Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc
September 25, 2024 - 7:00 PM
This Monday, Sept. 30, British Columbia will have its statutory holiday in honour of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The mandatory holiday was passed by the BC legislature 18 months ago and has now become law, making every Sept. 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, often referred to as Orange Shirt Day.
"One day there will be no survivors left in Canada. What is forgotten is often repeated," Orange Shirt Day Society founder Phyllis Webstad said in a media release. "The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation... will help to ensure that what happened to us will never happen again and will never be forgotten."
The provincial stat holiday follows in the footsteps of the federal government which introduced National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021. The move gave federal public service employees a paid day off along with a few industries governed by the federal labour code.
The province's move to adopt National Day for Truth and Reconciliation now gives the vast majority of workers in BC a paid day off.
"It’s a day to honour the resilience, dignity and strength of survivors and intergenerational survivors, to acknowledge and accept their experiences at residential school and remember the children who never came home," a statement from the province reads. "It's a chance to engage and educate people about B.C.'s colonial history and how it has and continues to impact Indigenous communities."
The idea for a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation statutory holiday came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action report released in 2015.
Orange Shirt Day was a grassroots campaign started by Webstad, who is a residential school survivor and attended St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School outside Williams Lake.
The orange shirt honours residential school survivors and came about after Webstad shared her story in 2013 about having her new orange shirt taken away on her first day at residential school.
Various National Day for Truth and Reconciliation events are taking place across Kamloops and the Okanagan. For more information go here.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2024