Canada
The Canadian Indian residential school system, founded in the 19th century, was intended to force the assimilation of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada into European-Canadian society. The last residential school was closed in 1996. On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized, on behalf of the sitting Cabinet, in front of an audience of Aboriginal delegates, and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC, for the past governments' policies of assimilation. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow at "the anguish caused by the deplorable conduct of some members of the Church" and offered his "sympathy and prayerful solidarity".
Read more about this topic: Child Migration
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“This universal exhibition in Canada of the tools and sinews of war reminded me of the keeper of a menagerie showing his animals’ claws. It was the English leopard showing his claws.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)