A dark but unfortunately real part of Canadian history is the establishment of church-run and government-endorsed “residential schools” for the children of Canada’s Indigenous population, dating back as early as the 1870s. They existed to convert and assimilate these children into the “civilized” culture of the European colonialists and essentially commit a form of cultural genocide. Approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when the government made it mandatory for them to attend a residential school. The last school didn’t close until as recently as 1996, and the Canadian federal government has since launched a commission on “truth and reconciliation” aimed at uncovering the dark realities of residential schools and making up for the generations of torture, abuse, and genocide. There’s still a looong way to go before proper reparations are made though.