History Reclaimed has followed very closely the story that hundreds of native children died or were murdered in former residential schools where they were educated by Canadian churches in decades past. It always seemed to us to have the characteristics of an ideological panic. There was no evidence, and attempts to investigate the supposed sites of these mass burials, particularly at Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, were always rebuffed by indigenous tribal leaders who supported the myth of mass murder but wouldn’t allow the search for human remains.
This didn’t stop a whole variety of leaders, from the Pope and Justin Trudeau down, from believing the myths and propagating them. Historians, anthropologists, educationists and others whom we respected gave it no credence, and they have written for History Reclaimed to explain why. They were told they were ‘deniers’ and threatened with a law that would ban them from telling the truth. The timing of the whole affair suggested that it was part of the hysterical wave of guilt and self-loathing that has swept across the democratic West beginning around 2015. In Canada the effects of this, stoked by these lies, were probably worse than anywhere else. Dozens of churches and other buildings were set on fire by arsonists at the beginning of this decade.
But now we learn that quietly – of course, without fanfare – the Canadian government has closed down the inquiry into alleged mass murder, the ‘National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials’. https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/02/canada-gives-up-trying-to-prove-the-mass-graves-hoax/
According to the Catholic Herald (3 March 2025), ‘After three years of searching for bodies, at the cost of $216.5 million, not a single set of human remains have been found’ https://thecatholicherald.com/failure-to-find-bodies-ends-canadas-inquiry-in-mass-burials-at-church-run-schools/. We told them that from the start because this had all the hallmarks of a confected political campaign.
No one doubts that the conditions and regimes in these residential schools were different from those in schools today: they were largely Victorian foundations, educating in a Victorian manner and should be judged as such. Today, educationists have much more respect for children’s indigenous culture. But teaching basic literacy, numeracy and skills so these children could find a place and a job in Canadian society circa 1900 was no sin, and no one set out to commit mass murder. As historians have explained, diseases like tuberculosis were rife on Indian reservations and in Indian communities, and it was from these that children in the schools died, not planned killing.
Still the ideological panic endures. Our good friend, roving reporter, and man on the spot, Professor Nigel Biggar, Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas, happens to be in Canada today, 5 March 2025, and has been prevented from speaking – ‘cancelled’ – at Regent College in the University of British Columbia by university authorities cowed by student protestors. They have called Nigel a ‘residential schools apologist and mass graves denier’. Knowing Lord Biggar as we do, we don’t think the truth will dismay him. For his part, Nigel has accused the college of
aiding and abetting the continuing reign of an aggressively repressive culture in Canada, which is invested in a story that thoroughly and unfairly discredits the work of Christian missions and justifies the razing to the ground of dozens of Christian churches.
But this is no war of words now. The Lord Biggar is right; there never was any truth in a story that has run for a decade. It is time very many people apologised for their part in a lie which has had such awful consequences. History Reclaimed is pleased to have disbelieved that lie as soon as we heard about it.
