'Offensive' porch signs an 'opportunity to educate' on Every Child Matters movement

Windsor, Ont. -

The signs are down, but the message is still causing pain, after a picture of a Pierre Avenue home with several homemade signs circulated online.

They implied not every child matters -- a response to the Every Child Matters movement.

“I’m not racist, I swear to God I’m not,” Paula Chemello told CTV News Windsor outside her home on Wednesday.

Chemello says she made and displayed the signs after seeing Every Child Matters signs. She says they remind of her previous family issues that continues to impact her today.

“I saw a sign stating kids matter. No they don’t matter. Not all of them, because nobody cared about my 12-year-old son.”

Chemello states her situation was several years ago, but that she felt unfairly treated at the time. Chemello denies her messaging has anything to do with the hundreds of unmarked graves recently discovered throughout Canada.

“Unmarked graves? No! I’m just saying not every kid matters!” She adds, “I just want to make my point out there that not ever child matters.”

Neighbours nearby say a family wearing symbolic orange shirts wrote counter messages in chalk in front of the home Tuesday evening, before the signs were removed.

“They stayed on the sidewalk and they wrote what they felt they needed to write and I think they were here for about three hours,” says Bev Pitts.

Pitts says the situation has brought sad attention to the neighbourhood and hopes the signs stay down.

“She may put them up today, maybe not. It’s hard to say.”

But Chemello says she has no intention of putting the signs back up after police spoke with her earlier in the week.

Elder and Indigenous Culture and Language specialist at Ska:na Family Learning Centre, Theresa Sims, says situations like this are not uncommon.

“It’s an opportunity to educate.”

Sims says a lack of Indigenous education throughout Canadian history can lead to these sorts of scenarios, explaining empathy is needed.

“There was no history taught about residential schools. There was no history about First Nations really in public or secondary schools,” Sims explains about a lack of education surrounding what Every Child Matters means.

“We can be allies for her, as well as having allies for us. People were ignoring us. We can relate to that. We’ve lived through that for generations.”

Sims acknowledges scars are still fresh related to the gruesome discoveries at former residential schools, saying anger can’t be met with anger and that healing is still needed.

“You know that we’re all human and we make mistakes. We can learn from them rather than repeating them.”