Why did the Catholic Church not reveal this till now?
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By Nina Green
On 13 March 2025, the BC Catholic revealed that Dorothy Bob, a student and later a cook at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, became 'the first Indigenous girl to enter the Sisters of St. Ann in the congregation's hundred-year presence in BC'.
Dorothy Bob, who took the religious name Sister Mary Juan Diego when she became a nun, was the daughter of Christopher and Cordelia (nee Patrick) Bob of the Fountain Indian Band near Lillooet, BC.
She died in Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria on 24 February 2025 at the age of 92. See her obituary.
Why did the Catholic Church not reveal until now that a former student and former employee of the Kamloops Indian Residential School became a nun?
Would Canadians ever have known about this had a reader of the BC Catholic not written - 'with astonishment' - to editor Paul Schratz about it, forcing the Catholic Church to admit that a former student of the Kamloops Indian Residential School became a nun?
Imagine the difference to Canada if - immediately after the Kamloops Band announced its false claim on 27 May 2021 that it had discovered 'the remains of 215 children' at the Kamloops Indian Residential School - the Catholic Church had said to Canadians, 'Let's pause and look at the facts. A former student and former employee of that school, Dorothy Bob, became a nun. And not only that, at the time the Kamloops Band claims these alleged murders and secret burials of 215 children were taking place, there were three Indigenous teachers on staff - Joe Stanley Michel, Mabel Caron, and Benjamin Paul. While teaching at the school, Michel was also Chief of the Adams Lake Band (see attachment). Moreover, a status Indian administrator, Nathan Matthew, took over the running of the school in 1973. Matthew later became Chancellor of Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops'.
If the Catholic Church had revealed these facts in a timely manner, and asked how 215 children could have been murdered and secretly buried while these - and other - Indigenous staff were working at the school, would Canada be a different place today?
Undoubtedly it would.
What can be done at this late date to ascertain the truth?
The University of Manitoba is the problem.
The reason Canadians cannot learn the truth is that in 2013 the University of Manitoba signed a trust deed with the TRC under which it gained possession of the TRC documents, and since then the University has not fulfilled its obligation under the trust deed to make the TRC documents available to the general public.
Consider, for example, that Sister Marie Zarowny stated in 2021 that the Sisters of St Ann sent four boxes of documents to the TRC. Why are those documents not on the University of Manitoba's NCTR Archives website more than a decade after the TRC received them? Is it because these documents reveal positive facts about the Kamloops Indian Residential School that the University of Manitoba doesn't want the public to see?
Consider further that 'In 2014, the government of British Columbia released to the TRC more than 4,000 documents, including death records for aboriginal children aged four to 19'. The BC records were digitized, and handed over on a flash drive (see TRC report, p. 259 attached). Why are those death records not on the University of Manitoba's NCTR Archives website? Is it because the University of Manitoba doesn't want Canadians to know that these children are buried on their home reserves, and that almost none of them actually died on the premises of an Indian residential school?
Why is the University of Manitoba continuing to deny Canadians access to the truth?
Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Who is misinforming Canadian politicians about the number of Indian residential school deaths?
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So the Kamloops Indian Residential School had for a time an indigenous cook (Dorothy Bob), indigenous teachers (Joe Stanley Michel, Mabel Caron, and Benjamin Paul), and an indigenous principal (Nathan Matthew).
The school also had parent visitors as it was in the centre of the reserve, but nobody saw the mass child murder, almost as if it never happened.
Brilliant Nina. You will soon have this tangled web of deception unraveled. It definitely appears that the Church has taken a vow of silence on this matter and continues to symbolically turn the other cheek, which by now must be seriously bruised from the relentless slapping. As for the U of M, like any other government funded institution, follows the rule of self interest. If the truth became known, this barnacle of lies, like the house built on sand, would likely crumble from lack of funding.
"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." ~ John Steinbeck