Hundreds of community members gathered at the Ojibway Nature Centre for a memorial walk in honour of Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
This is the fifth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation held in Canada to honour the children who never returned home and survivors of residential schools.
"There's a healing in being able to come together, hear each other's stories. We have medicines here today, which is part of ceremony for us in Indigenous culture. But then the sharing of food afterwards is a really important thing. I think that that speaks across all cultures, when you are communal in activities, it brings togetherness and it brings healing," said event organizer Kat Pasquach.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is calling on the provincial government to make the day a paid statutory holiday.
"We all need to heal together. I've had [non-Indigenous] people come up to me and say they're ashamed of the things that their ancestors did to my people. And you know what? That's why we need this day," says UFCW Canada Resident Elder Eric Flett. "Everybody needs to heal together in a good way. I don't know why governments don't want to do it, it would be so easy, so simple to do it. To let everybody heal together. Not just Indigenous people, everybody. Everybody's healing is important."
But Pasquach would like to keep students in class so they are engaged in the day's meaning.
"This is where we can be teaching our young ones, this is where people can be learning about the history," said Pasquach. "I don't think that we should be absolving people of responsibility to engage and participate on September 30."
