‘Emotional … beautiful’: From shoes by statues to teddy bears on porches, memorials for 215 Indigenous children stretch from coast to coast in Canada

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This article was published 30/05/2021 (1307 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From one side of the country to the other, children’s shoes and teddy bears are being laid on the stairs of public buildings and monuments, as Canada struggles reckons with the discovery of the remains of more than 200 children at a former residential school in British Columbia.

The shoes and the bears have been placed as memorials following last week’s revelation that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been found at the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation grounds.

The children — some as young as three years old — were undocumented deaths, said the First Nation.

Across the country, flags have been lowered to half-staff at federal, provincial and municipal buildings and vigils are being held amidst calls for the government to provide resources to seek out what are likely many more unmarked burial sites connected to residential schools.

But perhaps most striking of the public displays has been the shoes. On the West Coast, 215 pairs of children’s shoes were placed as a memorial on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery along with roses and teddy bears. In Toronto, they were placed outside Queen’s Park. At St. Francis Xavier Church in Kahnawake, Que., shoes were laid on the ground. In Ottawa, shoes lined the edge of the Centennial Flame. In Charlottetown, sets of children sneakers were placed in front of the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister, whom many have called responsible for the residential school system.

In the small community of Eskasoni, in Cape Breton, Mary Noella Marshall, was driving by the Holy Family Church on Sunday night when the sight of dozens of pairs of shoes on the church steps stopped her and got her out of her car.

“It was emotional,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

Many of her friends’ parents and older relatives had been taken to residential schools, she said, so emotions in Eskasoni about the discovery of the remains of the children in Kamloops have been strong.

“I was shocked. I was really hurt when I heard about it,” she said. “It was our people. They weren’t Mi’kmaq, but they were our people … they were a part of us also.”

In Windsor-Essex County, Aimee Omstead, director of Little Hands Kids for a Cause — a group that assists children suffering from life-threatening and terminal diseases — joined other organizations and school boards in calling for people to wear orange shirts and put teddy bears on their porches this week.

“We feel such immense sorrow that we thought that we would stand in solidarity with all Indigenous communities who are also mourning this unimaginable loss,” said Omstead.

“The orange shirt is a symbol of residential schoolchildren and survivors,” she added. “And the teddy bears symbolize the children that have been lost, and the survivors that didn’t make it home.”

“As a Canadian and a settler on this land. I think we all have a role to play in truth and reconciliation.”

The Kamloops school was operated by the Roman Catholic Church between 1890 and 1969 and was once the largest in Canada’s residential school system. The federal government took over operations then and ran it as a day school until its closure in 1978.

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The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24-hours a day for anyone experiencing pain or distress as a result of a residential school experience. Support is available at 1-866-925-4419.

Steve McKinley is a Halifax-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @smckinley1