Perhaps you’ve seen the explosive claim all over the legacy media that “residential school denialists” have been showing up in the wee hours of the night at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, shovels in hand, ready to dig for graves.
“Denialists entered the site without permission,” special interlocutor for unmarked graves Kimberly Murray said in her June 2023 interim report.
“Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to ‘see for themselves’ if children are buried there.”
It’s a compelling account – but it’s not really true.
The Kamloops RCMP told True North “At this time, there is no indication that these events have been reported to the Tk’emlúps Rural RCMP Detachment.”
This week, on CBC Radio, Tk’emlúps chief Rosanne Casimir downgraded the original claim after being prompted for more details on the shovel-wielding grave-diggers: “someone even showed up with a shovel in hand,” she said.
Because the original sensational claim in the governmental report was uncritically repeated by the legacy media, Canadians are now under the impression that gangs of “denialists” are showing up to the school in the night, trying to dig up graves with shovels.
But it turns out, according to the chief herself, one single person showed up with a shovel (perhaps as a symbolic gesture) and was presumably immediately turned away by security.
It’s similar to when the Tk’emlúps nation announced back in May 2021 that they discovered the “remains” of 215 children, and then in July downgraded their claim to 200 “targets of interest,” and eventually stopped providing any updates at all.
The “215” narrative caused a moral panic in Canada: over 70 churches were burned down or vandalized, our flags were lowered for several months, and our political leaders were trying to convince us that we are a nation of genocide.
For asking questions about the “unmarked graves” narrative and trying to get to the bottom of the claims I see propagated in the mainstream media, am I a denialist who should be jailed?
After all, our Liberal government is mulling how they can make it illegal for Canadians to ask critical questions about the “unmarked graves.”
“Urgent consideration should be given to legal mechanisms to address denialism, including the implementation of both civil and criminal sanctions,” wrote Kimberly Murray in her report.
Justice Minister David Lametti said he is open to “a legal solution” to “outlaw” questioning the residential school narrative.
Minister Lametti’s office did not answer True North’s repeated requests for comment.
Lametti isn’t the first to express interest in limiting Canadians’ freedom of expression in this way: earlier this year, Winnipeg NDP MP Leah Gazan announced she wants to introduce legislation to outlaw denying the “genocide” of residential schools.
“Denying genocide is a form of hate speech,” Gazan declared.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said he would be interested in reviewing the proposed legislation.
In case you missed it, Canada recently made it illegal to “condone, deny or downplay the Holocaust.”
Will it soon also become illegal to “condone, deny or downplay” the prevailing residential school narrative, even though there is currently no evidence to suggest any unmarked graves of missing children exist at all?
“I think it is now becoming clear that the claim that thousands of children went to residential school ‘and never returned’ is nonsense,” said Brian Giesbrecht of the Indian Residential Schools Research Group.
“There simply is no ‘missing children’ mystery. Children were buried properly and cemeteries were often not tended. However, an entire industry has been built on the false claim that something sinister took place at residential schools. This has spun out of control to claims that priests were murdering and secretly burying children.”
“I think that the activists making these claims know that as soon as the Trudeau government is gone their false claims will be exposed.”
