relationship. But so many people stay together for the sake of the kids. You know, they thought it was the right thing to do. We're taught to stick it out, right? We're taught to stick it out, no matter what, stick with your friends, stick with your, you know, your commitments and,

And I think a lot of people just did that or hung on to that hope that things might get better, you know? Oh, I've done that, Julie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've hung in. My last relationship was 10 years. That is a record for me. Yeah. And I kept thinking it was going to get better. But now I can also...

take a deep breath and realize my responsibility in all of it too. I think I felt so victimized for so long that I, but then I think, Oh my God, you were, you were not easy either. And I hate realizing that I hate being sensible and going and just realizing my part in everything. Yeah. Going forward. I,

As the months roll on, the last thing I want to do is be in a relationship. Like not a formidable, like formal idea of one. I just think I'm enjoying my friendship so much, enjoying coming and going, the idea of traveling. And I don't think I will have that piece of the pie that my parents did. I don't see my life that way.

All my relationships are significant. Like, do you have a significant other? I'm like, all my people in my life, which aren't a lot, are very significant to me. Exactly. And I think relationships can look different now. You know, we've sort of understood that they're more fluid and they're not as, you know, you don't have to marry the person and move in with them and make that sort of grand plan.

gesture. One thing I've learned over the years is that loving somebody is not enough. I love a lot of people, but it's not, uh, it's not a reason to, to stay, you know, living with them or in a relationship with them and that romantic relationship with them anyway. But yeah, I think we, I think our ideas of, of what constitutes a relationship and even a romantic relationship has really evolved over the years and, and it can mean a lot more things.

It can. If you're listening to the Jan Arden podcast, we're going to be right back with more helpful tips of how you can circumnavigate the globe without having to get married. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast show. Variety, Julie and Adam are here with me. We've been talking about

It's been actually really good for me, just descendants and ancestry and the magic that exists in the world every day that we have to pay or at least stand still long enough that we can see it, we can understand it. And this is kind of, it's great because the whole idea of our descendants and our past and our heritage brings me to this because I wanted to talk about this today. And that is, you know, what has unfolded in here in Canada the last decade.

Well, the last 150 years, but the finding of 215 unmarked Indigenous graves in Kamloops at a residential school. And now you'll be hearing this show on Friday or Saturday. We are pre-recording the show, but they are about to do a news conference talking about probably hundreds of more children

I'm assuming they're, once again, that age range from very young to late teenagers, and that's happening in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan had more residential students than any other province in Canada. The West in particular had more residential schools than anywhere else in this country. And it's hard even to speak about. I just...

I guess all I want to do is listen and learn, not throw my useless two cents into anything right now. I'm just listening to the stories that these people have, these nightmare, horrible stories. Adam has been working on a special. Am I permitted to say that, Adam?

I think so. Yeah, we're trying to promote it. And I've seen messaging on Instagram and social media. So it's not a secret or anything. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about what is going to be coming out on the 30th, Adam, of June? I'm on the Downey Wenjeck webpage right now. I'm just going to read some of the messaging here. It's called The Day to Listen. And it's Wednesday, June 30th.

amplifying Indigenous voices. And between 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time, all radio stations, pretty much every radio station across Canada is going to be airing stories of survivors and other Indigenous people telling their stories about the horrific tragedies that occurred with these residential schools. You know, the road to reconciliation is going to be very long.

I'm glad to see that, you know, provincially they announced yesterday that they were making $8 million available to the Indigenous people here in this province to find more unmarked graves and to find out information.

I know that there's a group of nuns. I'm sorry that what they were called eludes me, the name of the actual group, but they are releasing all the records that they have presently. They're coming forward, all the archival stuff. I think they're being released to either the University of British Columbia or something like that. And so that people can start going through, led by Aboriginal leaders,

And that's exactly how it should be done. It should be done independently. I don't think the government should be involved in that. This should be led by the Indigenous people, for their people. But it is so disgusting and hard to believe. And I knew about residential schools. I think they were kind of on the periphery. I'm embarrassed to say I never pondered what that actually meant to people.

I didn't think about what it actually meant to residential school. And I think a lot of people are in that boat of just not taking the time to understand the genocide that was put upon these people. And that's what it was. They unilaterally tried to wipe them out.

And erase them. Erase their culture, their language. Yes. Erase their culture. Break, break, break their, you know, erase their culture. Break up their families. And that loss is... Permanent. Yeah. How do you, where do we go from here? Well, you begin, you begin down a road of, first of all, finding these children. Finding, finding all of them. Yeah. And doing something to them.

remember their lives, to celebrate their lives, to hopefully identify who these people are and, you know, who they belong to. That's a, that's at the very least the beginning of it. And I don't, I don't even know you're right, Julie, where, where do you begin? But it begins with listening. And I'm glad that there is a day like

You know, Adam's putting his heart and soul into piecing this together. And like you said, Adam, it's been extremely difficult for you to listen to the stories. Oh, it's hard. Yeah. Emotionally draining. And I didn't know the story of residential schools and what happened. I cannot believe that that happened in this country. It's really bad.

Well, and it's curriculum. We need to take a look at what we're choosing to teach in our schools across the country, you know, and you know, my sister worked on, it was doing her PhD in curriculum and it's just, it's such a big part of it. What we're, what we're passing on, what we're teaching the next generations. I, you know, I was looking at the recommendations of the truth and reconciliation committee commission and they,

years ago had requested $1.5 million to do, you know, to investigate the properties, the schools and look for unmarked graves. And I feel like that's such a small amount. Why haven't we not done this? You know, why has this not been? Well, because Julie,

I think, you know, we have to come to terms with they didn't want it to be done. No, I know the answer. Yeah. And it's hard. And all those whys. Why are we just... Do you actually think anyone would have come forward saying, yeah, we need to look...

these residential schools. And we need to, we think there's a lot of young lives lost here and that are, that are not accounted for. You know, you cannot tell me that they didn't see those records, you know, deaths between 19, you know, 1885 and 1995 was the last residential school in 1995. It,

It's so recent. We were, you know, most of us were in school when residential schools were operating. We had some Indigenous kids at Springbank Community High School. You know, I remember them fondly. They, you know, they were in our school. So I don't, you know, and I don't remember ever being taught. I know we're running out of time on this show, but I didn't want to leave everyone today without addressing the

you know, my horror and just sorrow and my, just, I, to all the Indigenous families, to every single individual across this country, I'm so sorry on a personal level. I'm just, I'm sorry. And I'm just going to listen. I've got wonderful Indigenous friends, you know,

that I just, you know, rely on. I'm not looking for answers and I don't think we can expect them to teach us or school us, but now is the time to listen to the elders of each and every one of these communities and to stand and wait until we are called upon to do what they need us to do.

And to amplify. Amplify their voices. Yeah, amplify their voices. Very well said, Julie. There is no words. I'm stumbling because I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I don't want to say nothing. So at the risk of sounding uninformed, uneducated, yes, I'm all those things. I don't know.

I'm stumbling. I'm grappling to even speak to this. Thank you for listening today. Adam Karsh, Julie Van Rosendahl, thank you so much for your story about your grandfather's painting. And I hope it does open up some doors for your dad and your family just to put some of those pieces together and find those missing clues. But the painting is a hand reaching out from the past for sure.

And an invitation for understanding, an invitation for peace of mind. And anyway, you've been listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. Toodaloo. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.