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Six-year-old Phyllis’s excitement about her first day of school was short-lived. She was thrilled to wear her brand-new orange shirt. But her school was St. Joseph’s Mission in Williams Lake, B.C. (a residential school), and Phyllis was stripped and put in a uniform. She never saw her orange shirt again. More than 40 years later, orange still reminds Phyllis of her residential school experience. Since 2013, Phyllis Webstad and other Canadians have worn orange on Sept. 30.

I observe Orange Shirt Day because in 1991 Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, but Canada’s last residential school didn’t close until 1996. Article 2 states that ratifying nations “shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child … without discrimination of any kind irrespective of … national, ethnic, or social origin.”

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Article 3 states “the institutions, services, and facilities responsible for the … protection of children shall conform with standards established by competent authorities.” As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report about residential schools found, for almost 150 years Canada neither respected the rights of children sent to those schools (Article 2), nor protected those children (Article 3). In fact, just the opposite.