The scandal surrounding Canada’s Kamloops Indian Residential School (1890-1969, British Columbia) is an ultra-cautionary tale about the damage inflicted by self-interested politicians and activists, backed by a media that toes the line. The 2021 scandal sprang from the alleged discovery of 215 graves of indigenous children. They were said to have died under suspicious circumstances at the Catholic-run school and then buried in unmarked graves behind the facility. Kamloops was one of the largest schools in the residential system through which Indigenous children were culturally deprogrammed and indoctrinated to mold them into “proper” Canadians.
When the story broke, the press fell over itself in a race to sensationalism. CBC News on May 28 declared, “Remains of 215 children found buried at former B.C. residential school, First Nation says.” The Toronto Star announced on May 28, “The remains of 215 children have been found. Now, Indigenous leaders say, Canada must help find the rest of the unmarked graves.” The international press jumped on the speeding news train with their own headlines, such as “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada’” from The New York Times on May 31.
Actually, no graves had been discovered; their existence was extrapolated from “anomalies” in the earth found by ground-penetrating radar. Such anomalies are commonplace, however, and usually indicate a tree root, a large rock, or some other innocuous presence. Today, after three years and almost $8 million of publicly unaccountable funds being expended, no graves have been found. No one has bothered to even start the digging necessary to verify anything.
Evidence is optional in the court of opinion
The world was ready to believe without evidence. The residential school system was a horrific page of Canadian history and an act of cultural assault if not cultural genocide. Perhaps this history lent automatic credibility to the accusations that many students died prematurely and were buried anonymously as a cover-up or out of callousness.
The fallout from these accusations was stunning. Canada was internationally smeared as a genocidal nation; the United Nations called for prompt action on a massive “human rights violation”; the Pope apologized; dozens of Catholic Churches in Canada were burned down in retaliation; the 2021 Canada Day celebrations were canceled in national shame, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking a knee to Indigenous people. Subsequent government funds were pledged, including $3.1 million for a National Residential School Student Death Register and $238.8 million for a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund. Other governments followed suit. For example, the government of Ontario pledged $10 million to search for unmarked graves at residential schools in this province.
Eventually, academics and journalists began to ask for evidence. In a 2022 New York Post article entitled “Biggest fake news story in Canada: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics,” Professor Jacques Rouillard of the Department of History at Université de Montréal expressed an increasingly common concern. “Not one body has been found. After … months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?” And why hadn’t a single missing person’s report on them been found?
Almost alone among prominent Canadian media, the National Post ran a series of articles that showed cracks in what had become an almost sacred narrative about Kamloops. A Sept. 6, 2023, headline asked, “Who started calling residential school burial sites mass graves? At least in the beginning, First Nations didn’t claim there were deliberately hidden ‘mass graves.’ Media and activists did.” A May 30, 2024, article concluded, “Canada slowly acknowledging there never was a ‘mass grave’. There was much that was dark about residential schools, but no graves have been confirmed at Kamloops to this day.” In late 2023, the anthology “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)” appeared.
Hellbound and Down 