How to make National Day for Truth and Reconciliation personal

It’s September — the month that culminates in the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

For Indigenous communities, the last day of September used the be the day the Indian agent, the priest or the RCMP arrived to remove children from their homes and take them to residential school.

Nowadays, Sept. 30 is the day Canadians show up to prove that history will never be repeated.

This is the fifth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and the annual event has quickly become one of the most important and highly participatory days in the country.

Winnipeg team behind national LGBT monument spent six years bringing it to fruition

The Winnipeg team behind a national monument recognizing the LGBT Purge were in Ottawa to celebrate its official unveiling Friday.

Thunderhead is the work of local artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Liz Wreford and Peter Sampson of Public City Architecture, and knowledge keeper Albert McLeod, who served as cultural adviser for the project.

The team beat out 31 international submissions for the project, which is permanently located at 201 Wellington St. in Ottawa along the Ottawa River, in view of Parliament.

“We are a beacon internationally around the world of what democracies can do about inclusion, about human rights,” McLeod said.

Winnipeg’s postwar architecture well-documented by online archive

We live in a city rich with Chicago School high rises, mid-century modernism and much more. And, for the past three decades, Paul Clerkin has amassed arguably the most comprehensive archive of this architecture.

Elections Canada says 40% of people in Indigenous communities voted federally in 2025

OTTAWA - More than 40 per cent of registered electors living in Indigenous communities voted in the federal election last year, a new Elections Canada report shows.

The highest level of voter participation in Indigenous communities was recorded in the Yukon at 61.9 per cent, while the lowest level was recorded in Quebec at 21.1 per cent.

Across Canada, nearly 70 per cent of registered electors cast ballots in the 2025 election.

Indigenous people in Canada tend to be less likely than others to vote in federal elections — a legacy of decades of mistrust and tensions between their communities and Ottawa.

Winnipeggers join global community in honouring Hiroshima, Nagasaki dead with lantern ceremony

Marking small lanterns with messages of “No More War,” “Peace for Everyone” and “Nuclear Free,” Winnipeggers gathered Thursday to mark 81 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Lanterns for Peace event, one of many around the globe, brought dozens of people to the fountain at Memorial Park to honour those killed by atomic weapons at the end the Second World War.

Growing up in Japan, Hiroe St. Louis remembers how every year, the importance of peace was stressed across the country as the Japanese reflected on the devastation in Hiroshima.

It was a lesson her grandmother would embed in St. Louis as she grew up near Osaka. While her grandmother was not in a city hit by a nuclear weapon, her home of Yokkaichi burned to the ground during the war. Across the country, people were just trying to survive, St. Louis says.

Bill Wilson, one of Canada’s last Second World War veterans, dies at 101

Veterans Affairs Canada says one of the country's last surviving Second World War veterans has died.

A social media post from the federal agency says William (Bill) Wilson died Monday at 101.

It says he was born in Manitoba in 1924, and served aboard the HMCS Ottawa and took part in the bloody D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The post says after the war, Wilson was part of the Canadian delegations to D-Day and Netherlands anniversary commemorations.

Ottawa acknowledges “lasting impact” of forced adoptions but offers no apology

TORONTO - The federal government acknowledged this week that forced adoptions had a lasting impact on people and families in Canada after the Second World War but stopped short of offering the public apology sought by advocates, including some affected by the practice.

A petition calling on Ottawa to formally apologize for taking part in the system garnered signatures from more than 600 people from across Canada and was tabled in the House of Commons in May.

The petition was created by Christine Nayler, a mother whose child was taken away decades ago, who also launched a national advocacy campaign called Canadians for a National Apology.

The group said in a statement this week that the "state-sanctioned" forced adoptions had a lifelong impact on mothers and their children, calling it “one of Canada’s largest human rights violations.”

Manitoba chiefs behind renewed effort to criminalize residential school denialism

First Nations chiefs from across the country have unanimously passed an emergency resolution that calls on the federal government to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech.

The resolution was adopted Tuesday at the Assembly of First Nations annual general assembly in Ottawa. It was introduced by David Monias, chief of Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba and seconded by Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee.

“We must honour the survivors and we must honour every child who never came home,” Monias said Wednesday. “We must also support every person who was left behind and those children who never returned home. We are left to mourn those children. They would have been our grandfathers today, our grandparents.”

The federal government estimates about 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools.

Chiefs call on feds to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech

OTTAWA - First Nations chiefs say the federal government is enabling residential school denialism by failing to make it a crime.

The chiefs passed an emergency resolution at the Assembly of First Nations general meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday calling on the feds to criminalize residential school denialism as hate speech.

"Truth is not optional and reconciliation cannot exist without truth," said Chief David Monias of Pimicikamak Cree Nation.

"We must honour the survivors and we must honour every child who never came home."

MTS petition on residential school denialism garners 2,500 signatures

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society is petitioning Ottawa to make it illegal to deny, downplay or justify the harms of residential schools.

Its e-petition — formally known as “e-7191” on the House of Commons website — will close mid-morning Thursday, after a 120-day campaign to collect signatures in support of updating the Criminal Code.

“We won’t tolerate the denialism or the distortion of history,” said Lillian Klausen, who represents 17,000 public school teachers across the province.

The union leader said listening to the voices that have long been excluded from history textbooks “is part of trying to reconcile.”

Saigon Centre residents fear loss of Vietnamese cultural space after Manitoba Housing takeover

Longtime tenants of a social housing project built in Winnipeg for Vietnamese refugees nearly 40 years ago fear its takeover by Manitoba Housing will ruin their main-floor cultural centre.

Saigon Centre at 458 Balmoral St., which was run by the Vietnamese Non-Profit Housing Corp. since opening in 1989, was put up for sale in March because it was $3 million in arrears on its mortgage.

Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corp. is taking over the 54-unit building and the government department is working on integrating it into the provincial housing portfolio, a spokesperson confirmed recently.

While rent levels are protected under a caveat that was enacted when the building opened, residents say they’re about to lose access to their cultural centre. The large room on the main floor is used for community gatherings, health and wellness activities for seniors, festivals, language-learning classes and other events over the last four decades.

Confronting the scourge of polio

From 1928 to 1953, polio epidemics occurred in Manitoba every three to five years. The pain for the young victims was often excruciating. The vast majority of children recovered, yet many experienced lifelong disabilities from the disease.

HBC charter goes on display at Manitoba Museum

After months of petitions, legal scrutiny and political pressure, the 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter has formally arrived at the Manitoba Museum, marked by a ceremony including many notable Canadian and Indigenous political leaders.

“It’s with a profound sense of gratitude and humility that I stand before you today as we recognize the gifting of the HBC Royal Charter, together with our consortium partners,” said Dorota Blumczynska, CEO of the Manitoba Museum.

“Today marks an opportunity that is not to redefine the past, but to better understand it, and to help us use it to build a more just and inclusive future.”

The 356-year-old document, which not only birthed HBC, but effectively laid a foundation for colonial Canada itself, attracted new controversies in the last year or so. After years of bleeding at the bottom line, HBC announced in March 2025 that it would begin liquidating its stores across the country and selling off its assets to pay off creditors.

HBC Royal Charter welcomed in ceremony at Manitoba Museum

WINNIPEG - A 356-year-old document that granted the Hudson's Bay Co. control over roughly one-third of Canada is now in public hands.

The HBC Royal Charter was unveiled Thursday at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg in a ceremony that was both a celebration of the new life of the document and a reflection on the troubled legacy it created.

"In 1670, a king, sitting across the ocean, claimed authority over our lands," said Ovide Mercredi, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

"Through the so-called right of discovery, vast territories were granted to the Hudson's Bay Co., as if our lands and territories were empty. But our lands were not empty, our nations were here."

Northern First Nation purchases popular tourist lodge in Seal River watershed

The Sayisi Dene First Nation has purchased one of the largest hunting and fishing lodges in Manitoba’s Seal River Watershed, marking a return to the community’s traditional lands and an economic development opportunity for the northern nation.

The Lodge at Little Duck is nestled between Neganilini and Little Duck lakes, more than 1,000 kilometres north of Winnipeg. It is located in the Seal River watershed, a 50,000-square-kilometre subarctic ecosystem relatively untouched by industrial development, and centred on the last major river in northern Manitoba without a hydroelectric dam. A network of provincial and federal parks has been proposed to protect the region.

“The Sayisi Dene people have a real connection to the lands, especially around where the lodge sits,” Chief Kelly-Ann Thom-Duck said in an interview. “We have plans to use the area and see where it goes.”

The fly-in hunting, fishing and eco-tourism destination has its own airstrip, lounge and cabins. Manager Shawn Paul said it regularly welcomes more than 100 guests every summer and fall for guided caribou hunts and fishing trips.

Bishop of the Arctic: Christopher Williams immersed himself in northern culture

Born on May 22, 1936, in Sale, England, John Christopher Richard Williams arrived in Kugluktuk in 1960 at the age of 24.

His journey north began with what his son Drew described as a chance encounter in a student dormitory room, when he came across a handmade ceramic coin bank shaped like an igloo — a fundraising display for the Diocese of the Arctic.

Williams’ decision to ask what the coin bank was, Drew said, “ended up being either the stupidest or most significant question he would ever ask in his life.” That moment led to a deeper conversation about ministry in the North and the need for clergy in isolated communities.

Moving away from plans for a career in advertising, he instead immersed himself in northern culture, becoming fluent in Inuktitut and later working alongside colleagues to translate portions of the Old Testament, helping to make religious texts more accessible in the language.

Peace, justice and bringing this country together

From the War of 1812 to today, no one has stood up for this country and worked for unity in this place more than Indigenous Peoples.

Doors Open to Winnipeg’s mystery, history

It’s easy to travel past the Manitoba Buddhist Temple and not even notice it.

Even residential school couldn’t erase who Christina Henderson was

Over her life, Christina Gladys Henderson was known by a few names.

She was born Aug. 6, 1948, as Teenie Cook, to Adam Cook and Violet Quill, and lived her early years in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, on the shore of Lake Winnipegosis, about 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

She would later adopt the name Tina, which most people called her, and later, Christina. In marriage, she would trade the surname Cook for Henderson.

Over her 77 years, however, one part of her identity did not change: Henderson would hold fast to her first language, Swampy Cree, despite more than a decade spent in residential schools — institutions that routinely punished and humiliated First Nations children for speaking their own languages.

Human rights panel accuses Canada of genocide against Indigenous population

MONTREAL - An international panel of human rights experts has accused Canada of committing genocide against its Indigenous population after a week of hearings in Montreal.

The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal was mandated to look at missing and disappeared children and unmarked graves at Canada’s residential school sites, as well as the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, through the lens of international law.

The panel of seven judges said Canada historically adopted a series of policies that they deemed were crimes against humanity with genocidal intent, including the residential schools, which were in operation for over 150 years. The last residential school closed in 1996.

Survivors at the hearings held onto each other and wiped away tears as three tribunal members read out the decision.

Ruling against Aboriginal title on private land is allowed to stand by high court

A New Brunswick ruling that Aboriginal title cannot be declared over private land has been allowed to stand by the Supreme Court of Canada, giving British Columbia an avenue to win its appeal in the landmark Cowichan Tribes case, B.C.'s attorney general said Thursday.

Niki Sharma said the high court's refusal to hear an appeal by the Wolastoqey First Nation in the case involving Aboriginal title in New Brunswick gives B.C. a "clear path" for an appeal in the Cowichan case, which has cast doubt on the primacy of private property rights.

"When it's the same legal issues that we are dealing with here, I think that bodes well for our arguments, and the appeals that we are seeking in B.C.," she said.

The mayor of Richmond, B.C., meanwhile said private property owners in the Cowichan Tribes title area should "breathe a little easier" in light of the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling.

The quiet power — and necessity — of Oseredok

At a moment when Ukraine sits at the centre of global political attention, one of North America’s most important Ukrainian cultural institutions continues to operate quietly in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.

For many Winnipeggers, Oseredok remains one of the city’s hidden treasures — preserving an extraordinary collection of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian art, artifacts and archives within its five-storey building on Alexander Avenue.

Originally constructed in 1912 as the British and Foreign Bible Society Building and designed by Winnipeg architect William Bruce, the structure itself reflects layers of immigration, faith and history embedded within the city.

Yet few people fully understand its scale and significance.