Frankly, I had hoped to attend a Truth and Reconciliation event this year like I did last year. I remember how people thanked me for coming. Total strangers came up to thank me for wearing orange or coming. It was an amazing experience.

This year a cold is keeping me at home.

At the Pat Porter Seniors Centre on September 27, 2022 the old people there, including Chris and I and a surprisingly large contingent of old Steinbach and area people, were shown a film I had seen last year at the inaugural Day for Truth  Reconciliation. The film was called A National Journey for Truth and Reconciliation. It was worth seeing again.

You can get to see it online at no cost. The price is right. And it is a very short film—less than 10 minutes long. But there is a lot packed into 10 minutes. Gruesome stories are left out. Strength and freedom are on display.

The film consists mainly of the voices of survivors of residential schools. One of them said,

“I had these skeleton keys. And I went through a door in my mind. And I would go to each door. And I would open them. This one was fear. And this one was low self-esteem. And this one was sexual abuse. And the list goes on and on and on…I am proud to say, I opened those doors and I forgave.”

 

Ted Fontaine, a residential school survivor from Manitoba said this:

“I went through sexual abuse. I went through physical abuse. Mental, spiritual. And I will tell you, the one thing that we suffer the most is the mental and spiritual abuse that we carry the rest of our lives.”

 

Fontaine admitted that for the last 50 years he hated the perpetrator of the sexual assault on him. He said,

“I wanted to kill you. That came from me! But that wasn’t me speaking. That was a 6, 7, 8-year-old boy. Getting out what was still bothering him after 65 years.”

 

Fontaine could not believe that he had hated so much. That was not who he was. But that was who he became.

Ethel Lamothe another survivor said this with quite grace:

“My mother and father had 13 children and every single one of us had gone to residential school. I longed for the smell of spruce boughs. And the smoke. Wood smoke. I longed for the taste of the dried meat and the dried fish. I was hungry for all of that time. For my own food. And there was such a longing in my heart. Such a loneliness. For my people.”

 

And why could she not have that? Was she asking for too much? Her own people and her own food?

 

Lamothe also described how her brother died as a result of injuries suffered in residential school. She said,

“It was about my mother. And me. It was about us. And it was about the children who never came back.”

 

I paused to think. Children who went to school and never came back. In what kind of a world is that acceptable?

In the film A National Journey for Reconciliation, Joe Clarke, the former Prime Minister of Canada had some moving words to say about reconciliation:

“The Commission Chair, the eloquent Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair, borrows a phrase that was used by the leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement. That phrase is, “Keep your eye on the prize.” That sets a challenge for all of us. Indigenous and non-indigenous. Commissioners and Citizens. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will help to define the prize. We as Canadians, as citizens, have to mobilize the eyes and help the larger Canadian population both see and act. Reconciliation means coming together as a whole with one purpose being to hear and to heal  and then a critical common purpose which is to move forward together. And if we fail to do that, if we fail to go beyond apology and regret, if we admit the truth and ignore the reconciliation that would be to repeat the profound offences of the Residential Schools themselves. I believe that Canada as a broad and generous country can find the will to repair the damage of that past and build new partnerships if enough of our citizens know and if their eyes are turned to the prize.”

 

I think that is what reconciliation looks like.

I too think Canada can do this. I also  think of what Angela Merkel said when she proposed Germany accept 1,000,000 Syrian refuges: “Wir machen das.” We can do this.