Cindy Blackstock stands near Dr. Peter Bryce’s grave at Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa. ‘People think it’s about erasing the white history. It’s not. It’s about telling the story of the people of that period — the people who did the right things for the right reasons, and those who chose to do the wrong thing.’ (Giacomo Panico/CBC)

In June 2008, the day before then prime minister Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons to deliver an apology to survivors of Canada’s residential school system, Cindy Blackstock knelt beside a simple gravestone in a peaceful corner of Ottawa’s Beechwood