Orange Shirt Day at Loyalist College raises awareness of residential school survivors

Paul Latchford, Loyalist’s manager of Indigenous resources, said the goal of Orange Shirt Day was to raise awareness on campus. Photo by Brock Butler, QNet News

By Brock Butler

BELLEVILLE – Students at Loyalist College were sporting the colour orange for Orange Shirt Day Monday to raise awareness about Indigenous survivors of residential schools. 

Orange T-shirts – some with the slogan “Every Child Matters” and others having “Survivor” crossed out and “Thriver” underneath – were sold on campus, and sales exceeded expectations, according to Paul Latchford, the manager of Indigenous resources at Loyalist.

Latchford and Loyalist students took part in a smudging, a traditional ceremony for cleansing the soul of negative thoughts, at noon on Monday.

The goal of the event was to raise awareness about Canada’s legacy of forcing Indigenous children from their homes and families and placing them in residential schools. The schools, run by the Canadian government and Christian churches from 1880 to 1996, were intended to force Indigenous children to integrate into European Canadian society.

Thousands of children suffered abuse, sometimes fatal, at the schools.

“We find with lots of (survivors), the biggest issue is a lack of connection to family,” Latchford said. “Because at the schools, they were separated, with the boys being with boys and the girls being with the girls. So they didn’t have support of the family nucleus.”

He added: “There was a great deal of suicide (among) the survivors’ children. That group seemed to be dissociated too.”

Monday’s event was for people to understand that this happened, he said: “Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself.”