Residential Schools

A neighbourhood named after a key architect of the Roman Catholic Church in western Canada will be no more by Sept. 1, 2025, at the latest.

A Vancouver theological college cancelled a March 6 public lecture by Oxford professor and member of the House of Lords Nigel Biggar after alumni took to social media accusing the speaker of being a residential school apologist and “mass graves denier.”

Though much lauded, can what is documented in the Oscar-nominated film Sugarcane actually be believed?

Since the May 2021 announcement by Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology had located the remains of 215 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Canada has been embroiled in difficult attempts to come to terms with claims of mass graves, murder and genocide.

Though Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Kúkpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir has stepped back on her 2021 claims of 215 bodies found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), now referring to them as "anomalies," she said investigations to date still lead to the belief they are "unmarked burials."

Canada’s Catholic bishops deserve full credit for sticking with their commitment to, as Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith has framed it, walk the whole long path of Indigenous reconciliation.

Within days of the rhetorical pivot from “children” to “anomalies,” the head of the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations floated another theory on why no human remains have ever been discovered on the grounds of former residential schools.

The $7.9 million allocated to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation for “field work” at the alleged site of 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops, B.C. is only a small portion of the $110 million allocated to Indigenous communities to help them search and document burial sites at former residential schools.

Following an exhaustive investigation, retired Superior Court of Quebec Justice André Denis concluded French priest Joannès Rivoire was guilty of sexually assaulting five minors in Naujaat, Nunavut, between 1968 and 1970, and one in Arviat and Whale Cove, Nunavut, between 1974 and 1979.