An artistic collective created an Indigenous female figurine and perched it atop the spot where a Sir John A MacDonald statue was torn down a few years ago in Hamilton’s Gore Park.
The life-sized figurine stood there as about 100 people gathered in the city’s core to commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30.
“It was a very ground-shaking moment,” said Shyann Jenkins, Cayuga, Turtle Clan of Six Nations. “The community needed to reclaim this space that we are all gathered here in.”
Jenkins led a speech and round dance in the park and asked guests to write what truth and reconciliation means to them on an orange paper leaf, which was then tied onto a wreath around the statue’s base.
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is observed annually on Sept. 30 to honour First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Survivors, their families, and communities and participants wear orange shirts to memorialize and reflect on the tragic history and multi-generational impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system.
Participants at Gore Park wore orange shirts which serve as a symbol of remembrance and a commitment to understanding the harm caused by residential schools.
Jenkins said the event at Gore Park was to think about all the survivors and all the ones who didn’t make it home.
“Our family says that my great-grandfather went to the Mush Hole but we don’t call him a survivor; he made it out of the school but later on passed away due to that trauma that he had carried,” she said. “It’s a privilege for people to not have this trauma in their life, to not have their families go through this. If you’re not Indigenous and you’ve never had someone go through residential schools…you don’t have to deny that it didn’t happen; it just didn’t happen to your family and to your family members. There’s a lot of us still here today that still walk with that trauma, intergenerational trauma, from our families going to those residential schools that we then pass on to the next generation. I’m just here today to kind of lighten your load that you’re carrying on this heavy day.”
Sir John A. MacDonald, sometimes called the father of genocide in Canada by Indigenous groups, other allies and historians, is, on the flip side, often hailed as a hero for being Canada’s first prime minister.
Protesters toppled a statue of the controversial historical figure in Gore Park to raise awareness of his impact on Indigenous people, including deliberate starvation and detention of Indigenous people.
Originally published in the Two Row Times, October 7, 2026 (Volume 14, Issue 8), page 2.
