Canadians reflect on residential schools

With drumming and singing, at powwows and public ceremonies, communities across the country are marking the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

The federal statutory holiday, also known as Orange Shirt Day, was established last year to remember children who died while being forced to attend residential schools, as well as those who survived, and the families and communities still affected by lasting trauma.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined representatives of various First Nations and dozens of people in orange for a sunrise ceremony in Niagara Falls, Ont. He stood silently as the ceremony took place and spoke with residential school survivors afterwards.

Later in the morning, Trudeau addressed an event to mark the day.

“This is a day for Indigenous Peoples. Today to recognize that yes, you are still here, you are still strong and you are an indissociable part of the present and the future we build every day as a country,” he told the crowd.

“It is a day to remember, to grieve, to take another step along healing. But it is also a day for non-Indigenous peoples to recognize that you should not have to carry this burden alone.”

The speeches and events occur even as the grim work that helped inspire the day continues.

In Mission, B.C., where Orange Shirt Day finds its origins, work began in September to search for graves with ground-penetrating radar at the former St. Mary’s Indian Residential School. The City of Mission said in a statement the work would continue as long as dry weather allows.

It was at another Mission school, St. Joseph Mission Residential School, where student Phyllis Webstad had an orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, taken away from her in the 1970s.

Orange Shirt Day would become the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, a federal statutory holiday established last year following the discovery of suspected unmarked burial sites at former residential schools, by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc nation in Kamloops, B.C., Saskatchewan’s Cowessess First Nation and others.

Afair portion of the population is now gripped with the idea that it’s time to change the anachronism of having a monarch in Canada’s constitutional monarchy.

What that means, exactly, not even the critics seem to know: A separate election for president? Even more power in the prime minister’s office?

Neither sound enjoyable, but folks are already mulling candidates for the $20 bill.

Something that’s not discussed much any more — but could have a greater effect on improving government than the rather academic question of saving the King or not — is Senate reform.

But, when was the last time you heard about a Triple-E Senate?

Current candidates to become premier have a surplus of ideas (some argue too many) on how to rework confederation, but it’s crickets on the upper chamber.

The Alberta government still holds on to the idea of electing senators but

Albertans are less than enthusiastic.

Proof comes in this week’s release of the official report on the 2021 municipal elections which piggy-backed with provincial questions.

For senate, the top vote-getter in Medicine Hat was “No, thanks” when most Hatters refused to accept the senate ballot or left them blank.

Of 19,998 voters who arrived at city polling stations a year ago, 7,036 declined the senate ballot, but marked X’s for local positions or other referenda.

That is about 200 more than voted for local first-place finisher Pam Davidson, 1,200 more than No. 2 Pam Barootes and about twice the count of No. 3 Mykhailo Martyniouk. (Conservative Party candidates all, but none a household name).

The local “declined” rate is higher than elsewhere in the province, but among 1.1 million Alberta voters, about 200,000 didn’t bother with the senate race.

That’s about 18 per cent. Only five per cent of voters had no strong opinion on equalization, or two per cent left the time change question blank.

Heard this week

In court, on a relatively minor resolution: “He admits that he broke the Queen’s Peace, as it was known at the time, and in this plea agreement he agrees to keep the King’s Peace.”

Pitch in

Former News sports editor and all around good guy Sean Rooney is back at it this weekend with the now 10th annual charity auction to support the Alberta Children’s Hospital. He and wife Trish are promoting it as a big one this year. (The couple’s infant son, Dominic, died at age two in 2015 of leukemia).

Find out more about the auction that began Friday and ends Sunday on Facebook by visiting Rooney’s webpage at dominicaml.blogspot.com.

Bookmark it to read some very good writing about dealing with grief.

Marathon ending?

Mail ballots in the United Conservative Party Leadership contest must arrive on Monday to be counted, so at this point party members will have to figure out a ballot pickup station offered by candidates, or vote in person on Thursday before noon in Taber. The results will be announced later that day in Calgary.

A look ahead

Council will play a double header of sorts on Monday when it deals with items that would have been taken up at a meeting cancelled last month when it fell on the same day as the funeral for Queen Elizabeth II. We can’t recall much business flowing from committees before that date in early September. However, meetings are generally getting longer of late, so it could be a long night.

A potential change to taxi rates is on the early agenda.

100 years ago

The News provided topfront inning-by-inning run downs of the all-New York World Series games between the Yankees and Giants during the first week of October 1922.

A notice from Ottawa speculated the federal government would soon deal with the question of provincial control of natural resources in the west.

In Ontario, five towns around the northern town of Cobalt were completely destroyed by widespread forest fires.

Similar to a recent robbery in Foremost, a 10-man bandit party cut the telephone lines to Moosomin, Sask. before firing shots in a bank robbery there.

The city offered space to the Rotary Club to store tables and equipment at the Beaver Camp picnic place after it was discovered thieves had pilfered lumber from the site.

A general call for readers to present their garden produce for inspection produced two remarkable specimens. Two potatoes each weighing two pounds seven ounces came from the plot of S.A. Lindblad, a local CPR gatekeeper.

A woman in Oklahoma was exonerated by a coroner’s jury after she shot and killed a bystander while attempting to slay her husband. The ruling stated the fatal event was accidental and her general actions were justifiable considering she had been hospitalized by a beating by her husband.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com