Some Thoughts on this National Day for Truth & Reconciliation

Two cars passed by as I was out walking our dog around the block this morning. As Squix was busy sniffing out and watering the closest trees, I couldn’t help but notice both of these driving neighbours were sporting orange shirts. I couldn’t help but smile, as I saw it as one more sign of reassurance that more and more of us get it, that we now understand more of what happened with residential schools and want our governments to do more to deal with that legacy and its fallout.  

Residential School. Photo Credit: change.org

When I got home I poured a coffee and read the paper. Two things jumped out at me that spoke to that reassurance. One was an op-ed by executives at the polling firm Narrative Research. It focused on their polling which showed a strong majority of Canadians support declaring today a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and also strong support that students be taught Indigenous history including the history of residential schools, that more needs to be done to address the inequities faced by Indigenous people, and that Indigenous people have not been treated fairly by the Government of Canada. As the authors conclude, we want to see change.  

These statistics, along with what seems to be an awful lot of criticism on social media of Premier Higgs suggests that, as is often the case, the citizenry is a step ahead of the government in where they want to be as a society. Which brings me to the other item that jumped out at me from today’s paper.  

The Wolastoqey (St. Mary’s First Nation) flag was raised in front of Fredericton City Hall to mark National Day for Truth and Conciliation. The city seems more committed to improving our relationship with First Nations than the province does. Photo Credit: Susan Holt

The government purchased the cover page along with its flip side. On the cover, over an orange background, acknowledgement that this is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. On the other page, an open letter from Premier Higgs.  

Whether it was purchased long ago in good faith or whether it was a last minute attempt at damage control given all the criticism thrown at him over this, isn’t for me to say. The wordsmith behind the letter does a commendable job of having the Premier say all the right things, but he or she avoids the elephant in the room by failing to address why the Premier choose not to join the federal government and the other Atlantic Canadian governments in declaring this a statutory holiday to honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools. That would have sent a positive signal that the province “gets it” so to my mind this was a significant fail on his part. 

To give him the benefit of the doubt though, the letter does say he’s committed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, to getting First Nations history into our school curriculum, and to create a monument to, as his writer puts it, mark this dark part of Canada’s history.   

Hopefully, this will amount to more than just talk, but given our Premier’s dubious track record on matters related to First Nations, rather than applaud, I prefer to wait and see.  

To end on a more positive note, all the signals out there suggest that we as Canadians and New Brunswickers, now, finally have a grasp of what happened and what needs to be done. And as the aforementioned research shows, this is especially the case with our Millennials and Gen Xers.  

It’s encouraging that it is mainly the younger generations who are pushing for change. Maybe this is because those of a certain age, Boomers like me and maybe a lot younger, never knew until recent years about the horrors of residential schools, as our history classes only offered a sanitized version of our history. As has long proven true, better-informed populations lead to better choices. It seems we are going in that direction. That, I will applaud.

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