Whatever Happened to the Canadian Mass Graves Fiasco?

Remember back in the days when you could turn on CBC news and be reasonably certain that what you were hearing was a reasonably accurate portrayal of what was actually happening in Canada, or the world? When the stories you heard actually had some basis in reality and weren’t simply a paid advertisement for some bizarre ideology? It’s alright if you don’t, it was a long time ago.

I came across this article the other day on The Conversation:

It’s not CBC, but one of the authors of this piece did publish an article on CBC about a year ago on the exact same topic. Sean Carelton is a self-described “settler scholar” and Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba (just an hour or so down the road from my house). He asserts that Residential School Denialists “do not deny the existence of residential schools or even some of the harms of the IRS system". Well alright, he’s the settler scholar, so I guess he ought to know, right? Whatever you need to do to make the shoe fit…

This new piece he has co-written with Reid Gerbrandt (another “settler academic researcher” as it turns out) seemingly has the purpose of minimizing the extreme damage done to the media and the “Every Child Matters” cause by the shoddy journalism that resulted in the Mass Graves Fiasco. As expected, the article concludes that there was no “mass graves hoax” and those who say so are really just deniers, haters and conspiracy theorists who fell for “misinformation”.

The main reasoning of this article is that “denialists” are insisting that the media is involved in some sort of conspiracy to withhold the truth from Canadians. I’m not sure how much truth there is to that theory, but after the last few years, I’m definitely open. Anyway, this is really what’s known as a “strawman argument”, where the person sets up something that doesn’t really exist in order to distract from the real issue, and then attacks it to prove how superior they are.

For the record, I’ve never called this a hoax, because to me a hoax is supposed to be funny. I’ve always maintained this is a result of incredibly shoddy journalism mixed with activism (kind of like this article by Carelton and Gerbrandt) and swallowed whole by a public that’s been conditioned to believe the absolute worst about our society. Their piece focuses mainly on semantics, concluding that yes, many journalists made some mistakes, and they probably used some words they shouldn’t have, but for cryin’ out loud, it's not like it was all of them - Gosh!

Like anyone could even know that - Gosh!

Regardless of how gracious these two are feeling about this incident, what will stay with many Canadians (likely for the rest of our lives) are the things that happened as a result of these “innocent” mistakes.

• Dozens of Catholic churches burned to the ground, even while indigenous people pleaded for them to be spared,

• Statues pulled down in every major city in the country,

• Canada Day effectively cancelled,

• A brand new national holiday established so Trudeau could go surfing,

• Flags flown at half-mast on federal buildings for five months. And the only reason it was a mere five months was because they had to raise them in November so they could lower them again for Remembrance Day,

• More division among Canadians. Churches and statues can be rebuilt, but we may never rebuild that part of it.

Whether there was a conspiracy of any sort is completely beside the point, because our political leaders also pounced on this like dogs on a cat turd. Please keep in mind that as of this writing - going on three years now after these “discoveries”, not a single actual body has been unearthed. Emphasis mine.

John Horgan on X: Horrified and heartbroken to learn the burial site of 215 children has been confirmed on the grounds of the former Kamloops residential school.

Jagmeet Singh on X: 751. The unmarked graves of 751 more Indigenous bodies have been uncovered. This is Genocide.

AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde on X: It’s painful to hear that 215 bodies were found at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir: To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths. Some were as young as three years old.

NDP MP Mumilaaq Qaqqaq: There were three-year-old babies in the ground. How many more are there? Our children’s bodies deserve to come home.

Justin Trudeau on X: My heart breaks for the Cowessess First Nation following the discovery of Indigenous children buried at the former Marieval Residential School.

Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party at the time: As a parent, it's devastating to think that 215 children were buried by their school and lost for decades.

Here’s another one from Jagmeet: 215 Indigenous kids were found in an unmarked mass grave. Anytime we think about unmarked mass graves, we think about a distant country where a genocide has happened. This is not a distant country.

This even became part of the Liberal Party’s election platform in 2021:

“Residential schools were not the only federal institutions Indigenous peoples were forced to attend. Institutions such as Day Schools and Indian Hospitals also furthered colonial and racist policies of assimilation. These sites should also be explored to uncover remains of ancestors and loved ones.”

Here’s a montage of what a very quick Google search brings up when you search for “Canada mass graves”:

I think one could be forgiven for feeling somewhat distrustful of our news media and politicians given how long it took them to correct these “mistakes”. Many of them never even bothered to correct them, which is why so many people in this country are still convinced that there are bodies buried all over the country hiding nefarious secrets of government/church conspiracies.

In order to save myself some time, I’m just going to go ahead and quote from a previous piece I wrote about various forms of denialism. Don’t worry, I’ve given myself permission to use this text in its entirety.

---

Residential School Denier

Apparently, there are many facets to being a Residential School Denier, but evidently one of those is NOT actually denying that residential schools existed.

Yeah, I know. I'm shocked as well.

According to this article by Kisha Supernant and Sean Carleton (who is a self-described “settler scholar” and Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba),

Residential School Denialists “do not deny the existence of residential schools or even some of the harms of the IRS system".

Alright, that's cool. I guess that describes me, as well as most other people in this country. I'm still trying to get my head around that one, but hey, if you make it too complicated, then calling someone names isn't nearly as much fun.

Luckily, they also were able to tell us what being a Residential School Denier actually is:

Rather, they seek to downplay or distort basic IRS facts and question the validity of ongoing research.

Now this I can understand, and I would agree that if someone was doing that, it would be an uncalled for, mean, and nasty thing to do. The main problem I have with this description is the context in which it's being used (and this is actually how most of these are used). For context, the authors linked to this piece by award-winning and excellent Canadian journalist Terry Glavin in the National Post. I highly recommend reading that one because unlike the previous article, it's a very well researched piece with accurate facts - facts that dispute most of what this other article says, which is likely the real reason it was targeted as denialism in the first place.

Anyway, after reading the CBC article, and the “problematic” one it took offense at, my main takeaway is that “questioning the validity of ongoing research” means that when journalists say there are “mass graves” or “remains were discovered” this means that you do not “question the validity” of what's being said (even though both of these statements turned out to be false). When these same journalists later backtrack a little bit and start calling them “probable grave sites” but still insist that they are “confirmed probable grave sites” (yes, they are both confirmed and probable), obviously we are not to question that either, even though “confirmed” doesn't mean that remains were actually found, just that they might be found if one would ever care enough to look. Of course, no one has*, but that is apparently beside the point. There may also be a problem with the word, “research” here since it seems that word also no longer means what it used to mean, but that's a topic for another time.

---

*Since this piece was written, there actually has been some digging done in different places around the country, and of course nothing was found because nothing was there to begin with. It was difficult to know if finding nothing was a happy thing or a sad thing…

---

Even though one might think that by now the country would have come to grips with the fact that there have been no actual bodies uncovered in any of these locations, there are still those among us who refuse to give it up. This spring I was reminded of that gruesome day back in May of 2021 by our Canadian Museum of Human Rights, which again is just an hour or so down the road from me in Winnipeg.

My immediate reaction to this was: What? Don't you mean they've found approximately ZERO children and a whole lot of ground disturbances?

I'm not trying to be insensitive, but this kind of thing really pisses me off because it is simply not true. At all. This is a lie, and it's a terrible look for the Truth and Reconciliation people. Also, it's a slap in the face for the real victims here. Obviously, there were terrible things that happened with the residential school system and if I were around at the time, I would've been the loudest voice crying, "Let those people live their lives the way they want!"

Obviously, I have empathy for those that were harmed, but that’s not even the point. The point is that this is just not right. This isn't how you get justice. All this does is add to the mountain of reasons why we can't trust our leadership or the media in this country, and it's sickening to me.

People need to be honest about what happened there and about what didn't happen there. At the time this was going on, there were kids dying of tuberculosis all over the country and while some of them got a beautiful plot in a family cemetery, some of them may well have ended up in the yard of a residential school. Many of these were boarding schools after all - kids lived there, and diseases spread there. That part of it (though sad and unfortunate) was not a crime. Burying them there would’ve simply easier than transporting them back home.

This "discovery" rocked this country to its core, changed laws, and caused untold hurt and shame. And not one shred of actual evidence. Do you really think ground penetrating radar would be good enough on its own if we thought there were white children buried there? Would we (and our government) be satisfied to just take the community's word for it and not even really look? How long do you think we'd have to wait for there to be shovels in the ground to find out for sure? I'm sorry, but the "just respect them and don't disturb them" line is complete BS in light of the accusations being made here.

What we know now is pretty much what we knew then: GPR doesn't confirm anything other than a soil disturbance of some kind, so calling those "remains" is a lie, plain and simple, regardless of what one wants to believe.

At the end of the day, what this amounted to was nothing more than an opportunity to capitalize on our own “George Floyd moment”. Another example of how willing we are to follow in the footsteps of our southern neighbor, even when it's detrimental to us.

So, the issue here is not that kids were abused (though they probably were), it's that the media and our government have been dishonest about it and are literally spreading lies (not just exaggerations) in order to get people riled up. It’s not that nothing happened there, it’s that the way these stories are being told is dishonest and irresponsible. It's one thing to have stories passed down over a couple of generations. It's entirely another thing to accuse an entire country of genocide based on some soil anomalies.

Calling reasonable people deniers simply because they demand a little bit more to go on in order to justify these kinds of accusations and allegations is not the way to put this to bed.

Terry Glavin said it quite well: it's not just that the truth doesn't matter anymore, it's that it doesn't matter that the truth doesn't matter anymore.

This whole sordid episode was appalling. And it's very possible that there will indeed be actual remains uncovered eventually. This is the very reason these things need to be treated with the kind of respect they deserve, rather than sensationalized in the media, because if and when this does happen, it would be nice if we could read those reports and not wonder if it's just more sensational journalistic license meant to garner a million more clicks.

---

More from BlogOfKen: