- Hub staff
At Monday's city council meeting, Deputy Mayor Brian O'Leary spoke to the texts and emails from Owen Sounders who wanted Canada Day celebrations to be cancelled this year, or to continue, complete with fireworks.
“I think we can agree that what happened to these Indigenous children is something that our ancestors did to their ancestors, and for all of us to both heal and move forward, it has to be done through education, We have to do our part not only as individuals but as parents and educators.
Yesterday I visited the Reconciliation Garden to pay my respects and tonight I gave up my suit and tie to wear orange in support of our Indigenous community. Everyone can support in their own way.”
O'Leary then made the motion that ultimately passed, with two councillors opposed:
"That staff shall prepare the following in regard to Canada Day fireworks:
Have all available ambulances, city fire trucks and police vehicles spread around the city, including a firetruck at the end of the pier. At precisely 9:54 p.m. all emergency vehicles will activate lights and sirens for a period of one minute. From 9:55 to 10 p.m. it will be completely silent. We ask the public that during the five minutes of silence we pause, reflect, or educate your children on what our Indigenous community is going through and why. At 10 p.m. the fireworks will begin.”
O'Leary went on to say that this was 100% his idea, but with just the firetruck on the pier, and it was the mayor who “thought big and had the idea to have all vehicles involved.” The sirens have since been removed from the Canada Day schedule.
Councillor John Tamming had been prepared with his own motion to cancel Canada Day fireworks this year. He withdrew the motion, but offered these remarks.
"We have all heard in recent days of the graveyards in British Columbia and in Saskatchewan. I will not dwell on the horrors which have been revealed. In Kamloops, 215 graves, at Marieval, Saskatchewan, some 751 more. We know hardly anything about these children. But we do know this – that all of them died without the comfort of their mom or dad.
Slavery has been called the original sin of our neighbours to the south. But this is Canada’s original sin - the de facto imprisonment of our aboriginal youth under an Indian Act which mandated the forced relocation of eight year old girls and twelve year old boys.
Years ago, I represented the survivors of the Spanish Residential School. Most Saugeen First Nations kids (from Saugeen or Nawash) who attended residential school attended Spanish. I remember long meetings with Basil Johnson (his book Indian School Days, he told me, did not tell the entire sad story of his days at Spanish).
Permit one brief story. I met a frail elderly woman in a small community hall at Cape Croker. I asked her about her time at Spanish. It was her knees she remembered most, she said. I remember the gravel digging into my knees.
I did not understand. She went on to explain.
She was only four when the Indian Agent and the local priest came to her house on the Cape. In their presence, her father announced that she had to go away, far away, to boarding school. The father had the children kneel on the gravel driveway as he said a prayer for them. "My dad was crying." She had never seen him weep before. The children got into the car, the agent drove off and she did not see her parents for a full ten years.
She told me that friends of hers died and were buried there. I took it as the flight of a child’s imaginings. I now know better.
Reasonable people can disagree on how to best comport ourselves in the face of these recent discoveries. I respect and understand fully the sentiments of those who want Canada Day celebrations to continue. This debate should not be partisan. We are talking about children, after all, and their resting places. No matter our opinions, our voices should remain soft.
But for me, even if on Canada Day we have acknowledgements, even if we include a time of silence, it does not feel right for us as a city to party. It seems insensitive to party in the face of what has just been disclosed. Per the author of Ecclesiastes, for any nation, for any town, there is a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to keep silence and a time to speak.
Let our aboriginal brothers and sisters hear that, in the face of these graveyards, this city was overwhelmed. Let the youth of Saugeen, the elders of Cape Croker, those first nations peoples who live on our streets – let them hear that when confronted this past month with our original sin, we had nothing to say. Let them hear that in the face of such sad horror, we were rendered without fireworks, without speech, without song."
