The oldest survivor of Canada’s residential school system has died at age 111.

Marguerite Wabano — whom many called Gookum, Cree for “grandmother” — passed away in her home in Moosonee, Ont., late Friday night, relative Stephen Roy confirmed Saturday.

Wabano was born in Jan. 28, 1904. As a young girl, she was taken from her family and sent to a residential school run by Roman Catholic nuns in Fort Albany, Ont., for two years — more than a century ago. After two years, Indian Timeaccording to the Indian Time newspaper, her family moved farther into the bush to hide Wabano and her siblings from school authorities.

Wabano later married and had seven children. As of April 2014, she had 23 grandchildren, 77 great-grandchildren and 81 great-great-grandchildren, according to Indian Time.

Despite her time at the residential school, she was never bitter about her experience and offered help and comfort to younger generations, Roy said via Twitter. Roy is distantly related to Wabano through his mother’s side.

“She was looked at as surrogate mother to many who also went through the rez schools,” Roy said, adding that Wabano had helped his own mother with getting past her experiences in a residential school and go on to live a good life.

Wabano, who spoke only Cree, was one of several aboriginal leaders and residential school survivors who were given seats of honour on the floor of the House of Commons in 2008 as then-prime minister Stephen Harper delivered an official apology for the federal government’s residential school system program.

Under the system, thousands of aboriginal children were taken from their homes and placed in boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their native languages or practice cultural customs. Many faced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school employees.

Wabano said the apology brought her “hope and comfort.”

“I have never (experienced) anything like this before, and it’s the first time for all nations,” she said at the time.

Wabano’s death comes just weeks after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised “to have a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition, rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership” as a part of the Liberal Party’s platform.

So far, Trudeau has appointed Canada’s first aboriginal justice minister, Jody Wilson-Rayboul, and promised to call a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.

With files from Joanna Smith