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Lanark Village orange shirt sale raises money for First Nations charity
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation also sparks conversations about injustices Indigenous Peoples faced in residential schools
10/20/2021
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Deron Hamel
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Lanark Village team members are pictured here wearing orange T-shirts on Sept. 30.
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Lanark Village honoured the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30 by encouraging team members at the Kitchener, Ont. seniors living community to buy orange T-shirts, with all proceeds going to a local First Nations-run charity.
Every year, Unifor, the union representing Lanark Village team members, distributes orange T-shirts on Sept. 30.
This year, Unifor Local 1106 decided to sell orange T-shirts for $10 each to support the Healing of the Seven Generations, a Waterloo Region-based First Nations-run charity supporting Indigenous Peoples who are suffering from the multigenerational impact of the residential school system.
The T-shirts, which sold out quickly, were embossed with the words Every Child Matters, the slogan of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which until this year was called Orange Shirt Day.
At Lanark Village, $150 was raised for the charity.
While not everyone purchased an orange T-shirt, nearly all – if not all – team members wore orange T-shirts on Sept. 30 to show their support for Indigenous Peoples affected by the residential school system, says Lisa Irwin, a member of the Lanark Village culinary team and the Local 1106 steward.
Lisa says one of the greatest successes of the day was that the orange T-shirts raised awareness of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and its importance – both among residents and team members.
“It definitely started a lot of conversations,” she tells S&R Today. “I work in the dining room, so I heard multiple conversations (among) residents who wanted to talk about the residential schools and how great it was that we were all wearing orange.”
The colour orange has significance. In 1973, Phyllis Webstad, a then-six-year-old First Nations student from British Columbia, had an orange shirt taken from her by teachers at the residential school she attended.
Orange Shirt Day was first acknowledged on Sept. 30, 2013, to raise awareness of the injustices First Nations, Inuit and Métis people faced in residential schools.
Orange has been designated as the colour of remembrance of the children who didn’t return home from residential schools.
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