How Marie Wilson will mark the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

09/21/21 • 46 min

September 30, 2021 marks the first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. It's a federal statutory holiday, a time to reflect about the brutal impact of the Indian Residential School System. Hundreds of thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were forced to attend those institutions from the 1830s to the 1990s, and the impact of that has resonated through families, communities and generations.

This holiday was the direct result of the 94 Calls to Action from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. Our guest today, Marie Wilson, was one of the three Commissioners of that Commission, which worked from 2009 to 2015.

In that role, Wilson criss-crossed the country hearing heartbreaking testimony from residential school survivors. Stories of the mental, physical and sexual abuse children suffered as part of a system, run by the churches and government, aimed at forcing Indigenous children to assimilate into white society — or as one official bluntly put it, “to kill the Indian in the child.”

In this episode, Wilson reflects on how she will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the recent tragic discoveries of unmarked graves at several former residential school sites, and what still remains to be done to address the TRC Calls to Action.

The subject matter discussed in this episode may be upsetting or triggering for some listeners. If you are a residential school survivor in distress or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools crisis line toll-free at 1-866-925-4419.

Previous Episode

Chris Hadfield’s Space Race thriller

Commander Chris Hadfield is arguably Canada’s most famous astronaut. There was even a time, during his 2013 mission aboard the International Space Station, when he was quite possibly our most famous Canadian, appearing as a guest on talk shows and capturing the imaginations of millions with his viral dispatches from life in orbit. A veteran of multiple missions to space with the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and the Russian Space Program, he was the first Canadian to do a space walk, was commander of the ISS, and spent five years as the NASA representative to the Russian Space Program based in Moscow, becoming a fluent Russian speaker in the process.

It’s fair to say that Hadfield knows a thing or two about space, so when it came time for him to write his first ever novel, he turned for inspiration to the cosmos and the heyday of the Space Race, particularly the Apollo Missions to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s. Out next month, The Apollo Murders is a classic Cold War-era spy thriller. In this fascinating conversation, we discuss the moments in his own career that inspired a novel that now has leading Hollywood figures like James Cameron and Ryan Reynolds exploring turning it into a film.

“I thought trying to write a fiction book that would really give people a feel for what space flight is like, not only would that be an interesting personal challenge, but also once people have read this book they'll have almost an intuitive feel for what those various things are,” says Hadfield. “It gave [me] another avenue to share those extremely rare experiences that I've been lucky enough to have.”

Next Episode

Spooky storytime with Adam Shoalts

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The resulting story is a fantastic, fun and chilling tale, a look, as he puts it, into “the strange and scary things that lurk in the darkness, beyond the flicker of the firelight.”

Our spooky music for this episode comes to us courtesy of Liam Seagrave (@pianogeist).