Toronto student teaches classmates about residential school through comics

What started as a simple project in Photoshop has won praise from the Ontario government.

Justice Ryan, a Grade 12 student at Malvern Collegiate, wanted her classmates to understand more about the history of Canada's Native people, especially during the dark period of residential schools.

So she created a comic book telling the story of a young woman who escapes a residential school and wrestles with keeping her identity.

She was recently awarded a James Bartleman Aboriginal Youth Creative Writing Award. 

The comic, titled The Escape, is a very personal endeavour for Ryan, as her family were at one time in the residential school system. 

"What I wanted to do with this comic is promote awareness of what really happened," said Ryan on Metro Morning on Friday.

"I showed some of my peers the comic before I handed it in, and they thought I completely made up the story. I was like, 'No this happened up until 1996.' They had no idea."

Her inspiration came from course she took called Decolonizing Our Schools, taught by Susan Dion at York University.

See Ryan's interview above.