A country-wide show of solidarity to lower flags to half-staff is believed to have started in the City of Merritt last week.

It’s being done to honour 215 children whose unmarked graves were found last week on Tk‘emlúps te Secwepemc land, outside of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Merritt mayor Linda Brown explains how the idea came about.

“The CAO and myself, Sean Smith, were sitting discussing the response we should take. And we both felt that lowering the flag was the right thing to do. And about 10 minutes after he comes in with, ‘what do you think about one hour for every child?’ And the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. And I said that’s it, that’s beautiful. So we went with it.”

Brown says, though, it doesn’t matter who decided to do it first, whether that was Merritt or not.

She says it’s important that the country acknowledges the atrocities at residential schools.

“It hit my heart like nothing else has ever hit when I heard that news. This is what happened to them long before any of us even knew anything about it. In my day and age, we certainly didn’t know this was going on. But it has, and it has affected them deeply. And I think this is a wake-up call for us to say, maybe we understand a little bit now. I don’t know that we can ever be understanding. But we can grieve with them, and that’s all we can do.”

Merritt is lowering its flags for 215 hours.

Many other municipalities in Canada, as well as all federal and provincial government buildings, have also lowered their flags to show support for Indigenous communities and recognize the troubling story on the unmarked graves in Kamloops.