ORANGE SHIRT DAY 2018

Carisbrooke Elementary School celebrated Orange Shirt Day on October 1, 2018.  The day represents a movement that officially began in 2013, but it really began in 1973 when a 6 year old girl, Phyllis Webstad, entered the St. Joseph Mission Residential School outside of Williams Lake, BC.  Young Phyllis was wearing a brand new orange shirt for her first day of school.  New clothes were rare and wonderful for any Indigenous child.  But the school staff quickly took her new shirt from her and made her wear the school's institutional uniform.  Phyllis' story is the reason for what has become a national movement.  The purpose is to recognize the experience of survivours of the Residential School system and to honour them.  We want to show a commmitment to ensure that every child matters.  This initiative asks for every Canadian to wear an orange shirt in the spirit of healing and reconciliation.  The date was chosen because that was the time of the year when the trucks and buses would enter Indigenous communities to collect the children and take them to their residential school.  Orange Shirt Day is an opportunity for everyone to come together for the hope for generations of children to come.