Residential school survivors recounted their traumatic experience in the residential school system, as a crowd listed in front of George Etienne monument in Montreal. 

"In residential school you didn’t have an identity, I had a number, my number was seven, imagine that?”, said one survivor.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt day, calls attention to the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada imposed by the federal government and Catholic church through the creation of residential schools. This day was implemented in 2021, just months after 215 unmarked graves were discovered in Kamloops near a former residential school site.

Participants shouted "No pride in genocide" as they marched through the streets of Montreal.

The Montreal march was organized by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and Resilience Montréal. Organizers and those affected by residential schools both directly, by attending them, and indirectly through intergenerational trauma, gave speeches to the crowd. 

After speeches outside George Etienne monument, participants marched to Roddick gates, outside McGill university, where the audience heard from Victor Bonspille, Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake and watched a hoop dance performed by Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo, Mohawk Choreographer and dancer. Diabo dedicated this dance to the memory of a loved one who had passed, stating she only found out they were a residential school survivor after their passing, as this person was ashamed of sharing their experience. 

Marchers carried on to Place du Canada, where a statue of former Prime Minister John A. McDonald once stood before it was toppled and beheaded during a demonstration calling for the defunding of the Montreal police and an end to systemic racism in 2020.