Ontarians mark first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to remember horror of residential schools

For residential school survivor James Bird, the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation represented an incredible moment to work toward healing, but he wanted Canadians to remember why it was being marked.

"Let us never forget, ever, that this day happened because children's bodies were found," Bird said at a ceremony Thursday at the University of Toronto's Massey College.

Numerous Indigenous communities have reported finding hundreds of unmarked graves this year at former residential school sites.

Chief R. Stacey Laforme, of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, told the Massey College ceremony that he wrote a poem the day the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation in Kamloops, B.C., announced that ground-penetrating radar had detected what was believed to be 215 such graves(the First Nation has since revised the estimate down to 200).

"I sit here crying, I don't know why," Laforme began. "I didn't know the children. I didn't know the parents, but I knew their spirit.

"I knew their love. I know their loss. I know their potential. And I am overwhelmed by the pain and the hurt, the pain of the families and friends, the pain of an entire people unable to protect them, to help them, to comfort them, to love them."

Premier Doug Ford, who attended the ceremony along with Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, said the recent discoveries of remains at the sites of former residential schools underscores the need for Ontarians to learn about the lasting harms of the system.