Michael Higgins: Put the Kamloops narrative to rest

Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation is seen in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Sept. 2, 2021. In May of 2021, Kasimir issued a statement saying ground-penetrating radar had found the remains of 215 children in unmarked graves on the site of the former school. Three years later however, the First Nation clarified that all the “preliminary” investigation had found were “anomalies” in the ground rather than confirmed graves. No remains have yet been found. Photo by COLE BURSTON / AFP via Getty Images)

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Five years ago Canada was sold a narrative so emotionally charged that it changed this country for the worse.

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Truth has been twisted out of proportion, people’s lives have been devastated, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted and all based on a spurious investigation that hoodwinked the nation.

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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.

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“Some were as young as three years old,” said the statement.

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The next day, she gave a press conference in which she said, “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.

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If Casimir was to be believed, it wasn’t just heartbreaking, it was 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.

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But even at this early stage, nothing really had been confirmed. Not a lot was even known back in 2021. And what was known was kept secret and is still under wraps.

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Everything that was 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.

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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.

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It was Beaulieu who introduced lurid details into the tale.

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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.”

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However, to date, the report of Beaulieu 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.

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From the very beginning, it was never about truth, it was about establishing a narrative.

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And 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.

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But the damage had already been done and the consequences are still ongoing.

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Since the Kamloops announcement, more than 100 Christian churches have been burnt to the ground or vandalized.

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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.