The discovery of human remains at the site of a former residential school has set off a firestorm that has already resulted in demands for another national inquiry, and massively expensive forensic and excavation projects. But maybe we should take a pause, and ask some questions.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School operated as a residential school from 1890 to 1969. Its peak enrolment was around 500 in the 1950s. Although there has understandably been an outpouring of sympathy, it is not clear at this point how many of the bodies detected were residential students. It’s also not clear that there was even anything sinister about the discovery.
In fact, it is shocking that many people seem quite willing to accept slanderous conspiracy theories about teachers and priests murdering, and secretly burying, hundreds of children. There are many forgotten cemeteries in Canada. It is far more likely that the deaths simply reflected the sad reality of life back then. We should take a look at the history.
Tuberculosis was a major killer, and it didn’t spare children. From 1890 until the 1950s it was responsible for many child deaths. Influenza was also a particularly deadly disease for indigenous people. The 1918 Spanish flu killed a disproportionate number of indigenous people, but even ordinary influenza was particularly deadly for them. Other diseases that have all but disappeared now, like Whooping Cough, Meningitis and Measles, routinely took yesterday’s children.
Disease took many from every demographic, but indigenous people suffered most. They died mainly in their home communities, where the Grim Reaper was always close by. Infected children entered residential schools, and infected others. Many died.
In our comfortable times we forget how hard life was a hundred and more years ago – Dickens’ world of chimney sweeps, and the Poor House. Stories are now being written about Canada’s “Home Children”, for example. These were mainly English orphans, and children from poor homes, who were taken from their parents and sent by themselves to Canada. Little children – some as young as seven – would arrive with cardboard signs around their necks advertising their free labour.
Boys would be taken by farmers and used as labour, in return for their keep. The girls would be used as domestic workers. Some received good treatment – some were treated very badly. Many died alone and forgotten. It is a coincidence that the number of “Home Children” roughly equaled the total number of children who attended residential schools – 150,000.
The Home Children are one example only of the sadness that was part of the lives of all poor children who had the misfortune to be born in those times. Indigenous children suffered more than most. This historical snippet in no way mitigates the importance of the Kamloops discovery. But we should consider the harshness of previous times, before letting emotion overtake good sense.
The dead should be appropriately honoured, but we should be mindful that some opportunists will exploit these dead children for financial and political gain. The residential school story has now been exhaustively told. Canadians have heard it – and we get it. We have sympathized, and billions of dollars have been paid by people, most of whom weren’t alive then, to people who mostly weren’t either.
Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
There are much better explanations for the 200+ deaths at Kamloops Indian Residential School. One very important explanation is that Canada had an alarming Child Mortality Rate.
Another explanation is that the Spanish flu which was rampant in the town of Kamloops had spread to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. According to a news article published last week (Mid June 2021 in “Kamloops This Week”), the Spanish Flu had by 1918 infiltrated the small town of Kamloops (which had about 4,000 people in 1918).
There are much better explanations for the deaths at Indian Residential Schools” (Photo of Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops Above) Over the last two weeks of June, 2021, Canadian radio and television have been going hysterical over the discovery of 200+ bodies of Indian children at Kamloops Indian Residential School. As any sane person can see, the hysteria is completely uninformed. Almost all of the “explanations” given by the hysterical media imply that the children were murdered by Catholic supervisors at the residential school. Where is the evidence for this? There is none. The overwhelming point is that the accusation is blatantly defamatory and that it has already led to the burning down of two Catholic churches in southern B.C. and vandalism of Catholic churches in other locations.
Who are the defamers ? Obviously, it is Canada’s media, particularly the CBC. We offer four much more logical explanations for the deaths: One explanation is that, for a number of reasons, all of Canada had an alarming Child Mortality Rate at the time of residential schools. In other words, non-Indian children died in very high numbers all across Canada. Most of those children are now buried in Christian cemeteries (Catholic and other denominations). If skeptics want to unearth bodies to prove that point, they can go to non-Indian children’s graves all across Canada. There are at least tens of thousands of children’s bodies that could be unearthed. What about going after the churches that the parents and children attended? What about blaming God for all of the deaths? Do hysterical Canadians want to blame the churches that stand beside the non-Indian children’s graves for the children’s deaths? That child mortality rate was very high in the early 1800’s, and remained high into the early 1900’s. Some of those reasons are biological and some are immigration-related.
fact, even in 1915, BEFORE the so-called “Spanish Flu epidemic” began, 27% of the population died in Canada as young children. One can assume, that this number was even higher amongst the Indian population. (See statista.com) A second explanation is that the Spanish flu was entrenched in the town of Kamloops and had almost certainly spread to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. According to a news article published last week (Mid June 2021 in “Kamloops This Week”), the Spanish Flu had by 1918 infiltrated the small town of Kamloops (which had about 4,000 people in 1918).
A third explanation is that Canada’s lazy, biased media, particularly the hysterical pot-headed CBC, has suppressed important facts and created a false “reality” which many Canadians have been deceived and socially pressured into accepting. In fact, many Canadians have been convinced that looking for more believable explanations is wrong. That false reality fits with the CBC and private media’s perverted mission to portray Canada’s 400+ year-history as a time of endless crimes. As any sensible Canadian with experience with COVID 19 would have concluded by now, it probably would have taken only minimal contact between someone from the town of Kamloops and someone from the Indian Residential School to start an explosive outbreak of Spanish flu at the Residential School. The following sentence from a 1918 Kamloops Standard-Sentinel article summarizes the wide effect of the Spanish Flu on the town of Kamloops : “Most homes in Kamloops had at least one case of Spanish Flu and, in some cases, entire families were laid up.” A fourth explanation for the 200+ graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School is that the 1890 epidemic of Asiatic/Russian flu and later epidemics probably had had similar effects on the town and on the Kamloops Indian Residential School. In other words, the Asiatic/Russian flu had probably killed a significant number of children at the Indian Residential School. It is also quite likely that in all the epidemics, the supervisors at the Indian Residential School were overwhelmed by the epidemics and had to resort to rushed burials to control the spread of the diseases. In fact, a 1918 article that is cited in the “Kamloops This Week” newspaper article of last week supports that idea. That article states that both Municipal and Provincial authorities had been literally “overwhelmed” by the Spanish flu. As hard as it is to believe, in the past few weeks, not one of the media has even mentioned these four very important and much more believable explanations for the 200+ graves at the school.
The overall point we want to make about the reporting on the discovery of 200+ bodies at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, is that Canada’s media are extremely biased, lazy and irresponsible. All are clamouring for an apology from the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis. If anyone should be apologizing to Canadians, it should be the loutish Canadian media. After all, Canada’s federal government gave our private media hundreds of millions of Canadian taxpayer money in subsidies in the past two years to keep them afloat. Shouldn’t Canadians expect some sense of responsibility in return? Apparently, the subsidized media don’t think so. Therefore, to re-set its collective brain, it would be appropriate now for Canadians to start a class action suit to recover the hundreds of millions in subsidies.
Let’s be blunt: For its irresponsibility in the past two weeks alone, Canada’s private media and their perverted CBC counterparts, both deserve to be thrown out on the street. As for the CBC, which continues to receive close to $2 Billion per year in subsidies from Canadian taxpayers, it has terminal cultural cancer. In its reporting on the Kamloops incident, it has completely betrayed its founding duty to protect Canada’s majority population. It deserves the utmost contempt of all Canadians. All CBC employees should have long ago had their life-support terminated. In fact, long ago, Ottawa should have converted CBC buildings to manure storage. As a food-generating measure, the manure could have been distributed to urban residents who wanted to fertilize their gardens. CBC staff should have been forced to fill bags with manure. After all, they have been filling the “news” bags with manure for years. In fact, filling bags with manure would be the first productive work that most of these people had ever done in their lives. Also, storing manure in CBC buildings would would have also be a much more useful, appropriate and superior use of the CBC’s building space. As for Canada’s private media, many of them have long created their own financial problems as a result of also betraying the trust of the public. In other words, many Canadians have lost confidence in their reporting and regard them as mere hacks. Like the CBC, they have spent most of their time trying to convert Canada’s population to extremely media-biased views rather than telling the truth. For details on what happened in Kamloops in 1918 when the Spanish flu hit Kamloops, read the following: https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/a-look-at-kamloops-during-the-spanish-flu-of-1918-1.24107151 For other very relevant information which you will not find out from the CBC and other Canadian media, see this material that The Canadian Encyclopedia has published on epidemics in Canada: Epidemics in Canada | The Canadian Encyclopedia “Experts believe that five influenza pandemics have affected Canada since Confederation: 1890, 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. “The influenza pandemic commonly known as the Spanish flu developed at the end of the First World War. Its origins are debated. The first outbreaks of the disease occurred in the spring of 1918. The infection traveled back and forth between Europe and North America on the ships carrying troops fighting in the First World War. These troops then introduced the disease into Asia and Africa. The Spanish flu eventually killed about 50 million people worldwide (although estimates range from 20 to 100 million). In Canada, about 50,000 people died, and all parts of the country were affected. The timing of this flu’s development was critical to the eventual success of the virus because there were many people traveling from one part of the world to another. The 1918 flu is widely recognized as the most devastating pandemic in history.
“The name “Spanish flu” emerged as the result of media censorship by the military in Allied countries during the war. These countries suppressed the reporting of the viral infection and death of soldiers. However, in Spain, which was neutral during the First World War, the media widely reported the high incidence of death from the illness. The name of the virus became associated with Spain as a result. “It was not until 1933 that researchers isolated human influenza viruses. This is one of the first steps in the development of a vaccine that can be used to prevent the disease. “Canada was hit hard by the illness, from cities to the most remote communities.
More than 3,000 people died in Montreal alone, while Toronto lost about 1,600 to the disease. More than 8,700 people died in Ontario. There were 4,000 deaths in Alberta and 5,000 in Saskatchewan. Indigenous communities were hit particularly hard. At the time, the Department of Indian Affairs reported 3,700 deaths out of a total population of 106,000. Entire Haida settlements on the western coast of British Columbia were lost to the disease. “Most Canadian communities adopted measures designed to contain the spread of the virus. In Alberta, people were required to wear face masks in public. In Regina, people could be fined for public coughing or sneezing. In Winnipeg, people could be fined 50 dollars for spitting in the streets and all public gatherings were banned. Canada first established the Department of Health in 1919 in response to Spanish flu.”
These nurses are ‘leveling up’ their moves to Ciara’s hit dance challenge
COVID 19 is a rather unimpressive “pandemic.” The government is lying to you. Masks, lock-downs, social distancing – think about what they’re really doing to you. They don’t want to protect you; they want to control you. They use the standard formula for brainwashing: despair, deprivation, and dread. That’s what we have with our so-called pandemic. Not protection. Control. There have been various “pandemics” over the last few thousand years. The 14th-century Black Death may have killed 200 million people, and that was when the world population itself was much smaller. The Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 killed perhaps 40 or 50 million people. In 1957 the Asian Flu killed about a million people, and in 1968 the Hong Kong Flu also killed a million. Neither of those events in 1957 and 1968 was a major news item. The big news of 1957 was that Elvis Presley was starring in two movies.
The main difference between 1957 and 1968 and now? Then: no masks, no lock-down, no social distancing, no global economy crushed down to Great Depression level, and no government by martial law. (By the way, one million is only one percent of one percent of 8 billion, the world population. No, that’s not a misprint.)
There are about 77,000 radio and TV stations around the world. Starting in early 2020, it seemed that all of them were talking almost all day about COVID 19. At the same time, political leaders started chanting expressions such as “the New Normal” and “the Great Reset.” It was hard to imagine what sort of organization would be big enough to jump-start such an operation as “COVID 19” and keep it rolling for such a long time.
The expressions being intoned were in fact the words of Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, disguised as a great new opportunity for humanity, but really a massive attempt at global dictatorship. Imagine a “lock-down” that goes on for the centuries.
Don’t let your own fear be used as a weapon against you.
