'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
With drumming and singing, at powwows and public ceremonies, communities across the country are marking the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
The federal statutory holiday, also known as Orange Shirt Day, was established last year to remember children who died while being forced to attend residential schools, as well as those who survived, and the families and communities still affected by lasting trauma.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined representatives of various First Nations and dozens of people in orange for a sunrise ceremony in Niagara Falls, Ont. He stood silently as the ceremony took place and spoke with residential school survivors afterwards.
Later in the morning, Trudeau addressed an event to mark the day.
"This is a day for Indigenous Peoples. Today to recognize that yes, you are still here, you are still strong and you are an indissociable part of the present and the future we build every day as a country," he told the crowd.
"It is a day to remember, to grieve, to take another step along healing. But it is also a day for non-Indigenous peoples to recognize that you should not have to carry this burden alone."
The speeches and events occur even as the grim work that helped inspire the day continues.
In Mission, B.C., where Orange Shirt Day finds its origins, work began in September to search for graves with ground-penetrating radar at the former St. Mary's Indian Residential School. The City of Mission said in a statement the work would continue as long as dry weather allows.
It was at another Mission school, St. Joseph Mission Residential School, where student Phyllis Webstad had an orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, taken away from her in the 1970s.
Orange Shirt Day would become the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federal statutory holiday established last year following the discovery of suspected unmarked burial sites at former residential schools, by the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc nation in Kamloops, B.C., Saskatchewan's Cowessess First Nation and others.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said in an interview that the day was about residential school survivors, like Webstad, as well as the children who never returned from them.
"It's their day, especially those who suffered in those institutions and survived and then I also feel that it's for all the little ones who died in those institutions and didn't make it home," she said.
"The day is about them as well. It's also a time to reflect. It's a time to learn about Canada's true history."
She said the day was also an opportunity for Canadians to reflect on the Indigenous experience.
In Ottawa, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon -- the first Indigenous person to hold the post -- welcomed nearly 100 school children and staff to Rideau Hall, where she spoke to them about reconciliation.
She said people wear orange shirts to show that every child matters, which is important to do because of how traumatic residential schools were to Indigenous children.
Simon told the children she grew up speaking Inuktitut.
"I still speak my language every day," she said, adding she doesn't want to forget it.
Simon, who is 75, said at her age she's learning a new language, French, and told the kids it would be good if they could a learn an Indigenous word every day. She then went on to teach them one in Inuktitut that means to never give up.
Simon also talked to the children about persevering through hard things and tied it back to her own history, having grown up in a small, isolated village and now working at Rideau Hall as the Governor General.
"It wasn't handed to me," she said.
In Toronto, a group drummed and sang Indigenous songs as a woman in traditional Indigenous attire danced at a gathering at the city's downtown Nathan Phillips Square.
Several dozen onlookers, some wearing orange shirts, occasionally cheered and clapped during the performance. One of the drummers said they were performing for both survivors of residential schools and those who didn't return.
In the centre of Halifax's downtown, hundreds gathered to mark the day and hear from Acadia First Nation Chief Deborah Robinson, Mi'kmaw elder Alan Knockwood and Halifax's Indigenous adviser Cheryl Copage-Gehue.
Knockwood told the crowd at the city's Grand Parade that as the community comes together to reflect on Canada's legacy of colonialism, the children lost in the residential school system are "here in our hearts and they are with us here."
He led a prayer in English and in Mi'kmaw.
"My language is still alive but residential school survivors like myself have a difficult time speaking it because it was beaten out of me. But I'm still here," Knockwood said. "Survivors from residential schools are part of you, and now our legacy is that it will never happen again and that's because all of you here will not allow it to happen again."
Robinson told the crowd that she hopes everyone reflects on truth and reconciliation in their own way as they remember the suffering caused by residential schools.
While there has been progress towards supporting Indigenous people, Robinson said "it's hard to deny, and I say this every year when I speak, that we have so far to go."
The chief raised an orange flag created by a Nova Scotian Mi'kmaw artist with the Mi'kmaw petroglyph that represents a child.
While many of Nova Scotia's planned events for the occasion have been postponed due to the damage from post-tropical storm Fiona, there will be a ceremony Friday at the site of the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School and a light show in the evening at the old Halifax Memorial Library
In Prince Edward Island, the province says its flags have been lowered at provincial buildings to recognize the harm caused by the residential school system. But public events to mark the day are cancelled as work continues to repair damage caused by Fiona.
Some of the other events scheduled today include the illumination of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in orange, programming about residential schools at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and a community powwow at the Victoria-area Songhees Nation.
Canada's residential school system, funded by the federal government and run by Catholic churches, was established in the 1800s. It removed roughly 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children from their families. The last school closed in 1997.
Many children were sexually, physically or psychologically abused in the system designed to get the "Indian" out of the child.
At Niagara Falls, Trudeau said the day was about truth.
"That truth is we all need to open our eyes to the truth of how Canada evolved and came to be and how we need to make deliberate choices to undo the falsehoods and the wrongness that is part of it," he said.
"We are on the path, and it is going to take many years, but we must today and every day rededicate ourselves to that."
- With files from Jessica Smith in Niagara Falls, Ont., Stephanie Taylor in Ottawa, Lyndsay Armstrong in Halifax, Sharif Hassan in Toronto and Dirk Meissner in Victoria.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2022.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.