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215 pairs of shoes and moccasins placed at the Brantford 'Mush Hole'On the weekend Haudensaunee women from Six Nations took the initiative to honour the 215 children  who were buried on the site of what once was Canada's largest Indigenous residential schools. The women placed moccasins and shoes on the steps of the Brantford “Mush Hole.” 

Teri Morrow of the Six Nations of the Grand River participated in the memorial along with her mother and her children: "To be on this journey with my family and to see my children be free of spirit and have the strength to own their space in these moments is a true testament of generations of resiliency from my great-great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunties and daughter. I am grateful for the women today who lead this initiative to bring a small bit of peace to my mind and shine resiliency through our hearts to walk these babies home."  

Memorials such as this have been established across the country, as families and communities mourn and honour the children who never came home. 

BORN Ontario honours these children and their families and is committed to walking the path of reconciliation. 

150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families and forced to attend government schools over much of the last century.  Justice Murray Sinclair, who heads the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, believes up to 6,000 children may have died at the schools. Because the federal government stopped recording the deaths around 1920, it's difficult to cite numbers with certainty. Read more...

Please acknowledge and honour the young lives lost by wearing an orange shirt today and amplifying the work of reconciliation. 

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