“Residential School Mass Grave Mania”

Almost 100 Christian churches in Canada have been systematically targeted in apparent revenge attacks following a hoax about mass graves containing Native American children.

In 2021, a horrific story swept the internet as an indigenous group in Saskatchewan claimed to find 751 unmarked graves under the Marieval Indian Residential School, weeks after 215 children were supposedly discovered under another school in British Columbia.

The schools were run by Christian churches – largely Catholic – and sought to eliminate their students’ Indigenous culture so they could ‘assimilate’ into Canadian society.

Nearly 100 Canadian churches have been burned or vandalized since 2021.

As of January 2, 2024, 96 churches across Canada have been attacked since media claims of unmarked graves at residential schools in 2021, according to a map created by independent media outlet True North.  

There has been a fourth church fire in Alberta this month suspected of being caused by arson, this time destroying the Beiseker Seventh Day Adventist Church, according to the RCMP.

On Dec. 20, the Airdrie Integrated Rural RCMP received a report of a fire at the church near the village of Beiseker, which is located about 50 kilometres northeast of Calgary. Fire crews from the Rockyford Fire Department responded to the incident after receiving a call at 6 a.m., but by the time they arrived, the church was fully engulfed in flames, RCMP said in a release.

The new book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) constitutes a response to the moral panic unleashed in Canada on May 27, 2021, when the Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (aka, the Kamloops Indian Band) announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the grounds of the local residential school.

Barrhead RCMP and Barrhead Fire Services are investigating two arson fires that have severely damaged two of the town’s churches on Thursday night.

At approximately 7:52 p.m. police responded to a structural fire at The Glenreagh Church, located on Range Road 40 in Barrhead. At 9 p.m. police responded to a second structure fire at The United Church, located on Range Road 54 in Barrhead, according to a Friday morning news release.

WAUZHUSHK ONIGUM NATION – A First Nation in northwestern Ontario says it has found 22 areas where human remains may be buried at the site of a former residential school.

The Wauzhushk Onigum Nation, near Kenora, Ont., was “alerted” to the areas at the site of the former St. Mary’s Residential School(opens in a new tab) in mid-August after using a cadaver dog to conduct ground searches in and around the old school grounds.

Opened in 1897 at Rat Portage in northwestern Ontario this school was first known as the Rat Portage Boarding School, then the Kenora Boarding School and then St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic School. From 1938 it was known as St. Mary’s School. Early in its history, the local band negotiated an agreement that students would not be converted to Catholicism against their parent’s will.

Nearly half of Canadians have no plans to mark National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

A new survey found that 48 per cent of Canadians say they won’t be taking any specific action to recognize National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

This is according to Leger, a data analytics company that surveyed more than 1,600 Canadians to better understand their awareness of Indigenous communities.

The data found that 24 per cent of Canadians think they are much more aware of Indigenous history in Canada than they were four to five years ago.

CARCROSS, YUKON – Yukon First Nation elder Sandra Johnson says the discovery of 15 potential graves near the site of a former residential school has “uncovered long-buried wounds.”

Johnson spoke Tuesday at the release of an investigation into unmarked graves and the deaths of children who attended the former Chooutla Residential School in Carcross, south of Whitehorse.