Canada Day should be celebrated

By Letter to the Editor on June 24, 2021.

Editor:
These days it is difficult to not hear via the media about the transgressions committed against the Indigenous people, in particular the Indigenous children. Residential schools began in 1883 up until the 1970’s and 80’s when the schools began closing down or changing to local control. The last residential school closed in the 1990’s. It is reported that the parents of these children couldn’t go to schools and that when the children did come home, they didn’t talk about their treatment until the schools closed down. This is very sad and should not have happened, but it did.
It is also reported that the governments of the day considered the indigenous people second-class and wanted to make them (through the children) more like the white man.
This sounds like the government was exhibiting an unconscious bias which is my understanding that all people exhibit in some form. (Implicit biases are unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that can manifest in the criminal justice system, workplace, school setting, and in the healthcare system).
There have been other races of people that have been subjected to unwarranted treatment by the Canadian government especially during World War Two.
Some 21,000 Japanese people who were living in British Columbia prior to the declaration of war had their land taken from them and they were put in concentration camps. And if that was not bad enough, they never got their land back after the war ended.
Canada has a storied past, that is for sure, but it is not as bad as what was done to the Jewish people in Germany by the Nazis or in other nations around the world.
Fast forward to 2021, we in Canada are now hearing that Canada Day should be cancelled due to the finding of 215 graves of indigenous children in B.C. While I sympathize with the parents and loved ones of those children, I cannot see how canceling Canada Day is going to make the past any better. Many thousands of Canadian soldiers, of which several hundred were indigenous fought and died fighting the Nazis during World War Two. They sacrificed their lives so that we could forever live a life in Canada free of tyranny, which is what it would have been if the Nazis were successful in overtaking our country.
We must not forget their sacrifices even during times such as we are experiencing lately.
Canada Day is a day that we all should celebrate our freedom just as we do on Remembrance Day, November 11th.
Kent Perry
Lethbridge