PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. -- Trucks, motorcycles and various other vehicles travelled up Highway 37 from Kitimat to Terrace yesterday in honour of the 215 children whose bodies were found buried near the Kamloops Residential School in May.
The convoy began at the Riverlodge Recreation Centre in Kitimat and finished at George Little Park in Terrace, where hundreds of people gathered to both remember the children who attended residential school and also celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day. Truck convoys from Gingolx and Hazelton made their way to Terrace as well.
The event at George Little Park featured plenty of drumming, singing and dancing, and many attendees were clad in orange shirts to remember residential schoolchildren.
At around 2:15 p.m., a two-minute moment of silence was held in the park to remember the children found in Kamloops.
Skeena MLA and former Haisla Nation Chief Councillor Ellis Ross took part in the convoy and was also present at George Little Park. He said he was overwhelmed by the community’s response.
“I've never been, in my entire life, in a situation where I've seen all Canadians want to be side-by-side with Aboriginals,” he said. “It’s incredible. It’s history.”
Ross says he understands the frustration that many are feeling in regards to the discovery at Kamloops and the slow pace of reconciliation. Nonetheless, he says people should focus and build on the positive spirit from yesterday’s event.
“This is a great moment,” he said. “It’s positive, and I think we should come up with more events that are even more positive until the real official reconciliation happens at the provincial or federal level.
Another person who was in attendance at the event was Vivian Watson, whose father was a residential school survivor. She said her father never told her the details about his time there until he was on his deathbed.
“He said ‘I have something to tell you,’ and then he told me he was digging graves at the age of six and nine,” she said. “He stayed in residential school from the time he was five until he was 16.”
Watson stressed the importance of listening to residential school survivors.
“Believe the stories that you hear from residential schools, because they’re real. I didn’t believe my dad when he said he was digging graves.”
Jolene Wesley, interim acting executive director for the Kermode Friendship Society, was at the event collecting signatures for a petition the society is working on with the Ksan Society that asks the provincial government to investigate former residential school sites throughout the province for children’s remains.
Choking back tears, Wesley said she was “broken” when she heard the news about the 215 children from Kamloops.
“We have a responsibility for the generations ahead,” she said. “So many Indigenous people do the work that they do because we have a responsibility to the survivors. The kids who didn't survive, the people who went through the suffering – we have an obligation to them to make it better for the next generations that are coming up.”
A National Indigenous Peoples Day ceremony was also held outside the Prince Rupert courthouse yesterday evening.
With files from Robert Pictou and John Crawford.
