Residential school survivor displays hundreds of toy trucks to heal lost childhood
As he walks forward along the river, Gib thinks back on his childhood dream.
“I wish I was a truck driver,” he says before moving his hand like he’s holding a pencil. “I used to sketch trucks. Free hand. By myself.”
Gib started drawing them when he was about six, when he began attending the Kuper Island residential school. His wife Loretta says they weren’t allowed toy trucks there.
“He was putting [his truck drawings] on his wall,” Loretta says. “Because he couldn’t play with them, him and the other students.”
The truck pictures were Gib’s gifts to the other kids in lieu of the real thing until he found, during his decade at the residential school, that he’d lost the ability to draw altogether.
“I tried so hard to bring it back,” Gib says. “But the abuse, they really pushed it away.”
Gib says he hasn’t drawn since.
Instead, he’s focused on creating a family with Loretta. They’ve been married 46 years and Gib ensured that their six children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had countless toy trucks to play with.
“[The trucks] just start overflowing in the house,” Loretta laughs. “And I said [to Gib], ‘You’re going to have to do something!’”
“Hey! I got an idea!” Gib recalls thinking. “So I start building this fence.”
A small fence that, over the past 14 years, has expanded to hold a big collection. The three-level structure, where Allenby Road crosses the Cowichan River, features hundreds of toy vehicles of various sizes.
“It’s my hobby,” Gib says. “It’s my lost childhood.”
It’s also an opportunity to turn toys that he and Loretta buy at thrift stores and garage sales into gifts for those who ask. To give what Gib never got.
“It just makes him feel better to do this,” Loretta says, starting to cry. “I just love him so much and I know what he’s been through.”
She also knows that more than a place to store his toy trucks, Gib’s display has become a space to honour too many others’ unfulfilled dreams.
Gib says he thinks of the individual kids he went to school with a displays a specific vehicle for every one. There’s a tractor for the boy who wanted to be a farmer, a fire truck for the one who hoped to be a firefighter.
“Everything I put there was… to help them,” Gib says. “[Each truck], that’s a child.”
And the boy who once drew trucks to inspire hope is now the man who displays them to provide healing.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Northern Ont. lawyer who abandoned clients in child protection cases disbarred
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Maple Leafs fall to Bruins in Game 3, trail series 2-1
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
'It was instant karma': Viral video captures failed theft attempt in Nanaimo, B.C.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
What is changing about Canada's capital gains tax and how does it impact me?
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
New Indigenous loan guarantee program a 'really big deal,' Freeland says at Toronto conference
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
'Life was not fair to him': Daughter of N.B. man exonerated of murder remembers him as a kind soul
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.