Canada's National Day of Truth and Reconciliation

Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is an attempt, laudable in the extreme, to come to terms with the effects of colonialism. It’s impossible to come to terms with the effects of colonialism, but one has to start somewhere. I don’t even know where to start with this topic. Coming, as I do, from a long line of colonisers, whose colonising country has been very proud of the way it colonised (or “civilised”) and is only now coming to terms—thanks to the self-inflicted wound that is Brexit—with the fact that other countries might not have the same opinion of it that it has of itself, I am perhaps not even in the best position to try. But you know me: never let ignorance or crassness stand in the way of a paragraph.
 
You can only get self-knowledge from listening to what other people have to say about you. This, I think, stands true for individuals and nations. And the opinions of others about the UK are well worth listening to, even in Canada, which has a strong tradition of monarchism, despite its having cast off the shackles of being a dominion a while ago (1952, I think) and of being dependent, more recently (1982). But this isn’t the time or place, especially as Canada, perhaps influenced by its still strong allegiance to the Crown, has a long way to go before it comes to terms with what it did, admittedly influenced still by the Crown but still done with an excess of zeal, to its First Nations.
 
I think the best place to start is with the Residential Schools. Dragging kids from their screaming parents to take them hundreds of miles away, forbid them to speak in their own language, beat them when they do, bully them, harass them, force Christianity on them, beat their own culture out of them, rape them sometimes, kill them sometimes, bury them, when this happened, without telling the parents, in an unmarked grave, instil “discipline”… I could go on, but it is unthinkable and unimaginable. How anyone in Canada manages to look at an indigenous person without feeling shame and self-loathing is beyond me. But most people manage it… and, indeed, so do I. The trick is in saying “well, it wasn’t me that did it,” and trying to move on.
 
This is the answer, and the problem. And it is, at least partly, what the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation tries to get us to deal with. Kids wear orange shirts to school to remember the thousands of indigenous kids that died, either in the schools or attempting to run away from the schools and get back home. It’s not much – but it starts the conversation with our youngest. It is the only way we can get back to some sort of decency. One of the books Ottawacker Jr. read at school was Muinji’j Asks Why: The Story of the Mi’kmaq and the Shubenacadie Residential School, which is as good a place as any to start. It is also where I started. Recognition of a problem is the first step – and this is where we are at.
 
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For the rest of the day, I went for the world’s slowest service at the Beijing Legend with Mike Jeffreys. We chatted for a long while about his recent trip to Toulon. I got home and started feeling ill. Maybe the five-second rule doesn’t count for dim sum that escapes from a chopstick. I had a two-hour nap, a large glass of neat Ricard, and felt much better. If only there were a similarly easy solution for colonialism.