National Day for Truth & Reconciliation

Hello Members,

Today, September 30, 2026, marks the sixth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day that has been commemorated as Orange Shirt Day since 2013.

Acknowledging the truths from Survivors, families and communities impacted by the Residential Schools in Canada is a necessary step towards reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples.

Canada’s residential schools operated between the 1870s and 1997 and sought to separate children from their families, cultures, languages and identities and assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian society. More than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families and forced to attend government-funded schools often in partnership with churches. Many experienced physical, psychological and sexual abuse, and some were also subjected to medical experimentation.

The history and legacy of residential schools deserve to be heard and told from the perspective of the Indigenous Peoples. To deny and obscure that truth only helps to protect colonial practices that continue to harm the Indigenous Peoples.

On September 30, it is our duty to take a moment to reflect and acknowledge these truths: Some of the children who were taken from their families died while attending residential schools and never made it back home. The survivors, their families and communities are still affected today by the trauma of the residential school system.

Denialists cannot continue to have the floor and misrepresent basic facts. Click here for ways to identify and confront residential school denialism.

Please use this day to pay tribute to these young lives taken away by ideology and violence. Truth and reconciliation is a movement, not a moment and it starts with facing the hard truths of Canadian history.

For resources and podcasts, please visit the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s web site.

In Solidarity,

USW Local 1944