Janice Montour, Executive Director of the Woodland Cultural Centre, taught us the history of the former Mohawk Institute Residential School and the ongoing campaign to 'Save the Evidence' so that future generations will know what happened there.
The finding of unmarked graves in British Columbia and Saskatchewan have touched the hearts of all Canadians and attracted attention from around the world to a part of Canadian history that most Canadians knew or (sadly) cared little about. And while the subject of residential schools has been in the media for some time now, for most Hamiltonians it still feels rather remote.
Our guest speaker changed that. She comes from our own 'back yard', where the Mohawk Institute Residential School ran for well over a century, just minutes outside Hamilton's current municipal boarder. In a presentation to our Rotary Club on August 18, she shed a bright light on this part of our collective past, so that we can have a new understanding of current issues and work together to build a better future.
