Mission RCMP says it's fortunate that no one was "seriously injured" when a pickup truck driver struck four people with his vehicle.

The pedestrians were among a group walking along Lougheed Highway to the location of the former St. Mary's Residential School. They wanted to raise awareness about what happened there.

Two of those hit by the vehicle were sent to hospital with injuries. The motorist did not remain on scene.

"While our investigation has only just begun, at this point this appears to be a case of someone being unhappy that their trip was slightly delayed, and took it upon themselves to endanger the lives of others to try to save a few minutes," Const. Harrison Mohr of Mission RCMP said in a statement.

One of the marchers, Robert Jago, tweeted that one person was actually badly injured. Jago, a member of the Kwantlen First Nation and Nooksack Tribe, is a founding member and contributor to the Coast Salish History Project.

"The old man in the Chevy did it," Jago declared. "Appeared to aim at him on the median."

https://twitter.com/rjjago/status/1533174181667344385

According to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, missionaries opened a boarding school at the St. Mary mission in the Fraser Valley in 1863.

It was moved to a new location in 1882 and then a new school was built in 1933. It was operated by the Catholic Church. 

"The school closed in 1984," the IRSHDC website states. "In 2004, a former school employee was convicted of 12 counts of indecent assault in relation to his time at the school and was sentenced to three years in prison."

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada have documented 4,117 deaths of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children in residential schools. About 150,000 children and teenagers were forced to attend these institutions, which were operated for more than a century before the final one closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.

The former chair of the TRC, Murry Sinclair, has estimated that 6,000 or more Indigenous children might have died as a result of abuse or neglect in these schools. Various churches ran these institutions under contracts with the federal government.

In a 1996 report to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, historian J.S. Milloy pointed out that the apprehension of Indigenous kids and placement in residential schools was seen by some as a way to reduce the likelihood of Indigenous insurrections.

"The Presbyterian church, lobbying the government in December of that year [1885] for what became Thomas Moore's residential school north of Regina, included on the list of anticipated benefits that, as Dewdney reported it, 'the Indians would regard them [their children] as hostages given to the whites and would hesitate to commit any hostile acts that might endanger their children's well-being'," Milloy wrote.

"Such a belief, though seemingly outlandish, was not rare," he continued. "In the following year, for example, the Department received the same opinion from one of its senior employees - J.A. Macrae '...it is unlikely that any Tribe or tribes would give trouble of a serious nature to the Government whose members had children completely under Government control.' "