Denialists may very likely assume the same honored position that suspect communists did during the Red Scare in the US during the 1950s. During the hearings those targeted were asked, "are you now or have you ever been a communist?" Substitute "denialist" for communist, then you get the picture. Goethe once famously said, "there is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." The current debacle we now find ourselves in, proves him right.
Another very articulate and informative article. Thanks for sharing.
Well done. I tried to post this comment yesterday online with the National Post and it was censored.
Day of the new narrative is almost upon us and as some choose to believe in the 'orange tide' of nebulous prognostication it falls to others to stay focused on the facts at hand. There was NO "genocide" in Canada, there are NO unmarked graves or evidence beyond hearsay, there is NO criminal investigation of misdeeds nor murder. Canada has no shame beyond apologist revisionism of history set down in the annals of time. We must stand on guard for thee. If fiction, diversion, inequity and exclusion guide your sense of virtue seeking appeasement... no harm done but to yourself. However, if youth are misled again by government ideology and dogma then we are fooled to repeat our blight in perpetuity without honour.
John, I’m with you on this (or I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t bother to write this comment). I feel your rage, and I share it. That said, I can understand why the Nat. Post would choose not to publish your letter as shown above. The mainstream papers don’t want to start a war of invective on their letters pages. If they print one letter that is mostly an expression of outrage, they’ll get a barrage of equally outraged letters from those with opposing views. Contributing new facts to the conversation might catch someone’s attention, whereas simply ranting and denying the “facts” of the prevailing narrative will only get you dismissed as (well, dang:) a denier. It’s not true, for example, that “there are NO unmarked graves” – of course there are; that’s not the point you were trying to make, but you said it wrong, and BAM, you’re cannon fodder!
I regret that I don’t have the courage, myself, to write to the papers (long story), but if I did, I’d ask someone to edit me first, to strip out the heat and any accusatory rhetoric and give me an honest critique of whatever stays in.
Maybe just ask the question: Given that careful excavations were done of 34 GPR-targeted anomalies at the Camsell Hospital site in Edmonton, and no human remains were found – only debris -- should that fact not cause us to pause in spending on further GPR surveys, at least until the validity of the process is proven?
Points well taken. To clarify on the subjective tone, or miscommunication on my part - I do not feel a sense of "rage" over historical fact finding, perhaps aggrieved by egregious remarks made by our political leaders and media pundits regarding "genocide". I agree with you that "unmarked graves" was not qualified in this post. I am by no means an expert on the subject and am only informed by reading several sources of print media including this newsletter. As you point out in your example "no human remains" have been exhumed as yet. Some columnists on the subject have argued that many of the so called "unmarked" sites have been left so unattended for so long that records of the sites in question existed or are unaccounted for by those whose charge it was. Therefore, more accurately, the notion of "unmarked graves" remains contested until proven otherwise. Thank you for taking the time to offer your opinion and corrective criticism. Always appreciated!
I confess I DO on occasion feel something close to rage, and have to talk myself down (to something milder like frustration or worry or just plain old dismay). I apparently sensed some of my own rage in your letter, and therefore misattributed it to you : ). I have no presence online (exactly zero), and until I subscribed to this substack and a couple of others a few months back, I had never posted a comment online. I don’t understand the conventions or the protocols, and have only just discovered that there’s a place where all my comments are catalogued and can be seen by anyone on any substack who might go looking. I appreciate most of what I read in these newsletters, including the comments, but didn’t know about “liking” or how it’s done. And I thought that my response to your post was “after-the-fact” enough that only you would see it! Clearly, I’ve got some learning to do.
I do understand that many people can't handle the "Truth" of Reconciliation and that what government tells you is part of a larger agenda and industry of misinformation. It follows that this does not serve the true interests of people and citizens nor remove the stigma and discrimination inherent in perpetual victimhood.
In the Victoria News yesterday (Thursday Sept. 29th edition) there were numerous articles about the residential school survivors. One quote, from the lead article. "In residential school the kids who ran away, we thought they were lucky, that they made it maybe. But when they found those bodies... maybe they didn't, because some of them we never ever see again." And ...."Kamloops, where Underwood's brother attended, was the first site where evidence of a mass burial was found in Canada." and from another interview..."Like countless others, his (Perron's) grandfather's stories have been lost..Perron can only imagine what his grandfather may have endured at the hands of an institution designed as an instrument of genocide. But last May, when the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were discovered at an unmarked burial site on the grounds of the former Kamloops residential school, the horrifying truth was in plain view for Perron, and the rest of Canada, to see."
There were several other quotes of this nature in various local papers. A friend of mine asked me yesterday "If all these children disappeared like that, thousands of them, why didn't the parents say anything?" I had to tell her that there's no evidence thousands of kids disappeared, in fact, most of the deaths of children who attended the schools have been registered, and the causes documented. I also told her that no residential school children's bodies have actually been seen, located or exhumed at any of the ground penetrating radar scanned sites. She was very surprised. "Everyone says that they found all those bodies of little kids," she told me. "That's why I wondered why the families didn't speak up."
These articles were in the Victoria News, a free paper delivered door to door. The issue was a "special series" on Truth and Reconciliation, and had several in depth interviews with Residential School Survivors. The Times Colonist had similar articles but I have not read them in depth. Here is a link to the Victoria News e edition. You should be able to find the articles from there. https://www.vicnews.com/e-editions/
Holy moly. Every article should be rebutted. I'll consider that. This is disgraceful "journalism". I'll take suggestions on how to respond, if anyone has any.
You will come up against people who believe the "lived experience" narrative vs. the forensic and other factual evidence. People who have total faith in the "believe all survivors" narrative will not be convinced with facts and evidence that contradict the stories. When I mention the "lived experience" tale about the Queen as kidnapper story they tell me "that's how he experienced it," and some of them become quite angry because I didn't understand how the survivor's actual suffering could have led him to symbolize it in this (albeit false) story. I'm interested in this issue because I'm interested in memory and how it forms and changes over time. I was involved in a memory experiment when I was young which taught me how unreliable it is. I've studied the "recovered memory" ideas and other issues around remembering the past. I don't think any of these school survivors are consciously lying. They've been given leading questions and rewarded for coming up with more and more memories that support the current residential school narrative. I talked with many former students before the year 2000, before the TRC, in fact, I shared an apartment with one survivor. All their stories were mixed, good and bad. Being made to wash your mouth out with soap if you speak your indigenous language is inexcusable, for example, but then there was a basketball team. It's hard to see intentional genocide in that context, although I think there's a case for cultural brainwashing happening at the schools. It wasn't all Priests and Nuns, though. The Kamloops Residential school, for example, had an indigenous head administrator from 1973 on. Most of the kids were sent there by their parents, and in some cases their home lives were very bad. How to respond to these stories? Maybe a letter to the editor. You can't convince the converted, but generally I think people are waking up to an awareness that the story is much more nuanced than the good vs. evil dichotomy we're presented with.
Thanks for your comment. Very helpful. I will go through those Vic News articles and try and write a good response. I agree about memory. When I first began in the career I've been in for 14 or so years one of my first jobs was transcribing the first TRC hearings. I did maybe 300 of them, mostly from the Prairies. My initial response was I guess what is the current "settler" narrative: guilt and shame. As I worked my way through them though my position changed. As you said, leading questions and reward for any response. Virtually none of the stories that were told in the 300 or so that I did could be corroborated, through lack of information, death, time, lack of details. Many, many of the participants told stories of "abuse" that was the same kind of "abuse" I was subjected to as a student in the 1960s in Vancouver: the strap, paddle, standing in the corner, that kind of thing. I didn't hear anything that stood out as being particularly egregious, but I guess that's besides the point. It wasn't necessary. Every story was monetarily rewarded. I then went on around 2015 to get a master's in history with a focus on BC history and in particular the Douglas treaties. The participation of the bands and chiefs in residential schools seems to be lost to the narrative. KRS was an institution demanded by the then chief of the band. That was the case in many of the schools. Chiefs and council recognized that education was necessary. I'm sure this isn't anything those of us who read these articles and research don't already know. I'm startled by the memory aspect of it, though. I work in the legal field in a peripheral sense and I've worked on many FN trials in BC. Kamloops elders just call them "the 215" as if there is no question of the fact that there are 215 bodies buried in the apple orchard. I wonder if there will ever be a forensic examination. Listening to Crown counsel try and tap dance around questions that in today's sensitive environment cannot, but should be, asked is frustrating.
Very interesting. You have a background working for the TRC, and an M. A. in BC History. I imagine you've read Professor Ronald Niezen's academic book "Truth And Indignation," it mentions many of the things you do re: the hearings.
The woke left have an agenda to destroy this once great country and they are doing a good job of it. The sheeple who believe these outright lies are unfortunately uneducated morons but what absolutely makes my head spin is those that are well educated who should know better are also drinking the koolaid, like those at the Jonestown mass suicide event many years ago.
It drives me crazy that despite the fact that there hasn't been a single offical scientific excavation of any of these so-called grave sites, parrticuarly the one in Kamloops, which started this nonsense. Does anyone not think that may, particularly in Kamloops there should be an excavation. After all the claim is that the children 'buried' there were actually murdered. That would be a crime scene that should be investigated, shouldn't it. So sick of aboriginal victimhood. To compare this to the Holocast is ridiculous. Natives were not systematically exterminated. Oh and the Jew either in Israel or the diaspora, didn't play that victim card. They got back to work, and back to business, and achieved success. They never forgot the Holocast, but they didn't use it for constant government handouts for money,.
There HAVE been excavations of GPR sites, but this instance (for one) doesn't get much mention in the press: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/camsell-hospital-excavation-ends-1.6222381 The article doesn't say how many GPR targets were flagged altogether, but a total of 34 targets were excavated (carefully, inch at a time) and they found only debris. What's interesting is that the chief of the Papaschase First Nation has "mixed feelings" about these results, "... given all the accounts of people being buried at the site."
Just yesterday, I was talking to someone I greatly respect, who is Jewish who had/has relatives that went to the camps in WWII, essentially called me a Holocaust Denier because I would not accept the accusation of a genocide in Canada on face value. You don't throw the accusation around like its nothing, it has serious weight and implications when invoked, right?. It was really incredible to have my head explode that way. They said that there bones and child's shoes found somewhere that's not Kamloop's and it was enough to claim genocide. And, you cannot prove intend with remains that you find let alone that the death was by foul play, right? When I pressed them on what site they were found at, they did not know what site the remains were found and told me to google it {sure, I am going to do the work to prove your claim}. I couldn't get to them to listen to a single counterpoint. Mind you I was reeling from the accusation that I couldn't get my thoughts in order, but I couldn't even get common ground, which is to get a proper trial for it, we did it for Nuremberg why can't we do it here? Its as if, they could not give an inch of possibility that it could be proven to be wrong. It must be believed, immediately and without question.
After that conversation, what terrifies me is some people, I would wager this individual as well, want Iranian Morality Police to exist in Canada.
You can't convince a true believer, whether it is a religious or political ideology they follow. Best to just agree to disagree, although ideologues won't usually let you do that.
I had someone say there was no documentation to support that anyone died in the Holocaust and yet we believe it occurred, so the same belief should be accorded to the IRS graves. I didn't know what to say to that.....
Ask questions I guess. I wonder if they are expecting a document that is titled Holocaust. Assuming they are expecting a document with the word in it, they are technically accurate. We gave a name to an event that didn't have a name until after WWII.
Denialists may very likely assume the same honored position that suspect communists did during the Red Scare in the US during the 1950s. During the hearings those targeted were asked, "are you now or have you ever been a communist?" Substitute "denialist" for communist, then you get the picture. Goethe once famously said, "there is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." The current debacle we now find ourselves in, proves him right.
Another very articulate and informative article. Thanks for sharing.
Well done. I tried to post this comment yesterday online with the National Post and it was censored.
Day of the new narrative is almost upon us and as some choose to believe in the 'orange tide' of nebulous prognostication it falls to others to stay focused on the facts at hand. There was NO "genocide" in Canada, there are NO unmarked graves or evidence beyond hearsay, there is NO criminal investigation of misdeeds nor murder. Canada has no shame beyond apologist revisionism of history set down in the annals of time. We must stand on guard for thee. If fiction, diversion, inequity and exclusion guide your sense of virtue seeking appeasement... no harm done but to yourself. However, if youth are misled again by government ideology and dogma then we are fooled to repeat our blight in perpetuity without honour.
John, I’m with you on this (or I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t bother to write this comment). I feel your rage, and I share it. That said, I can understand why the Nat. Post would choose not to publish your letter as shown above. The mainstream papers don’t want to start a war of invective on their letters pages. If they print one letter that is mostly an expression of outrage, they’ll get a barrage of equally outraged letters from those with opposing views. Contributing new facts to the conversation might catch someone’s attention, whereas simply ranting and denying the “facts” of the prevailing narrative will only get you dismissed as (well, dang:) a denier. It’s not true, for example, that “there are NO unmarked graves” – of course there are; that’s not the point you were trying to make, but you said it wrong, and BAM, you’re cannon fodder!
I regret that I don’t have the courage, myself, to write to the papers (long story), but if I did, I’d ask someone to edit me first, to strip out the heat and any accusatory rhetoric and give me an honest critique of whatever stays in.
Maybe just ask the question: Given that careful excavations were done of 34 GPR-targeted anomalies at the Camsell Hospital site in Edmonton, and no human remains were found – only debris -- should that fact not cause us to pause in spending on further GPR surveys, at least until the validity of the process is proven?
More power to you.
Points well taken. To clarify on the subjective tone, or miscommunication on my part - I do not feel a sense of "rage" over historical fact finding, perhaps aggrieved by egregious remarks made by our political leaders and media pundits regarding "genocide". I agree with you that "unmarked graves" was not qualified in this post. I am by no means an expert on the subject and am only informed by reading several sources of print media including this newsletter. As you point out in your example "no human remains" have been exhumed as yet. Some columnists on the subject have argued that many of the so called "unmarked" sites have been left so unattended for so long that records of the sites in question existed or are unaccounted for by those whose charge it was. Therefore, more accurately, the notion of "unmarked graves" remains contested until proven otherwise. Thank you for taking the time to offer your opinion and corrective criticism. Always appreciated!
I confess I DO on occasion feel something close to rage, and have to talk myself down (to something milder like frustration or worry or just plain old dismay). I apparently sensed some of my own rage in your letter, and therefore misattributed it to you : ). I have no presence online (exactly zero), and until I subscribed to this substack and a couple of others a few months back, I had never posted a comment online. I don’t understand the conventions or the protocols, and have only just discovered that there’s a place where all my comments are catalogued and can be seen by anyone on any substack who might go looking. I appreciate most of what I read in these newsletters, including the comments, but didn’t know about “liking” or how it’s done. And I thought that my response to your post was “after-the-fact” enough that only you would see it! Clearly, I’ve got some learning to do.
In hindsight ...it was wonderful. Trudeau, celebrated in Tofino on the company jet stream while anarchy reigned. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-captain-cook-statue-vandalized-1.6088828
I do understand that many people can't handle the "Truth" of Reconciliation and that what government tells you is part of a larger agenda and industry of misinformation. It follows that this does not serve the true interests of people and citizens nor remove the stigma and discrimination inherent in perpetual victimhood.
In the Victoria News yesterday (Thursday Sept. 29th edition) there were numerous articles about the residential school survivors. One quote, from the lead article. "In residential school the kids who ran away, we thought they were lucky, that they made it maybe. But when they found those bodies... maybe they didn't, because some of them we never ever see again." And ...."Kamloops, where Underwood's brother attended, was the first site where evidence of a mass burial was found in Canada." and from another interview..."Like countless others, his (Perron's) grandfather's stories have been lost..Perron can only imagine what his grandfather may have endured at the hands of an institution designed as an instrument of genocide. But last May, when the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were discovered at an unmarked burial site on the grounds of the former Kamloops residential school, the horrifying truth was in plain view for Perron, and the rest of Canada, to see."
There were several other quotes of this nature in various local papers. A friend of mine asked me yesterday "If all these children disappeared like that, thousands of them, why didn't the parents say anything?" I had to tell her that there's no evidence thousands of kids disappeared, in fact, most of the deaths of children who attended the schools have been registered, and the causes documented. I also told her that no residential school children's bodies have actually been seen, located or exhumed at any of the ground penetrating radar scanned sites. She was very surprised. "Everyone says that they found all those bodies of little kids," she told me. "That's why I wondered why the families didn't speak up."
Do you mean the Times Colonist in Victoria, BC?
These articles were in the Victoria News, a free paper delivered door to door. The issue was a "special series" on Truth and Reconciliation, and had several in depth interviews with Residential School Survivors. The Times Colonist had similar articles but I have not read them in depth. Here is a link to the Victoria News e edition. You should be able to find the articles from there. https://www.vicnews.com/e-editions/
Holy moly. Every article should be rebutted. I'll consider that. This is disgraceful "journalism". I'll take suggestions on how to respond, if anyone has any.
You will come up against people who believe the "lived experience" narrative vs. the forensic and other factual evidence. People who have total faith in the "believe all survivors" narrative will not be convinced with facts and evidence that contradict the stories. When I mention the "lived experience" tale about the Queen as kidnapper story they tell me "that's how he experienced it," and some of them become quite angry because I didn't understand how the survivor's actual suffering could have led him to symbolize it in this (albeit false) story. I'm interested in this issue because I'm interested in memory and how it forms and changes over time. I was involved in a memory experiment when I was young which taught me how unreliable it is. I've studied the "recovered memory" ideas and other issues around remembering the past. I don't think any of these school survivors are consciously lying. They've been given leading questions and rewarded for coming up with more and more memories that support the current residential school narrative. I talked with many former students before the year 2000, before the TRC, in fact, I shared an apartment with one survivor. All their stories were mixed, good and bad. Being made to wash your mouth out with soap if you speak your indigenous language is inexcusable, for example, but then there was a basketball team. It's hard to see intentional genocide in that context, although I think there's a case for cultural brainwashing happening at the schools. It wasn't all Priests and Nuns, though. The Kamloops Residential school, for example, had an indigenous head administrator from 1973 on. Most of the kids were sent there by their parents, and in some cases their home lives were very bad. How to respond to these stories? Maybe a letter to the editor. You can't convince the converted, but generally I think people are waking up to an awareness that the story is much more nuanced than the good vs. evil dichotomy we're presented with.
Thanks for your comment. Very helpful. I will go through those Vic News articles and try and write a good response. I agree about memory. When I first began in the career I've been in for 14 or so years one of my first jobs was transcribing the first TRC hearings. I did maybe 300 of them, mostly from the Prairies. My initial response was I guess what is the current "settler" narrative: guilt and shame. As I worked my way through them though my position changed. As you said, leading questions and reward for any response. Virtually none of the stories that were told in the 300 or so that I did could be corroborated, through lack of information, death, time, lack of details. Many, many of the participants told stories of "abuse" that was the same kind of "abuse" I was subjected to as a student in the 1960s in Vancouver: the strap, paddle, standing in the corner, that kind of thing. I didn't hear anything that stood out as being particularly egregious, but I guess that's besides the point. It wasn't necessary. Every story was monetarily rewarded. I then went on around 2015 to get a master's in history with a focus on BC history and in particular the Douglas treaties. The participation of the bands and chiefs in residential schools seems to be lost to the narrative. KRS was an institution demanded by the then chief of the band. That was the case in many of the schools. Chiefs and council recognized that education was necessary. I'm sure this isn't anything those of us who read these articles and research don't already know. I'm startled by the memory aspect of it, though. I work in the legal field in a peripheral sense and I've worked on many FN trials in BC. Kamloops elders just call them "the 215" as if there is no question of the fact that there are 215 bodies buried in the apple orchard. I wonder if there will ever be a forensic examination. Listening to Crown counsel try and tap dance around questions that in today's sensitive environment cannot, but should be, asked is frustrating.
Very interesting. You have a background working for the TRC, and an M. A. in BC History. I imagine you've read Professor Ronald Niezen's academic book "Truth And Indignation," it mentions many of the things you do re: the hearings.
Orange tide is as frightening as waves of fascist brownshirts and blackshirts, of children enlisted by a dark cult.
The woke left have an agenda to destroy this once great country and they are doing a good job of it. The sheeple who believe these outright lies are unfortunately uneducated morons but what absolutely makes my head spin is those that are well educated who should know better are also drinking the koolaid, like those at the Jonestown mass suicide event many years ago.
It drives me crazy that despite the fact that there hasn't been a single offical scientific excavation of any of these so-called grave sites, parrticuarly the one in Kamloops, which started this nonsense. Does anyone not think that may, particularly in Kamloops there should be an excavation. After all the claim is that the children 'buried' there were actually murdered. That would be a crime scene that should be investigated, shouldn't it. So sick of aboriginal victimhood. To compare this to the Holocast is ridiculous. Natives were not systematically exterminated. Oh and the Jew either in Israel or the diaspora, didn't play that victim card. They got back to work, and back to business, and achieved success. They never forgot the Holocast, but they didn't use it for constant government handouts for money,.
There HAVE been excavations of GPR sites, but this instance (for one) doesn't get much mention in the press: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/camsell-hospital-excavation-ends-1.6222381 The article doesn't say how many GPR targets were flagged altogether, but a total of 34 targets were excavated (carefully, inch at a time) and they found only debris. What's interesting is that the chief of the Papaschase First Nation has "mixed feelings" about these results, "... given all the accounts of people being buried at the site."
Are we "denialists" for asking that the proper investigations be undertaken? That seems to be the current narrative.
This piece really hits home for me.
Just yesterday, I was talking to someone I greatly respect, who is Jewish who had/has relatives that went to the camps in WWII, essentially called me a Holocaust Denier because I would not accept the accusation of a genocide in Canada on face value. You don't throw the accusation around like its nothing, it has serious weight and implications when invoked, right?. It was really incredible to have my head explode that way. They said that there bones and child's shoes found somewhere that's not Kamloop's and it was enough to claim genocide. And, you cannot prove intend with remains that you find let alone that the death was by foul play, right? When I pressed them on what site they were found at, they did not know what site the remains were found and told me to google it {sure, I am going to do the work to prove your claim}. I couldn't get to them to listen to a single counterpoint. Mind you I was reeling from the accusation that I couldn't get my thoughts in order, but I couldn't even get common ground, which is to get a proper trial for it, we did it for Nuremberg why can't we do it here? Its as if, they could not give an inch of possibility that it could be proven to be wrong. It must be believed, immediately and without question.
After that conversation, what terrifies me is some people, I would wager this individual as well, want Iranian Morality Police to exist in Canada.
You can't convince a true believer, whether it is a religious or political ideology they follow. Best to just agree to disagree, although ideologues won't usually let you do that.
I had someone say there was no documentation to support that anyone died in the Holocaust and yet we believe it occurred, so the same belief should be accorded to the IRS graves. I didn't know what to say to that.....
Ask questions I guess. I wonder if they are expecting a document that is titled Holocaust. Assuming they are expecting a document with the word in it, they are technically accurate. We gave a name to an event that didn't have a name until after WWII.
They have a constitutional right to be a dumbass.
That is one totally incorrect premise. But indeed, this is the kind of argument we hear.