BC Lions team up with Orange Shirt Society to raise awareness about residential schools
CTV
For the second year in a row, the BC Lions will host an Orange Shirt Day in honour of residential school survivors and all the children who didn’t make it home from the institutions which were scenes of horrific abuses against Indigenous children.
For the second year in a row, the BC Lions will host an Orange Shirt Day in honour of residential school survivors and all the children who didn’t make it home from the institutions which were scenes of horrific abuses against Indigenous children.
"It takes a while after I present to actually be OK again,” Phyllis Webstad, the society's founder, said with a shaky voice as she took the podium at the team’s announcement.
When she was six-years-old, Webstad’s grandmother took her shopping for a new outfit before her first day at St. Joseph’s Residential School near Williams Lake.
Webstad picked out a shiny orange shirt which was immediately confiscated when she arrived at the school.
As an adult, she started Orange Shirt Day, which takes place every Sept. 30, and founded the dedicated to helping residential school survivors.
“What happened to us is Canadian history. It’s not just Indigenous history,” Webstad said.
“There’s no longer an excuse for Canadians to not know what happened.”
