I haven’t written a Hopebuilding post for the past two days because I am, like so many in Canada, mourning the 215 children discovered to be buried in a mass grave at the Kamloops residential school. I am heartsick, like so many others.

There is something about this discovery that has touched the heart of so many Canadians, who are putting childrens’ shoes and teddy bears on steps to art galleries, legislatures, and in front of churches, in memory of the children.

It is not that we didn’t know that thousands of children had died in these residential schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission told us that, some years ago. Survivors had been whispering about these deaths for a long time but it was not until the Commission hearings that these stories were shared widely in more public settings. 

But there is something about this discovery, with its specific numbers and the information that the youngest was only three, that has wrung peoples’ hearts in a way that the more factual information didn’t.