Those words the Prime Minister spoke [on June 11, 2008] brought back the old memories from my residential school days. The feelings of sheer loneliness, the homesickness, the fear of being there… Former dorm mates who were no longer around. Maybe it was the lost child within me waiting all those years to hear those words. I needed to hear those words—”It was wrong”—and never thought that I would live to hear them. The public acknowledgement that what had been done to us in the past was wrong added to the healing process for myself. The Prime Minister’s words and actions that day were a true act of healing and reconciliation.
—Vivian Ketchum is a residential school survivor and member of the Healing and Reconciliation Advisory Committee of the PCC. She works at Winnipeg Inner City Missions.
Lord, we seek your help and support in the journey towards true healing and reconciliation in Canada and in the Church. we seek the strength and guidance and comfort of your Holy spirit, so that aboriginal peoples of Canada can return to the sacred teachings and ceremonies of their traditional elders and return to the loving arms and sacred word of Jesus Christ. we also ask that the whole Church, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, can support them in this walk and walk with them in all parts of the journey of life and be their brothers and sisters, as you intended for all of us, through Jesus Christ our lord …
Lord, help us all to repent from our part in this whole painful part of history.
—Rev. Stewart Folster of the Ojibway people and Director of Saskatoon Native Circle Ministry in a closing prayer.
