REGINA (CANADA)
Swift Current [Saskatchewan, Canada]
September 29, 2025
By Hayden Michaels
Powerful words on the truth of life after residential schools for the generations that followed were shared in Swift Current.
Locals, officials, students, and members of Nekaneet First Nation gathered for the Flag Raising Ceremony on September 26, officially recognizing National Truth and Reconciliation Day in Market Square. Guest speaker, David Fox, was one of the many voices to speak out about the damages that have rippled through lives like his since residential schools closed.
His father was a survivor of the final Saskatchewan-based residential school, Gordon’s Indian Residential School. He lived through and saw the atrocities that were committed. Fox was raised on stories of how the Catholic Church abused the children, via beatings and sexual assault, and even on how nuns disposed of children’s bodies.
He shared how, in his own childhood, he witnessed as his father and mother’s relationship diverged, after an early childhood where he saw alcoholism, domestic abuse, and other issues.
“I was very scared to tell the story to everybody, but it was necessary to tell them,” said Fox. “I didn’t want them to have that view of my father, but they had to understand where he came from, how he got there, and where I am.”
Fox explained how he witnessed his father and stepmother prioritizing partying, and how he would struggle to provide for his siblings. He communicated how the issues in his household, from assault to struggling to afford food, were normal. It even reached a point where the government stepped in and took his siblings away while his parents were out one evening. His father and stepmother were able to have the kids returned, although the condition of them not leaving the kids unsupervised only lasted so long, according to Fox.
Growing up, Fox recalled that his father would tell stories about how at the schools, the kids were lucky to survive. He would tell his son about bodies that were buried years before they were uncovered.
The day that they uncovered the bodies in 2021 proved his father right, Fox wept.
“It’s wild for me to see people believe it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but growing up, it really wasn’t,” said Fox.
Fox is hopeful that by sharing his story and that of his father, he can continue to impart on people the significance of the damage done to Indigenous people across Canada.
“My dad talked about it regularly, and friends came over and told their stories,” said Fox. “It’s very necessary to hear it. People think it’s just some old-timers, but no, I remember dealing with the effects of it.”
Fox is himself a father. His daughter is now a source of strength for him, from which he drew upon while speaking before the people in the market square.
“One of my biggest fears is public speaking,” admitted Fox. “To give you some idea, another fear of mine was jumping out of an airplane, and I did that with my daughter. So to calm myself down, I just looked at her. I told that story to her.”
For the sake of generations to come, he hopes to see events like the one held in Market Square continue to build towards both the truth of what happened and reconciliation going forward.
“I feel there are a lot of different people who are coming (to these events),” said Fox. “My ex-wife was one. I remember her family didn’t have a clue about residential schools, and they were becoming Canadian citizens. I remember being very upset about it. Now, I can hear people of all different cultures and age groups talking about it. It’s definitely warming to the heart to understand that people are realizing everything that happened.”
Fox lives near a school, and remembers when the first Orange Shirt Day, on September 30, 2013, there weren’t very many orange shirts walking by. However, 12 years later, he is happy to report that every year he sees more and more students choosing to wear one.
“Now it’s just the whole sea of them today,” said Fox. “It was amazing to see.”
While Gordon’s Indian Residential School is often cited as the last residential school, its closing in 1996 was followed by the closing of Kivalliq Hall in Nunavut in 1997. The Saskatchewan school was the last federally run residential school.