This is the second year on which the federal government of what we currently call Canada observes this occasion.
There was a long, winding skein of roads taken by millions of people to get from there to here. A lot of life and death and pain and joy, and many of the states of being in between.
I find myself still looking for paying work on this day, regardless of these truths. I feel guilt over disrespect committed by doing that.
Since I'm going to have a death some day - whether I want it or not - I want to die in a country that conducts itself better, where all the people are kinder to one another than we've been up to now. I am angered by those who consider acts of kindness to be treasonous or worse against their understanding of Canada. Against their belief of what Canada should be.
Yes, we've been horrifically unkind to one another. That's why the Residential Schools existed in the first place, to enforce cruelty in law. That's why there was slavery. Why some seek to restore the protection of law to cruelty.
No more.