THUNDER BAY – A Cancel Canada Day rally will take place on Thursday afternoon in Thunder Bay.
A group associated with Idle No More and No Pride in Genocide plans to gather at Waverly Park at 1:45 p.m. and then at 2:15 p.m. march to Marina Park, where a moment of silence will be held at 3 p.m. in honour of the recent discoveries of children buried in unmarked mass graves on the property of former residential schools in Canada.
“We cannot be idle while Canada’s genocide is celebrated. We are once again calling on Indigenous land, water and sky protectors and allies to come together, disrupt the celebration, and create awareness,” reads a post on the group's Facebook page.
Organizers say they are gathering to honour all the lives lost to the Canadian state, including Indigenous, Black, migrant, women, trans and two-spirit, boys and men's lives.
“Together we will use our voices to amplify, advocate and demand action for all, past, present and ongoing injustices faced by all our relations,” organizers say, pointing to the ongoing plague of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, child welfare, police brutality, the failure for governments to consult, forced sterilization, birth alerts and the federal government's continuing court fights with residential school survivors.
Participants are encouraged to wear orange shirts, to bring hand drums or rattles and to make signs and banners of support.
Similar rallies are planned across Canada, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto and Charlottetown, P.E.I.
