There is no credible evidence that any residential school student died under sinister circumstance
The case of Jim McMurtry is now well-known to Canadians. He is the Abbotsford schoolteacher who told his class the truth about the claim that 215 indigenous students had been killed and secretly buried at Kamloops Indian Residential School – and was fired for it.
He said that any students who died at the school had likely succumbed to natural causes, mainly tuberculosis. Students who had heard wild stories about children tortured by priests and left in the snow to die were outraged. They complained, and McMurtry was promptly escorted from the classroom, placed on indefinite leave, and subsequently fired.
Eminent writers such as Conrad Black and Barbara Kay have already commented in detail about the outrageous injustice of a schoolteacher being fired for telling the truth. I agree with them and have nothing useful to add in that regard.
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However, there is one event which has largely escaped comment that is highly relevant to the case. That is the parliamentary motion unanimously passed on Oct. 27, 2022, equating residential schools with genocide.
The foundation for that motion was the Kamloops claim (and subsequent copycat claims) of about 215 sinister deaths and secret burials. McMurtry’s “crime” was refusing to accept those claims as fact. Parliament’s passage of the genocide motion implicitly gave the school board that fired McMurtry permission to do so. It sent a clear signal that the genocide claim must be accepted without question. The motion was passed with no study and no debate.
Parliament’s genocide motion also gives international human rights abusers, like communist China, a perfect defence against any legitimate criticism we might make about their inhumane treatment of the Uyghurs or Tibetans. It is a blood libel against every Canadian soldier who fought to defend our freedom, every important Canadian historical figure, and all of our ancestors. It declares them all to be genocide-complicit.
But it also smears every MP and PM who came before them with the “genocide” label. Think of it: Sir Wilfred Laurier, Lester Pearson, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien – all indicted as genocide-complicit.
So, with all that, perhaps we should take a look at what Jim McMurtry actually told his students. He said that students who died at the school mainly died of disease, likely tuberculosis. A quick check of the death certificates on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation list of the 51 children who died at the school (available online) proves exactly that. They died of disease, a few as a result of accidents; some died at home, and some died at a hospital. Here’s one example: “48. Theophile Dick Billy (1941/4/22)d Royal Inland Hospital, Kamloops, DIA Inquiry held.”
There is no mystery there or with any of the other 50 sad deaths. Most were buried on their home reserves. In every case their deaths were properly recorded, and they would have received a proper Catholic funeral with family present. In Theophile’s case, an inquiry was held into his death.
There is no credible evidence that any residential school student died under sinister circumstances, went missing and was never found, or was buried secretly. We know where they are buried. And there is no credible evidence that anyone is buried in the “apple orchard” at the Kamloops School – and especially no credible evidence that any residential school students were buried late at night with the forced help of six-year-olds. The fact that many people lie in untended graves that became “unmarked” with the passage of time is nobody’s fault.
The children who died came from reserves with shockingly high tuberculosis death rates. Their deaths were not caused by residential schools. As Dr. Peter Bryce, chief medical examiner said at the time, the children arrived at the schools already infected, where they infected others. If residential schools had never been built, they would still have died.
In short, there is no credible evidence of anything sinister about any of the 51 deaths or 51 burials.
So, Jim McMurtry told his students the truth. Indigenous children were not tortured by priests and left to die in the snow. They died of natural causes, and were given proper burials. Parliament’s implied message to McMurtry’s school board was to force teachers to disregard the truth – and teach nonsense.
But some of our “leaders” aren’t content with the egregious genocide motion and want to take things even further. They even want to prevent articles like the one you are reading now from being published. NDP MP Leah Gazan, with the approval of Indigenous Affairs Minister Marc Miller, wants legislation that criminalizes any questioning of the secret burial stories, calling it “denialism.”
Parliament must reconsider. They have made a serious error. At the very least, evidence must be presented, and the claims about murder and secret burials at residential schools must be thoroughly examined.
Residential Schools were an attempt to educate, not to commit genocide.
Brian Giesbrecht, a retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
For interview requests, click here.
The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.
© Troy Media
Troy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.
Thank you Mr. Giesbrecht, for having the courage to investigate “the truth”.
Please listen to an interview of David Frum, regarding Residential School Schools, click on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7bUpfIhYA
“Every” old cemetery in Canada has hundreds of unmarked graves and without official or legal documentation of who or when that person was buried in that spot, not because of any planned nefarious plan, but rather out of a simple lack of commitment to document management.
A case in point is that in the little cemetery in Saskatchewan where my Ukrainian maternal ancestors and Ukrainian immigrants built the church and set aside the adjoining land as the cemetery. To look at the cemetery, it looks like there is a huge lawn in the middle of the cemetery with graves only around the perimeters. Fact and truth, is that in the middle of the cemetery in what appears to be a large lawn, has graves of unknown people buried anywhere in there. At the time the Ukrainian priest didn’t document the burials or even having held the funerals in the church, in the church records, not out of malice but out of just bad management. The point here is that this was a Ukrainian priest not properly documenting the funerals and burials of his own parishioners being the Ukrainian immigrants, and this was of his own connected ethnic people and parishioners. It has always been known that there is unmarked graves but nobody has ever suggested that this was a Canadian or Catholic genocide or cover-up.
In Calgary, there is regular cemetery walking tours during the summer months.
In one of Calgary’s oldest cemeteries the very experienced and accurate tour guide said that the particular cemetery could not accept any more burials because the cemetery is full.
Within feet of the tour guide saying so, somebody asked the tour guide how how her statement could be true as there was a plethora of empty spaces that could obviously accept a burial. The tour guide said that no, that was not an empty ground space, but rather it did have a burial, but there wasn’t any marker and nor did the care-taker of the time do proper documentation of who and when that burial in that plot space, happened.
There isn’t any difference between every old cemetery in Canada with unmarked and undocumented graves and the cemeteries at the residential schools, yet who cares about the unmarked and undocumented graves that contain more Caucasian than Indigenous graves?
Some residential schools also had Caucasian students, yet those Caucasian students are not crying foul and demanding government pay-outs for harsh treatment. Why not?
It is a fact Indigenous chiefs asked for and wanted the Residential Schools because they could see foresee that academic education was the future for their descendants, of the way to come as the nomadic life of following the herds of large animals and lack of education would not be the way of the future.
The written contracts must be on recorded in the archives.
Why is this truth not said, and to say this truth is now considered to be truth-denialism and close to be charged as hate speech?
How dare the “academic- only woke” suggest that those who speak the truth are denialists and should be charged with hate speech for not the whole truth and not blindly speaking the fad-lies?
This is a dangerous situation that we are currently in, that our free speech which is “truth speech” has been taken away and labeled as hate-speech and that a teacher Mr. McMurtry can be immediately fired or Senator Lynn Beyak can be suspended for “speaking the truth”.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Giesbrecht, for having the courage to investigate “the truth”.
Please listen to an interview of David Frum, regarding Residential School Schools, click on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7bUpfIhYA
“Every” old cemetery in Canada has hundreds of unmarked graves and without official or legal documentation of who or when that person was buried in that spot, not because of any planned nefarious plan, but rather out of a simple lack of commitment to document management.
A case in point is that in the little cemetery in Saskatchewan where my Ukrainian maternal ancestors and Ukrainian immigrants built the church and set aside the adjoining land as the cemetery. To look at the cemetery, it looks like there is a huge lawn in the middle of the cemetery with graves only around the perimeters. Fact and truth, is that in the middle of the cemetery in what appears to be a large lawn, has graves of unknown people buried anywhere in there. At the time the Ukrainian priest didn’t document the burials or even having held the funerals in the church, in the church records, not out of malice but out of just bad management. The point here is that this was a Ukrainian priest not properly documenting the funerals and burials of his own parishioners being the Ukrainian immigrants, and this was of his own connected ethnic people and parishioners. It has always been known that there is unmarked graves but nobody has ever suggested that this was a Canadian or Catholic genocide or cover-up.
In Calgary, there is regular cemetery walking tours during the summer months.
In one of Calgary’s oldest cemeteries the very experienced and accurate tour guide said that the particular cemetery could not accept any more burials because the cemetery is full.
Within feet of the tour guide saying so, somebody asked the tour guide how how her statement could be true as there was a plethora of empty spaces that could obviously accept a burial. The tour guide said that no, that was not an empty ground space, but rather it did have a burial, but there wasn’t any marker and nor did the care-taker of the time do proper documentation of who and when that burial in that plot space, happened.
There isn’t any difference between every old cemetery in Canada with unmarked and undocumented graves and the cemeteries at the residential schools, yet who cares about the unmarked and undocumented graves that contain more Caucasian than Indigenous graves?
Some residential schools also had Caucasian students, yet those Caucasian students are not crying foul and demanding government pay-outs for harsh treatment. Why not?
It is a fact Indigenous chiefs asked for and wanted the Residential Schools because they could see foresee that academic education was the future for their descendants, of the way to come as the nomadic life of following the herds of large animals and lack of education would not be the way of the future.
The written contracts must be on recorded in the archives.
Why is this truth not said, and to say this truth is now considered to be truth-denialism and close to be charged as hate speech?
How dare the “academic- only woke” suggest that those who speak the truth are denialists and should be charged with hate speech for not the whole truth and not blindly speaking the fad-lies?
This is a dangerous situation that we are currently in, that our free speech which is “truth speech” has been taken away and labeled as hate-speech and that a teacher Mr. McMurtry can be immediately fired or Senator Lynn Beyak can be suspended for “speaking the truth”.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Giesbrecht, for having the courage to investigate “the truth”.
Please listen to an interview of David Frum, regarding Residential School Schools, click on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7bUpfIhYA
“Every” old cemetery in Canada has hundreds of unmarked graves and without official or legal documentation of who or when that person was buried in that spot, not because of any planned nefarious plan, but rather out of a simple lack of commitment to document management.
A case in point is that in the little cemetery in Saskatchewan where my Ukrainian maternal ancestors and Ukrainian immigrants built the church and set aside the adjoining land as the cemetery. To look at the cemetery, it looks like there is a huge lawn in the middle of the cemetery with graves only around the perimeters. Fact and truth, is that in the middle of the cemetery in what appears to be a large lawn, has graves of unknown people buried anywhere in there. At the time the Ukrainian priest didn’t document the burials or even having held the funerals in the church, in the church records, not out of malice but out of just bad management. The point here is that this was a Ukrainian priest not properly documenting the funerals and burials of his own parishioners being the Ukrainian immigrants, and this was of his own connected ethnic people and parishioners. It has always been known that there is unmarked graves but nobody has ever suggested that this was a Canadian or Catholic genocide or cover-up.
In Calgary, there is regular cemetery walking tours during the summer months.
In one of Calgary’s oldest cemeteries the very experienced and accurate tour guide said that the particular cemetery could not accept any more burials because the cemetery is full.
Within feet of the tour guide saying so, somebody asked the tour guide how how her statement could be true as there was a plethora of empty spaces that could obviously accept a burial. The tour guide said that no, that was not an empty ground space, but rather it did have a burial, but there wasn’t any marker and nor did the care-taker of the time do proper documentation of who and when that burial in that plot space, happened.
There isn’t any difference between every old cemetery in Canada with unmarked and undocumented graves and the cemeteries at the residential schools, yet who cares about the unmarked and undocumented graves that contain more Caucasian than Indigenous graves?
Some residential schools also had Caucasian students, yet those Caucasian students are not crying foul and demanding government pay-outs for harsh treatment. Why not?
It is a fact Indigenous chiefs asked for and wanted the Residential Schools because they could see foresee that academic education was the future for their descendants, of the way to come as the nomadic life of following the herds of large animals and lack of education would not be the way of the future.
The written contracts must be on recorded in the archives.
Why is this truth not said, and to say this truth is now considered to be truth-denialism and close to be charged as hate speech?
How dare the “academic- only woke” suggest that those who speak the truth are denialists and should be charged with hate speech for not the whole truth and not blindly speaking the fad-lies?
This is a dangerous situation that we are currently in, that our free speech which is “truth speech” has been taken away and labeled as hate-speech and that a teacher Mr. McMurtry can be immediately fired or Senator Lynn Beyak can be suspended for “speaking the truth”.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Giesbrecht, for having the courage to investigate “the truth”.
Please listen to an interview of David Frum, regarding Residential School Schools, click on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7bUpfIhYA
“Every” old cemetery in Canada has hundreds of unmarked graves and without official or legal documentation of who or when that person was buried in that spot, not because of any planned nefarious plan, but rather out of a simple lack of commitment to document management.
A case in point is that in the little cemetery in Saskatchewan where my Ukrainian maternal ancestors and Ukrainian immigrants built the church and set aside the adjoining land as the cemetery. To look at the cemetery, it looks like there is a huge lawn in the middle of the cemetery with graves only around the perimeters. Fact and truth, is that in the middle of the cemetery in what appears to be a large lawn, has graves of unknown people buried anywhere in there. At the time the Ukrainian priest didn’t document the burials or even having held the funerals in the church, in the church records, not out of malice but out of just bad management. The point here is that this was a Ukrainian priest not properly documenting the funerals and burials of his own parishioners being the Ukrainian immigrants, and this was of his own connected ethnic people and parishioners. It has always been known that there is unmarked graves but nobody has ever suggested that this was a Canadian or Catholic genocide or cover-up.
In Calgary, there is regular cemetery walking tours during the summer months.
In one of Calgary’s oldest cemeteries the very experienced and accurate tour guide said that the particular cemetery could not accept any more burials because the cemetery is full.
Within feet of the tour guide saying so, somebody asked the tour guide how how her statement could be true as there was a plethora of empty spaces that could obviously accept a burial. The tour guide said that no, that was not an empty ground space, but rather it did have a burial, but there wasn’t any marker and nor did the care-taker of the time do proper documentation of who and when that burial in that plot space, happened.
There isn’t any difference between every old cemetery in Canada with unmarked and undocumented graves and the cemeteries at the residential schools, yet who cares about the unmarked and undocumented graves that contain more Caucasian than Indigenous graves?
Some residential schools also had Caucasian students, yet those Caucasian students are not crying foul and demanding government pay-outs for harsh treatment. Why not?
It is a fact Indigenous chiefs asked for and wanted the Residential Schools because they could see foresee that academic education was the future for their descendants, of the way to come as the nomadic life of following the herds of large animals and lack of education would not be the way of the future.
The written contracts must be on recorded in the archives.
Why is this truth not said, and to say this truth is now considered to be truth-denialism and close to be charged as hate speech?
How dare the “academic- only woke” suggest that those who speak the truth are denialists and should be charged with hate speech for not the whole truth and not blindly speaking the fad-lies?
This is a dangerous situation that we are currently in, that our free speech which is “truth speech” has been taken away and labeled as hate-speech and that a teacher Mr. McMurtry can be immediately fired or Senator Lynn Beyak can be suspended for “speaking the truth”.
Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Giesbrecht, for having the courage to investigate “the truth”.
Please listen to an interview of David Frum, regarding Residential School Schools, click on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7bUpfIhYA
“Every” old cemetery in Canada has hundreds of unmarked graves and without official or legal documentation of who or when that person was buried in that spot, not because of any planned nefarious plan, but rather out of a simple lack of commitment to document management.
A case in point is that in the little cemetery in Saskatchewan where my Ukrainian maternal ancestors and Ukrainian immigrants built the church and set aside the adjoining land as the cemetery. To look at the cemetery, it looks like there is a huge lawn in the middle of the cemetery with graves only around the perimeters. Fact and truth, is that in the middle of the cemetery in what appears to be a large lawn, has graves of unknown people buried anywhere in there. At the time the Ukrainian priest didn’t document the burials or even having held the funerals in the church, in the church records, not out of malice but out of just bad management. The point here is that this was a Ukrainian priest not properly documenting the funerals and burials of his own parishioners being the Ukrainian immigrants, and this was of his own connected ethnic people and parishioners. It has always been known that there is unmarked graves but nobody has ever suggested that this was a Canadian or Catholic genocide or cover-up.
In Calgary, there is regular cemetery walking tours during the summer months.
In one of Calgary’s oldest cemeteries the very experienced and accurate tour guide said that the particular cemetery could not accept any more burials because the cemetery is full.
Within feet of the tour guide saying so, somebody asked the tour guide how how her statement could be true as there was a plethora of empty spaces that could obviously accept a burial. The tour guide said that no, that was not an empty ground space, but rather it did have a burial, but there wasn’t any marker and nor did the care-taker of the time do proper documentation of who and when that burial in that plot space, happened.
There isn’t any difference between every old cemetery in Canada with unmarked and undocumented graves and the cemeteries at the residential schools, yet who cares about the unmarked and undocumented graves that contain more Caucasian than Indigenous graves?
Some residential schools also had Caucasian students, yet those Caucasian students are not crying foul and demanding government pay-outs for harsh treatment. Why not?
It is a fact Indigenous chiefs asked for and wanted the Residential Schools because they could see foresee that academic education was the future for their descendants, of the way to come as the nomadic life of following the herds of large animals and lack of education would not be the way of the future.
The written contracts must be on recorded in the archives.
Why is this truth not said, and to say this truth is now considered to be truth-denialism and close to be charged as hate speech?
How dare the “academic- only woke” suggest that those who speak the truth are denialists and should be charged with hate speech for not the whole truth and not blindly speaking the fad-lies?
This is a dangerous situation that we are currently in, that our free speech which is “truth speech” has been taken away and labeled as hate-speech and that a teacher Mr. McMurtry can be immediately fired or Senator Lynn Beyak can be suspended for “speaking the truth”.
Thank you.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
I appreciate the sanity and logic that Mr. Giesbrecht has put forward. I, like many Canadians, were very concerned with the allegations that the indigenous community had made that we were murderers and had committed genocide. This empowered me to investigate just to see what the facts were. I found a number of issues that simply did not add up:
for examople, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions report concluded that residential schools operated in Canada for about 120 years and that there were 139 residential schools.
Senator/commissioner Sinclair said that the number of unaccounted students could be as high as 6,000 so I used his number. So if we take 6,000 unaccounted for students divided by 120 years, that gives us 50 students per year divided by 139 schools, which gives us 0.36 students per year per school that may be unaccounted for. It’s important to remember that Canada went through a number of times when contagions spread across the land such as the Spanish flu which killed more than 50,000 Canadians and was especially hard on children five years of age and younger.
The assertions from the indigenous community is that not-indigenous Canadians were not affected by these diseases. We know from the historical records that many chiefs signed(made their mark) for their children to be taken and put into residential schools but there have been no calls from the indigenous community to hold their pass leadership to account. Also a significant number of these residential schools were located within the reserves which meant that the indigenous communities there not only had access but were responsible.
It occurred to me, given the fact that residential schools operated here for about 120 years first under British Authority then Canadian which is about eight generations, that the indigenous communities not mounting any reasonable protest that the narrative the indigenous community is now asserting is at best embellished and at worst totally falsified; all done for political and monetary gain.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.
Brian Giesbrecht’s writings articulate many of my thoughts, and reading them gives me hope there is still some sanity in Canada, difficult as it is to find it!! I have a request for him – I would like to hear what he has to say about the Doctrine of Discovery.