A diocesan effort to examine its response to Truth and Reconciliation has led to a new process of reflection, repentance and rebuilding relationships.
About 130 people signed onto Zoom on the evening of June 14 to hear from the Rev. Leigh Kern and Bishop Andrew Asbil about their efforts to renew the Diocese of Toronto’s treaty relationships with the seven First Nations on whose land the diocese lives and worships.
The process began in the winter of 2025, when the Bishop’s Collaborative for Right Relations, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous clergy and laity, began an audit of the progress the diocese had made in implementing the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Of those 94 calls, 13 specifically name the Church. The collaborative found that the diocese had implemented only three of the 13 calls.
That audit spurred a longer conversation about Call to Action #46, which calls for the Church to “renew or establish Treaty relationships based on principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, and shared responsibility for maintaining those relationships into the future.”
“Early in 2026, Leigh and I sent out letters to each of the chiefs and councils of the seven communities, asking if there might be an opportunity for us to meet together and talk about renewing our treaty relationships,” Bishop Andrew told the gathering.
Since then, they have heard back from five communities and visited four so far: the Chippewas of Rama, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Alderville First Nation and Curve Lake First Nation. They’re waiting to schedule a time with a fifth and are hoping to hear back from two more.
Before sharing the story of those visits, Kern, the diocese’s Right Relations Coordinator, began with some historical context – a history that is not in the past, she explained, but is living, present and ongoing.
First Nations in southern Ontario were forcibly displaced multiple times and had their land stolen from them repeatedly. While 1/7 of all Crown lands were set aside for the Anglican Church, many First Nations had to purchase their own reserve lands, which were later stolen from them again.
Treaty relationships, Kern explained, were meant to be ones of interconnection, interdependence and respect, renewed annually in ceremony and prayer. But treaties that were supposed to honour Indigenous rights, including the right to hunt and fish, instead took away those rights and often made smaller the already tiny reserves.
Before meeting with the First Nations chiefs and councils, Kern and the diocese’s archivists did careful research to better understand the Church’s history of colonialism and broken treaties.
“The sad part for us has been that the truth is actually so much more painful than even these high-level surface presentations,” Kern said. “This isn’t far-away history, it’s very close – the land under our feet.”
She and Bishop Asbil both felt it was essential to approach the First Nations communities with knowledge of each group’s specific stories.
“Not knowing our history is not an excuse anymore. It’s very important for us to hear the stories that are local to us,” said Bishop Asbil. “My eyes have certainly been opened to the stories.”
In each of the four meetings, Bishop Asbil brought a bundle of tobacco as a sign of welcome and gratitude. He offered words of repentance, confessing the sins of Christian colonialism and acknowledging the hurt and brokenness caused by the Anglican Church.
He and Kern offered a copper vessel to mark a relationship of cooperation and collaboration, a symbol of great respect for the Nations’ teachings, traditions and relationship with their territories. Purple fabric from a former Anglican Church represented the Church’s call to repentance and confession of sin, as well as the office of bishop. Smaller copper cups were presented to each member of council as a symbol of the diocese’s deep desire to renew the relationships. And a pottery bowl from a local artist, made from different clay bodies coming together, represented the beauty and abundance of the Great Lakes basin.
Bishop Asbil, Kern and Mary Asbil, who accompanied her husband on his visit to Curve Lake, all remarked how moving the experiences had been.
“There was in each of those rooms deep gratitude on the one hand, candour on the other hand,” said Bishop Asbil. “One of the comments that we heard on a number of occasions was, ‘We had no idea what you really wanted, and we didn’t know what you were going to say.’”
“There was deep stillness and silence in the room, a lot of emotion – both gratitude and also real honesty about survivor hurt,” said Mary Asbil. “We could just listen and be part of it and take that in.”
In a Q&A session following the Zoom presentation, those gathered wondered how they could engage with issues of reconciliation. Bishop Asbil and Kern both encouraged them to find ways of building relationships with local First Nations communities at the parish level.
“Building relationships is something we can all do,” said Kern. “It takes a lot to build trust and build relationships, and we can break the trust in a second. It is a journey we are on.”
Both emphasized that the diocese and its parishes are the ones responsible for making the effort to build relationships, not First Nations.
“It is our job to reconcile. We did the harm. We need to repent,” said Kern. “We need to do a 360 as a church.”
Bishop Asbil also emphasized that he carries the whole diocese with him in these conversations, speaking words of penance on behalf of every parish and its members.
“We wanted to have an evening like that so that you knew what we were saying, because we are inviting you into this work,” he said. “It is imperative that we do this work. We are summoned into this reconciliation ministry. I’m counting on you to keep all of us accountable in doing this work.”
