More than a dozen orange-painted wooden hearts dot the lawn at the northwestern corner of the John Deutsch University Centre, just outside the Kathleen Beaumont Hill Wing.

Each heart bears the name of one of the 18 residential schools that once operated in Ontario. The Heart Garden, introduced to Queen’s University in 2025, invites honest learning, reflection, and conversation about more than 150 years of Canada’s residential school system. During that period, researchers estimate that at least 150,000 Indigenous children, typically aged 7 to 15, were forced to attend government-funded, church-run schools.

Queen’s Rector Niki Boytchuk‑Hale proposed the idea to the Queen’s University National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Working Group in 2025. She had first encountered a Heart Garden several years earlier while on practicum in the Greater Toronto Area, where a school on her placement had created a garden modeled after the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society’s Honouring Memories initiative.

“It was a really wonderful way to engage students in a conversation that was deeper than I had seen in the past,” says Boytchuk-Hale. “Although they weren’t learning about every residential school, they could read about one, learn where it was, how long it operated and how many children were there.”

That experience inspired the garden at Queen’s and motivated Boytchuk‑Hale to encourage student government and senior university leaders to get involved.

It has been estimated that more than 3,200 children – and counting, as research continues – died while in the residential school system. The final school, Kivalliq Hall, located in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, closed in 1997.

Edward Sy, now Alma Mater Society Vice‑President (University Affairs), was one of the student leaders who helped plant the hearts in front of the JDUC. At the time, they served as AMS Social Issues Commissioner.

“It was a lovely and inspiring experience for me as a non-Indigenous student who wanted to learn more about allyship, reconciliation, and my role in I-EDIAA work on campus," says Sy. “It pushed my boundaries to use my privilege and platform to create moments for dialogue and to bring Indigenous student voices forward, whether at Assembly or through Indigenous-student-led projects. I’m grateful to have been involved in the process, and I hope the garden’s presence was more than performance; that it represented a commitment to truth, reciprocity, and reconciliation through education and dialogue.”

Boytchuk-Hale and Sy planting hearts in the heart garden.

To make the garden a reality, Boytchuk‑Hale contacted Ena Holtermann in Technological Education within the Faculty of Education to help source and prepare the materials for the hearts. That led to a serendipitous collaboration with Faculty of Education instructor Bob Chambers, who practices Indigenous permaculture on his Joyceville property. Chambers, who is Métis, has been part of the Faculty of Education for nearly 30 years and has helped develop technological education curriculum that recognizes Indigenous ways of knowing and learning.

“It is a wonderful opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about what we, as settlers on this land, need to consider and enact as part of our social responsibility — not just to the people who came before us, but to those who will come after us,” says Holtermann, Executive Program Director, Multi‑Session Programs; Adjunct Professor of Pedagogy & Curriculum; and Coordinator, Technological Education.

Holtermann worked on the project with Technological Education lab assistant Brian McGillivray and called the process of cutting the hearts from wood donated by Chambers a centering experience.

Once the hearts were complete, Boytchuk-Hale, members of the Office of the Rector, and several AMS representatives painted them and wrote the names of the residential schools. Senior university leaders also accepted invitations to write personal reflections and school names on the hearts.

“We talk about residential schools and their impacts,” says Boytchuk-Hale, “but a lot of the work I do in Truth and Reconciliation is about putting names to things instead of relying on statistics. When we discuss Indigenous issues, we can be too far removed; being as specific as possible is really important.”

To learn more about Truth and Reconciliation and the history of residential schools in Canada, start with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and explore resources such as the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.