In 2021, it was reported that ‘mass graves’ had been discovered in Canada. The remains of 215 indigenous children were said to have been found at the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. More such ‘discoveries’ at other former residential schools followed.
Notoriously, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Canadian government removed indigenous children from their families and placed them in boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them into the dominant culture. Conditions were reported to be appalling and abuse was rife. Thousands of children went to residential school and never returned home. Many died from illnesses like tuberculosis and the Spanish flu combined with poor living conditions, lack of access to good medical care and nutrition, and neglect. Some died in fires. Early on, the mortality rate for indigenous children in residential schools was much higher than in regular schools.
When reports across the media said that the remains of hundreds of indigenous children had been discovered at old residential school sites, it seemed to be merely the most shocking example of what Canadians had widely accepted was a dark time in history. It led to the lowering of flags to half-mast, widespread calls to cancel Canada Day in favour of a day ‘reflect[ing] on the dark roots of Canada’, and a solemn photoshoot featuring prime minister Justin Trudeau holding a teddy bear (it later transpired he was at a Catholic cemetery). In some ways, all this was understandable. Such a discovery really would be deeply disturbing and bring shame on the nation – that is, had it been real.
Almost four years later, no such remains have been uncovered at any of the former residential schools. Headlines have since been amended in some publications to add the word ‘suspected’ ahead of ‘unmarked graves’, but overall, the narrative holds strong. Some Canadians simply refuse to let go of the idea that these mass killings of children had taken place. This is a history that Canadians are expected to mourn performatively for eternity.
In truth, the only ‘evidence’ for the mass graves is that ‘anomalies’ have been detected by ground-penetrating radar. But for all we know, these could have been trenches from long-disused septic fields. No actual excavations have ever been carried out at the sites where these supposed graves were discovered. Yet those who point this out are publicly tarred as ‘residential-school denialists’.
When Dallas Brodie, a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, wrote on X last month that, ‘The number of confirmed child burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site is zero’, she was roundly denounced as a racist. Even her own BC Conservative Party leader, John Rustad, asked her to take her posts down lest they be ‘misinterpreted’.
‘Residential-school denialism is an anti-indigenous racist movement that even the right realises is politically untenable’, said Sean Carleton, an associate professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, in response.
He’s not wrong. It isn’t just the woke who demand we cling to misinformation that supports preferred political narratives. BC Conservative house leader A’aliya Warbus explained on X that: ‘Questioning the narratives of people who lived and survived these atrocities is nothing but harmful and taking us backward in reconciliation.’
In Canada, the truth is now considered undesirable. As a statement from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs puts it: ‘This type of “truth-seeking” rhetoric is nothing more than a smokescreen for anti-indigenous racism.’
Brodie’s X post was responding to a libel case brought by BC lawyer James Heller against the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC), which he accuses of ‘bad faith, high-handedness, arrogance, malice’ and betraying its ‘ethical duties’.
Heller initially took issue with a statement published in LSBC’s ‘indigenous intercultural course’ for BC lawyers. It reads: ‘On 27 May 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc nation reported the discovery of an unmarked burial site containing the bodies of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds.’
In July, Heller wrote to the course providers, asking them to amend the statement to reflect the fact that no bodies had been found or confirmed. After following up a number of times, to no avail, Heller and another lawyer, Mark Berry, submitted a resolution to the LSBC’s annual general meeting, asking for the word ‘potentially’ to be inserted before ‘unmarked burial site’ in the course literature and to delete a passage that read: ‘The discovery confirms what survivors have been saying all along.’
In response, the BC First Nations Justice Council (BCFNJC) published a press release titled: ‘Racist resolution proposed by LSBC members supports residential-school and genocide denialism.’ Labelling Heller and Berry’s proposed resolution a ‘so-called correction’, the BCFNJC statement went on to say: ‘Since the painful discovery in Kamloops in 2021, there has been a small but growing disillusioned sect in BC and across Canada that put forward spurious and harmful claims denying the horrors of residential schools and refer to the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential-school sites as a “hoax”.’
This rebranding of demands for accuracy as ‘racism’, or as otherwise ‘harmful’, to the point that the truth must be suppressed or rewritten, has become widespread. Canadian progressives view any deviation from the ‘mass graves’ story as akin to Holocaust denial.
None of this is to say that atrocities did not occur at residential schools in Canada. We can be certain that abuse and neglect did take place. The point is that journalistic ethics demands we report the facts, as best we can. We should not bend the truth to fit a preferred narrative or sell a story.
‘No one should be afraid of the truth. Not lawyers, their governing bodies, or anyone else’, Brodie posted on X. She’s right. The tragedy is that so many Canadians now see the truth as dangerous. At this point, countless institutions, jobs, grants and media narratives rest on what are, at very least, wild exaggerations, if not outright lies.
Above all, the modern Canadian identity itself would be put at risk. We need narratives like these to support our view of ourselves as the most evolved, most forward-thinking and most politically advanced country on Earth. Our capacity for self-flagillation is central to this. After all, what is modern Canada if not a nation that is so terrified of climate change it will embrace electric vehicles that don’t even function properly in cold weather? That is so LGBT-friendly that Pride celebrations are enforced by the law, and opting out can lead to fines? That is so ostentatiously ‘anti-racist’ that we see demands for accurate reporting on our history as indicative of ‘racism’? Learning the truth would rob us of this phoney moral superiority.
There are clearly some remaining Canadians who have not fallen under the spell of woke demands. Here’s hoping that enough of us exist to spread the good word that there is nothing to fear in telling the truth – in fact, it can be quite a thrill.
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and the host of The Same Drugs podcast.
