Fresh from the Women’s March on Washington, Senator Marilou McPhedran told First Nations high schools in Thunder Bay, Ont., on Tuesday, that protest is a valuable part of a healthy society.
McPhedran, a human rights lawyer and newly-appointed independent senator from Manitoba, said she volunteered to visit the school when the senate’s communications department was looking for someone who would be willing to make the trip.
“When people use words like protest, troublemaker, agitator, activist, very often they have a strong negative connotation and I was just bring a different point of view to that to the students,” McPhedran said.
As a senator, McPhedran said she believes she can continue her role as an activist on human rights.
“Many of us [new independent senators] have taken the view that there has to be major, major, major changes and we have often been highly critical of the way things are, the status quo,” she said.
Senator Marilou McPhedran (centre) receives a gift of artwork from students at Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations high school in Thunder Bay, Ont. (Jody Porter/CBC)
During the assembly at Dennis Franklin Cromarty high school, McPhedran encouraged students to ask questions or share their experiences, including the sense of loss they may feel over peers who have died.
The deaths of seven First Nations students who were attending high school in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011 were the subject of a wide-reaching inquest last year.
Recommendations from the inquest were shared with McPhedran and she quickly endorsed one of them, suggesting the school needs a student residence so teens don’t have to stay in boarding homes scattered throughout the city.
Hearing from students and teachers helped McPhedran “to appreciate that something as basic as having a safe residence where they could actually grow from the 90 [students] they are now to the full capacity of 300, if they had a safe residence connected to the school — and that that’s all about money.”
McPhedran said she’s still learning the ropes of her new job but believes her role is to “facilitate and support” initiatives such as a residence for First Nations students that are in keeping with the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“There are very few high schools like this in all of Canada and so in many ways, while this is located in Ontario, this is something that is of great importance to our whole country,” she said.