Today, I Wear Orange.

I normally enjoy a relatively quiet Canada Day,  but today I am reflective and sad. I feel that Canada is like the popular girl at school.  The one who everyone loves and invites to all the parties.  But she is also the one that is the bully.  The one who picks on the weaker kids in a way that often goes unnoticed by the adults because she's so sweet and cute.  The one who's victims look at her with fear and distrust.  

I have always known about Canada's darker side.  I grew up hearing about how the Canadian government turned away a ship of European Jews fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust, sending them to their death.  Growing up in Vancouver, with parents who studied and worked with both Indigenous and minority cultures, I knew all about the Chinese Head Tax, the injustices and internment of the Japanese Canadians in World War 2, as well as to our First Nations and the Residential school history.  I knew at a young age that the Reserves were racist and that the poverty was systemic based on the government system that created it.  As an educator who taught about the immigration system into Canada, I always made sure to explain to my students, many of whom are recent immigrants themselves, the truth around Canada's policies and history.  

As an educator, a parent, and a citizen, it is the time to call out and change the behaviour.  No, we can not go back in time and stop these events from occurring, and no, we can not bring these people to justice.  But there can be learning and changes in tolerances and acceptance.  The undercurrent of hate and distrust in the world today has to stop.  It shocks me that there is still so much hate.  

I recently read Until We Are Free: Reflections of Black Lives Matter in Canada.  The introduction talks of an imagined future after race and class wars.  The cities are gone and  it reminded me of Mad Max.  I have since thought a lot about that.  I do not think that there has been enough done to ensure that ALL people in Canada feel that they are home.  

I can't help but think of those hundreds and hundreds of children who were swept off their land and taken to these so called 'schools', many of whom never returned.  And, for those that did survive, at what cost?  Without the connection to their families, their language and their land, the Church attempted to wipe out an entire culture.  These sweet children were stolen and systematically eliminated, either physically or culturally.  I can't help but think about how our country would look like had the European settlers respected the people who had inhabited the land before them and built a community around inclusivity and acceptance.  

While I am horrified, I am not surprised that there are mass graves.  Just like my kinsmen that parrished in the Holocaust,  many of whom were eliminated and disposed of in nameless graves, these children were murdered and disposed of.  I follow the Auschwitz Museum's twitter page.  Each day, they show a picture and bio of a Jewish child who was murdered there.  Each day I see a beautiful child smiling and then read of their fate.  I believe that the Canadian government should be doing this for the victims of the Residential schools.  These children came from love, had a life and died because of who they were.  Children shouldn't die at school.  And they DEFINITELY shouldn't die due to abuse, neglect or suicide while at school.

So, today I do not celebrate Canada Day.  Today I am reflective.  Today, I am mourning the victims of a racist system, and hoping for a future of acceptance and no more hate.