A Timmins Transit bus honouring residential school victims and survivors is hitting the road today.
As part of the Orange the City initiative, a bus was fully wrapped in orange over the weekend. It also has the City of Timmins and Every Child Matters logo on it.
The bus was revealed Monday morning.
“Every Child Matters is directly related to the discovery of undocumented graves, starting from Kamloops, throughout summer. The significance is we want to be part of the educational process so that we know and acknowledge our history,” said Mayor George Pirie at the reveal held at Timmins Transit garage.
This is the first time a Timmins Transit bus has been wrapped in support of Indigenous peoples.
“When it comes to supporting any kind of disasters and events that happened within the history of Canada ... this is the first time,” said transit maintenance supervisor Marcel Côté. “We have normally buses wrapped for advertising for personal firms, personal businesses.”
He said he doesn’t know how long the bus will stay wrapped.
The bus will be in the rotation and won’t have an official route.
"It will be in different routes at different times of the day every week, so it will be all over town," Côté said.
In wake of the recovery of mass and unmarked graves at former residential schools across the country, the City of Timmins launched the initiative in honour of Indigenous peoples.
The McIntyre Headframe and all city-owned electronic billboards lit up with the “Every Child Matters” logo.
In June, the city also approved officially recognizing 10 Indigenous days.
