I share your anger and add my rage that the prime minister and his corrupt sycophants stoked the fear and encouraged the lies. Thank you for not letting this go
“The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man—though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.”
Never lose your obvious passion for the truth, Terry. You provide an invaluable public service. Thank you.
People wonder how Germany, a decent country, descended in the 1930's into the madness of the Nazis and Hitler, and how unhinged they became from reality.
People wonder why so few people stood up against it back then.
Maybe we are witnessing something similar in effect around us right now.
Not the Nazis as such but something similar - a totalitarian-type society where only the 'official truth' is allowed, and much of the media echoes the ideology of the authorities.
Those who do not agree and voice their disagreement are denounced, demonized, smeared and ostracized.
And unfortunately few people and organizations have the backbone and courage to stand up for truth, facts and reality, and push back against the increasing madness in our society.
I think you are right. The head of the snake of lies and deceit is the prime minister. It’s different to Nazi Germany; because this insidious liberal mantra is cloaked in faux goodness and fairness. And all the politically correct words they can muster. Which makes it more terrifying to my mind, than Nazi Germany
Oh the Nazis wore a pretty thick cloak of virtue as well. Such evil doesn’t happen at scale without a conviction of righteousness. The rise of virulent anti-Israel sentiment today attests to that.
"We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation. . . .The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism."
Goebbels’ “Our Socialism” editorial was written on April 30, 1944.
As quoted in I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Vol. 2 , Random House, Inc. (2001) p. 317.
"One day, one hopes, there will be a "long overdue reckoning" with what began on this weekend, three years ago."
No - it will never happen. The lies are too convenient for too many: the indigenous people who use them to extract wealth from our society, the ruling classes, like the Dauphin, who use the lies to smear their opponents to preserve their own power, and the anti-everything protesters who just want to watch it all burn down, falsely confident that they will come out on top in whatever hell-hole remains.
Part of my job means that I deal with projects that have indigenous participation in one form or another. The indigenous approach to such projects can be increasingly distilled to "you should feel guilty, and must give us money to assuage that guilt." At one meeting, when it was suggested that several hundred million dollars would not be delivered to him and his colleagues, an indigenous representative stood and made an impassioned speech about residential schools, settler colonialism and culture, and "oh my God, those poor 215 children of mine." The project in question is nowhere near Kamloops, and he has no connection (that I know of) with the Kamloops band - but it was a convenient club with-which to beat the 'settlers.' It is possible he believes all this stuff - it has been told to him by people he trusts, but that doesn't make it true. All the same - any club to beat your opponent with is welcome.
Incidentally, a 'land acknowledgment' before any Canadian event is becoming traditional. I would be more convinced if an indigenous representative might acknowledge 'wheeled transport, radio communication, and antibiotics' none of which would be locally available without European contact (of course, the list goes on).
When I defend my lack of participation in 'land acknowledgements', I ask the person the following - what if you were a member of (insert FN here) and you continue to hear (sometimes daily like in schools) the 'white allies' preach about how the land was stolen from your ancestors but nothing is ever done except the empty words, don't you think that might just piss you off instead of make you feel warm and fuzzy?
Most of the time I get a 'yeah....well....maybe you're right....but....'
The system is working as intended. None of this was accidental. None of this was caused by incompetence or a need to be seen as "compassionate" or "progressive". This was a deliberate and coordinated gaslighting of Canadians by a government with an utterly toxic agenda. This was the system working as intended.
Both this and the National Post piece are superb. Trudeau will never admit to any error in judgment, and neither will any of his ministers, as this is the culture Trudeau has encouraged. But where at least is the police or RCMP investigation into the criminal church burnings? Why aren't the Christian communities affected making their voices heard on this? If there is no legal redress for these crimes or even attempt to find the culprits, it will remain a national open wound. IMHO, of course.
Yes, an open, festering wound, going right gangrene now. The churches: I have a huge story about the "sacred covenant" between TKemlups and the Catholic archdiocese. It's such a sad, weird story, and I've got it all (including the contents of what should be called a "secret covenant," because it hasn't been released, which is dumb because it contains nothing more that I can tell from the Archbishop's press release. It is such a sad story. It's a story about Indian Catholics who have been browbeaten and bullied and they just want this whole thing to go away. And by the way Barb I do hope you and your colleagues are not mad at me about my failure to properly review Grave Error (your contributions were terrific, of course). I had a call from the Quesnel Mayor today; he's in BC Supreme Court over council's efforts to lynch him the way the NDP lynched Robinson. It's crazytown up there. As usual, I've got too many breaking stories to deal with. Will be up all night on the latest foreign-interference bombshell. We should talk soon. Love, -TG.
No apologies needed re: the book. You gave it so much publicity, I am sure you spurred many further sales. Your productivity level is phenomenal. You plate is very full. We are all just amazed at what you DO put out. A blessing on your house.
Oh wow, yes. Little was made of the church arsons in the media which was a disgrace that was encouraged/motivated by the callously thoughtless remark made by the man who is our Prime Minister. “ Is is understandable.” Even only a couple of mosques being burnt would have been extensively covered and of course Trudeau would have strongly condemned the burnings complete with a lecture on Islamophobia meant for us all.
The final hysterical, if I may use that word, reaction was the self aggrandizement of Trudeau by ordering of our country’s flag to fly at half mast for as long as he wished.
The whole saga is a national open wound, except there is much effort to not speak or write about it by far too many who should know better.
The Christian communities have been terrorized into silence by this campaign of arson, denunciation, etc. Many are finally being shamed into standing up because other faith communities aren't taking this sort of thing lying down.
It is a thankless task to point out what people will not listen to.
The travesty of our times is that when proof or disproof of something is easy to find so very many people refuse to look and cling to their sacred-cow beliefs, at all cost. Personal credibility is not desired, just placating acknowledgement of "you have the right to believe what you want." As you say, getting to the truth is avoided rather than sought.
That said, Terry some people in this country and particularly your readers, care. We ask that you stay strong and don't let us down. The truth DOES matter.
The Liberal Government moans and groans about “misinformation” on a regular basis. This is hardly any surprise as they are not very adept at smelling out torqued news stories or bother fact checking to avoid embarrassment. More emphasis seems to be placed on how to manage front page news for political benefit.
The “mass graves” story shares the same faulty blinkered thinking as jumping to conclusions about a bombing in Gaza in a hospital parking lot or the more recent death of Palestinian civilians in a tent camp. The Government response to all of these stories has caught them on the slippery side of the truth. Canadians are still waiting for a correction, apology or both.
That is not even the worst of it Terry. The Federal Government was doing a lot of colluding with the Corporate Media to engage in some serious story telling during the Freedom Convoy protest as well. Just as what they did through out the pandemic to convince Canadian’s to stay hone and take their untested vaccine. We were their personal Guinea pigs. Not one media outlet has even spoke of the information coming out now in the US and across all Western Nations on the studies or the entire pandemic response. Not even a whisper in the Corporate Media. The same demonization of Jewish people being done today, was, at that time, placed on the unvaccinated and the Freedom Convoy. Let’s now be honest and admit that since the Liberals and then the NDP Coalition (that no one voted for) has been in power the only thing this Government of Canada has done is tell big stories to which very little if any were true. From the Emergencies Act, the Foreign Interference in our elections, the Winnipeg Lab debacle, and onto the arrive scam and procurement disgrace. Either they are telling continuous stories, or they and the media are dead silent on the truth. It’s nice to see truth tellers, such as your self, speak truth to power. I just wish we had many more like you.
Incredibly powerful gut punch Terry. How you have coped with what would have vanquished the average man is beyond belief. I am stunned by the speed with which our social fabric has been shredded in favour of virtue signalling blather. Our population incited to madness while those of us who looked away for a moment almost missed the seismic shift. The absence of leadership in Ottawa has precipitated the divisions and the deep societal damage.
How we get out of this seems only to embrace the writings of the few good scribes remaining.
Thank you, Terry! This message needs to be told, retold, and told some more. A great many dark days surrounding this “madness” (you chose an excellent descriptor in “madness”) need more of your light shone on and through them. I understand your dark mood and pray that you will soon recover some of your own light. Be good to yourself and take care.
I have been in a similar dark mood for much of the past 40 years, realizing that some narratives are harder to kill than the latest-model Terminator. In my student days in the 1980s, I was busting feminist myths such as the gender-pay gap, and discrimination against women in employment and in education. Few people even wanted to know what the evidence was. Later, I published a book-length journal article on intimate partner violence showing that men accused of this crime were treated much more harshly than women at every step in the legal process - from the moment the police arrived at the door to when the jail door slammed behind them. In fact, I found that being male was the best predictor of harsher outcomes, after controlling for all of the legally relevant factors - ahead of such things as having a prior record of intimate partner violence, and the level of injury suffered by the victim. When I quit practicing family law in disgust at the system, I wrote a book about the discrimination that fathers face, but again nobody cared and the system hasn't changed. All the while I have been following the debates on "global warming" - another hysterical narrative that won't die. Folks, there is no evidence that humans are causing catastrophic heating, or indeed any heating other than in urban areas. So when I now in old age encounter narratives surrounding such things as the IRS mass graves, the "river to the sea" atrocities, the gender fluid ideology, the moral panic and over-reaction to covid - it is all just more of the same mass hysteria. We live in a cluster B society, riven by internal conflict over absurdities. You could say I'm black pilled.
Grant, did you ever read Don Dutton's 2016 study results on domestic violence? He said the BC government (at the time it was Liberal but it's no different now -- in fact, it's probably even more skewed) adopted a false premise regarding domestic violence, being that in domestic violence perpetrators are male and victims are female. large cohort peer-reviewed surveys found repeatedly that 50 percent of domestic violence is bilaterial, 35 percent of all cases is perpetrated by women against non-violent men, and the 15 percent is male violence against females. Do we ever hear about the two most common forms of domestic violence? Never. There is no support for men. Gender politics rules the day. Female on male ivolence is underreported; men are more reluctant than women to tell police they are victims of intimate-partner violence. Ashamed. Many men fear, correctly, that they will not be believed by police and will be treated as the aggressors. women are not the only victims. Far from it. There is not a single shelter in BC for male victims. There are no programs. There is no funding. There is no government acknowledgement. There are no advocates. The result is a self-reinforcing system that serves only one gender, as Dutton says. It's sad. I don't think anything has changed since 2016. with the issuance of the grossly misleading and inaccurate MMIW report (a more egregious waste of taxpayer dollars does not exist, other than the TRC report), the stereotype has been reinforced even more.
Yes, I remember when that report came out. I also remember that even many of those who acknowledged that it could well be accurate observed that far more women die from the abuse from their domestic partner. This is very important to acknowledge and remember.
Terry, I have to ask, because you’re the guy who might know (and I’ve not seen it answered anywhere else): Why has it not been REQUIRED for the survivors or “knowledge keepers” who have claimed to have buried children, or witnessed those burials, to be identified to the authorities so that they can be questioned, and further details ascertained? Is it because that would be “disrespectful”? Or “traumatizing”? Or is it because it might prove that their memories are not solid?
We know from interviews with former Kamloops IRS students in Celia Haig-Brown’s *Resistance and Renewal* (1988) that there were many instances of chiefs or parents responding “with effect” when students complained to them about treatment at school.
“Those students not directly involved in opposing the rules and regulations were few,” Haig- Brown says, and parents or chiefs often came in to “set staff straight,” even for relatively minor complaints like a child with allergies not being provided her special diet.
So it strains credulity to believe that children were going missing – much less being buried by their classmates – and family members were helpless to do anything about it.
And yet: We have the venerable Murray Sinclair (in June 2021) on video saying that during the TRC hearings “Some of the survivors talked about witnessing children being buried in large numbers into mass burial sites.” (at the 5-minute mark, here: https://irshdc.ubc.ca/2021/06/04/murray-sinclair/; BTW the printed transcript on that page is NOT a faithful transcription of his actual words).
Witnessing. In large numbers. Into mass burial sites.
And Mr. Sinclair did not happen to make a note of which former students had witnessed those horrors? Or have any interest in finding out who those deceased students might have been, or how they died? DID NOT REPORT that horrifying revelation – not at the time, nor at any time in the next six years – to any First Nations official, or to government, or to law enforcement? And did not think it significant enough to include it in the TRC report?
Sinclair is still of sound mind (though suffering some health problems); surely given the nature of these accusations, Canadians have a right to ask him to substantiate a statement like that?
From the comments, many people share your anger. To me, it’s incredible- as I’m not believable. The story is humans are upset that other humans are killing, taking the land, enslaving, desecrating the culture and environment. Seriously? This is the story of human kind. Occasionally the losing side rises up, burns something down or whatever- but they are the losers. All this sanctimonious heartbreak over someone who’s lost everything by those who enjoy the spoils of war are pretty far gone. As the guys at the Legion tell me, “ we won, they lost - fuck them”.
The thing is that the people we are up against do not understand "believe" in the same way we understand the word. When they wish to demonstrate loyalty to a movement or orthodoxy, their first move is to put forward an obvious historical falsehood in support of their putative idea. Because the purpose of the falsehood is to test loyalty not to propound an actual fact pattern.
I share your anger and add my rage that the prime minister and his corrupt sycophants stoked the fear and encouraged the lies. Thank you for not letting this go
They didn’t just encourage the lies; they TOLD the lies as well.
And yet that's the team who are the most intent on imposing measures on what we see and hear in the name of controlling "misinformation".
“The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man—though often it is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least.”
Never lose your obvious passion for the truth, Terry. You provide an invaluable public service. Thank you.
People wonder how Germany, a decent country, descended in the 1930's into the madness of the Nazis and Hitler, and how unhinged they became from reality.
People wonder why so few people stood up against it back then.
Maybe we are witnessing something similar in effect around us right now.
Not the Nazis as such but something similar - a totalitarian-type society where only the 'official truth' is allowed, and much of the media echoes the ideology of the authorities.
Those who do not agree and voice their disagreement are denounced, demonized, smeared and ostracized.
And unfortunately few people and organizations have the backbone and courage to stand up for truth, facts and reality, and push back against the increasing madness in our society.
I think you are right. The head of the snake of lies and deceit is the prime minister. It’s different to Nazi Germany; because this insidious liberal mantra is cloaked in faux goodness and fairness. And all the politically correct words they can muster. Which makes it more terrifying to my mind, than Nazi Germany
Oh the Nazis wore a pretty thick cloak of virtue as well. Such evil doesn’t happen at scale without a conviction of righteousness. The rise of virulent anti-Israel sentiment today attests to that.
"We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation. . . .The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism."
Goebbels’ “Our Socialism” editorial was written on April 30, 1944.
As quoted in I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Vol. 2 , Random House, Inc. (2001) p. 317.
Wow. That is devastating. I was not aware of this quote. Thanks.
A well-considered reply. THanks.
Well said -- thank you.
"One day, one hopes, there will be a "long overdue reckoning" with what began on this weekend, three years ago."
No - it will never happen. The lies are too convenient for too many: the indigenous people who use them to extract wealth from our society, the ruling classes, like the Dauphin, who use the lies to smear their opponents to preserve their own power, and the anti-everything protesters who just want to watch it all burn down, falsely confident that they will come out on top in whatever hell-hole remains.
Part of my job means that I deal with projects that have indigenous participation in one form or another. The indigenous approach to such projects can be increasingly distilled to "you should feel guilty, and must give us money to assuage that guilt." At one meeting, when it was suggested that several hundred million dollars would not be delivered to him and his colleagues, an indigenous representative stood and made an impassioned speech about residential schools, settler colonialism and culture, and "oh my God, those poor 215 children of mine." The project in question is nowhere near Kamloops, and he has no connection (that I know of) with the Kamloops band - but it was a convenient club with-which to beat the 'settlers.' It is possible he believes all this stuff - it has been told to him by people he trusts, but that doesn't make it true. All the same - any club to beat your opponent with is welcome.
Incidentally, a 'land acknowledgment' before any Canadian event is becoming traditional. I would be more convinced if an indigenous representative might acknowledge 'wheeled transport, radio communication, and antibiotics' none of which would be locally available without European contact (of course, the list goes on).
When I defend my lack of participation in 'land acknowledgements', I ask the person the following - what if you were a member of (insert FN here) and you continue to hear (sometimes daily like in schools) the 'white allies' preach about how the land was stolen from your ancestors but nothing is ever done except the empty words, don't you think that might just piss you off instead of make you feel warm and fuzzy?
Most of the time I get a 'yeah....well....maybe you're right....but....'
Totally agree….. pure lip service.
It's not taunting... but sometimes I wonder.
Good for you for standing up for truth. Given your job, you hoe a hard row. You are showing moral courage!
The system is working as intended. None of this was accidental. None of this was caused by incompetence or a need to be seen as "compassionate" or "progressive". This was a deliberate and coordinated gaslighting of Canadians by a government with an utterly toxic agenda. This was the system working as intended.
Terry this honest to the core is far superior to the essay i n the NP. Thank you Mr. Glavin.
Both this and the National Post piece are superb. Trudeau will never admit to any error in judgment, and neither will any of his ministers, as this is the culture Trudeau has encouraged. But where at least is the police or RCMP investigation into the criminal church burnings? Why aren't the Christian communities affected making their voices heard on this? If there is no legal redress for these crimes or even attempt to find the culprits, it will remain a national open wound. IMHO, of course.
Yes, an open, festering wound, going right gangrene now. The churches: I have a huge story about the "sacred covenant" between TKemlups and the Catholic archdiocese. It's such a sad, weird story, and I've got it all (including the contents of what should be called a "secret covenant," because it hasn't been released, which is dumb because it contains nothing more that I can tell from the Archbishop's press release. It is such a sad story. It's a story about Indian Catholics who have been browbeaten and bullied and they just want this whole thing to go away. And by the way Barb I do hope you and your colleagues are not mad at me about my failure to properly review Grave Error (your contributions were terrific, of course). I had a call from the Quesnel Mayor today; he's in BC Supreme Court over council's efforts to lynch him the way the NDP lynched Robinson. It's crazytown up there. As usual, I've got too many breaking stories to deal with. Will be up all night on the latest foreign-interference bombshell. We should talk soon. Love, -TG.
No apologies needed re: the book. You gave it so much publicity, I am sure you spurred many further sales. Your productivity level is phenomenal. You plate is very full. We are all just amazed at what you DO put out. A blessing on your house.
Oh wow, yes. Little was made of the church arsons in the media which was a disgrace that was encouraged/motivated by the callously thoughtless remark made by the man who is our Prime Minister. “ Is is understandable.” Even only a couple of mosques being burnt would have been extensively covered and of course Trudeau would have strongly condemned the burnings complete with a lecture on Islamophobia meant for us all.
The final hysterical, if I may use that word, reaction was the self aggrandizement of Trudeau by ordering of our country’s flag to fly at half mast for as long as he wished.
The whole saga is a national open wound, except there is much effort to not speak or write about it by far too many who should know better.
The Christian communities have been terrorized into silence by this campaign of arson, denunciation, etc. Many are finally being shamed into standing up because other faith communities aren't taking this sort of thing lying down.
It is a thankless task to point out what people will not listen to.
The travesty of our times is that when proof or disproof of something is easy to find so very many people refuse to look and cling to their sacred-cow beliefs, at all cost. Personal credibility is not desired, just placating acknowledgement of "you have the right to believe what you want." As you say, getting to the truth is avoided rather than sought.
That said, Terry some people in this country and particularly your readers, care. We ask that you stay strong and don't let us down. The truth DOES matter.
The Liberal Government moans and groans about “misinformation” on a regular basis. This is hardly any surprise as they are not very adept at smelling out torqued news stories or bother fact checking to avoid embarrassment. More emphasis seems to be placed on how to manage front page news for political benefit.
The “mass graves” story shares the same faulty blinkered thinking as jumping to conclusions about a bombing in Gaza in a hospital parking lot or the more recent death of Palestinian civilians in a tent camp. The Government response to all of these stories has caught them on the slippery side of the truth. Canadians are still waiting for a correction, apology or both.
That is not even the worst of it Terry. The Federal Government was doing a lot of colluding with the Corporate Media to engage in some serious story telling during the Freedom Convoy protest as well. Just as what they did through out the pandemic to convince Canadian’s to stay hone and take their untested vaccine. We were their personal Guinea pigs. Not one media outlet has even spoke of the information coming out now in the US and across all Western Nations on the studies or the entire pandemic response. Not even a whisper in the Corporate Media. The same demonization of Jewish people being done today, was, at that time, placed on the unvaccinated and the Freedom Convoy. Let’s now be honest and admit that since the Liberals and then the NDP Coalition (that no one voted for) has been in power the only thing this Government of Canada has done is tell big stories to which very little if any were true. From the Emergencies Act, the Foreign Interference in our elections, the Winnipeg Lab debacle, and onto the arrive scam and procurement disgrace. Either they are telling continuous stories, or they and the media are dead silent on the truth. It’s nice to see truth tellers, such as your self, speak truth to power. I just wish we had many more like you.
I wish more people would read it.
Incredibly powerful gut punch Terry. How you have coped with what would have vanquished the average man is beyond belief. I am stunned by the speed with which our social fabric has been shredded in favour of virtue signalling blather. Our population incited to madness while those of us who looked away for a moment almost missed the seismic shift. The absence of leadership in Ottawa has precipitated the divisions and the deep societal damage.
How we get out of this seems only to embrace the writings of the few good scribes remaining.
Thank you Terry, God bless you.
"Our population incited to madness while those of us who looked away for a moment almost missed the seismic shift."
Well said, though I think the moment was more like years.
There's too many versions of collective madness going around to keep track of the Overton window.
Thank you, Terry! This message needs to be told, retold, and told some more. A great many dark days surrounding this “madness” (you chose an excellent descriptor in “madness”) need more of your light shone on and through them. I understand your dark mood and pray that you will soon recover some of your own light. Be good to yourself and take care.
I have been in a similar dark mood for much of the past 40 years, realizing that some narratives are harder to kill than the latest-model Terminator. In my student days in the 1980s, I was busting feminist myths such as the gender-pay gap, and discrimination against women in employment and in education. Few people even wanted to know what the evidence was. Later, I published a book-length journal article on intimate partner violence showing that men accused of this crime were treated much more harshly than women at every step in the legal process - from the moment the police arrived at the door to when the jail door slammed behind them. In fact, I found that being male was the best predictor of harsher outcomes, after controlling for all of the legally relevant factors - ahead of such things as having a prior record of intimate partner violence, and the level of injury suffered by the victim. When I quit practicing family law in disgust at the system, I wrote a book about the discrimination that fathers face, but again nobody cared and the system hasn't changed. All the while I have been following the debates on "global warming" - another hysterical narrative that won't die. Folks, there is no evidence that humans are causing catastrophic heating, or indeed any heating other than in urban areas. So when I now in old age encounter narratives surrounding such things as the IRS mass graves, the "river to the sea" atrocities, the gender fluid ideology, the moral panic and over-reaction to covid - it is all just more of the same mass hysteria. We live in a cluster B society, riven by internal conflict over absurdities. You could say I'm black pilled.
I fervently wish you were wrong, Grant, but I know that you are not!
Grant, did you ever read Don Dutton's 2016 study results on domestic violence? He said the BC government (at the time it was Liberal but it's no different now -- in fact, it's probably even more skewed) adopted a false premise regarding domestic violence, being that in domestic violence perpetrators are male and victims are female. large cohort peer-reviewed surveys found repeatedly that 50 percent of domestic violence is bilaterial, 35 percent of all cases is perpetrated by women against non-violent men, and the 15 percent is male violence against females. Do we ever hear about the two most common forms of domestic violence? Never. There is no support for men. Gender politics rules the day. Female on male ivolence is underreported; men are more reluctant than women to tell police they are victims of intimate-partner violence. Ashamed. Many men fear, correctly, that they will not be believed by police and will be treated as the aggressors. women are not the only victims. Far from it. There is not a single shelter in BC for male victims. There are no programs. There is no funding. There is no government acknowledgement. There are no advocates. The result is a self-reinforcing system that serves only one gender, as Dutton says. It's sad. I don't think anything has changed since 2016. with the issuance of the grossly misleading and inaccurate MMIW report (a more egregious waste of taxpayer dollars does not exist, other than the TRC report), the stereotype has been reinforced even more.
Yes, I remember when that report came out. I also remember that even many of those who acknowledged that it could well be accurate observed that far more women die from the abuse from their domestic partner. This is very important to acknowledge and remember.
Terry, I have to ask, because you’re the guy who might know (and I’ve not seen it answered anywhere else): Why has it not been REQUIRED for the survivors or “knowledge keepers” who have claimed to have buried children, or witnessed those burials, to be identified to the authorities so that they can be questioned, and further details ascertained? Is it because that would be “disrespectful”? Or “traumatizing”? Or is it because it might prove that their memories are not solid?
We know from interviews with former Kamloops IRS students in Celia Haig-Brown’s *Resistance and Renewal* (1988) that there were many instances of chiefs or parents responding “with effect” when students complained to them about treatment at school.
“Those students not directly involved in opposing the rules and regulations were few,” Haig- Brown says, and parents or chiefs often came in to “set staff straight,” even for relatively minor complaints like a child with allergies not being provided her special diet.
So it strains credulity to believe that children were going missing – much less being buried by their classmates – and family members were helpless to do anything about it.
And yet: We have the venerable Murray Sinclair (in June 2021) on video saying that during the TRC hearings “Some of the survivors talked about witnessing children being buried in large numbers into mass burial sites.” (at the 5-minute mark, here: https://irshdc.ubc.ca/2021/06/04/murray-sinclair/; BTW the printed transcript on that page is NOT a faithful transcription of his actual words).
Witnessing. In large numbers. Into mass burial sites.
And Mr. Sinclair did not happen to make a note of which former students had witnessed those horrors? Or have any interest in finding out who those deceased students might have been, or how they died? DID NOT REPORT that horrifying revelation – not at the time, nor at any time in the next six years – to any First Nations official, or to government, or to law enforcement? And did not think it significant enough to include it in the TRC report?
Sinclair is still of sound mind (though suffering some health problems); surely given the nature of these accusations, Canadians have a right to ask him to substantiate a statement like that?
From the comments, many people share your anger. To me, it’s incredible- as I’m not believable. The story is humans are upset that other humans are killing, taking the land, enslaving, desecrating the culture and environment. Seriously? This is the story of human kind. Occasionally the losing side rises up, burns something down or whatever- but they are the losers. All this sanctimonious heartbreak over someone who’s lost everything by those who enjoy the spoils of war are pretty far gone. As the guys at the Legion tell me, “ we won, they lost - fuck them”.
This is a superb piece, Terry.
The thing is that the people we are up against do not understand "believe" in the same way we understand the word. When they wish to demonstrate loyalty to a movement or orthodoxy, their first move is to put forward an obvious historical falsehood in support of their putative idea. Because the purpose of the falsehood is to test loyalty not to propound an actual fact pattern.
You're one of the few people who have always understood this. Thanks for your kind words, comrade.