When Something Changes, Something Changes

A reflection on Orange Shirt Day 2026

On September 29, I went in for my weekly shift at St. Joe’s Café, a welcoming space that offers two meals daily operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph. At the Café we were remembering Orange Shirt Day on both the 29th and the 30th. Volunteers wore orange shirts. Our staff created a web with orange ribbons for people to write the name of someone they wished to remember. Just before opening, I was speaking to a volunteer at the front door. He was a former student of mine in high school some 40 years ago. In those days a few of the teachers and students, with the help of contacts in Moosonee, began to run a summer camp for the “Indian” children in the bush about 20 kilometers outside the town. Some relationships have lasted over these many years. He asked one question before we opened our doors. “Did you know anything about residential schools when we were there some 40 years ago?” we both shook our heads in some kind of disbelief that we knew nothing. Not a thing.

Some 13 years ago, First Nations people with the inspiration of Phyliss Webstad began commemorating Orange Shirt Day to remember the history of residential schools, to commit to changing the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples and recognize the harm created by the attempt to erase a culture.

On September 30 I was going for a noon time walk in a parklet that serves as a playground for a local school. It was around noon. Suddenly, across the parklet about 50 students between the ages of 6-8 began to race toward the swings and slides. Every one of them wore an orange shirt. The principal must have directed the teachers who reminded the students. The parents rummaged through drawers and found orange shirts. Some of them were specifically created for the day. Some were Halloween shirts or other team shirts. The point is they were all orange and people were intentional. I wondered what these children were learning about the history of other children. The counterpoint of carefree children reminded of other children who were not carefree was obvious. The hope that those running and jumping children and their teachers and parents inspired brought hope of an enlightened history moving toward real change.

And I was reminded that when something changes…something changes.

-Sister Margo Ritchie, csj

Image: chris robert @chris_robert/Unsplash

A Man Who Wore Out Too Many Pairs of Boots

Jean-Pierre Médaille was born in Carcassonne, France on Oct. 6, 1610 and was educated at the Jesuit College there.

On October 6, each year the Sisters and wider community of St. Joseph honour Father Jean Pierre Médaille, S.J.

Father Médaille, was born in 1610 in the beautiful walled city of Carcassonne, France. But walls never kept him enclosed. He was, in so many ways, a man who broke boundaries. As a young man he embraced his vocation as a Jesuit priest. After his time of formation and first ministries he was assigned to offering missions in the region of Le Puy en-Velay. His ministry required walking many miles across lovely, volcanic, hilly landscape. The story goes, and is recorded in the Jesuit archives in Rome, that he was reprimanded for “wearing out too many pairs of boots” in his endeavours!

During his travels Father Médaille met groups of women who wished to become nuns but were not eligible to due to Church discipline at the time that only permitted women religious to be in cloisters. In these women, Médaille recognized, however, an authentic vocation to religious life to be lived out in the world around them responding to the unmet needs of their time in places of squalor, violence, environmental destruction and profound disparities in wealth and poverty; a time not unlike our own.

Image: Oziel Gómez @ozgomz/Unsplash

Together, the women and Médaille encountered a mutuality of spirit – the realization of God in all things, a commitment to unity at the heart of Trinity, passionate service of the neighbour, a seeking of God’s call to “the more” rooted in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola yet original and feminine in its expression. In his helping the women to form the Congregation, which became a reality in 1650, Médaille once again broke boundaries. So too did the first Sisters as they realized a whole new way of living religious life. One might almost say, they were born in dissent! Sister Mary Cresp, RSJ writes, “they demonstrated the characteristic of breaking boundaries into a new way of being”. That way continues to evolve for new times. The entire community of St. Joseph, sisters, associates, partners in mission and friends express gratitude to Father Médaille on this day.

In Médaille’s own words, “love Love and let Love love through you”, and maybe we too will wear out our boots, metaphorically, on that journey into God and to the dear neighbour together. 💞

-Sister Mary Rowell, csj

Feast Day of Saint Francis of Assisi - October 4

“Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.”

This particular translation of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Sun is found on the Franciscan Friars website identifying it as the first poem to be written in vernacular Italian, probably in the Umbrian dialect.

Other translations of this text and melody have been singing within me as we approach this feast of St. Francis. Perhaps you also are humming All Creatures of Our God and King (a translation from the Italian by William H. Draper, circa 1919, in CBW 543), (below),  and Marty Haugen’s Canticle of the Sun (CBW 542).

The translation above is written in a prose style making it difficult to set to a metred melody. Of interest though are the adjectives “useful, humble, precious, chaste”.  This 2026 Season of Creation highlights care for water and our relationship with water – water that is ever so useful and precious. As the world awakens to its relationship with water, “useful and precious” stand as beacon calls against our destructive treatment of water, our overuse of water and misuse of water. The adjectives “humble” and “chaste” reflect the unique personhood of water – water as created gift with rights for protection.

What St. Francis understood in 1225 and expressed in his mystical relationship with all God creates has been reflected in the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si. Now in 2026 as we conclude the marking of this Season of Creation may we who have inherited this song of praise become heralds for the precious, humble, chaste, useful gift of water.

-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj

Image: Nick Castelli @nickcastelliphotography / Unsplash

A National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Sept. 30th was first observed in 2021 as a federal statutory holiday.  It was in Call to Action #80, which states: “ We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with aboriginal peoples, to establish, as has statutory holiday, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honor Survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains A vital component of the reconciliation process.”

Previously, September 30th had been known as Orange Shirt Day which began in 2013 when Phyllis (Jack) Webstad told her story of her first day at St. Joseph Mission Residential School when her shiny new orange shirt bought by her grandmother was taken from her as a six-year-old girl.

Webstad is a residential school Survivor and founder of Orange Shirt Day. She currently serves as ambassador for the Orange Shirt Society. It was in 2013 when she first told the story of how her new orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, was taken from her on her first day at residential school.

Today, people across Canada and, increasingly in the United States and beyond, wear orange shirts to acknowledge the horrific truths of the genocide committed through the country’s residential school system. But it all began as the childhood experience of Phyllis Webstad of the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem (Canoe Creek Dog Creek) First Nation. By sharing her own personal story, she spoke for thousands of Survivors and those who never made it home. (https://orangeshirtday.org/about/phyllis-story/)

Since then and thanks largely to Webstad’s efforts, which have included publishing five children’s books, the orange shirt has become a symbol of Truth and Reconciliation, a visible reminder of the residential school system along with the message that “Every Child Matters.”

The educational movement highlighted by her story led to Sept. 30 being recognized as Orange Shirt Day, and eventually to the federal government establishing that day as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It became a statutory holiday in B.C. in 2023.

Phyllis Webstad’s contributions are foundational to the public awareness and understanding of the history of Canada and its evolving relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Her work to bring about this level of public awareness is monumental and has created a movement towards respect, safety, and justice for all people in Canada and beyond.

Do you have an orange shirt for September 30? Even wearing an orange ribbon can be a meaningful gesture.

By wearing orange, we say:

We remember.
We acknowledge the truth.
We honour survivors and their families.
We commit ourselves to reconciliation.

-Sister Kathleen Lichti, CSJ