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Toronto Star

Michelle Good:King Charles can't fix the Crown's broken promises. But he can offer Indigenous people this one powerful symbol

By Michelle Good, Special to the Star Michelle Good is the author of 'Five Little Indians,' a novel about the survivors of residential schools and the effects of their experience on subsequent generations. She wrote it in answer to the question people often ask about survivors: 'Why can't they just get over it?' The book has won almost every major literary prize in the country. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. I was born, and spent my childhood, in a non-Indigenous community in northern British Columbia. My mother lost her Indian Status when she married my father and thus her legal rights and access to her own community. I was a child with an enthusiastic nature and it didn't take much to inspire my passionate devotion to this or that. My paternal grandfather was born in Britain, in Essex, and it's fair to say his children were imbued with a hearty respect for the monarchy. When my father was ten years old, King George VI bore the crown. When I was ten, Elizabeth II had ascended the throne twelve years prior. Her picture was hung prominently in every classroom I learned in and we sang heartily to God to save her at every school assembly. I was a child in this country when it still was a Dominion of Great Britain, before Canada patriated the constitution asserting our independence while remaining a member of the Commonwealth. I particularly remember Dominion Day — what Canada Day was known as before we cut the apron strings with Britain, or at least untied them. It was a fun day filled with pancake breakfasts and a big parade; games and concerts and all sorts of activities. My father, the head of the X-ray department, used to take me and my siblings up to the top floor of the hospital where we had a bird's eye view of the elaborate floats inching their way along the main thoroughfare below. His birthday was July 1 st and for a while I actually believed him when he told us the parade was in honour of his special day. Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details