A river of orange will flow along the shores of the Sturgeon this Canada Day as hundreds run to draw attention to Indigenous Canadians and the legacy of the country's residential schools.
Some 400 people will be at Lions Park this July 1 for the fourth annual Run/Walk for Reconciliation. The free event sees participants, many dressed in orange Every Child Matters shirts, walk or run three or five kilometres along the Sturgeon River, to raise awareness of the impacts of Canada’s residential school system.
Run organizer and St. Albert resident Amanda Patrick said she started the run in 2021 after the discovery of about 200 suspected unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School — an event that drew renewed attention to the thousands of youths who died while attending the schools. She decided to hold the run as a way to honour residential school survivors and families, and scheduled it for Canada Day — a day many Canadians had second thoughts about celebrating following the Kamloops discovery.
“We can still celebrate our great country and honour the past on the same day, and I believe that this event does that in a really gentle way,” Patrick said.
Patrick said event participants will get an orange ribbon to carry during the run, during which they will consider the nature of reconciliation. Those ribbons will be tied to the pergola in the St. Albert Healing Garden at the run’s end. Participants can then return to Lions Park for bannock and music and dance by Indigenous entertainers.
Patrick said this year’s run is collecting donations on behalf of the Poundmaker’s Lodge, which sits on the site of the former Edmonton (Poundmaker) residential school. The run has raised some $16,000 to support Indigenous organizations in the last four years.
Run to remember
Back for her third run is Edmonton resident Leanne Ballantyne. She said this event was important to her, as her father was a survivor of the Sixties Scoop — a decades-long government campaign where thousands of Indigenous youths were taken from their homes and adopted into mostly non-Indigenous families across North America, resulting in a loss of cultural identity.
“Similar to the residential schools, they [the government] were trying to take the Indian out of the Indian,” Ballantyne said.
Ballantyne said she has used the Run for Reconciliation as a way to reconnect with her Indigenous roots and to show support for those affected by the residential schools.
“It’s very touching to see it grow year over year, and to see that this is a cause people want to support. They are reaching toward reconciliation.”
It might seem like the residential schools happened long ago, but they were actually still in operation relatively recently, Patrick said — the last one closed in 1996. The influence of the schools continues today through inter-generational trauma, and there are living survivors of the schools around that can share their experiences.
“We need to create spaces where we can hear those stories and honour them,” Patrick said.
The run starts at 9 a.m. July 1. Visit runremrec.square.site to register.
