This past fall, I travelled to Nova Scotia with my family and visited Pier 1 in Halifax. It was an emotional visit as it's where our grandparents arrived from Ukraine with their young families after WWII.
Today is Canada Day. It's always been a huge day of celebration for our family. We are so proud to be Canadian and forever grateful to Canada for welcoming and offering our parents and grandparents safety and opportunity. Canada continues to welcome and support the many newcomers fleeing Ukraine.
We love Canada deeply yet last year, after the discoveries of 1000s of unmarked graves of Indigenous children in various residential schools throughout Canada, we felt the need to cancel Canada Day. It was a very sad day.
While Canada is a great country, it has a shameful history. It was built upon racism, cultural and biological genocide, colonization, exploitation and oppression of its Indigenous people - the original owners of the land.
As Canadians, we can love our country and be proud to be Canadian but we must also LISTEN. LEARN and ACT to do better.
We must educate ourselves about our country's past and present. We must learn about current indigenous issues and injustices and how we, as settlers, can further the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 Calls to Action. We must listen, read, learn, acknowledge, understand, honour and stand up for change, not only today, but every day. It's a process.
While there are many resources available, I have just discovered these two incredible podcasts: