Blaze News investigates: Ashes and accountability in the aftermath of Canada's unmarked Indian graves sham

Years after the Russia collusion hoax was debunked, America's northern neighbor embraced a baseless narrative all its own — one that evidently resonated with radicals' pre-existing anti-Christian prejudices and post-colonial critiques.

Those keen observers, investigative reporters, and historians who understood the tall tales about unmarked Indian children's graves near and in former residential schools to be fraudulent, overblown, or at the very least unsubstantiated were smeared with a term once reserved for Holocaust deniers: "denialists." Lawmakers even considered making such publicly stated doubts a crime.

Meanwhile, Catholic dioceses were extorted, churches were torched, and the nation was reimagined by the powers that be, not as one of the world's oldest and most successful democracies or as a country home to heroic fists and scientific firsts, but rather as a bordered testament to the genocidal nature of Christian civilization.

'We now know that it was all a hoax. No bodies were found even after $8 million was spent to find them.'

The admitted absence of any evidence now, years later, has prompted the narrative's grip to slacken and some to reflect on how it was able to hold on for so long absent a body.

Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People's Party of Canada, told Blaze News, "Three years after a moral panic broke out following the supposed discovery of 'mass graves' at the Kamloops residential school, we now know that it was all a hoax. No bodies were found even after $8 million was spent to find them."

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been blown on the other investigations — ostensibly also fruitless pursuits.

"But like other moral panics, this one was instrumentalized by far left activists and the Trudeau government to demonize Canadian history and Canadian society," continued Bernier. "Among the awful repercussions of this demonization is the fact that it likely motivated hateful criminals to torch over 80 churches across the country during these three years, with new ones being added almost every week."

Blaze News has looked into whether there has been any accountability for those who advanced this "blood libel" or for those who participated in the 2021 anti-Christian attacks. It has also reviewed what precisely led to the 2021 breakdown of civic order and truth in Canada.

In addition to reaching out to those federal police detachments across the country who oversaw investigations into the church burnings that occurred in summer 2021 and to exponents of the false narrative, Blaze News has spoken to the head of a Christian watchdog group that documented the attacks; a Catholic bishop whose diocese is still reeling from a church burning; and to a Canadian investigative reporter who covered the story as it unfolded amidst incredible backlash.

It appears that only a handful of the "terrorists" responsible for the church burnings were brought to justice. The officials and academics who excused, downplayed, or cheered on the attacks appear to be unapologetic and to have altogether avoided any accountability.

Quick background

The residential schools were part of a federally mandated campaign to both educate Indian children who had no alternative local school options and to assimilate them into contemporary Canadian society.

These schools operated from the 1880s until the second half of the 20th century.

While neither the Catholic Church as a whole nor the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops were associated with the system, various Catholic dioceses helped administer a plurality of the schools. The Anglican and Presbyterian churches were also involved. An estimated 150,000 children attended the schools over the course of a century.

Canada's seven-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission alleged that over 3,200 children died while attending the schools. The main killer was reportedly tuberculosis, a disease that swept the rest of the nation as well.

In "The Canadian Manifesto," British lord and former newspaper publisher Conrad Black noted, "The federal government for some decades in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was encouraging and subsidizing residential schooling delivered mainly within the private sector, especially the Christian churches. This was designed to enable Indigenous people to compete advantageously in the community of Canada as a whole, not to exterminate their consciousness of their socio-cultural roots. The policy had mixed results and there were certainly a good many instances of cruelty and incompetence, but many people thrived, and these students constituted the great majority of educated natives."

Years after the last school was shuttered, a grievance industry began to grow around claims of abuse and so-called "cultural genocide" in the schools.

Black added that "to tag any previous Canadian government as genocidal [over the residential schools] in any sense was an outrage and a blood libel on the English- and French-Canadian peoples."

Philip Horgan, president and general counsel for the Catholic Civil Rights League, told Blaze News, "A national resolution of claims arising from the residential school experience was reached in 2008, which resulted in published and expressed apologies from the federal governments and the various churches involved."

"A settlement process was reached which remitted payments of close to $5 billion from the federal government over the following 12 years for former residential school students," continued Horgan. "Christian churches provided added assistance to those recoveries."

Horgan noted that as part of the settlement process, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "pursued investigations and submitted reports, from roughly 2008 through 2015, which provided additional evidence of missing children and/or unmarked graves, but that evidence continues to be investigated."

The historic paydays, apologies, and various efforts at transparency were evidently not enough to turn the page on the residential schools chapter of Canadian history.

The makings of a 'blood libel'

The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation — formerly called the Kamloops Indian Band — announced in May 2021 that it had confirmed the discovery of children's remains in an apple orchard near a former Catholic-run residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

The apple orchard was originally selected for a survey partly on the basis of "Knowledge keepers' oral histories" and a tooth belonging to a juvenile found nearby.

Rosanne Casimir, the chief of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation, told state media at the outset that University of the Fraser Valley anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu’s ground-penetrating radar surveys had uncovered the remains of 215 "missing children" whose deaths were "undocumented."

'It's an example of science playing an affirming role of what the Knowledge Keepers already recognized.'

Weeks after her initial announcement, Casimir — who did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment by deadline — would refer to the alleged discovery as a "mass grave ... reflecting a pattern of genocide against Indigenous Peoples that must be thoroughly examined and considered in terms of Canada's potential breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law."

The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, a repository of testimonies that were not meaningfully cross-examined along with archival documents pertaining to alleged wrongdoing at the former schools, has long suggested there were a total of 51 students enrolled in the Kamloops school who died between its opening in 1890 and closure in 1978, with no indication of homicide.

Contrary to the Center for Truth and Reconciliation's tally, Beaulieu, an activistic anthropologist, figured she had come across a historic discovery of additional fatalities.

"My findings confirmed what Elders had shared," Beaulieu told the media. "It's an example of science playing an affirming role of what the Knowledge Keepers already recognized."

Beaulieu later suggested that the blips on her survey were "probably burials" that only excavation would be able to confirm.

Martha Dow, director of the Community Health and Social Innovation Hub at the University of the Fraser Valley, claimed, "Dr. Beaulieu's work sheds light on these historical truths that continue to have real impact today."

Sarah Beaulieu did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

State media relayed the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation's suggestion that they were working with the B.C. Coroners Service, reaching out to students' home communities, "protecting the remains and working with museums to find records of these deaths."

Federal police reportedly began looking into the claims about human remains, but were castigated for doing so.

Former Sen. Murray Sinclair told a parliamentary committee that by doing their job, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were "intimidating" people involved with the search. Sinclair, former chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truths and Reconciliation Commission, said Mounties should "not be pursuing those who are revealing information," including researchers, reported state media.

Bad press and activist pressure ostensibly helped to keep neutral investigators clear of the orchard.

The insinuation in the first and in subsequent state media reports was that these supposed graves — which could alternatively be tree roots, sewer plots, or stones — belonged to children whose deaths were unnatural and covered up. This played well with leftist academics who already assumed Canada was somehow guilty of "genocide" — a term Canadian activists and lawmakers have since thrown around with reckless abandon.

Tim Rahilly, president and vice chancellor of Mount Royal University in Calgary, took for granted that bodies were found and stated, "I believe we must all stop and reflect on the scale of this tragic event."

The University of British Columbia lowered flags on its two campuses in memory of the supposed 215 children. When the University of Toronto did likewise, its president, Meric Gertler, said, "I would like to acknowledge the dignity of each one of these 215 children." Ryerson University went even further, dropping its name entirely over concerns of Egerton Ryerson's link to the school system.

Extra to the liberal publications and academic institutions that uncritically played along with the apparent sham in Canada, international outfits also seized upon the narrative.

Reuters and the BBC, for instance, claimed as a fact that children's remains had been discovered.

Ian Austen of the New York Times was among those who helped stir things up with an article entitled, "'Horrible History': Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada." In a subsequent report, Austen wrote definitively that "the remains of 200 people, mostly children, were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia."

While the unmarked graves narrative predominated, others jumped to another unsubstantiated conclusion: These were "mass graves."

Chief Stacey Laforme of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, for instance, claimed in an open letter to the prime minister, "A mass grave containing 215 children was discovered on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia."

The initial strain of the false narrative made its way all the way to the Vatican, prompting Pope Francis to tweet, "I join the Canadian Bishops and the whole Catholic Church in Canada in expressing my closeness to the Canadian people, who have been traumatised by shocking discovery of the remains of two hundred and fifteen children, pupils at the Kamloops Indian Residential School."

Pope Francis' remarks came just days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blamed the Catholic Church and said, "We expect the Church to step up and take responsibility for its role in this."

Weeks after the Kamloops "discovery," the Cowessess First Nation of Saskatchewan announced on June 24 that there were 751 unmarked graves nearby the former Marieval Indian Residential School.

Kisha Supernant, an associate professor at the University of Alberta's department of anthropology, had her team probe a cemetery with another ground-penetrating radar device. Supernant, who has since protested that "there is no big lie or deliberate hoax," told state media, "When you're actually walking across these grounds, I like to say that it's a very heavy process."

Blaze News reached out to Supernant with questions about the narrative as well as her use of the term "denialist" in reference to skeptics. She did not respond by deadline.

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said the community would be treating the alleged unmarked grave site "like a crime scene."

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the alleged discovery, stating he was "terribly saddened." The Canadian leader suggested further that the supposed unmarked graves served as "a shameful reminder of the systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice that Indigenous peoples have faced."

Trudeau also claimed on social media to have seen "the unmarked graves in Cowessess First Nation."

Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada's other leftist party, did not see but nevertheless believed, stating, "Each child had a name and a family they never came home to."

In a subsequent teary-eyed speech, NDP Leader Singh said, "As a country, this is our country's responsibility, and it's our responsibility to make it right." Singh added, "It's not good enough for us to mourn."

Days later, a member community of the Ktunaxa Nation in the southern interior of B.C. announced it too had discovered unmarked grave sites near a cemetery established in 1865, which sits adjacent to former residential school run by the Catholic Church and near where a hospital was built in 1874. This time, there were supposedly 182 graves whose markers had ostensibly rotted away with time and neglect.

'We are at another point in time where we must face the trauma because of these acts of genocide.'

The Indian community acknowledged in a press release that "graves were traditionally marked with wooden crosses and this practice continues to this day in many Indigenous communities across Canada. Wooden crosses can deteriorate over time due to erosion or fire which can result in an unmarked grave."

"These factors, among others, make it extremely difficult to establish whether or not these unmarked graves contain the remains of children who attended the St. Eugene Residential School," added the community.

Weeks later, the Penelakut Tribe in B.C. tripped over 160 more alleged "undocumented and unmarked graves," stating on Facebook, "We are at another point in time where we must face the trauma because of these acts of genocide."

The family heads of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc evidently did not want to be outdone, suggesting in an October open letter that the alleged graves of "little ones who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School" also amounted to "evidence of a horrific act of genocide."

Empty fields and old cemeteries were reimagined in media reports and official statements as unmarked children's graves linked to genocide. That misunderstanding stoked fires that would soon sweep the nation.

Empty fields, rage-filled hearts

Canada quickly descended into an orgy of anti-Christian rage, revisionism, and self-flagellation.

The Canadian Parliament observed a moment of silence to "mark the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops."

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the supposed graves served as a "painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our county's history."

Trudeau also ordered the national flag be flown at half-mast on government property, where it remained for five consecutive months. He said on X that the symbolic gesture was to "honour the 215 children whose lives were taken at the former Kamloops residential school" — a bold assertion that there were not only hundreds of dead children, but that they were killed.

PPC Leader Maxime Bernier told Blaze News, "The Trudeau government used [this moral panic] as an excuse to announce '$321M in new funding for programs to help Indigenous communities search burial sites at former residential schools and to support survivors and their communities.'"

"This is a complete waste of money and only serves again as a huge subsidy to foster anger and resentment based on fake stories about priests and nuns killing indigenous children," added Bernier.

Activists nationwide demanded the cancellation of Canada Day festivities. While various municipalities and provinces resisted such demands, city council in Victoria, B.C., obliged them.

Then-Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps stated, "As First Nations mourn and in light of the challenging moment we are in as a Canadian nation following the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school, council has decided to take the time to explore new possibilities, instead of the previously planned virtual Canada Day broadcast."

NDP Leader Singh also dishonored Canada in order to honor the narrative, which Sohrab Ahmari, the founder of Compact magazine, has characterized as "an anti-Catholic blood libel."

While iconoclasts toppled statues of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II, and Egerton Ryerson, activists set up memorials outside churches and government buildings across the country, frequently using children's shoes as props.

A photograph of one memorial won Amber Bracken the World Press Photo of the Year award. Bracken snapped a photograph for the New York Times of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside commemorating "children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School."

In keeping with the mass movement that wrought havoc south of the border the previous year, activists turned to "every child matters" as a rallying cry and donned orange garments — the chosen color of residential school critics since at least 2013.

In the wake of the so-called discovery of graves, all political parties, including the Conservative Party of Canada, agreed to fast-track legislation making "National Day for Truth and Reconciliation" a statutory holiday.

The following year, NDP parliamentarian Leah Gazan would successfully pass a motion in Parliament with unanimous consent demanding the Canadian government "recognize what happened in Canada's Indian residential schools as genocide."

While passing bills to affirm the narrative, Parliament also considered a proposal to criminalize its rejection.

Phillip Horgan told Blaze News that "the federal government's rapporteur charged with investigating these claims has proposed the introduction of a criminal charge for 'residential school denialism' for even allowing discussions on the factual underpinnings of the various claims."

While lawmakers were beating their chests and orange-clad activists were wasting shoes in 2021, radicals began burning down and vandalizing scores of churches.

Truth North, a Canadian digital publication, mapped out roughly 100 attacks on churches that took place after the May 2021 announcement. Many of the churches were hundreds of years old and had served Indian communities.

State media indicated that 24 of 33 attacks between May 2021 and December 2023 were confirmed as arson.

Despite singling out the Catholic Church for abuse and peddling the baseless narrative, Trudeau found time to condemn the attacks, suggesting they deprived people of places to "grieve and reflect."

He coupled his condemnation with empathy for the attackers and a smear against Canada, stating, "I understand the anger that's out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic Church. It is real and it is fully understandable given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware."

Gerald Butts, Trudeau's close ally who resigned amidst the SNC Lavalin scandal, echoed the prime minister days later, writing, "I can understand why someone would want to burn down a church, though I do not condone it."

While various prominent members of the Liberal Party signaled understanding for anti-Christian attacks, other Canadians called for more.

Harsha Walia, a Hamas apologist who at the time of the inaugural 2021 church burnings was the executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said, "Burn it all down."

Various others joined in this inflammatory rhetoric, including McGill University associate professor Debra Thompson, who wrote, "It's truly a wonder we don't burn it all down."

Caitlin Urquhart, chair of the board of the St. John's Status of Women Council, tweeted, "Burn it all down."

Torching churches, largely consequence-free

In an effort to get some sense of whether the attacks were answered with justice, Blaze News looked into the following 18 church burnings and attempted church burnings that occurred between late June 21 — Canada's so-called "National Indigenous Peoples' Day" — and early August 2021:

• Sacred Heart Mission Church in Penticton, B.C. — burned to the ground on June 21;
• St. Gregory Mission Church in Oliver, B.C. — burned the ground on June 21;
• St. Ann’s near Hedley, B.C. — burned to the ground on June 26;
• Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Chopaka, B.C. — burned to the ground on June 26;
• Siksika First Nation Catholic Church on Siksika First Nation, Alberta — survived a fire attack on June 28;
• St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church in Morville, Alberta — burned to the ground on June 30;
• Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Church on Sipekne'katik First Nation — torched on June 30;
• St. Patrick’s Co-Cathedral in Yellowknife, Yukon — survived fire on July 1;
• St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Gitwangak First Nations land, B.C. — destroyed by fire on July 1;
• St. Columba Anglican Church in Tofino, B.C. — torched on July 2;
• Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Peace River, Alberta — firebombed on July 3;
• St. Andrew's United Church in Prince George, B.C. — survived a fire on July 4;
• Angus Bonner Memorial United Church in South Indian Lake, Manitoba — burned to the ground on July 5;
• St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Surrey, B.C. — burned to the ground on July 19
• Holy Trinity (inactive) in Redberry Lake, Saskatchewan — burned to the ground on July 8;
• Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Bonnyville, Alberta – burned to the ground on July 9;
• St. Mary’s Parish in Prince George, B.C. — survived a fire on July 26; and
• Little Flower Mission Church in Fox Lake, Alberta — burned to the ground on Aug. 7.

On the basis of responses from the various relevant RCMP detachments, it appears that in most cases, the perpetrators were never caught.

Despite obtaining a grainy video of the suspect, the Yellowknife RCMP detachment confirmed to Blaze News that no arrest was ultimately made in the St. Patrick’s attack.

RCMP spokespersons also indicated that the investigations into the Fox Lake, Tofino, and Sipekne'katik First Nation attacks have been closed without arson arrests having been made. The RCMP detachment overseeing Fox Lake did, however, inform Blaze News that a suspect who has since died was charged with theft in connection to the church around the time of the fire. Despite being found in possession of items from the newly torched church, the suspect was not formally tied to the arson.

RCMP Cpl. James Grandy indicated that the June 26 St. Ann's fire remains under investigation.

'Their faith is unshaken and they look forward to worshiping in a new building in the near future.'

Bishop Gary Franken of the Diocese of St. Paul in Alberta told Blaze News that the investigation into the torching of St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church remains open.

Bishop Franken added, "Any time that any of our churches are damaged, let alone the target of arson, it is extremely upsetting. The loss of the historic St. Jean Baptiste church is a tragedy — for the worshiping community and as an historic edifice. The pain of the loss of the church is still very acute for the people of the parish, as well as for the diocese and for me personally as their bishop."

Bishop Franken indicated that the parish has gathered for Sunday Masses in a nearby school gymnasium and that daily Mass takes place in the rectory.

Absent justice, the diocese has carried on in a spirit of hope.

"We hope that a new church can offer hope for the future. A tragic fire may have taken the building, but St. Jean Baptiste parish is more than a brick-and-mortar building. It is the people of God," continued Bishop Franken. "Their faith is unshaken and they look forward to worshiping in a new building in the near future. Their love of God, guided by the Holy Spirit, remains steadfast. As their shepherd, I could not be more proud."

The arsonist who left the parishioners of St. Jean Baptiste without a permanent church may have escaped justice, but there were two arsonists in other cases who weren't so lucky. In the Bonnyville case, a juvenile was charged in connection to the attack and in the case of the allegedly "random" burning of St. George Coptic Orthodox Church, Kathleen Betty Panek was ultimately convicted.

Federal police overlooking the other fires did not respond to requests for comment or alternatively did not provide confirmation of suspended investigations. It appears, however, that no arrests were made in the alleged arson cases in their jurisdictions.

Whereas even a couple of arsonists were brought to justice, it appears that none of those officials who helped advance the false narrative have faced accountability to date.

Spreading falsehoods, entirely consequence-free

In June 2022, Kimberly Murray was appointed as the Trudeau government's "Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites." At the end of her two-year appointment, Murray is required to deliver a final report regarding the supposed unmarked graves. However, on May 7, her office postponed the report's big release and corresponding "National Gathering."

The Catholic Register asked Murray's office whether this postponement meant the report would be deferred. The publication was told there would be "more information to follow."

At the time of publication, there's not been so much as a peep out of Murray's office.

Two days after the postponement, Blacklock's Reporter reported that there has been no public accounting for the nearly $8 million allocated to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation for its graves investigation and that no bodies had yet been recovered in the orchard.

The Canadian Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations reportedly has resisted releasing an audit of the use of the taxpayer funds under the Access to Information Act. Carolane Gratton, a spokeswoman for the department, reportedly directed inquiries about the specifics of the taxpayer-funded activities to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation.

'I don't like to use the word hoax because it's too strong, but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence.'

Kamloops is not the only supposed unmarked grave site to turn up nothing.

In 2022, fourteen "anomalies" were detected using ground-penetrating radar in the basement of the church of the former Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba. Excavators went to work after a pipe ceremony. Four weeks later, they determined there was no evidence of human remains, reported the National Post.

Jacques Rouillard, a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, told the New York Post after the Manitoba basement was revealed to be empty, "I don't like to use the word hoax because it’s too strong, but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence."

Drea Humphrey, B.C. bureau chief for Rebel News, covered the unmarked graves story as it unfolded and detailed her findings in the documentary, “Kamloops: The Buried Truth.”

Blaze News asked Humphrey what has become of the mass graves narrative.

"It's a smokescreen. That's what Canada's mass grave narrative has become," said Humphrey. "Those who look through the smoke can form their own opinions about the fact that, to date, not a single body has been discovered in a secret unmarked grave site of residential school students. Just hundreds of 'anomalies' that could be anything from a tree root to an old sewage plot."

"Those who see only the smoke make it easy for radicals to push to criminalize unpopular residential school truths as 'hate speech,' for bigoted extremists to burn and deface churches, and for millions of tax dollars to be handed to the claim makers who have no burden to prove," continued Humphrey.

When asked if any of the politicians who advanced the unproven narrative have apologized, Humphrey answered that to her knowledge, there has yet to be one.

Blaze News pressed Humphrey on who were the worst offenders, and Humphrey responded, "I find no hierarchy of offenders among the politicians who have failed to make known the good news, which is that no genocidal unmarked graves of former residential school children have been found in Canada."

"It's incredibly concerning that all of our elected officials have failed us in this way even after hate crimes against Catholics rose as high as 260% in 2021 and Christian places of worship are still under attack," continued Humphrey. "It is worth noting that after I probed him on the matter, Mr. Poilievre at least acknowledged that Canadians deserve the truth regarding the claims."

Humphrey asked Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre in January about his party's silence about the absence of evidence in the mass graves case.

"We should provide the resources to allow for a full investigation into the potential remains at residential schools," said Poilievre, adding that "Canadians deserve to know the truth."

Poilievre referred to the church attackers as "terrorists" and stressed that there is "no justification for burning down a church. Period."

Concerning Trudeau's inflammatory commentary in 2021, Humphrey suggested the "prime minister should have done Canadians a favor by resigning for many reasons, but one reason is for justifying acts of hate against Christians. He should also educate himself about the fact that nearly 50% of Indigenous Canadians are Christian, and in many cases, it is churches in First Nation communities that are being targeted."

Horgan told Blaze News, "There is no question that abuses occurred over the many years of the residential school experience in Canada. Settlements have been reached. Apologies have been extended. Reconciliation efforts continue. But it is also hoped that some balance may soon be provided to the narrative of the residential school history, based on a more objective treatment of the data."

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