It’s September 30th. In Canada, that means National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It means orange shirts, social posts, politicians looking solemn for the cameras. It means half my inbox stuffed with “we acknowledge we work on unceded land” from companies that would rather eat glass than give land back.

It also means kids were stolen, languages beaten out, graves hidden. That’s not history; it’s still now. Survivors are still alive. Families are still missing their children.

Children who never got to go home.
Children whose graves we’re still finding.

And the institutions, government and church alike, that built this machine of assimilation haven’t dismantled it.

Orange shirts aren’t a brand. They’re grief. They’re resistance. They’re survival.

Today isn’t about settler comfort. It’s about listening to Indigenous voices, even the ones that sting, the ones that don’t wrap reconciliation in warm fuzzies. It’s about noticing which institutions profit from talking about reconciliation while refusing to act.

 

If you’re sitting there wondering what the hell a settler is supposed to actually do, here are a few places to start:

• Orange Shirt Society
• Indian Residential School Survivors Society
• National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
• Legacy of Hope Foundation
• First Nations Child & Family Caring Society

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If you are a residential school survivor or an affected family member and need support, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available 24/7 at 1-866-925-4419.

Day 42 was seven days ago. A full week.

I have stepped back from publishing, but not from writing. The universe keeps handing me material, some of it even writing itself.

This past week, for example, I got tired of the same canonization of someone’s idea of a saint over on Facebook (I haven’t finished the purge as of this writing), and decided to push back on a post a former pastor shared.

That turned into a zealot equating me with an assassin, and for the record, I have only ever played one in video games.

On an unrelated note, I finally picked up a walking pad earlier this week, and I’ve somehow managed to drop it on my foot. Twice. Last night’s drop was the worst of the two, and I am forever thankful that we have a healthy stash of ice packs in the freezer.

It’s funny how quickly “not publishing daily” turns into actually writing more. Some drafts might not see the digital light of day, but I’m still able to get the words out to process my thoughts and experience.

I’m sure I’ll unpack a number of things in this space in the coming weeks, if not days, but consider this proof of life in the meantime.

There are a lot of feelings that I’ve been sifting through lately, and of course day 42 would land today.

I have blogged every day for the last 41 days, and planned to end my current streak at 42. I didn’t have anything philosophical or witty planned to wrap with.

But the weight of today won’t let me off that easy.

Some of the feelings are about this day twenty-four years ago, and what the following years meant. Others are about the events of this past week.

And some have nothing to do with either at all.

Still, there are a few things I need to make crystal clear.

I am not celebrating the death of someone by gunshot, even if they encouraged harm against people like me. I am not mourning them, either.

I am not condoning violence against people who demand everyone fit their mould and cling to oppression as their power. Or violence of any kind.

I am not going to sit back and agree that some things should be tolerated when they are not mere differences, they are harms.

 

I keep circling back to the idea of getting a small couch or futon for the studio.

Part of me wants it just so I can chill down here instead of having to go up one or two floors – it’s all about the convenience comforts.

But the problem is, it would run right into my desk space and cut off the corner where I keep a lot of my stuff.

So here I am, defeated by IKEA dimensions like some tragic couchless gremlin.

Tonight smells like neighbourhood sweet weed and pure exhaustion.

And so begins my attempt at starting and finishing an audio book in a reasonable amount of time.

I’ve already had to start it over because I missed some bits.

When my younger sister told me that my nephew was asking to play football, I had very strong mixed feelings about it. His dad played football (his grandfather did too, he actually went all the way to the CFL!). It was a pretty common thing for the high schools back in my day, so much so that both of mine had strong football programs at varying times in their histories.

But football is a risky sport, and I was worried first and foremost about head injuries.

A lot has changed in the 21 years since I was in high school. Football programs don’t exist in most of them. But community programs do. And now that we know more about head injuries and the impact they have on our youth and their futures, we run these programs smarter, too.

So, my nephew was signed up. His team was undefeated pretty much any time I asked how his games went. Talk about a confidence booster for this kid who was brand new to football! He was happy, he was thriving. That’s something that this auntie can get behind.

He loved playing with his original spring house league team, but they wrapped up for the season in June (y’know, when spring ends). It’s local to where they live (and outside the city), so we weren’t able to make it to any of his games this year.

But he joined another league to play over the summer and into the fall, and it just so happened to be the league that covers the city! While his home team’s community and field aren’t local to us, any of the away games in the city are pretty accessible.

So, we went to my nephew’s football game yesterday. It rained around the start of the second quarter, and while I had brought blankets to keep me warm (and drier than if I had not), I wondered if it would continue until the end of the game.

It didn’t.

The kids didn’t let a bit of rain stop them, though!

There was a moment toward the end of the third quarter when my younger nephew asked me if there was a chance that the other team could win the game. We were up by a good amount of points, so my sister chimed in about how it was unlikely. And then the other team scored some points. And then they scored some more.

That led to a conversation about why we don’t say such things at such moments in a game. I will admit, I had actually wondered in that moment, too, what the likelihood was. I figured it wasn’t very likely, but I also didn’t know the strength of that team.

By the second half of the fourth quarter, it was clear the other team wasn’t going to close the gap. Our kids held their lead and finished strong, winning 40–16.

But the score wasn’t even the highlight for me. It was the look on my nephew’s face when he realized I was standing there with his parents and brother – and with his uncle too, after the game. Disbelief in his voice, pure surprise in his eyes: what are we doing there?

Totally worth the drive, the rain, and the blankets.

Today was a great, though busy, day.

I didn’t get much sleep, but I spent a good chunk of time outside and got a game of D&D in.

I’m wrapping it up online window shopping for a new gaming rig build for a friend’s kid.

That more than makes up for how tired I feel!

One of my teammates put up a poll in one of our company-wide Slack channels today: Team Jeremiah or Team Conrad?

I didn’t, although I should’ve honestly, expect the ChatGPT theories would surface. But they did. And of course they did, we’re all in on generative AI after all.

While I won’t tell you which team I’m on (I will let you guess, though!), I can confirm that the poll results heavily favoured Team Conrad, even with the skewed ChatGPT arguments factored in.

I love back to school season.

I’m excited for the new school year of opportunities that await everyone, but especially for our nephews and niece, my friends’ kids and my friends who are teachers.

I have fond back to school memories. Some that aren’t so stellar, too, but they don’t outweigh the good.

I went to university to be a teacher, but it didn’t pan out. For a few reasons, and neither because I was flunking out for those of you who like to sit behind your screens and criticize me.

Sometimes, I sit and think about the possibility that it could have become. I don’t dwell on it, though. I have no idea what my life would be like now if I had continued going to Roberts or if I had picked it back up here in Ontario (which would’ve been a heavy lift considering the classes I missed). But I was also undiagnosed neurodivergent at the time, so it would’ve likely been another academic spiral.

Even though I never became a teacher, I still love the start of the school year.

There’s something hopeful about it, even when I’m only watching it unfold from the sidelines.