a walk for truth and reconcilation

5000 people walked the streets of Duncan

For The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Duncan Campbell Scott CMG FRSC (August 2, 1862 – December 19, 1947) was a Canadian civil servant, and poet and prose writer. With Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Archibald Lampman, he is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets.

A career civil servant, Scott served as deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932. He supported the government's assimilationist policy toward Canada's First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Today he is known more for his implementation of this policy, especially the mandatory education of children in the horrendous residential school system, than for his poetry. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has characterized this policy as cultural genocide.

Scott wrote on this topic:
I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

In 1918, after Peter Bryce issued a report to the Department warning about the severe toll tuberculosis outbreaks were having in residential schools, Scott helped block the implementation of Bryce's recommendations to fight the disease, stating that the frequency of disease outbreaks and the resulting mortality in the schools "does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian Problem."
Wikipedia