Canada marks first Truth and Reconciliation Day

Canada marks its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Thursday.

Truth and Reconciliation Day is intended to honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools, 140 of which operated across the country from 1831 to 1998.

Some 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend the church-run schools, where many suffered physical and sexual abuse, malnutrition and neglect. More than 4,000 are believed to have died.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke on Wednesday night at an outdoor ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa,

near the Centennial Flame, where mounds of stuffed toys and pairs of children's shoes have been left in honour of the children who never returned from the residential schools.

Trudeau applauded the courage of survivors and acknowledged that it cannot be easy for them to tell their stories.

Canada is seen as a peace-loving place that respects the rights of people, but it is also a country that has made "huge and terrible mistakes," Trudeau said.

"Every people are good at telling stories of how great we are, how we were heroic in this moment or there were brave leaders in other moments," he told the small crowd gathered for the ceremony.

"It's harder to reflect on the truth of the mistakes, of the evil that we did in the past but that's what this day, this day of truth and reconciliation, must be."

Reconciliation, Trudeau said, doesn't mean just looking back and understanding the mistakes made in the past but acknowledging that Canada is, even now, living with the legacy of those mistakes in the form of injustice, inequality and systemic racism.