Despite some other municipalities discussing boycotting Canada Day celebrations this year, as a show of solidarity with Indigenous communities, the City of Belleville will be going ahead with its pandemic-adjusted plan.
The calls to cancel come after the recent discoveries of unmarked graves at former residential schools and while councillors agreed that those issues do need to be discussed and not hidden, Mayor Mitch Panciuk says cancelling Canada Day isn’t the solution.
“Canada Day is the one holiday that’s for all of us. It’s not a religious-based holiday, it’s not an ethnic holiday, it’s a national holiday for all Canadians. We celebrate that day together and I just wanted to be clear that the City of Belleville has no intention of cancelling Canada Day.”
Councillor Sean Kelly also chairs the city’s Inclusion Committee and says as Canada Day festivities go ahead, so will the local conversations on Indigenous issues.
“We’ve got a lot of work towards understanding reconciliation and I don’t want it to be tokenised by having a flag, or wearing orange, where we really don’t understand. I think moving forward, we need to have workshops with our neighbours at one of the City facilities, because this means a lot to me and I know to everybody.”
Kelly says the committee is planning a meeting this week with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and local Indigenous groups, on how to properly address those issues.
During his time to speak on the issue, Councillor Paul Carr said he works with many members of the Indigenous community in his civillian job and that “we need to listen, learn, understand and then work cooperatively towards a better future”.
“When I look at Canada Day and the celebration, I look at it more as celebrating our diversity, it has been referred as a mosaic. To be able to sit here and have this dialogue today demonstrates the fact that we do live in a great country, where we can have these conversations, where we can heal together and where we can grow.”
As far as furthering those discussions on Indigenous issues, Councillor Tyler Allsopp told Monday’s meeting that he had seen some chatter on social media about painting eagle feather crosswalks in the downtown core to mark Indigenous History Month, similar to the rainbow crosswalks that have been painted to mark Pride Month.
He thought something like that might be a fitting tribute.
“It would remind people of where we are and the context of how we came to be here. And also, as I mentioned before, almost 1-in-12 people in Belleville are native and walk downtown on a daily basis. That’s something that would make them proud that their culture is being respected and being presented in the place where they live, and in their ancestral home.”
Allsopp admitted that while the art display won’t solve the issues faced by Indigenous peoples, bringing more native art, culture and history to the downtown may start more conversations on those issues.
This year’s Canada Day event will be much like last year’s, with a non-public event recognizing those on the front lines of the pandemic, since restrictions against large gatherings will still be in place.
Full details will be announced in the coming weeks.
