Orange Shirt Day

Orange Shirt Day at Old’s Cool General Store:
Saturday, September 30th 2:30 to 5:00pm

SCHEDULE:

2:30 We will start the afternoon with an opening talk by Artist and Residential School Survivor Warren Boucher. Everyone needs to come out to hear him speak.

3:45 We get our little Marchers organized with their signs, chants and safety rules.

4:00 Our March through the neighborhood with all the little people. EVERY CHILD MATTERS! NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!

Background:

Orange Shirt Day: Every Child Matters is a growing national grassroots event that recognizes the survivors of residential schools – and acknowledges those who did not.

September 30 was chosen because it is the time of year in which children were taken from their homes to residential schools.

Orange Shirt Day: Every Child Matters grew out of Phyllis Webstad’s account of having her sparkly new orange shirt taken away on her first day of St. Joseph Mission residential school. This was just the beginning of how she was robbed. She shared this story during a community commemoration in WilliamsLake,BC in 2013.

At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in Vancouver the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair had encouraged Ms. Webstad to share her orange shirt story with others. Since then, Orange Shirt Day has become an annual opportunity to keep the discussion happening on all aspects of residential schools.

The community is invited to attend and commemorate this important day together: raising awareness about residential schools and to honour the close to 4,000 children who died, and the sacrifices that were made by over 150 000 residential school survivors. 

At Old’s Cool we believe that repairing the harm done to Indigenous People in Canada is the most important Constitutional/Human Rights Issue needing to be addressed in our country and around the world. 

So let’s talk about it in our community. Let’s get educated so we can put pressure on the powers that be. Let’s teach our children not to recreate the past and how to change things for the future. Let’s not be silent but come together in the spirit of restoration and hope for generations of children.

Please wear ORANGE! We don’t care if it’s one of our tshirts or something else. We just got these together because we heard people needed an accessible place to get orange shirts for the day.

If you can pre-order your EVERY CHILD MATTERS Orange Shirt Now ($22 plus tax) it will help us have enough shirts for Saturday.
$5 from the sale of every shirt will go to Children’s Peace Theatre to help support the amazing programs they run with Indigenous Children and Youth.