Just over six years since she began speaking her truth full-time, Phyllis Webstad shared her story during her keynote speech for the 2025 BC Historical Federation Conference in Williams Lake.
“Life can be understood backward but must be lived forward,” said Webstad as she spoke about coming to peace with the past.
Webstad presented to about 35 people in the afternoon of the conference’s first full day of events. She shared stories from her childhood and talked about living off the land with her granny before attending residential school.
Though she describes her one year at St. Joseph's Mission near Williams Lake as a “walk in the park” compared to the experiences of others, including her mother, grandmother and great grandmother, it is this experience which gives name to the now internationally known Orange Shirt Day movement.
During her speech, Webstad recalled how others’ experiences at the school were little discussed, so she didn’t know the excitement she had about going to school would quickly vanish as it did on the day she arrived in 1973.
“I remember lots of crying and the feeling of terror,” Webstad said, reading to the audience from her book Beyond the Orange Shirt Story. “This was the beginning of that feeling like I didn’t matter,” she read after recounting how her brand-new orange shirt was taken from her by the residential school staff.
“Denialism is alive in the country,” she said, which is part of the reason why she continues to tell her story today.
“There’s people alive today that have brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles that never came home from these places, that they’re still there,” Webstad said, pointing to a photo of St. Joseph’s Mission.
“So, these people that say, ‘Oh, where’s the bodies, where’s the bones...take a picture then I’ll believe you...it’s very hurtful.” She imagined how difficult it must be for a family who has lost loved ones at residential school to decide whether or not to excavate an area.
Webstad told her story at the BCHF conference just days after speaking in Wolfville, Nova Scotia for the 2025 National Youth to Youth program attended by youth from across Canada to learn about truth and reconciliation and stewardship. Since 2019, Webstad has been travelling around Canada full-time to tell her story and help spread awareness of the impact of residential schools.
In Williams Lake, Webstad described the last 150 years as an apocalypse, with Indigenous peoples across the country facing disease, being forced into reserves, sent to residential schools and being systemically placed into foster care or adoption. The trauma this caused, she said, is coming to a head.
“We’re losing youth on a daily basis because of all the trauma, the accumulation of it,” she said.
Along with Webstad’s speech, the BCHF conference included presentations on the routes of the fur trade and Chinese Canadian history, the screening of the Oscar nominated film Sugarcane, a field trip to the historic 153 Mile Store and to the grounds of the former St. Joseph’s Mission Indian Residential School.
This year’s conference was centred around the theme of truth and reconciliation.
