“When in a hole, stop digging,” the saying goes. They dug a lot of holes at Kamloops Indian Residential school but, as described in 2022 by Professor Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, they have not found a single one of the 215 bodies allegedly buried there. Nor have they found any since.
They did not stop digging, though. They simply announced that “their investigation was proceeding but would remain confidential to preserve its integrity.”
(That Wikipedia article is quite something. In its current form it is full of talk about “denialists”. Wikipedia was not always like this.)
Some people might be glad to discover that, despite extensive investigation, there is no evidence to support rumours of the secret mass burial of hundreds of children. Not Leah Gazan, an MP with the New Democratic Party, though. As reported by the National Post:
NDP MP tables bill seeking to criminalize residential school ‘denialism’
OTTAWA — An NDP MP tabled a bill Thursday seeking to change the Criminal Code to criminalize downplaying, denying or condoning the harms of residential schools in Canada.
Leah Gazan, who represents Winnipeg Centre, presented her private member’s bill on Monday, a few days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
To be fair, it looks like most of the people complaining haven’t started digging. I searched the Wikipedia article for “dig” and “exhume”, and most of the hits* were talking about the severity of the allegations.
The quote isn’t entirely irrelevant, though; there were a few that said that nothing was found, that the exhuming was the next step of the process, or just said that the process needed to continue without mentioning their results so far.
* Well, most of the results were for the middle of the word ‘indigenous’, but I meant most of the results that involved some form of the word ‘dig’.
They announced that there were several hundred dead kids, killed and buried by the residential schools.
Using ground-penetrating radar and dogs and people just digging, they have discovered . . . no bodies buried anywhere.
They (government types) still speak about this as if it’s real.
Since the day of the first announcement, there have been 85 Catholic churches burned in retaliation for the church’s role in “all of these horrid deaths.”
Trudeau sucks.
These schools operated for almost 170 years. In that time 4000 attendees died. Out of how many? The article does not say. 4000 pupils? Wah! 100% death rate. 400,000 pupils? Hm. 1% death rate – immensly better than the general population. The Wiki article omits the most crucial piece of information.
Residential Schools, both in Canada and the United States, were an ANTI racist policy – indeed the word “racist” was coined by the supporters of the Residential Schools in the United States to describe their opponents – people who argued that members of the tribes were “savages” by “blood” (heredity) and so no amount of education would change this.
Today most people, including myself, think the Residential Schools were a bad idea – and that the children should have stayed with their parents and gone to day schools, but at the time boarding school was far more accepted – even by the most wealthy European heritage families. The intention behind the Residential Schools may have been misguided (I would argue that the policy was a blunder) – but it was motivated by a desire to HELP (I repeat the “racists” of the time were AGAINST the policy of Residential Schools – as they thought the tribal people were “savages” by “blood”).
As for children dying of sickness – this was sadly normal for all communities (including wealthy people in the 19th century) and there were indeed burials at some schools, with wooden grave markers (culturally normal among Canadian tribes – it would have been stone grave stones that would have been a different culture) that rot away over time.
However, the campaign in recent years has been that the children were MURDERED and buried in “mass graves”.
This campaign was a lie – the people pushing this campaign, which included the Canadian government and the media, always knew it was untrue – they were lying, not making an honest mistake.
And I am going to use the “M word” – this was a Marxist (specifically a Frankfurt School “Critical Theory”) agitprop campaign – aimed at stirring up racial hatred and discrediting the Christian churches who ran most of the Residential Schools.
So the question arises – why was the Canadian “Liberal” government and the “mainstream” international media pushing a Marxist agitprop campaign?
I repeat – they knew it was as lie, they were lying not making an honest mistake. And the Marxist (Frankfurt School Marxist) objectives of this campaign were obvious – even before large numbers of churches were BURNED by people brainwashed by the government and media campaign to hate Christianity – and to hate the “reactionary” past of Canada.
The objective (the obvious objective) of this campaign was to make people hate Christianity, and to hate the “reactionary” history of Canada, including the first Prime Minister of Canada, and to hate Canadian culture, indeed to hate Western culture generally.
Why was the “Liberal” government and the “liberal” international media pushing a Marxist campaign of wild lies?
The incident that made me finally give up on the American government (and the Canadian bureaucracy, sadly, has the same totalitarian agenda) was the treatment of General Flynn in 2017.
He was the ex head of military intelligence and had just been made President Trump’s National Security Adviser – the FBI went after General Flynn with absurd charges, and got him to make a “plea deal” (basically plead guilty when he had committed no real crimes) by making threats about family members.
I watched that happen – and I watched the media go along with it (they cheered on the tyranny).
That was when it finally got through my thick head that the Western (not just American) system had been utterly corrupted.
You can disagree with General Flynn about X,Y,Z policies – fine, go right ahead and show that he is utterly mistaken about policy. But you do NOT go after a policy opponent with criminal charges – not unless you (and the “you” is the establishment as a whole) are a gang of vicious scumbags – which-they-are.
Canada is an example of this – the Trudeau regime (and regime is the correct word) is not a matter of one bad person (although Mr Trudeau is a very bad person indeed) – it is an entire establishment, government, media and corporate, which is rotten to the core.
The weird doctrines that have taken over education (yes – education) in so much of the Western world, are at the heart of this.
One of the major arguing points the progressive social justice warriors of the late 1800’s had for establishing residential schools was the high death rate from tuberculosis for indigenous children.
I got a lot of abuse for suggesting the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“As for children dying of sickness – this was sadly normal for all communities (including wealthy people in the 19th century)”
Indeed. This is the UK age profile from 1901:
00-09: *****************************************
10-19: ******************************************
20-29: *******************************
30-39: ************************
40-49: **********************
50-59: *****************
60-69: ***********
70-79: ******
80-89: *
90-99:
Compared to 2011:
00-09: ************************
10-19: **********************
20-29: **************************
30-39: **************************
40-49: **************************
50-59: ****************************
60-69: **********************
70-79: ****************
80-89: ********
90-99: **
Not only were almost HALF the population children, getting on for a QUARTER of each age group died each ten years. The modern expectation of “nobody dies until they’re in their 80s” is exactly that – a *modern* expectation.
Jay and jgh – both good comments, thank you for writing them.