Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King Jr.
As we celebrate Canada Day 2021, we can look back on the 154 years of confederation and be part of a nation that signed the final province into a family. A family with skeletons in the closet and challenges to how we built ourselves. Gathering ten provinces and three territories across a wide girth of land, into one whole nation, was a great day and I am proud to be Canadian of Irish descent. Ancestors who arrived in 1840s before Confederation, I wonder how they celebrated that day in 1867 as a new Canadian family to this rugged, cold and barren land. Did they know what was going on or was that realization yet to come?
There have been many stories about pioneers arriving here in this land. A land so very different from their own. A land that was marketed as being a place of possibility and prosperity. No mention on the brochure of the brutal cold, snow, and winds. There was no discussion of the challenges to be faced and no talk of how they were treating the Indigenous peoples. The sales pitch only talked of potential. The price of the ticket was sold as all that was needed. Sometimes there is more to the story than just buying a ticket.
Rarely do I buy a ticket for the weekly lottery draws. It is just not part of the fabric of my life. I know about the weekly draws and see the advertising and I know the odds of winning. I choose to place my optimism and hope in places where I have better odds and where I can glean some success for my investment. I wonder about those who consistently put their hopes and purchase the potential of winning each week only to be let down repeatedly. While I cannot win if I do not buy a ticket, I feel the price of the ticket is overridden by false hope and gets lost in the odds.
This Canada Day holds the potential for hope in our people choosing to invest in a future of great hope and optimism that the win/win will be genuine and a good investment. People choosing to observe and use this Canada Day as a day of observance and a somber day of repentance. This gives me invested hope that the whole is looking to make amends for the wrongs of the past.
In the 12-step program, one of the steps is to make amends to those we have wronged. As we the addicted, the wrong-doer, begin to heal our lives, we must face those who we have wronged. I remember being one of the people someone felt it important to make amends. I do not think they got the step very well because they just shouted an apology at me over the phone and would not give me time or a voice to respond. I was not allowed to be angry or to speak my own story or hurt I was simply made to listen as part of their road to recovery. Being on the other end now as the sober one, after three and a half years, I still have moments where a hurt is spoken that happened while I was drinking. I am stung and reminded how the apologizing, or the repenting does not end. It must be the fabric of our moving ahead and as each hurt comes up, something is remembered, I as the wrongdoer, must endure the shame again and listen because I am the one who inflicted the hurt. One apology will not buy me a ticket out of my past, nor does it win me a chance to be rich. As we the generations of the abusers, drunk on their own colonization, it is our task to be listening and sting with remembering. One apology by any one institution or group is not the ticket to all winnings. The odds are just too great!
While serving in Bella Coola BC in 2013, I was witness to so many survivor stories that I remember being blessed to be told. It was a time of learning for me. Learning and hearing the stories as they were told. The sharing of any story is a gift. Part of my soul was forever marked by every story told. I now remember each day to serve and care for others in their pain and in their journey because of the stories I know. The story of these dry bones coming to life, while haunting, is of no surprise to me because of the stories I have been told. In my own shame of these stories, I could only listen respectfully to the telling, while holding it in honour of the teller’s story. May the discoveries and uncovering of the injustice bring us to our knees and asking forgiveness repeatedly, knowing it is only the beginning of healing. It is not up to those wronged to forgive, it is up to us to bear the shame, guilt, and knowledge when others turned a blind eye to the events of the past and attempted to bury the wrongs on unmarked land. As we all listen, healing will follow.
As the bones of the children wronged and left behind in the fields, rise to ask us to hear their cries, I am listening and stand to be brought to hear them and take on the wrongs served to them by others as they attempted to build a nation on the backs of these children. I expect little forgiveness in my sobriety, yet I hope together we may, as Canadians, hear the stories of the bones with listening ears and never justify any of the actions. In truly hearing the story and never checking the ticket, the potential for hope lives on for all people. Together we mourn and listen to the rattling of the bones coming to life to right the wrongs of our drunken past. There is no room to simply include only forgiveness, there must be room for hearing, absorbing, and righting the future for Canada’s Indigenous/Aboriginal/First Nations and Metis peoples. They need not forgive; they need to be heard and have the space to tell their story.
May the pandemic of 2020 and the discovery of the graves of 2021open the minds of all who need to listen. These dark times can work into potential hope that history will never repeat itself whether it is called residential school or cultural genocide, as we remember, honour and hear the stories with a healing heart, in time, forgiveness will be earned and in the fabric of the future.
Cynthia Breadner is a grief specialist and bereavement counsellor, a soul care worker and offers specialized care in Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy with special attention as a cognitive behavioral therapy practitioner and trauma incident resolution facilitator. She volunteers at hospice, works as a LTC chaplain and is a death doula, assisting with end-of-life care for client and family. She is the mother part of the #DanCynAdventures duo and practices fitness, health and wellness. She is available remotely by safe and secure video connections, if you have any questions contact her today! [email protected] breakingstibah.com
