–noun
1. loss of hope; hopelessness.
2. someone or something that causes hopelessness: He is the despair of his mother.

–verb (used without object)
3. to lose, give up, or be without hope (often fol. by of): to despair of humanity.

–verb (used with object)
4. Obsolete. to give up hope of.

Despair is quite an extreme. It’s very hard to work away from this point, basically because you have lost everything even hope. Imagine that! Losing your money, then job, then friends, then family, then you have to work up again… but when you have lost even hope, for a lot of people it’s even worth it. It is no surprise that suicide rates are so high among groups that lose so much at such an alarmingly rapid rate.

How can you help someone who has lost it all, and is now knee deep in despair?

Manitobans for Healing and Reconciliation

In recognition of Canada’s National Day of Healing & Reconciliation and Australia’s National Sorry Day

5:30 am Sunrise Pipe Ceremony and Lighting of Sacred Fire

10:30 – 12:00 pm Welcoming Ceremonies
• Honour Song – Strong Singing Turtle Women
• Welcome Manitoba Lance Runners Youth – MBHR
• First Nations Remarks
• Greetings from Community Leaders

12:00 – 1:00 pm Community Lunch

1:00 – 5:00 pm Under a Listening Tent: Thoughts on Healing and Reconciliation
• Keynote Presentation: Justice Sinclair Presenter
• Presenter
• Open Microphone
• Church Remarks
• Song

5:00 – 6:00 pm Closing Ceremony
• Prayer – Elder Jessie Howell
• Round Dance

Elders, Indian Residential School – Resolution Health Support Workers, and Pastoral and Spiritual Care support will be identified and available throughout the event. You are invited to bring your medicine bundles for prayers and smudging

Contact: Albert McLeod T: 204-783-6424
Ko’ona Cochrane T: 204-582-0130 TF: 1-866-320-2763
E: healingmb@hotmail.com

Sponsored by MBHR and Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc.

If you look up “St. Eugene Golf Resort and Casino” on Tripadvisor.com you get some fantastic reviews:

what an amazing opportunity that the First Nations Band has seized! Well done, and be proud of what your band has accomplished!
Guests will be treated to superb rooms, very well maintained. Our room had a fireplace, very spacious, large bathroom, mini fridge, in room safe, and large closet.

Michael Kluckner has written about this Ex-Residential School on his “Disappearing BC” website

I first visited the old school at St. Eugene’s Mission on the St. Mary’s Reserve near Cranbrook in 1995 and was struck by the beauty of the massive old building and its dramatic siting with the Rocky Mountains in the distance. The other notable building on the reservation is the St. Eugene’s Church, one of two (the other being at Moyie) built with the proceeds of a galena mine discovered by a Kootenay Indian named Pierre, assisted by the resident missionary of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Father Coccola. The church was completed in 1897.

This is an unusual residential school for the period in that it didn’t use standard plans developed by Indian Affairs departmental architect Robert M. Ogilvie. Instead, a private Ottawa architect, Allan Keefer, designed it. (Source: Dana J. Johnson, Indian Affairs 1887-1962 in Building the West: the Early Architects of British Columbia, ed. Donald Luxton, 2003)

My understanding at the time was that the Ktunaxa First Nation wanted to preserve it and use it as a cultural interpretation centre in the middle of a golf course and resort: one quote I recall was from a local woman who said that “it was here where they attempted to take away my culture, so it is fitting that it is here I should get it back,” or words to that effect.

The building is now rehabilitated and incorporated into the St. Eugene Golf Resort and Casino. There is a “backgrounder” on the economic viability of the process on the Government of Canada website.

(Tom Annandale of Toby, Russell, Buckwell and Partners, the project team that worked to incorporate this building into the golf course development, gave me regular updates on the project.)

The tipi’s on the course are a nice touch, but it seemed to some customers that the place was still missing another touch of it’s heritage:

Breakfast was okay, a little disappointing compared to the dinner experience. It would have been nice to have some First Nations specialties on the menu – bison sausage, or bannok?

Winter 2010, 6.6 MB

1. To excuse for a fault or an offense; pardon.
2. To renounce anger or resentment against.
3. To absolve from payment of (a debt, for example).

How about this week we get inspiration from some quotes?

and to finish it off, the ingenious Oscar Wilde said this:

So, how do you all view “Forgiveness”, and when was the last time you asked for it, or gave it!

I believe that in the next 20 years we can see the condition of Aboriginal Australia transformed. And many here today may play a part in that. There is momentum now for this, and we need to take advantage of that.
It is no easy task. Our forebears used overwhelming power to push Aboriginal people into the mud, and we have kept our boots on their throats for 200 years. What happens as we remove the boot? Some come up cautiously, others angrily. Some forgive. Some want revenge. There is much misunderstanding. Mediators are needed – people who can understand both sides.
That, to me, is an important role for the Stolen Generations. If Australia can work through this phase creatively, its life will be enriched by Aboriginal perspectives, its economy, environment and agriculture will benefit, its relations with its Pacific neighbours will find a new warmth, and Australians will be able to claim with justice that we have a multicultural society.

This is vital for Australia. The Aboriginal population is growing steadily, and Aboriginal people form a high proportion of the population in many inland regions. Take the water catchment area of the Darling River for instance. A majority of the population in that catchment is Aboriginal. They will be the people who determine whether the Darling runs with good water or is polluted with salt. If they feel part of the Australian community, they will do all they can to keep the water pure for the people downstream. If they don’t, they won’t care.

At present most of them don’t, which is an indictment on us, the non-Indigenous population. AD Hope described Australians as ‘second-hand Europeans pullulating timidly on the edge of alien shores’. Few Australians have a vision for the great inland of Australia, and much of our effort there has had the effect of destroying Aboriginal community and emptying out the interior of the continent. Which is a strange approach to nation-building. Unless Australians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, accept responsibility to develop the potential of the interior, sooner or later others will come and take over, and do what we should have done.

So what can we do to bring this shift in attitudes, and enable Aboriginal people to play their rightful, creative role in the life of Australia?

The Prime Minister’s speech of apology, almost exactly two years ago, was a huge step forward. It set the mood, as you can see if you watch the reaction to the speech:

Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations—this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

To the Stolen Generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry. And I offer you this apology without qualification. We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted. We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied. We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.

So let us turn this page together: Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, Government and Opposition, Commonwealth and State, and write this new chapter in our nation’s story together.

That shows the possibility for the future. It was a moment for Australians like the fall of the Berlin Wall was for Germans. A moment of hope.

The Prime Minister made clear commitments during this speech, aimed at transforming the condition of Aboriginal Australia. Over the next five years to have every Indigenous four-year-old attending a proper early childhood education centre. And to transform Aboriginal housing. Within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for Indigenous children, and halve the gap in infant mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Within a generation, to close the 17-year life expectancy gap.

It was brave of the Prime Minister to set a timetable for matters which will cost billions of dollars, because now it is a political issue, with the Opposition holding the Government to its commitments. Today the Prime Minister gave his statement in the Australian Parliament on this, saying that the national programme is costing $4.6 billion. Even the Leader of the Opposition says he does not doubt the Prime Minister’s commitment, though he thinks some of the money could be better spent. But there is progress. Tom Calma, the Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, said recently: ‘A marked shift in the Indigenous policy landscape since the National Apology continues to gain momentum and signals a more inclusive and promising future for Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander peoples.’

What still needs to happen is the enlistment of the Australian community. This is Australia’s great asset. Many Australians carry on their conscience a sense of guilt that we have grown rich while Aboriginal people are in the gutter. If that guilt can be channeled into creative action, it can be a tremendous force. I discovered the truth of that through the Sorry Day campaign.

The campaign was amazing. When the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Parliament in May 1997, the Howard Government tried to ignore it. They had just been elected promising to make Australians relaxed and comfortable with their history, and here was a report of a national inquiry which had uncovered immense tragedy resulting from past Government policies. The accepted wisdom of Howard’s generation of politicians was that if you ignored an Aboriginal report, the Australian community would ignore it. So that is what the Government tried to do.

But the community did not ignore it. Speaking a few weeks after the release of the Report, the then Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson told an Aboriginal conference:

We have seen a most extraordinary turn of events in this country. Day after day and week after week the newspapers and airwaves have been jammed with talk about our families and children. Day after day the letter pages in the papers are filled with the reactions of ordinary Australians who are horrified at the truth that they never knew. Never before have so many Australians turned their attention to our families. Never before has Australia really known or cared about our children, children taken from the arms of their mothers, taken from their culture.

Where did this response come from, which so blindsided the Government? I think that Howard had not understood the shift that had come in national attitudes due to the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. In the previous six years, under the leadership of Patrick Dodson, they organised study circles, voluntary and official. Hundreds of these circles formed, and many thousands of Australians, for the first time, were able to sit down and talk face to face with Aboriginal people. I believe that these meetings did much to bridge the vast emotional gulf between us. So when those thousands read the Bringing Them Home report, they could feel the pain as they never had before.
The person who was most powerfully affected by the inquiry was its Chair, Sir Ronald Wilson. That was unexpected. Sir Ron was an Establishment man, chosen for the High Court by a Liberal Government. He said:
It was like no other inquiry I have undertaken. Others were intellectual exercises, a matter of collating information and making recommendations. But for these people to reveal what had happened to them took immense courage and every emotional stimulus they could muster.

We sat there as long as it took. We heard the story, told with that person’s whole being, reliving experiences which had been buried deep, sometimes for decades. They weren’t speaking with their minds; they were speaking with their hearts. And my heart had to open if I was to understand them.

This affected him deeply. “I came to this inquiry with fifty years behind me as a hardboiled lawyer, mixing it with all sorts of antagonists,” he said “and yet this inquiry changed me. And if it can change me, it can change our nation.”
Sir Ron Wilson was a remarkable man. What other person who had reached the top of his profession, at the age of 75, would set to work to enable his fellow Australians to understand the painful history to which his eyes had been opened. He spoke in meeting after meeting, all over the country. At the time he was head of the Human Rights Commission, a Government appointment which would normally be renewed automatically. The Government was so annoyed that they refused to renew it. To Sir Ron, that simply gave him greater freedom to speak out, and he did so. He went to State Governments, churches, the police, asking for apologies from all who had been involved in implementing the removal policies – and led the way himself. “I was a leader of the Presbyterian Church in Western Australia at the time we ran Sister Kate’s Home, where removed children grew up,” he said. “I was proud of the home, with its system of cottage families. Imagine my pain when I discovered, during this inquiry, that children were sexually abused in those cottages.” He and the Presbyterian Church apologized wholeheartedly.
His actions struck a chord. In the following months, most of Australia’s State parliaments and churches held ceremonies to hear from representatives of the stolen generations, and to apologize for their role in this tragedy. They were heart-rending, yet healing events.

Then when the Government ignored the recommendation that a Sorry Day be held, Sir Ron called together about 30 of us to discuss whether a Sorry Day could be held without Government involvement. By the end of the day we had decided to try. We chose 26 May 1998 as Sorry Day, just four months away.
And other Establishment figures joined us. A former Governor-General agreed to be our patron. That gave schools, universities, town councils the confidence to arrange events. The media was intrigued, took the story to the country, and thousands of people got involved.

A well-known actor created Sorry Books – manuscript books in which people could express their apology. More and more books were produced as demand grew from public libraries, town councils, schools, universities. Soon several thousand books were in circulation, and nearly a million people wrote messages, many of them telling of personal experiences which prompted them to contribute.
When the day arrived, it was commemorated by hundreds of events. There were theatrical presentations, cultural displays, town barbecues. Universities, government departments, councils, churches held gatherings to hear from stolen generations people, and to ceremonially hand the Sorry Books to them. The churches of central Melbourne rang their bells. The Lord Mayor gave the keys of the city to representatives of the Stolen Generations. Over half of the 30-minute national TV news that evening was devoted to Sorry Day events, and to the heartfelt response of Aboriginal leaders.
The Federal Government was taken aback by the strength of the Day. They had no idea how to respond to a campaign which included many people on their side of politics. So they stayed almost silent. This provoked plenty of cartoons in the press.
But the stolen generations were deeply moved. For the first time, they felt that the Australian community understood what they had gone through. From across the country many met together, and decided to launch a Journey of Healing, inviting all Australians to play a part in healing the wounds. It is a measure of how stirred they were by Sorry Day that the people whose childhoods had been ripped up by callous white attitudes welcomed the white community to work with them for healing.
A former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and a respected Aboriginal leader, Lowitja O’Donoghue, became patrons. The Journey of Healing’s message was: ‘You can help heal the wounds of the Stolen Generations. Get to know those in your locality. Arrange for them to tell their stories to the newspapers if they wish, or on local radio. See how you can help them with the difficulties they face. Work at implementing recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report.’
Tens of thousands responded. Throughout the next decade, hundreds of Journey of Healing events were held each year. Memorials started to go up, as these photos illustrate. At this stage, however, the Government produced a report which said that, since only 10% of Aboriginal children were removed, ‘stolen generations’ was a misnomer. This provoked intense anger. And our patrons made their views known.
The situation could have degenerated into bitterness and frustration. But other people were thinking creatively. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation decided to hold a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and invited all who supported reconciliation to join them. Sir Ron and all of us put all our energies into this. And Aboriginal leaders did their best to persuade the Prime Minister to join the walk. He wouldn’t do so. But a quarter of a million people came, many of them carrying placards saying ‘Sorry’. It was the largest demonstration in Australian history. Some who walked also paid for a plane to go up alongside the Bridge and write the word ‘Sorry’ in the sky. The main national newspaper called it The People’s Apology.
Then a walk was held across a bridge in Melbourne, and 300,000 people came. Every Australian city and many towns held similar events. In all, about a million people took part.
I’ll just tell you one story from the Sydney event. We had invited the Stolen Generations to walk with us, and many came. But one woman phoned me – since my phone number was on the publicity – and was very angry. She said that after all she had been through, there was no possibility of healing for her, and she would only walk with us if we got rid of the Journey of Healing banner. When she told me her story, I understood how she felt. She had been removed from her family at the age of two – here are her parents – and had endured terrible abuse including rape. However, in the end she decided to walk across the bridge on her own, which she did carrying a sign saying ‘Stolen Generations – I am not a myth’. The next night she phoned me. ‘I looked at the thousands of people who had come, and I looked up at that word Sorry in the sky. Suddenly, she said, ‘tears began to pour down my cheeks. I have found a peace I have never known.’ Here she is, back at the institution to which she was removed, a place she loathed. But for her, this visit was profoundly healing.
We persuaded the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to meet her and listen to her story. And we took her to other Members of Parliament. One of them, Brendan Nelson, heard her story and, a few days later, stopped me in a corridor of Parliament. ‘We have arguments in the Party room as to whether the Stolen Generations are exaggerating their story,’ he said. ‘But when you hear a story like hers, you just know it is the truth.’
The Government could not ignore a million people. Besides, rebellion was growing in Government ranks. The Prime Minister announced that they would build Reconciliation Place, in the centre of Canberra and, he said, ‘It will include a memorial to those removed as children from their families.’
Then we discovered that the Government had created this memorial themselves, refusing to allow any consultation with the Stolen Generations. Their memorial was insipid, and included a soundscape of children laughing happily. Immediately there were protests and demonstrations. The project ground to a halt.
We went to the Government and said, ‘This memorial could be deeply healing if it is created properly. We are prepared to arrange consultations all over the country, not just with the Stolen Generations but with those who staffed the institutions, or fostered removed children. We believe we can reach consensus on what it should say.’ Eventually the Government agreed to this.
We arranged teams in every State and Territory, who consulted hundreds of people. Then we met for three days, which included much passionate discussion. By the end we had consensus on a powerful statement about the removal policies.
We took it to the Government. They tried to persuade us to tone it down. We pointed out that it was approved by all sides. Influential people sided with us, and eventually the Government decided it was wiser to let the memorial be built.
And it was a magnificent statement. Here is one extract: ‘We the removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children of Australia urge you to look through our eyes and walk in our footsteps, to be able to understand our pain. We call on all Australians to acknowledge the truth of our history, to enable us to move forward together on our journey on healing, because it is only the truth that will set us all free.’

The secret to the campaign’s effectiveness, I believe, is that it offered an opportunity and a challenge to all sides. To the non-Indigenous community it said, ‘If you are prepared to face the truth about the past, you can be part of healing the harm done.’ To Aboriginal people it said, ‘There is a way out of despair. You can find healing.’ Each found hope from the other. For a Stolen Generations person to go for healing takes courage, because it means opening up the past, going back to places where you were hurt, seeking for family members despite the fear that they might not welcome you. Many Stolen Generations people told me that they found the courage to launch out on the journey of healing as a result of the empathy they felt at Sorry Day, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge walk, or some similar event.

That does not mean that our approach was universally popular. Many Aboriginal people are angry, and the whole concept of a Journey of Healing grated. Some just wanted to hit out at authority, and loathed our attempts to involve the Government in initiatives towards healing. On the other side, we endured much nastiness from the Government and the right-wing media. When Lowitja O’Donoghue gave an interview, a twisted version of it was carried on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, and the Prime Minister immediately went on radio and said, ‘I told you so.’ That then created conflict within our committee, as some criticised Lowitja, and that conflict was all over the newspapers. But most of the committee knew that our strength came from offering everyone, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, a part in the struggle for healing and justice, and we worked through our conflicts. We learnt the truth of that saying, ‘If you want to be a bridge, you have to be prepared to be walked on.’

There were some traumatic events. In 2005 we booked the Great Hall of Parliament, and invited a Stolen Generations woman from Western Australia, who had an amazing story of forgiveness after immense suffering, to open the event. She came with her 14 year old daughter, and they stayed in my home. The night before this event, she went for a walk, crossed a road, was hit by a car and killed. You can imagine the agony we went through, and the pain that still lives in me. But to our amazement, the daughter said, ‘I will give my mother’s speech in the Great Hall tomorrow.’ In front of 500 people, including 22 Ambassadors and many politicians, she stood up and gave the speech. That was all over the media of Australia, and even John Howard wrote her a letter of sympathy. Through tragedy, the Stolen Generations story reached the nation.
And gradually we saw a shift in attitudes among the Howard Government. In 2007, on the tenth anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report, we booked the Great Hall again. Both the Minister of Health and the Minister of Indigenous Affairs were sitting in the front row when Lowitja O’Donoghue spoke, challenging the whole Government approach. You can see their discomfort in this photo from the front page of the Canberra Times.
However, the Minister of Health’s speech was unexpected. He was one of the Prime Minister’s closest allies. But when he spoke, he broke with the Prime Minister’s approach. ‘The forcible removal of Indigenous children is an episode in our history of which we are rightly ashamed,’ he said. ‘The fundamental premise on which it was based – that children were better off away from their Aboriginal families – was wrong, indeed repugnant. We should have known it then. We certainly know it now, and we do have to atone for it.’
This was vital. Because when the election brought a change of Government, the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced that he would make this apology, and invited the Opposition to join him in it. By then the Opposition Leader was Brendan Nelson, the person who had been moved by Valerie Linow’s story. Under his leadership, the Opposition reversed their policy of ten years, and supported the apology.
Three months later the Canadian Prime Minister made a similar apology in his Parliament to their Residential School Survivors, as they are called.
What can we learn from this for the ongoing struggle? I think there are many lessons. But above all, it leaves me with hope. We cannot do for Aboriginal people what they must do themselves. But we can create the conditions in which Aboriginal people are able to flourish. There are plenty of struggles ahead, to create a country to which Aboriginal people are proud to belong, and I am convinced this can happen.

Nova Scotia has apologized and granted a pardon to Viola Desmond, a black woman who was convicted for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in 1946.

“Today is meant to right a 65-year-old wrong,” Justice Minister Ross Landry said Thursday in a ceremony at Province House.

Premier Darrell Dexter apologized to Desmond’s family and to all black Nova Scotians for the institutional racism of the past.

“This injustice has impacted not just Mrs. Desmond during her life and her family, but other African-Nova Scotians and all Nova Scotians who found and continue to find this event in Nova Scotia’s history offensive and intolerable,” he said.

The free pardon for Desmond, who died in 1965, was signed by Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis — the first black person to serve as the Queen’s representative in the province.

“It is only on rare occasions — with the clarity of hindsight and benefit of careful thought and measured reason — that a society comes together to undo the wrongs of the past,” Francis said.

This is the first time such a pardon for the innocent and wrongly convicted has been posthumously awarded in Canada, according to the province.

It was an emotional day for Wanda Robson, Desmond’s youngest sister.

“I’m numb with joy,” the 83-year-old said. “She’s just one of many of us who have suffered. And when I say suffered I don’t mean that you just couldn’t do anything anymore. But it was a momentary sting of racism and then you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off and get on with life.”
‘Dragged her out’

Desmond, then a 32-year-old beautician, was driving from Halifax to Sydney on Nov. 8, 1946, when her car broke down in New Glasgow. She decided to see a movie at the Roseland Theatre while she waited for repairs.

Desmond sat downstairs, unaware of the theatre’s rule that blacks could sit only in the balcony seats. She was asked to leave but refused. Eventually, the manager and a police officer pulled her out.

“They sort of took one arm and sort of dragged her out,” Robson told CBC News before the ceremony. “She said, ‘I just went limp.’”

Desmond spent the night in jail. The next morning, she was convicted of tax evasion. Prosecutors made no mention of race. They told the judge that Desmond didn’t pay the full price to sit up front and therefore didn’t pay the proper tax — a difference of one cent.

She was fined $20 and sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Desmond decided to fight the case with the help of the newly created Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. She lost the first appeal but won a second attempt on a technicality.

Thanks to Desmond’s public court battle, the Nova Scotia government ended up dismantling its segregation laws.

Robson said her sister would have welcomed the province’s gesture.

“She would feel so justified. She would feel that this is long overdue but [say], ‘I thank you.’”

It was Robson who started the ball rolling to get an apology for her sister when she called the mayor of New Glasgow last year and asked that town council pass a motion recognizing the incident.

Robson said she and the town then began discussions about erecting a plaque in town to memorialize her sister and what had happened.

Justice Minister Landry, who represents the area, heard about what municipal politicians were discussing. He took the matter to the premier, and it was then decided to offer a provincial apology.

The Opposition tabled a bill Thursday afternoon to designate Nov. 8 as Viola Desmond Day in Nova Scotia.

Cape Breton West MLA Alfie MacLeod, who tabled the bill, said it’s important to commemorate Desmond.

“If we don’t have such a day in the province of Nova Scotia, people will forget what took place,” he said. “The whole idea behind declaring Viola Desmond Day was so that Nova Scotians would never forget where we were at and where we’ve come from and what we’ve accomplished.”

MacLeod wanted the bill fast-tracked through second and third reading Thursday, but the government refused to do that. The premier said the bill needs to be improved.

Desmond’s ordeal earned her an unofficial distinction as Canada’s Rosa Parks. Parks made history in the U.S. when she was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man. Her arrest inspired a massive bus boycott which brought Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation on public transportation.

1. an act of confronting.
2. the state of being confronted.
3. a meeting of persons face to face.
4. an open conflict of opposing ideas, forces, etc.
5. a bringing together of ideas, themes, etc., for comparison.
6. Psychology. a technique used in group therapy, as in encounter groups, in which one is forced to recognize one’s shortcomings and their possible consequences.

The latin roots of the word is quite self-descriptive. Con means “with”, front is simply the predominant “front”, face to face in this case. And interesting enough, ending with ation, which takes a noun into a verb, or in other words, an idea into an action. It’s the act of going face to face with your aggravant.

With such a simple latin root, the term Confrontation is usually confused with a negative “Conflict”, while one is really the cause and the other the effect. I would rather see confrontation as one possible solution to any conflict. It could be looked upon as the moment of truth, when you stand up to something/someone that is causing an aggravation.

Often, healing will start with confronting your self. There are many types of confrontations, ranging from a face to face meeting with your assailant, to a self-disclosure through symbolic confrontation; maybe writing a letter to yourself or speaking with someone about yourself.

Do you remember the last time you confronted someone? Did you get your point across, or did they get their point across and you learned something new? How about yourself? Why did you need to confront your own ideals?

Everyone can see these same words, but they can also take on different meanings depending on the angle we look at them. We thought it would be great to dissect and analyze each word, as a group project; us and anyone else comfortable with leaving their opinions and comments.

We have a total of 27 words that we are going to discuss. This page will always be here and will be updated after we jump to the next word.

1. Trust - We are now discussing this word HERE
2. Confrontation- We are now discussing this word HERE
3. Forgive - We are now discussing this word HERE
4. Despair - We are now discussing this word HERE
5. Equal
6. Resentment
7. Hope
8. Racism
9. Reconcile
10. Unity
11. Agreement
12. Abuse
13. Destruction
14. Healing
15. Trauma
16. Work Together
17. Stereotype
18. Denial
19. Mending
20. Tradition
21. Tension
22. Honor
23. Hate
24. Love
25. Shame
26. Believe
27. Culture

1. Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.
2. Custody; care.
3. Something committed into the care of another; charge.
4.
a. The condition and resulting obligation of having confidence placed in one: violated a public trust.
b. One in which confidence is placed.
5. Reliance on something in the future; hope.

What a strong word to start with! This single word is much needed in any and all two-way conversations. If there is no trust, then the whole conversation is null. Everyone is talking and promising and hugging and laughing, but once they leave the conversation, they go back to feeling the same way they did before. Nothing changes without trust. Would I be wrong if I said that distrust begets more distrust? Trust is hard to gain, and even then it dangles from a very thin line. This connection only gets stronger with actions, not words.

The government may apologize all they want with words, but it’s their actions that count. So I open the forum to debate: do you trust their words? How healthy is the “trust” between your community and your government?