After the announcement by the T’kemlups First Nation of the discovery of so-called unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops residential school, many politicians, Indigenous leaders, and media have thrown aside balance, restraint, and caution, turning truth into a casualty. Public discussion about residential schools is now either totally false or grossly exaggerated. Canada is accused of the most heinous crimes, with some even accusing our country of committing genocide. A more balanced picture of residential schools is the only road to genuine Reconciliation. True North is proud to partner with Dorchester Books to publish Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and The Truth about Residential Schools) by Dr. Tom Flanagan and Dr. C.P. Champion. This excellent collection of first rate articles challenges the false narrative surrounding Canada’s residential schools and treatment of Indigenous Canadians. Grave Error is available now just in time for Christmas! Get your copy today! |
Tag Archives: Kamloops Indian Residential School
CAFE PROTEST TO ABBOTSFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT ON THE FIRING OF TEACHER JIM MCMURTRY FOR CHALLENGING KAMLOOPS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL GENOCIDE STORY
Canadian Association for Free Expression
Box 332,
Rexdale, Ontario,
M9W 5L3
Ph: 416-428-5308
Website http://cafe.nfshost.com
Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director
March 1, 2023
Mr. Kevin Godden, Superintendent of Schools,
Abbotsford School District
2790 Tims Street,
Abbotsford, BC
V2T 4M7
Dear Mr. Godden:
I ask that you bring this correspondence to the next meeting of the Abbotsford District School Board
We are appalled at the Board’s February 21 decision to fire teacher Jim McMurtry. His “crime’? Back in 2021 when the media was filled with exaggerated stories of a mass grave found outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. One of Mr. McMurtry’s grade 12 students alleged that Catholic priests had tortured and killed Indian children and left them to freeze in the snow. Firstly, there is no evidence with melodramatic scenario ever occurred. Indeed, close to two years later, there is actually no evidence that the alleged 218 “graves” are indeed graves. If they are graves, there’s no evidence who is buried there and what caused these people’s deaths.
As a good and responsible teacher, Mr. McMurtry gently corrected the enthusiastic student’s comment, which echoes longtime anti-Catholic bias that was once rife. Mr. McMurtry stated that most children who died in residential schools died from disease, which was true not just of native children at that time, but children in general.
Dr. McMurtry has extensive experience and education in Native issues. His comment is not merely his opinion, it is the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. According to graph 6 of the report, The overwhelming cause of the deaths of Native children in residential schools (1867 to 2000) was tuberculosis, followed by a long distance by influenza and respiratory diseases.
It’s often forgotten that tuberculosis was a major blight in Canada up into the 1950s. In my own family alone, two relatives spent time in sanitoria to recover from tuberculosis, or TB in common terms.
So, Dr. McMurtry’s offence was to tell the truth!
As unjust as your decision was for Dr. McMurtry, it perpetrated an even greater injustice on the student body. What does it teach students? Certainly, not to think for themselves and follow the evidence, sometimes even challenging currently accepted ideology. No, it teaches them that, if they dissent from currently fashionable Woke doctrine, they’d better shut up and keep their views to themselves. Remember what happened to Dr. McMurtry!
The students deserve better. The taxpayers deserve better.
We urge you to reconsider your decision.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Fromm, Director
CAFE PROTEST TO ABBOTSFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT ON THE FIRING OF TEACHER JIM MCMURTRY FOR CHALLENGING KAMLOOPS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL GENOCIDE STORY
Canadian Association for Free Expression
Box 332,
Rexdale, Ontario,
M9W 5L3
Ph: 416-428-5308
Website http://cafe.nfshost.com
Paul Fromm, B.Ed, M.A. Director
March 1, 2023
Mr. Kevin Godden, Superintendent of Schools,
Abbotsford School District
2790 Tims Street,
Abbotsford, BC
V2T 4M7
Dear Mr. Godden:
I ask that you bring this correspondence to the next meeting of the Abbotsford District School Board
We are appalled at the Board’s February 21 decision to fire teacher Jim McMurtry. His “crime’? Back in 2021 when the media was filled with exaggerated stories of a mass grave found outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. One of Mr. McMurtry’s grade 12 students alleged that Catholic priests had tortured and killed Indian children and left them to freeze in the snow. Firstly, there is no evidence with melodramatic scenario ever occurred. Indeed, close to two years later, there is actually no evidence that the alleged 218 “graves” are indeed graves. If they are graves, there’s no evidence who is buried there and what caused these people’s deaths.
As a good and responsible teacher, Mr. McMurtry gently corrected the enthusiastic student’s comment, which echoes longtime anti-Catholic bias that was once rife. Mr. McMurtry stated that most children who died in residential schools died from disease, which was true not just of native children at that time, but children in general.
Dr. McMurtry has extensive experience and education in Native issues. His comment is not merely his opinion, it is the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. According to graph 6 of the report, The overwhelming cause of the deaths of Native children in residential schools (1867 to 2000) was tuberculosis, followed by a long distance by influenza and respiratory diseases.
It’s often forgotten that tuberculosis was a major blight in Canada up into the 1950s. In my own family alone, two relatives spent time in sanitoria to recover from tuberculosis, or TB in common terms.
So, Dr. McMurtry’s offence was to tell the truth!
As unjust as your decision was for Dr. McMurtry, it perpetrated an even greater injustice on the student body. What does it teach students? Certainly, not to think for themselves and follow the evidence, sometimes even challenging currently accepted ideology. No, it teaches them that, if they dissent from currently fashionable Woke doctrine, they’d better shut up and keep their views to themselves. Remember what happened to Dr. McMurtry!
The students deserve better. The taxpayers deserve better.
We urge you to reconsider your decision.
Sincerely yours,
Paul Fromm, Director
Canadian teacher of 40 years fired for speaking out against Trudeau’s ‘mass grave’ hoax
Canadian teacher of 40 years fired for speaking out against Trudeau’s ‘mass grave’ hoax
[The Red Guards of wokeness have claimed another victim, Jim McMurtry, who only tried to correct a misinformed student who claimed that Catholic priests had murdered many young Indians in residential school. He quoted the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that tubereculosis was the major killer, there in in the greater society until the 1950s. For this and because he refused to be silenced, this brilliant and educated man was fired. I sympathize. After a 25 year career as an “exemplary teacher”, I too was fired in 1997 by the Peel Board of Education, not for anything I said or did in the classroom but for my political views expressed on my own time, outside school property. — Paul Fromm]
According to his employer, since school teacher Jim McMurtry would not forego his ‘democratic right’ or be ‘muzzled’ he of course must be fired. Kamloops Residential SchoolChris Allan/Shutterstock
Wed Feb 22, 2023 – 3:58 pm EST Listen to this article 0:00 / 4:59 BeyondWords
ABBOTSFORD, B.C. (LifeSiteNews) — A Canadian teacher who taught for forty years has been fired for speaking out against the now roundly debunked “mass grave” narrative that Trudeau and the mainstream media peddled in 2021.
According to the National Post, Jim McMurtry was fired on Tuesday, February 21, for daring to speak out against the misinformation about the Canadian residential school history.
In 2021 when the “mass grave” narrative spread across Canada, faster than the dozens of Church burnings that it inspired, McMurtry corrected one of his students in a Grade-12 class who stated that priests had murdered and tortured children and left them to freeze to death in the snow.
He told the student that most children who died in residential schools died from disease, which was true not just of native children at that time, but children in general.
It may seem insane to hear that people were bandying around the notion that priests were essentially serial murderers for decades without ever being stopped, but that is what people thought. — Article continues below Petition — PETITION: Trudeau must apologize for “mass grave” smear that led to church-burnings Show Petition Text 4946 have signed the petition.Let’s get to 5000! Add your signature: Keep me updated via email on this petition and related issues.
I distinctly remember Canada Day in 2021 – what a dark day that was – and even family members had come to the conclusion that Catholic priests and nuns had ritually murdered children and thrown them into massive pits behind the schools.
Of course, as the Post report pointed out, nothing like this was ever recorded in any official report.
For his efforts, McMurtry was marched out of the school for having committed what might be the only mortal sin left in public education: not peddling a communist narrative.
Ironically, all McMurtry did was repeat information that was recorded in the federal government’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report. The TCR report is far from a “conservative” or “right-wing” document, and has been sharply criticized for shoddy scholarship and not including the massive amounts of positive claims about residential schools.
Alas, McMurtry’s reference to historical information in a government-approved report that did not include positive information about the residential schools was seen as unacceptable, and he was suspended.
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A year after his initial suspension he refused to remain silent about the injustice and was subsequently fired.
The report that recommended he be axed admitted that his commitment to telling the truth was why he was fired:
Given Mr. McMurtry’s assertions that he will not be ‘muzzled,’ that he has a democratic right to speak, that he will not follow directions, it is clear that Mr. McMurtry’s employment can no longer continue.
So, according to his employer, since McMurtry would not forego his “democratic right” or be “muzzled,” he of course must be fired.
It is worth remembering that we are not speaking about some renegade activist, but a teacher of four decades who simply corrected a student who said something different than the official government information. This affair is nothing more than an employer penalizing a man who is shedding light on the fact that the employer was wrong in the first place.
How have we arrived at the point where a public school teacher is disciplined for telling students information that was made available to the public by a publicly funded government inquiry?
As if the firing wasn’t absurd enough, McMurtry holds a master’s degree in the history of education and a doctorate in the philosophy of education, with a specialty in indigenous history.
The man is literally an accredited expert in education and the history of native Canadians, but was sacked for telling the truth about the history of native Canadians.
Apparently in Canada, any degrees and experience one might have is irrelevant if you don’t move at the speed of woke.
About the affair, McMurtry said:
This woke indoctrination [is] as offensive as any totalitarian ideology that has ever been pushed… There are people who believe that Canada is systemically racist and that all our ancestors were monsters. And I’m the person who is saying, ‘Well, let’s debate it. Let’s look at it.’
He also said that teachers “are walking on eggshells,” and need to speak up before it is too late.
It was reported that he was “terminated for just and reasonable cause,” but it seems that reason went out the window with the actual truth about native Canadian history.