The Story Behind Orange Shirt Day

("Orange Shirt Day 2019" by Province of British Columbia)

September 30th is Orange Shirt Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the Canadian residential school system. But why exactly do we wear orange shirts? Is there a story behind it?

In fact, there is, and it starts with an Indigenous girl named Phyllis. Phyliss Webstad is part of the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation and was a young girl living on the Dog Creek Reserve in British Columbia with her grandmother. Even though they didn’t have electricity, Phyllis was content with her life. But one day, tired of her life of solitude, she wanted to go to school like her cousin and all the older children. When she was six her grandmother told her she was old enough to go to school. Unfortunately, school was not a good idea. 

 Like her cousin, Phyllis went to St Joseph’s Mission, a residential school. Before the first day of school, her grandmother brought her into town and bought her a bright orange shirt that was laced up on the front. She and her cousin were ready for their first day of elementary school. The school was large and daunting, and the nuns that ran the school scared her. Phyllis was undressed and forced into a shower, something she had never seen before on the reserve. They took her orange shirt and cut her hair short. While her hair eventually grew back, she would never see her orange shirt again. 

(Indigenous girls sewing at St. Joseph's Mission)

Phyllis was subject to the full range of horrors the Canadian residential school system had to offer. The nuns who ran the school neglected the Indigenous children who attended, the food was terrible, and she felt completely and utterly alone.

Finally, after 300 nights in Residential School Phyllis was finally free to go home. She was elated to be back to her house and back to the people she loved. That Summer she worked in her grandmother’s garden, fished in the Fraser River, and never went back to the residential school again.  

So, we wear orange shirts to raise awareness for all that was lost in the residential schools, whether this was a shiny orange shirt with laces on the front or the lives of young children who were failed by the horrifying system. 

Hopefully, never again will a child, Indigenous or not, have something forcibly taken from them. 

Because every child matters. 

(People attend the second annual Orange Shirt Day Survivors Walk and Pow Wow on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Sept. 30, 2022. Photo credit: John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)