Canada Post unveils new commemorative stamps

This Saturday, Canadians across the country and in our area will remember those forced into residential schools on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Community members watched as Canada Post and the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford unveiled commemorative stamps today.

More than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Metis children across Canada were taken from their families and sent to residential schools created by the federal government and Christian churches between the 1830s and 1990s.

Many never made it home.

The stamps feature archival images of some of these residential schools that existed across the country.

Dawn Hill is a survivor of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School, which was closed in 1970, and is where the Woodland Cultural Centre currently operates.

Dawn says, “Everybody is getting their stories told now, so many of them are so similar. The environment, the harsh treatment, the awful food, the sexual abuse and stuff. It was there in almost every school.”

Canada Post says it was important that survivors guided the creation of the stamps.
So it worked closely with the survivors circle of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

Ahead of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation this Saturday, the Woodland Cultural Centre is holding multiple events this week geared toward survivors and their families.