Five years ago, Canada was sold a narrative so emotionally charged that it changed this country for the worse. The issue is not that no bodies have been found, but that we were told the graves of children had been 'confirmed.' Truth has been twisted out of proportion, people's lives have been devastated, and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, all based on a spurious investigation that hoodwinked the nation.
The Initial Announcement
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,' the statement read. The next day, she held a press conference, saying, '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 was not just heartbreaking but 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.
Lack of Confirmation
But even at this early stage, nothing really had been confirmed. Not a lot was even known back in 2021. What was known was kept secret and is still under wraps. Everything that 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, Beaulieu's report 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.
The Narrative vs. Reality
From the very beginning, it was never about truth; it was about establishing a narrative. 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.
It is time to put the Kamloops narrative to rest and demand accountability for the misinformation that has caused so much harm.
