“Glad you are interested in the most serious crime in Canadian history. » The tone of the email from historian Jacques Rouillard, to whom I had asked for an interview on the anonymous burials discovered on the grounds of former native residential schools, was sarcastic.
If I had spoken to anyone else, it could have been totally serious. For many people, the thousands of potential graves of indigenous children reported over the past three years across Canada are indeed evidence of the worst crime ever perpetrated in the history of this country. More than a vast assimilation operation; a genocide.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the history department of the University of Montreal
But not for Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the history department of the University of Montreal. For him, this story of anonymous burials does not hold water. “It’s a radioactive subject that the major dailies in Canada want to avoid,” he wrote to me.
I went for it, despite everything. I contacted him in Victoria, British Columbia, where he had gone to consult the archives of the Sisters of Saint Anne of Montreal, who taught at the Kamloops residential school. “I had special access to the chronicles of the Sisters of Saint Anne. The chronicles are the boarding school logbook. »
With his nose buried in these chronicles of the daily life of Quebec nuns, the retired historian continues a quest begun three years ago. He is looking for evidence of a very serious crime. And, of course, he doesn’t find any.
Some will accuse him of not looking in the right places. To refuse to hear the testimonies of former indigenous residents, each more heartbreaking than the last. Some will call him a “residential school denier”, an offense that the federal government is considering criminalizing.
That seems excessive to me, as a measure. I do not believe that it is the best way to move forward on the path of truth and reconciliation to prevent Canadians from asking questions, even if they are radioactive, to use Jacques Rouillard’s expression. That said, these questions must be handled with the greatest care.
And look for the answers wherever they may be found.
PHOTO ANDREW SNUCINS, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Wooden stakes indicate where the graves would be located, on the site of the former boarding school, on May 27, 2021.
On May 27, 2021, leaders of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the discovery of 215 anonymous child burials in the orchard of the former Kamloops residential school, administered by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
The shock was immediate. And huge. Even though it had long been known that thousands of children did not return home from residential schools across the country. We knew the tragedy of these children, torn from their families, cut off from their language and culture, too often mistreated, neglected, sexually assaulted. We thought we knew everything about the Canadian assimilation policy aimed at “killing the Indian in the child”.
IMAGE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES WEBSITE
Screenshot of text from New York Times
Except that in Kamloops, it was no longer about that. It was a question of simply killing the Indian. And to bury him, in secret, in the orchard. Well, that’s what a lot of people understood at the time. Hence the scale of the national shock. And the cuff of New York Times1 announcing the discovery of a “common grave” of indigenous children…
The flags were flown at half-mast for five months, an unprecedented event in Canadian history. National Day celebrations were canceled. As if, for the first time, the country understood the full extent of the tragedy of the residential schools.
For too long, we had not believed what the Aboriginal people were saying, I wrote in a column2. “We needed evidence. They came suddenly, in the form of children’s bodies. »
But there you have it, this “evidence” didn’t really come.
Three years after the announcement of their discovery, the 215 bodies of children have still not been exhumed from the orchard of the former Kamloops residential school.
Many expected excavation work to begin quickly, since the graves had been detected by ground-penetrating radar. In theory, we therefore knew precisely where each of the small bodies was located.
PHOTO JENNIFER GAUTHIER, REUTERS ARCHIVES
The leader of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc community, Rosanne Casimir
“It looks like a crime scene with so many potential children in unmarked graves,” Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc community leader Rosanne Casimir told The Fifth Estate, CBC flagship show, in January 2022. “Families need answers, the community needs answers, the world needs answers. »
The First Nation then announced its decision to dig. The orchard would soon be transformed into an archaeological dig site. Weeks, months, then years passed. The community hasn’t given much news anymore.
In this silence, false notes began to be heard.
IMAGE FROM THE NEW YORK POST WEBSITE
Screenshot of text from New York Post
In May 2022, the National Post exposed how many initial news reports were wrong about mass graves, when they were unmarked graves, often in old, abandoned cemeteries3. THE New York Post added in a more sensationalist tone, denouncing “The biggest fake news in Canada”4.
And then, this spring, the book Grave Error – How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), rose to first place in sales, Canadian literature category, on the Amazon site. In British Columbia, the mayor of a small town was sanctioned by his municipal council for having distributed the essay described as “denialist” to his fellow citizens.
Jacques Rouillard signs the first chapter of Serious Error. He takes up the thesis that he had presented in January 2022 in the Dorchester Review, a conservative – and openly provocative – English-Canadian history journal5. “In Kamloops, not a single body was found,” he emphasized.
Marc Miller, then Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, reacted strongly to X. “The macabre demand to see corpses […] is not only in very bad taste, but also retraumatizing for the survivors and their families,” he wrote. Articles like that of Mr. Rouillard, he added, “are part of a trend of denial and distortion of reality which has marked the discourse on residential schools in Canada. They are harmful because they attempt to deprive survivors and their families of the truth, and they distort Canadians’ full understanding of our history.”
Jacques Rouillard does not deny the abuse committed at residential schools or the horribly disproportionate mortality rate of Indigenous children who attended them. According to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, at least 4,100 children have died in these institutions, often swept away by devastating waves of measles or tuberculosis.
What the historian refuses to admit is that it is suggested that the Quebec brothers and sisters responsible for the Kamloops residential school coldly, deliberately killed children, then tried to cover up their crimes by burying them in the orchard . In 2022, The Fifth Estate reported boys being hanged, babies thrown into a furnace, children forced to dig in the orchard in the middle of the night to bury their comrades6…
Jacques Rouillard persists and signs: he wants proof.
1. Read the article “Horrible History: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada” from New York Times (in English, subscription required)
2. Read the column “Between the Furnace and the Rink”
3. Read the article “How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves” from National Post (in English)
4. Read the article ““Biggest fake news story in Canada”: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics” from New York Post (in English)
5. Read the article “In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found” by The Dorchester Review (in English)
6. Watch the report from The Fifth Estate from CBC on YouTube (in English)