First Nations youth in Thunder Bay, Ont., say an apology alone from Pope Francis wouldn't be enough

For young Indigenous people in Thunder Bay, Ont., the ongoing effects of colonialism are with them every day.   

For them, it's a city that doesn't care. It's a city that has been racist and discriminatory toward them, where trust with the police is broken, and where seven young First Nations people died after leaving their home communities to attend school.

Pope Francis is touring three regions in Canada — Edmonton, Quebec City and Iqaluit — for six days through July 29. During the trip, he's expected to expand on an apology he delivered at the Vatican this past spring for residential school abuse in institutions run by the Catholic Church. 

He's called his trip a "pilgrimage of penance" that he hopes can help heal the wrongs done to Indigenous people by Catholic priests and nuns who ran abusive residential schools.

His presence has generated mixed reactions from survivors and their relatives, and youth in Thunder Bay.

Myla Jacob is from the Webequie First Nation and a teenager living in Thunder Bay. When the unmarked graves were detected in 2021 at the former residential school site in Kamloops, B.C., Jacob initially wanted to ignore the news. But she couldn't.

"I realized that it was something that you can't ignore, because it … happened, and to real people." 

It prompted Jacob and other First Nation youth to create gardens filled with orange flowers to honour the children who died at residential schools and commemorate the survivors. 

So far, there are two gardens with the flowers at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School for First Nations students and at St. Joseph's Care Group, a local hospital.

Jacob said it made her feel good to honour the past and do what she could to bring more awareness to residential schools and survivors.

Jacob said that through the years, she learned about residential schools from her grandmother, Laura James, who's from Cat Lake First Nation and is a residential school survivor. When Jacob heard the Pope was coming to Canada to apologize, she remained unconvinced. 

"An apology doesn't really have any meaning [or] significance …. An apology won't fix anything now. It won't bring back our culture or language," Jacob said. "It's just words to me." 

James was forced to go to the Pelican Falls residential school, and agrees with Jacob that a visit and any apology wouldn't do much for her or her healing journey.

"For myself, I would say no words coming from anybody is going to bring healing for myself. Personally, I'm on my own healing as I have lived life from day to day … right from that time when I walked out of that school."