Was the Globe and Mail complicit in the false claim by the Kamloops Band that it had found 'the remains of 215 children'?
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By Nina Green
On 23 May 2026, the Globe and Mail published an article on the false claim by the Kamloops Band that it had discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’ (see attachment).
The article raises questions about transparency and full disclosure on the part of the Globe and Mail. The article also raises the issues of whether the Globe and Mail was complicit in the dissemination of the false claim by the Kamloops Band, and whether the Globe and Mail was involved in derailing the RCMP investigation into the false claim.
In the article, the authors wrote:
Inside the band office halls, just a short walk from the powwow grounds and adjacent to a museum and heritage park, Ms. Casimir greeted a reporter.
For nearly five years, she had not responded to Globe interview requests. Those requests began in the days immediately after the announcement, when it became clear that the nation had yet to uncover any physical remains.
Readers of the Globe and Mail article would assume from the foregoing that the Globe and Mail was given no information about the Kamloops Band’s false claim until after the story broke at 3:59 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 May 2021 via a scoop which the Kamloops Band had given to James Peters, Bill O’Donovan and Dylana Kneeshaw of CFJC Today in Kamloops.
In fact, as the Globe and Mail’s Tanya Talaga belatedly revealed in her book, The Knowing, published in August 2024, the Globe and Mail had advance notice of the Kamloops announcement.
In Chapter Two of The Knowing, Talaga revealed that she was one of a select group of journalists to whom the Kamloops Band’s media contact, Racelle Kooy, sent embargoed copies of the Kamloops Band’s media release at least two days before the news broke upon a shocked world on the afternoon of 27 May 2021.
According to Talaga, this was the content of the email Racelle Kooy sent her on or about 25 May 2021:
Her message began: “Weytk Tanya, I am honoured to be working with Tk’emlups to Secwepemc to bring forward some tragic news that was a ‘knowing’ before but is now confirmed.”
Kooy said they were sending out an embargoed press release to select journalists who they felt could bring the devastating news to light with sensitivity.
The release categorized the unthinkable. It began to say that with a “heavy heart” Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir confirmed what survivors of the Kamloops Indian Residential School knew: that there were children buried on the former school ground. It further said that ground-penetrating radar used over the past weekend had indicated the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” who were students of Kamloops.
Immediately after she had belatedly looked at the email, Talaga phoned Racelle Kooy, booked a flight to Kamloops, and advised the Globe and Mail’s editors David Walmsley and Natasha Hassan, who put her in touch with yet another editor, Renata D’Alesio:
This was one of those moments. I booked my flight and then sent a note to David Walmsley, the Globe and Mail’s editor, and Natasha Hassan, the Opinion editor and my direct boss, to let them know I was heading to Kamloops and why. By then, the story was breaking across social media. As I got on a plane to Kelowna, they put me in touch with investigations editor Renata D’Aliesio.
After arriving in Kamloops, Talaga spent several days talking to Band members, including former Chief Manny Jules.
Canadians might wish to reflect on these facts. Tanya Talaga of the Globe and Mail had advance notice of the Kamloops Band’s false claim to have discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’, and did nothing to stop the Band’s media release until the claim could be verified, and she was one of the few select journalists in the world who had exclusive access to the Kamloops Band leadership in the days after the Kamloops Band’s false claim had been released to the world, yet the Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 misleadingly implies that the Globe and Mail was completely shut out of interviews with Kamloops Band leadership ‘for nearly five years’.
And that’s not the end of Tanya Talaga and the Globe and Mail’s lack of transparency. The Globe and Mail did not reveal, until Talaga published ‘The Knowing’ in August 2024, that while in Kamloops, Talaga phoned former TRC Chair Murray Sinclair in a panic because questions were being raised in the Globe and Mail’s Parliament Hill bureau about the validity of the Kamloops Band’s claim. In Chapter Two of ‘The Knowing’, she wrote:
As a Globe columnist, I was also fielding questions, but they were coming from the Globe’s Parliament Hill bureau. On one of my first nights there, my editor called me. It was late, and I was in my hotel room, exhausted. She apologized for what she was about to ask me and then she said, “The Prime Minister’s Office, the RCMP, is questioning the numbers — the 215.”
Talaga says she phoned Sinclair, and although she reveals no details of that phone call in her book, immediately after receiving the call, Sinclair told a parliamentary committee that the RCMP were conducting a ham-handed investigation and frightening the GPR operator, as a result of which, the RCMP handed the lead in the investigation over to the Kamloops Band, thus derailing the RCMP investigation which could have immediately put an end to the Kamloops Band’s false claim that it had discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’.
Thus, not only did the Globe and Mail spike questions coming from the Prime Minister’s Office and the RCMP about the Kamloops Band’s ‘numbers — the 215’, but Tanya Talaga’s panicked phone call to Murray Sinclair resulted in the derailment of the RCMP investigation into the Kamloops Band’s false claim.
These facts are of major importance this week because not only is 27 May 2026 the fifth anniversary of the Kamloops Band’s false claim — which means that five years have gone by without any verification of a claim about Canada that shocked the entire world — but also because next week a non-judicial entity known as the Permanent Peoples Tribunal will be holding a tribunal in Montreal sponsored by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal to investigate and render judgment on unmarked graves, genocide and crimes against humanity in Canada (see attachments).
An obvious question arises: Why is the federal government allowing a non-Canadian entity without any legal authority to hold hearings in Canada on unmarked graves, genocide, and crimes against humanity while refusing to allow the RCMP to independently investigate the false claim by the Kamloops Band?
It is significant that by holding a ‘tribunal’ next week in Montreal, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is intentionally violating its own mandate:
The PPT takes into consideration requests made by community representatives, minorities, peoples, civil society who have been and/or are subject to serious systematic violations of their human and peoples’ rights, by governments, institutional and private actors, and who are unable to find a response in national, regional or international court proceedings.
As PPT officials are well aware, Canada’s institutions have not failed to respond. They have been actively prevented from responding. As a result of Tanya Talaga’s intervention in early June 2021, journalists were prevented from pursuing questions raised by the Prime Minister’s Office and the RCMP about the Kamloops Band’s ‘numbers — the 215’, and as a result of Talaga’s phone call to Murray Sinclair on 3 June 2021, and Sinclair’s immediate intervention with a Parliamentary Committee, the RCMP have not been allowed to independently investigate the Kamloops Band’s false claim.
Now Canada is faced with the preposterous situation that the Globe and Mail’s Tanya Talaga is scheduled to testify as a witness on an ‘investigative journalism expert panel’ at the Permanent Peoples Tribunal’ (see attached agenda). By her own admission, Tanya Talaga actively prevented both journalists and the RCMP from investigating the false claim by the Kamloops Band, yet the Permanent People Tribunal — in a proceeding in Canada apparently sanctioned by the federal government — is producing her as a witness in a spurious ‘investigation’ which could potentially result in a libellous ‘judgment’ against Canada in connection with unmarked graves, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Additional factual errors and omissions in the Globe and Mail article
There was thus lack of full disclosure in the 23 May 2026 Globe and Mail article with regard to Tanya Talaga and the Globe and Mail’s advance notice of the Kamloops Band’s false claim, and their failure to do anything to stop the Band’s media release until the ‘discovery’ could be verified. There was also lack of full disclosure in the article with regard to Talaga and the Globe and Mail’s involvement in spiking questions from the Prime Minister’s Office and the RCMP about the validity of the Kamloops Band’s false claim as reported in Talaga’s book, The Knowing, as well as lack of full disclosure with regard to Talaga’s actions in derailing the RCMP investigation into the Kamloops Band’s false claim.
In addition, the Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 omits other relevant information, and makes a number of allegations unsupported by evidence, including the following:
(1) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 makes no mention of the fact that the Kamloops Band, in an Assembly of First Nations resolution on 6 July 2021, falsely claimed to have found a mass grave. The Band’s claim to have found a ‘mass grave’ decisively refutes the Band’s contradictory claim that it had found ‘the remains of 215 children’ since a mass grave has a completely different GPR profile from 215 individual graves (see attached 6 July 2021 resolution moved by Chief Rosanne Casimir at an Assembly of First Nations General Meeting).
(2) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 falsely asserts that 3500 children died as a result of the residential school system:
And regardless of what they find, the fact remains that more than 3,500 children are named on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation‘s registry of students who died as a result of the residential school system, which operated in Canada for more than 160 years.
Provincial death certificates which have been in the possession of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the National Centre For Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) since 2014 (see attachment) establish that children didn’t die as a result of the residential school system. They died of disease and accidents, and many of them died on their home reserves. Only 423 named children actually died on residential school premises (see attachment from the TRC report). Provincial death certificates establish that almost all of them were buried by their families on their home reserves, and that the remainder were buried in other known cemeteries with nothing nefarious surrounding their burials.
(3) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 treats as reliable statements made by Jeanette Jules, Manny Jules and Garry Gottfriedson without disclosing that they are close relatives of the persons directly responsible for the false claim that the Band had discovered ‘the remains of 215 children’. The persons directly responsible for the GPR work were Diena Jules and Ted Gottfriedson Jr. (see attached transcript from the CBC’s Fifth Estate program). Diena Jules is the sister of Manny Jules and Jeanette Jules, and Ted Gottfriedson Jr is the nephew of Garry Gottfriedson. The Globe and Mail thus neglected to interview the persons responsible for both the GPR work and the false claim — Diena Jules and Ted Gottfriedson Jr. — but instead interviewed their close relatives without disclosing relationships which had a bearing on the reliability of their statements.
(4) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 omits to mention that the old apple orchard where the 215 graves were allegedly found using GPR is in the Kamloops Band’s Heritage Park. The question thus naturally arises: Why did the Band build a tourist attraction on top of alleged burials if, as their knowledge keepers like Garry Gottfriedson claim, they always knew the burials were there? More importantly, why were the remains not found during the construction of the Heritage Park? If any human remains had actually been buried there, they would have been discovered during the construction of the Park in the early 1990s, since the Park was constructed in the area where the 215 graves are now alleged to have been found.
(5) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 makes no mention of Dr Sarah Beaulieu’s lack of formal GPR training or her failure to produce a public written report. Has the Globe and Mail ever confirmed whether Dr Beaulieu had formal GPR training,and if so, where that training took place? Has the Globe and Mail ever requested a copy of Dr Beaulieu’s written report of her GPR work at Kamloops?
(6) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 accepts Chief Casimir’s specious announcement that ‘clay tiles’ have been ruled out as the cause of Dr Beaulieu’s GPR results:
One popular theory questioning the presence of remains comes from an anonymous blog called Graves in the Apple Orchard. Drawing on historical blueprints of the residential school, the author hypothesized in 2022 that Dr. Beaulieu’s radar had actually captured a defunct septic system.
Ms. Casimir addressed the notion earlier this year, saying in a news release that radar and LiDAR scans had “ruled out the presence of utility lines and clay tiles in these locations.”
The Graves in the Apple Orchard website does not claim that ‘clay tiles’ produced the trench-shaped images in Dr Beaulieu’s GPR scans. What the Graves in the Apple Orchard website establishes, through historical documents, is that there were 2000 linear feet of septic field trenches dug there in 1924. Septic field trenches have the same GPR profile as shallow graves. Thus, what Dr Sarah Beaulieu mistook for children’s graves were soil disturbances caused by extensive septic field trenches having been dug in the area in 1924. Chief Casimir’s statement that clay tiles have been ruled out is therefore a red herring since it is the shape of the shallow septic field trenches, not the clay tiles, which produced the GPR profile which resembled children’s graves and misled Dr Beaulieu.
(7) The claim made in the 23 May 2026 Globe and Mail article that Garry Gottfriedson is a residential school survivor is disingenuous. It is well known that almost all the Gottfriedson children went to public schools in Kamloops in the 1950s because their mother, Mildred, demanded that they go there. Garry, the youngest, was the exception. When he was 5 his mother sent him for four years, from 1959-1963 (see attached article), to the new Indian day school which had just opened at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, after which time he went to public school like the rest of the family. Enrolling Garry at the Indian day school was his mother’s choice, and moreover she was able to enrol him there at age 5, an age at which he couldn’t have attended public school like his siblings because he was too young (public school students had to be 6). In fact, at age 5, Garry wasn’t eligible for enrolment at a federally-funded Indian day school either; the age of acceptance for status Indian children under the Indian Act was 7. Yet Garry’s mother managed to get him enrolled. So Garry got 2 free years of education, from ages 5-7, at Canadian taxpayers’ expense at the Indian day school which he wasn’t eligible to attend. And then he almost certainly got $10,000 as compensation for having attended there as a result of the Kamloops Band’s Day Scholars’ lawsuit which was settled almost immediately after the Kamloops Band’s false claim shocked the world on 27 May 2021.
(8) The Globe and Mail article of 23 May 2026 made no attempt to investigate Garry Gottfriedson’s spurious claim that he saw a body hanging from the rafters in the school barn.
In one poem, he recounts entering a school barn and seeing a student – Kenny, he calls him — hanging dead from the rafters.
What evidence does the Globe and Mail produce establishing that Garry Gottfriedson saw this? None. It is highly irresponsible for the Globe and Mail to report a claim of that nature without investigating it.
In summary, it seems evident that there are matters here that Parliament needs to look into, including why and how the RCMP investigation into the false Kamloops Band’s claim was derailed, and why a non-Canadian institution with no judicial authority, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, is being allowed to hold a tribunal in Montreal this coming week and ‘investigate’ and render a judgment on alleged unmarked graves, genocide, and crimes against humanity which Canada’s own RCMP are not allowed to investigate.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Misleading CBC article on alleged Indian residential school deaths at Sturgeon Lake
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Wow, now if only the RCMP, government and these news agencies could be so thorough - the truth might be revealed to all. Great article. There are many shady issues with the whole 'discovered bodies'. However, keeping it going pays off. :(
There MUST come a day when the deceitfulness stops and accountability for these claims by providing actual physical EVIDENCE begins. Conducting a PROPER thorough investigation by the RCMP with teams of forensic archaeologists on site in full view of reporters at the outset of the May 27th 2021 allegations would've added weight to these claims by the Kamloops Band of a crime so heinous that's increasingly caused further overwhelming divisions between cultures and by blaming a religion for this alleged crime, has contributed to the burning of churches. It is the DUTY of The Globe and Mail's reporters and editors and that of EVERY news affiliate across Canada that it's reporters thoroughly investigate and fact check their information making certain that what is written cannot be taken out of context so as to avoid lawsuits accusing said news affiliates of libel and slander, prior to releasing stories ESPECIALLY one as controversial as this. By providing fact-based evidence of blatant discrepancies in the Globe's reportage and what amounts to serious editorial misconduct noted in today's article, the author here is doing what every journalist is supposedly trained to do, yet the field continues to fail miserably at, which is to dive deep and not stop until the truth is revealed IF it ever can be. At what point will everyone involved in this debacle that placed Canada in an untenable position on the world stage of having committed cultural genocide, that included a former Prime Minister's brutal photo-op that helped to further smear this country's reputation and escalate divisions in cultures, admit mistakes have been made? Sadly, never, because once a lie has been reformulated as truth and embedded into the minds of those who take things at face value vs applying critical thinking, other lies may continue to be perpetuated by everyone who's trying to save face.