Residential school survivors torn over decision to raise Canadian flag: documents
Global News
Hoisting the Canadian flag became a source of debate last year after it was lowered for months following the discovery of unmarked graves at a residential school in B.C.
Documents show some residential school survivors told Ottawa they didn’t want to “wear” a decision to raise the Canadian flag, as the government spent months mulling how to lift the Maple Leaf from half-mast.
Hoisting the flag became a source of debate last year after it was lowered for months following the discovery of what were believed to be the remains of 215 children at the former Kamloops residential school site in British Columbia last May.
Next week marks the one-year anniversary of that discovery using ground-penetrating radar by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation.
It sent waves of grief, shock and anger through the country. As Indigenous communities reeled and more non-Indigenous Canadians joined them, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the flags lowered at all federal buildings, including the one atop the Peace Tower.
By June, federal officials were trying to figure out the timing to raise the flag, reaching out to Indigenous leaders and drafting up options.
“This is the longest time in Canadian history that flags have been at half-mast,” Crown-Indigenous Relations officials wrote in a briefing note released to The Canadian Press under access-to-information legislation.
How long the flag remains lowered is typically dictated by a strict set of rules. But when the federal government lowered it to honour Indigenous children who died and disappeared from the 140-year-long residential school system, the timeline for lifting it was not clear.
Ottawa was working to return the flag to full-mast ahead of Remembrance Day, documents show, which is what ultimately happened. The documents say survivors and those in the country’s national Indigenous organizations saw the need to raise the flag in order for it to be lowered on Nov. 8, Indigenous Veteran’s Day, and Nov. 11.
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