National Truth and Reconciliation Day

Today – September 30, 2021 – is Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day.

Here is the information I found about it:

“This solemn day has been established to honour the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities, and to ensure public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools as a vital component of the reconciliation process.”

The inspiration for Orange Shirt Day (also September 30) came from Phyllis Webstad who is Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation (Canoe Creek Indian Band). On her first day of residential schooling at six years old, she was stripped of her clothes, including the new orange shirt she had picked out and her grandmother bought for her. She never got it back. The orange shirt now symbolizes how the residential school system took away the indigenous identity of its students.

What this day symbolizes hurts my heart. It is hard to grasp that children could be given no love or tenderness by adults, but instead were handled with cruelty and degrading, inhuman treatment – just because of who they were.

I’ve noticed that a few people around here have hung out orange t-shirts or orange somethings, so I attempted to shape a heart and hung it on my weathered deck railing.

There are many posts I want to add to my blog but this one takes priority today.

Have you done anything special for this important day?

Thanks for reading, … and keep in touch!