Today, September 30, 2026, marks our sixth annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Also referred to as Orange Shirt Day, it honours the children who never returned home from Canadian residential schools, the survivors, their families, and their communities. It is a step towards understanding a shameful and horrific piece of our Canadian history that we certainly were not taught about in grade school. And, hopefully, a genuine attempt at reconciliation.
The Residential Schools were a system of boarding schools, funded by the Canadian government, and administered by “Christian churches.” Their purpose was to isolate indigenous children from their families to make it easier to assimilate them into the “preferred” Canadian culture. The system ran across Canada for over 100 years, with the last schools finally closing in the 1990s.
More than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from across Canada were forced to attend the schools, often far from their families. Thousands never made it home.
Imagine a young child torn from their family and home, deprived of their own language and culture, suffering terrible conditions – malnutrition, disease, humiliation, physical and sexual abuse.
Now imagine that child was your own.
My heart breaks for all the children who endured that system. And for those who died. I feel great sadness for their families. I hope that, as a nation, we all feel that heartache and regret and continue down a road of meaningful reconciliation.
