A thread.

The recent talk of monuments made me want to see one.

Here it is. In Spanish, Ontario. A memorial to the students who attended the residential schools here. It's in a small park by the waterside, where the boys school once stood.

Kids were brought here from all over.

To be taught by the Jesuits.

This is where many in my family went.

To be taught.

To be tortured.

To have the Indian forced out of them.

Does this monument teach that history? No. It says nothing of what happened in the schools. Of why the kids were brought there.

Or what these two schools have meant for generations of families who had members attend them.

It teaches nothing. But it does memorialize people and events that would have been erased. Not forgotten. Erased. There's a big difference.

There are no names on it. No faces.

If I were to take it down would history be erased? Would my aunties and uncles, my grandmother Norma, would she be spared the pain and humiliation if this wasn't here?

Of course not.

Would Canada forget residential schools? It was already doing that long before this monument.

In the end the monument I truly came to see was this. The crumbling hulk of the residential school my grandmother attended.

For ten years, she went here.

This place forever changed my family, along with so many others.

The only sign on it is No Trespassing.

It will disappear one day.

This monument to Canada's darkest history, its darkest origins.

Will we forget then?

Not me. Not my children and not their children.

History lives in us. As it does in you.

I don't need a monument to know that.

Why do you?