Canada Day 2021: A day of reflection

By Deanna Bertrand

REGIONAL — Celebrating Canada Day with flag waving and fireworks of years past was not on the minds of many Canadians this July 1, but was instead a day spent in quiet reflection on the recent tragic revelations in Canadian history.

For four local residents, it was spent on horseback wearing orange coloured t-shirts in honour of the more than 1,000 unmarked graves found at locations of former government-sponsored residential schools in Canada.

Michelle Stein of Leamington said that she wanted to do something to honour the children, “to show their lives — every child’s life — matters.”

For Stein, the discovery of the unmarked graves in western Canada hit a little more close to home.

“My mother was Ojibway,” she explained in front of the Leamington Municipal Building on July 1.

“It’s a day of reflection,” she said. “It is more about giving our condolences and showing support to the families.”

Michelle Stein, Sarah Parks, John Pavao and Nelson Carvalho made their way on horseback from Leamington to Amherstburg on Canada Day to show support for Indigenous children lost to the residential school system in Canada.

SUN photo by Deanne Bertrand

Stein, along with friends Sarah Parks, John Pavao and Nelson Carvalho all wore their orange t-shirts in memory of those children as they rode from Leamington — stopping at Erie Shores Hospice and townhall — to Kingsville with a stop for lunch, and then on to Amherstburg.

Canada Day on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and other locations across Ontario, such as Toronto and London, also had large displays of orange coloured t-shirts instead of the traditional sea of red as Canadians paid tribute to those lives lost so many years ago.

According to the Government of Canada website, residential schools for Indigenous children existed in Canada from mid- 1800s until the late 1990s. It is estimated that over 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended residential schools during this period, which were largely operated by churches and religious organizations and funded federally.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada described the residential school system as a cultural genocide.