Today is a day when we honour the Indigenous people who were sent away to residential schools in Canada when they were children by wearing an Orange Shirt.
Orange Shirt Day represents the orange shirt that Phyllis Webstad wore on her first day of school in 1973 at St. Joseph’s Residential School in British Columbia. When Phyllis arrived at the residential school the staff cut her hair and forced her to remove the orange shirt and wear the school’s uniform. The orange shirt was never returned to Phyllis. The colour orange has always reminded Phyllis that she and all the children in the residential schools did not matter. Her story is at the core of the message represented by Orange Shirt Day – “All Children Matter.”
