PORT HAWKESBURY - Katie MacEwen, a Mi'kmaq elder from Membertou First Nation in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM), can't hold back her tears as she addresses a crowd outside the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre on the evening of September 22.

MacEwen is one of hundreds of thousands of residential school survivors across Canada, and her words resonate with an audience that includes provincial, municipal and indigenous leaders, as well as local residents, for Port Hawkesbury's first-ever Orange Ribbon Ceremony. 

Flanked by Mi'kmaq representatives that included Potlotek First Nation band councillor Anita Basque, We'koqma'q First Nation band councillor Steven Michael Googoo, and the We'koqma'q Women's Drum Group, MacEwen told those in attendance about her mother's reaction to the English words that came out of MacEwen's mouth as they were driving her home from the residential school in Shubenacadie. 

"She was in the front seat, and she turned right around and asked, 'Did you lose your tongue?'" MacEwen recalled of that day, before letting out a heavy sob and adding: "I said, 'I don't know.'"

However, despite the heavy involvement of several Christian church denominations in operating these schools, MacEwen still urged the crowd in Port Hawkesbury to join her in The Lord's Prayer, which she described as "the universal prayer" before reciting it in Mi'kmaq. Googoo and Basque also declared that they routinely pray that the horrors of the residential schools will never re-occur. 

The September 22 event, which was followed by a traditional M'kmaq blanket exercise inside the Civic Centre, also saw those in attendance tying orange ribbons to a nearby tree. The event was designed as part of Port Hawkesbury's observance of the first-ever National Truth and Reconciliation Day, which took place on September 30. Municipal offices and services in Port Hawkesbury, the neighbouring Town of Mulgrave and nearby Richmond County were also shut down for the day.