Outrage over Grave Error

The book that stresses out weak leaders and grandstanding moral do-gooders

Quesnel mayor Ron Paull answers ‘no,’ to the question from Coun. Scott Elliott regarding whether he agreed with what his wife was doing. (Screenshot of Quesnel City Council meeting)

By

James Pew

Canadians need to “do the work.” We need to start having those hard conversations about “indigenous privilege.” In a breath-taking act of Orwellian censorship, the gross privilege so sickeningly draped over indigenous Canadians by mostly progressively minded non-indigenous Canadians, reached a new paragon of gag-inducing genuflection. A post on X from Canadian political scientist, Eric Kaufmann, captures this outrageously sickening example of illiberal privilege and its adjacent act of morally vacuous political virtue signaling:

“Indigenous have cultural power over whites, so the small town council can’t question the veracity of ‘community’ anecdotes, instead choosing to genuflect and cancel a book in the name of ‘sensitivity’. An object lesson in how woke works. Shelby Steele 101.”

Yesterday, as reported by the CBC:

“Quesnel's city council voted unanimously to denounce a book the Lhtako Dene Nation says downplays the harms of residential schools, after the First Nation and councillors raised concerns the mayor's wife was distributing it to residents in the city about 630 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Several copies of Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) by C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan have been circulated by Pat Morton, Mayor Ron Paull's wife, city council members said in a meeting on Tuesday, after receiving a letter of concern about the issue from the First Nation.” 

Full disclosure, regular readers of Woke Watch Canada will know that I am a contributor to the book Grave Error - which in spite of not being stocked in any book stores, or receiving any press what-so-ever, is a Canadian best-seller. Readers will also know that many of the other contributing authors of Grave Error are the same IRS researchers I write about often in these pages.

One of them, cancelled teacher Jim McMurtry - fired from his teaching position for correctly teaching kids that former Indian Residential School student deaths were mostly due to disease and accidents, posted two relevant thoughts on X. The first was a quote from an article published on a recently launched website by the IRS researchers mentioned: 

“Most people are self satisfied with lies about the past, but not all…

Irene Hoff, who went to the Chapleau IRS, said: ‘I will not be taking any money from the government. I was not abused, my family was not, and nobody I know was abused in the schools’.” - The Beautiful Passages in the IRS Concerto | IRSRG

Jim’s second post responded to yesterday’s ridiculous story coming out of Quesnel, B.C. :

“Quesnel council ‘denounces’ the book Grave Error.

Quesnel mayor throws his wife under the bus for giving out copies of the book.

She doesn’t believe the dark narrative on residential schools.

The narrative is trash, as is her husband.”

Indeed, Trail Times reported that Ron Paull, “the mayor of Quesnel was forced to publicly denounce the actions of his wife, after actions in her private life reflected on the city’s public institutions.”

My Cariboo Now reported that one of the copies of Grave Error was given to “the parents of Councilor Tony Goulet.” Here is what Goulet had to say about it:

 “It was very disturbing, I was just appalled.  People are allowed to have their opinion and I’m not against people having their opinion, but we shouldn’t be detesting things that have been taking place for years with reconciliation and what we’re trying to do with Indigenous elders and Indigenous people, we’re doing an actual injustice by saying here is a book, here is something you should read and look at and form your own opinion.  It’s very, very, very traumatizing. It’s very, very, very disrespectful I think to an Indigenous community.”

Isn’t it odd how in one sentence Goulet claims, on the left side of the first comma, that he isn’t against “people having their opinion,” but immediately, to the right of the comma, he explains how he is against people having their own opinion? Here is what the Dorchester Review posted to X in response to Goulet’s “double consciousness.”:

"‘We're doing an actual injustice by saying here is a book, here is something you should read and look at and form your own opinion.  It’s very, very, very traumatizing. It’s very, very, very disrespectful I think to an Indigenous community’. Not allowed to read a book and form your own opinion? That's an interesting take.”

Always polite and professional, the minds at the Dorchester Review may have understated the case slightly by framing it as “interesting.” Shannon Lee Mannion, an independent researcher, journalist, and board member of the Indian Residential School Research Group, had a hot take:

“Quesnel, BC is at a Full Boil.

Here's something that strikes me as ludicrous. There are roughly 10,000 in the town of Quesnel, 23,000 if lumped in with the surrounding area. 

However, there are only 206 Lhtako Dene who are creating a countrywide scandal. The Quesnel City Council have soundly denounced, that's the word used, Grave Error. They have all but called for the mayor to drag his wife from their house by her hair and to publicly flog her in the centre of town. 

What is going on?” 

Another IRS researcher and independent writer, retired lawyer Peter Best, wrote a letter to the editor of the CBC story mentioned at the top of this article. Here is Peter’s letter to the Quesnel story editor:

“I am a retired Sudbury lawyer. Way over here in Ontario we are reading about the Mayor and Council of Quesnel buckling under the pressure to denounce and ban the truthful book, Grave Error. Shame. It is neither racist nor disrespectful to Indigenous people. It is a necessary re-balancing of the narrative about residential schools. It is a condemnation of the press for gullibly buying into the Kamloops mass graves story, where, three years later, there’s no proof of them. My review of Grave Error is linked to here. Lovers of free speech urge Quesnel to read this book, and not to be intimidated from exercising their right to freedom of speech and thought.”

The CBC and other media are claiming that our book is “hurtful.” I have two thoughts about that. The first is just some grown up tough guy stuff - I fully realize many just cannot accept the harsh and cold reality that the truth does not care if your feelings are hurt. The truth is like an AI where no one programmed it to understand or consider feelings. It was programmed that way deliberately because it was understood - by those nerdy IT types - that feelings and emotions do not serve the truth, in fact, they are far more likely to prevent it.

The second thought I have about Grave Error and all the feelings it's hurting, might be a little hard for me to explain without descending into a rage. I’ll give it my best shot though by introducing a real world example of the type of thing I’m talking about that happened earlier today.

An argument on X - something I rarely engage in, because it’s a waste of time (I’d rather write an article for Woke Watch Canada that goes to thousands of subscribers, than respond to one dummy on X). However, this morning, I responded angrily to a teacher who had posted pictures of her classroom to X. The walls of this classroom were covered with posters with Social Justice slogans. One of the posters read, “don’t like looting, you will hate the British museum.” Before you read my response, do you think this is appropriate for an elementary school in Canada?

Here was my response to this activist teacher:

“You have a poster in your class that says ‘don’t like looting, you will hate the British museum.’ Whatever that is referring to is a political opinion that has no place in the classroom. I’m a British descendant Canadian, as are many Canadian children, how can you be so disrespectful and insensitive?”

I won’t bore readers with the X argument that ensued. Everyone already knows what the anti-West, anti-Anglo left, thinks about everything. The reason I brought it up was in response to our book, Grave Error, being accused of hurting feelings. The teacher who posted about so-called “British looting,” is not an isolated case, and not uncommon. Our schools (and society) is full of such radical leftists who view Western culture and civilization as negative forces of oppression and injustice. One thing they have never cared about is the feelings of British descendants. So why then, should British descendants care about the feelings of anyone? Why can’t we just agree that feelings and truth are fire and ice, water and oil, Trump and Biden, and Komodo dragon’s and kittens? They simply don’t belong together.

I hope it’s clear why we should not care about indigenous feelings…because if we do, we will never get to the truth of anything. It’s cold and harsh and mean, but also… true.

___

Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, How the TDSB manufactured racism

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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