The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/09/30 at 20:00 EDT

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/09/30 at 20:00 EDT

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in Canada, and Google is helping Canadians innovate in ways both big and small, from mapping accessible spaces so the disabled community can explore with confidence, to unlocking billions in domestic tourism revenue. Thousands of Canadian companies are innovating with Google AI. Innovation is Canada's story. Let's tell it together. Find out more at g.co slash Canadian Innovation. I'm Phelan Johnson, and I'm failing Johnson, and I'm walking into a building I've been in many times before.

In some ways, it looks the same as I remember, but it also feels very, very different. Look at those little faces. This used to be when you first come in here, this is like a sitting room, and if your families were here, they wanted to see the kids or something. this is where they would be and that would be Zimmerman on that side. That's principal? Yeah. This is the site of the former Mohawk Institute,

the longest operating residential school in Canada. It's the residential school closest to my community of Six Nations and it's where some of my family went. The Mohawk Institute, or the mush hole as it was often called because of the food they served, first opened in the 1800s and functioned as a residential school until 1970. Oh, there's me. I'm with Roberta Hill.

She attended the school from 1957 to 1961. We're standing in the newly renovated visiting room. This is where kids would come to visit with family or siblings, but that often didn't happen. Children seldom got or were allowed visitors. Today, the walls are covered with photographs, pictures of the children that would have gone to the mush hole. I'll see who's here, all these nice faces.

Oh, there's John. Oh. This is, I'll probably know who this is. Del Riley. He wrote a book. Shirley, she's with us. Today, September 30th, is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. And it is also the day that the newly renovated Mohawk Institute opens its doors to the public

after a lengthy renovation period. It's now a museum with a murraying. exhibitions, telling the stories of what happened here. Being back in the space can bring up a lot of memories. I was standing in the building looking outside, seeing all the kids go home for summer, because we didn't go home for summer. The majority of kids did go home.

But there was probably 40 or 50 of us that never went home. We stayed here year-round. So I'm watching those kids go home. And all I wanted to do was go home. And that supervisor, the girl supervisor, says, you're not never going home, you know? And those were pretty painful words to hear because I just wanted to go home.

I don't think people understand the damage that you do, the hurt that you cause when kids are put in here and they don't, like a lot of kids, even from the North, how would you know why you're here as a child? They just know somebody took you here, put you in here. How would you know that? And all they want to do is go home. They miss their moms.

They miss their families. And then you miss all the rest of the stuff that goes with it, all the things that your parents would have taught you. You know, your grandparents. all of that. You grow up in this isolated, cold little world, you know? For a long time, many people felt that these memories, memories of places like this, were best left buried, forgotten. But slowly, over time, survivors began to share and speak out. And in 2015, the truth and reconciliation calls to action were released.

These 94 calls were to acknowledge and address the harms of the residential school system while seeking a path forward. One of those calls to action was call number 80 to establish a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honor survivors, their families, and communities. Which brings us to today. Today is the day that we hold dear in our hearts. While I was in Federal Day School in Pagnetong for 10 years, I was not allowed to speak my language or learned the traditional ways of my people. I did not admit that I was a residential school survivor. Today is the day that we remember those that never came home.

Sago, my name is Phelan Johnson, and today is the fifth annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Across the country today, many people have gathered to reflect on a painful history and a legacy that reverberates through many indigenous communities and families. The residential school system leaves a stain on Canadian history, and that history is still playing out. With so much of the truth coming to light many years later, and with that truth comes the work of healing. As a First Nations person with connections to the residential school system,