Canada marks first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
CTV
Thursday marks Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, as communities across the country honour Indigenous survivors and children who disappeared from the residential school system.
The new statutory holiday, which the federal government announced in June, asks the country to reflect on Canada’s history of mistreatment of Indigenous people and the lasting intergenerational trauma of the church-run institutions where children were torn from their families and abused.
Creating a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was one of the 94 calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) back in 2015.
The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996, with more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children forced to attend the facilities between the 1870s and 1996, according to the TRC.
The facilities were designed to strip Indigenous people of their culture and language, and replace them with a Christian faith and the English language. There were 139 residential schools in the federally funded program, many of which were run by the Catholic Church.
