Toronto opens Spirit Garden, a space for residential school survivors, in Nathan Phillips Square [Video]

Michael Cheena says he gets emotional when he reads the names of the 18 residential schools that operated in Ontario on a monument in Spirit Garden in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. He attended two of them.

He said spaces like this are reminders of why we need to understand what survivors endured and support the families and communities they come from.

The Spirit Garden in the south-west quadrant of the plaza outside Toronto City Hall is a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 82 which calls for residential schools monuments to be installed in Canada’s capital cities.

Cheena is Cree and grew up along the shores of James Bay. At seven, he was taken to residential school at Bishop Horden Hall in Moose Factory, Ont., and then Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Now he advocates for fellow residential school survivors and travelled …