The Steering Committee for the Residential Schools National Monument has announced a prominent location on Parliament Hill where the future memorial site will be built.
The announcement ceremony took place on June 20 near the location on the west side of Parliament Hill where the monument will be established.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Governor General Mary Simon, and House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota attended the ceremony, along with a number of TRCC members.
Simon delivered a speech, saying that the monument’s placement “allows as many Canadians as possible the opportunity to see” it, adding that it will also “serve as a constant reminder to parliamentarians that the policies and laws they create, debate, legislate, and enforce have consequences.”
Simon also said the future monument will represent “Canada’s true history.”
“It is a reminder that we must never again let anyone—not indigenous people, not anyone—suffer the consequences of racism and inequality, of cruelty and neglect,” Simon said.
Trudeau did not deliver any remarks at the ceremony.
The planned monument comes around two years after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations said ground-penetrating radar had found burial sites of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2021. A number of other similar announcements have since been made about other residential schools across Canada. No excavations have yet been done to investigate or recover remains on any of the sites so far.
