Every Child Matters Orange T-Shirt 2024
Due to ongoing website difficulties, please visit one of our Gift Shops to purchase your shirts.
You may also phone us at 416-480-4983 to purchase over the phone.
Shirts will be available for pickup at our Bayview M1 or Holland Gift Shops. Special arrangements are being made for shirts needing to be picked up at St John's Rehab or the Reactivation Care Centre.
Shirt orders may also be shipped via Canada Post/UPS.
On September 30, all Canadians are encouraged to wear orange to raise awareness of the very tragic legacy of residential schools, and to honour the thousands of survivors.
The shirts this year were designed by local Indigenous artist Animikiik’otcii Maakaai.
Animikiik’otcii is an Anishinaabe multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. Her father, Alex McKay, survived attending two residential schools. Their family is from Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Big Trout Lake, in northern Ontario. Animikiik’otcii lives in Toronto with her children.
Proceeds from the sale of these shirts will be donated to the the Ontario Aboriginal HIV | AIDS Strategy, an organization that provides culturally respectful and sensitive programs and strategies to respond to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic among Aboriginal people in Ontario through promotion, prevention, long-term care, treatment and support initiatives consistent with harm reduction.
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a day to acknowledge the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. It's a time to reflect on the legacy of residential schools in Canada and to consider our individual and collective responsibility to Reconciliation.
On September 30th, let’s together create a sunset of orange to remember all the childhoods lost.
What is Orange Shirt Day?
Both the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day take place on September 30.
Orange Shirt Day is an Indigenous-led grassroots commemorative day that honours the children who survived residential schools and remembers those who did not. This day relates to the experience of Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwepemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem'c Xgat'tem First Nation, on her first day of school, where she arrived dressed in a new orange shirt, which was taken from her. It is now a symbol of the stripping away of culture, freedom and self-esteem experienced by Indigenous children over generations.
