Toronto opens Spirit Garden, a space for residential school survivors, in Nathan Phillips Square

Michael Cheena says he gets emotional when he reads the names of the 18 residential schools that operated in Ontario on a monument in Spirit Garden in Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. He attended two of them.

He said spaces like this are reminders of why we need to understand what survivors endured and support the families and communities they come from.

The Spirit Garden in the south-west quadrant of the plaza outside Toronto City Hall is a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Call to Action 82 which calls for residential schools monuments to be installed in Canada's capital cities.

Cheena is Cree and grew up along the shores of James Bay. At seven, he was taken to residential school at Bishop Horden Hall in Moose Factory, Ont., and then Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Now he advocates for fellow residential school survivors and travelled with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

"The residential school system was a national crime and a national secret and it was never taught in the public education system. It was hidden from the general public," he said.

"Spirit Garden is about sharing learning, healing and about the true history of Canada and honouring the residential school survivors and their families."

Spirit Garden, a project led by Toronto Council Fire, the City of Toronto and survivors, officially opened Sept 30. Its focal point is a two-metre tall stone sculpture of a turtle by Solomon King, an Anishinaabe artist and stonemason from Neyaashiinigmiing, on the Bruce Peninsula.

The turtle's head is tilted upwards, which King said has importance.

"It signifies the whole idea of overcoming, of working though, something positive," he said.

"As we move forward, we're starting to look up and see the future."

King said this is the largest scale project he's ever worked on which took six months and combined his skills as both a stone mason and sculptor. He said when he first moved to Toronto 35 years ago, he found there was little Indigenous representation.

"Having this space here now, and having that acknowledgement of all the different residential schools, that is a nice big step forward and now hopefully … we can build upon that."

Pamela Carter, who is Tsimshian and Ditidaht from B.C. and a health support counsellor at Toronto Council Fire, said survivors have been marking Orange Shirt Day in the space for the last seven years, as the Spirit Garden was planned and built.

"Before the turtle was here, we were praying about it and bringing the energy of it to the space," she said.