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Or sign-in if you have an account.Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation is seen in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Sept. 2, 2021. In May of 2021, Kasimir issued a statement saying ground-penetrating radar had found the remains of 215 children in unmarked graves on the site of the former school. Three years later however, the First Nation clarified that all the “preliminary” investigation had found were “anomalies” in the ground rather than confirmed graves. No remains have yet been found. Photo by COLE BURSTON / AFP via Getty Images)Five years ago Canada was sold a narrative so emotionally charged that it changed this country for the worse.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. 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Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorTruth has been twisted out of proportion, people’s lives have been devastated, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted and all based on a spurious investigation that hoodwinked the nation.On May 27, 2021, Chief Rosanne Casimir, of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, issued a statement “confirming” that ground-penetrating radar had found the remains of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.“Some were as young as three years old,” said the statement.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe next day, she gave a press conference in which she said, “This loss is unthinkable,” and added that she believed other bodies were waiting to be discovered at Indian residential schools throughout the country. “There are many out there,” she said.If Casimir was to be believed, it wasn’t just heartbreaking, it was horrific. Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau was so affected that he ordered all federal flags to be lowered to half-mast, a position they stayed at for almost six months.But even at this early stage, nothing really had been confirmed. Not a lot was even known back in 2021. And what was known was kept secret and is still under wraps.Everything that was spawned from May 2021 onwards came directly from the work of Sarah Beaulieu, an assistant professor in anthropology and sociology at the University of the Fraser Valley, who conducted a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) investigation on May 21-24 of that year.At a press conference in July 2021, Beaulieu described using GPR over a two-acre site near an apple orchard at the former Indian residential school.It was Beaulieu who introduced lurid details into the tale.The site was chosen, she said, because “knowledge keepers’ oral histories” recalled “children as young as six years old being woken in the night to dig holes for burials in the apple orchard.”However, to date, the report of Beaulieu has never been released, despite the federal government paying $40,000 for the work. It has never been subject to scrutiny nor have other experts had the opportunity to challenge it.From the very beginning, it was never about truth, it was about establishing a narrative.And far from finding the graves of children, all the “preliminary” investigation found was “anomalies” — a fact the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation later recognized in a 2024 statement.But the damage had already been done and the consequences are still ongoing.Since the Kamloops announcement, more than 100 Christian churches have been burnt to the ground or vandalized.Canada felt ashamed and disgusted. Young people especially felt guilty. A Leger poll in 2023 for the Association for Canadian Studies found 25 per cent of people aged 18-24 said they felt personally responsible for past injustices against Indigenous people.Those who searched for the truth were fired, arrested, ended up in court or subjected to disciplinary action.Jim McMurtry was fired by the Abbotsford District School Board for daring to tell Grade 12 students that most students at Indian residential schools died from tuberculosis.Frances Widdowson, a former associate professor at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, has been harassed, surrounded by protesters and arrested by police all in an effort to shed light on the Kamloops findings.B.C. lawyer James Heller simply wanted his own law society to talk about “potential” graves in Kamloops. But the law society was so reluctant and the dispute became so vitriolic that Heller ended up in a libel action against it.Ron Paull, the mayor of Quesnel, B.C., was censured and removed from numerous committees because his wife distributed a book that was skeptical of the Kamloops “discoveries.” He eventually won a lawsuit that saw the disciplinary action quashed.Meanwhile, the federal government established the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund to “locate and document burial sites associated with former residential schools.”More than $247 million has been spent of a total of $416 million in allocated funds.The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation has received about $10 million, but still no bodies have been found.Astonishingly, politicians, institutions and large parts of the country were happy to reject any skepticism and embrace the narrative wholeheartedly.Five years later, to question the narrative is to be denounced as a denialist; the GPR report is still under lock and key; hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent without accountability or results; and the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation has backtracked on its original statement.The issue isn’t that no bodies have been found, it’s that we were told that the graves of children had been “confirmed.”Despite this, a poll last year found almost 40 per cent of Canadians were willing to accept the Kamloops children’s grave theory “even if no further information is publicly offered.”That’s an incredible number of people who believe compassion, or at least allyship, is more important than truth.But the truth matters because it goes hand-in-hand with trust, which is needed to bind relationships, communities, societies and nations. Get rid of truth and the result is chaos.The Kamloops narrative has left in its wake five disruptive and discontented years. It’s time to put it to rest.National Post Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.