Many of us will recall our primary school education and the well-intentioned teachers who taught us that Canada is a nation founded jointly by the French and English. The various conflicts, treaties, and miscellaneous politicking between them, we were told, culminated in a small meeting in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in 1864. At that meeting, the story continued, the Canadian Confederation was born. Though, Canada’s ‘birth certificate’ would not be signed until July 1, 1867.

            This neatly packaged, fantastical narrative, as we all now know, crumbles immediately under the weight of even the slightest scrutiny. Not only are the invaluable political and economic contributions of Indigenous Peoples largely (if not entirely) disregarded, but so too is the brutality of colonialism erased. Predating the British North America Act by more than 30 years, the first Indian Residential School opened in Ontario in 1831. In the years that followed, more than 130 schools would open their doors and house the Indigenous children forcibly separated from their families across Canada. Between 1831 and 1996, the year the last residential school ceased operations in Canada, it is estimated that approximately 150,000 Indigenous children attended, with more than 6,000 children dying as a result of neglect, disease, and other forms of physical and even sexual abuse. These various abuses, survivors recall, included beatings, confinement, being chained, and being underfed and malnourished.

            In recent years, Indigenous communities across Canada have begun to launch their own investigations into residential schools and the schools’ myriad generational impacts on their communities. In May of 2021, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation near Kamloops, British Columbia, announced that ground-penetrating radar technology had revealed the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the (former) Kamloops Indian Residential School. Several weeks later in June 2021, the Cowessess First Nation outside Regina, Saskatchewan announced that it had deployed similar radar technology and located 751 unmarked graves at a cemetery near the (former) Marieval Indian Residential School.

            The day immediately following the horrific discovery in Kamloops, MPs in Ottawa moved swiftly to pass a piece of legislation that would create a national day for Truth and Reconciliation, known at the time as Bill C-5. The newly created statutory holiday would apply to all federally regulated workers and occur each year on September 30. In a social media post the day legislation was passed, former Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault wrote:

Buried without a name, far from home. Families that could never heal. Stories that could never be told. Grieving that could never truly begin. Commemorating the tragedy of residential schools must go beyond words. I thank my colleagues for taking action and passing Bill C-5.

As part of the national day for Truth and Reconciliation, Canadians are encouraged to wear orange coloured shirts to raise awareness of the complex and lasting intergenerational impact the residential school system has had upon Canada’s Indigenous population. The orange shirt, according to Canadian Heritage, symbolizes the painful losses experienced by Indigenous children, reminding us that Every Child Matters.

            As one step on our country’s long journey towards achieving meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, Truth and Reconciliation Day becomes more than a federal statutory holiday. It is part of a larger struggle to abandon the moral absolution afforded by the ‘two founding nations’ myth. It is an opportunity for each of us to learn how to sit with the discomfort brought forward by truthful conversations about the bloodshed, tears, and heartbreak that underlie our country’s founding. And as we sit in this discomfort, I hope we pause and consider not only the sheer scale upon which damage was done and its lasting impact on Indigenous Peoples and their communities, but the meaning of the phrase Every Child Matters.