A Burnaby coalition is proposing an orange crosswalk in the city as a way to raise the importance of meaningful truth and reconciliation.
The Stand With Asians Coalition says it wrote to City of Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley and council to propose a crosswalk to commemorate residential schools victims and survivors.
Co-founder Doris Mah says the idea for the crosswalk came after seeing an article of a city in Ontario that had an orange crosswalk painted on a major street in its community.
The City of Gibson in B.C. also installed an orange-striped crosswalk at the Glover Point and Winn Road intersections in August of this year.
“In June this year, Canada was terribly shaken by the horrific discovery of 215 children's remains at the Kamloops residential school," Mah says in a news release.
"According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 report, “Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials”, there are over 3500 unmarked graves in Canada.
"While I would like to commend the city’s effort to partner with the Stand With Asians Coalition (SWAC) in June and to set up the shoe memorial at the Burnaby Civic Square, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to truly address meaningful Truth and Reconciliation."
