Juno News - B.C. city councillors suppress book challenging residential school narrative

00:00:00.000 I want to turn our attention to a controversy in British Columbia where a city council is

00:00:15.420 reeling after people in the community were exposed to heterodox views. The setting for

00:00:21.160 this is the city of Quinnell where the mayor's wife decided to hand out to some people copies

00:00:27.260 of a book that was as it happened published by True North. The book is called Grave Error. It was

00:00:32.520 written well it was edited by CP Champion and Professor Tom Flanagan. It features a number of

00:00:38.740 essays from some incredibly esteemed scholars and contributors that are talking about Canadian

00:00:45.300 history a version of Canadian history that you aren't really getting even though it is a version

00:00:50.720 that is supported by volumes and volumes of evidence. So it's put in a book a book that was a bestseller

00:00:56.880 on Amazon has sold thousands of copies but has been blacklisted by several libraries and as it

00:01:02.800 happened is now facing this ridiculous investigation inquiry apology by a city council. Tom Flanagan

00:01:11.360 joins me now. Tom always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on and congratulations for all

00:01:16.520 the success of the book too. Oh thanks Andrew. So what on earth happened in this British Columbia

00:01:22.240 community? Well the the mayor's wife her name is Pat Morton she's a I don't know what her professional

00:01:29.360 designation is but she her business is filing tax returns. She was she liked she read the book she

00:01:38.080 liked it so she bought 10 copies and was giving them to people or places where she thought it might do

00:01:46.160 some good. There are four small Indian bands in the area around the town of Quenelle and they heard of

00:01:56.080 what was going on that she was giving out these books so they sent a letter to city council said

00:02:03.360 they wanted to meet to discuss the book so they showed up and basically they bullied the council into

00:02:11.280 voting to condemn the book even though none of them had ever read the book. They all said no no we

00:02:17.600 haven't read it first time we've seen it but we'll vote to condemn it anyway. Then the same thing happened

00:02:25.840 with the school board. Pat had given a copy to the school board. All this took place without the knowledge

00:02:33.040 of myself or any of the other authors you know she just did it on her own. So the school board voted to

00:02:39.200 condemn it as well. I don't still don't know if anybody's actually read the book. Yeah they all

00:02:45.280 I mean even some of the comments you hear are basically from people saying well you know I

00:02:49.120 started reading it and I didn't like it or oh I heard so and so said you know this was offensive.

00:02:54.080 You know when I first heard of this this controversy you know distributed in the community

00:02:58.080 it sounded like someone had bought like you know the entire inventory on Amazon and was just like

00:03:02.560 going out distributing them door to door and then you learn as you've just shared that a woman who liked

00:03:07.600 the book bought a handful of copies and handed them out and I still fail to see how this is a city

00:03:13.040 council matter. Well it's because she's the wife of the mayor I guess. Which has no official I mean 0.64

00:03:21.280 there's no first lady of Quesnel I mean she has no official status with the city. Of course not but

00:03:26.320 they claim that because she's married to the mayor that it that makes a difference. I should say in

00:03:33.120 passing that the whole ruckus is has been a boost uh for our sales of the book you can track your

00:03:40.400 not the actual number of sales but you can track your ranking on the Amazon website of where you

00:03:46.480 stand relative to other books and um we we shot up over 90 places in the books category once this uh

00:03:56.400 once this happened we had slipped down below 100 and the next day we shot up to seven so um yeah it's

00:04:05.040 been great for us. Well fair fair enough I mean you can embrace the the silver lining of that Tom but

00:04:11.920 let me ask you about kind of the context here because one of the terms that that has been used in in

00:04:17.280 coverage of this even and certainly CBC's narrative on what happened in Quesnel is that this is residential

00:04:23.920 school denialism and and they basically make claims about the book or they make claims about what the

00:04:29.280 book says that the book doesn't actually say. No uh much of the book is uh devoted to examining the

00:04:37.920 announcement that came out of Kamloops uh the the notorious announcement about 215 unmarked graves

00:04:45.520 uh we also look at a couple of other similar announcements as well like the one from blue quills there

00:04:52.320 been multiple from blue quills but we looked at one of them that was available at the time and some

00:04:57.520 others as well uh trying to look at actual evidence and the first thing to um to be to understand is

00:05:06.960 that there is no physical evidence of unmarked graves the only evidence if you could call it that

00:05:12.320 is the results of ground penetrating radar which at best can uh show soil disturbances or soil anomalies

00:05:21.360 it doesn't tell you what uh what's there in order to know what's there you have to dig

00:05:26.800 and um there have been a few digs around the country most recently at pine creek reserve

00:05:32.880 um on the border between saskatchewan and manitoba in the basement of the mission church there

00:05:39.600 didn't find anything and none of the digs have turned up any you know no bones no shrouds no caskets

00:05:47.120 nothing that that uh could be linked to a burial um so absolute absence of physical evidence i'm not

00:05:57.360 saying that no child was ever buried near a residential school i you know you can't say that but i think

00:06:03.120 the burden of proof is on the other side to say yeah there were burials and they haven't come forward

00:06:07.680 with any evidence that that uh is at all persuasive they just demand that you believe on the basis of

00:06:16.800 a combination of ground penetrating radar and memories um you know at this point these memories

00:06:23.520 are really quite old schools the last school shut down in 1996 but most of them were shut down long

00:06:29.760 before that so when you're hearing memories they're usually actually something that somebody heard from

00:06:35.840 his father or his grandfather you know it could be 60 70 even 100 years old um so they're demanding

00:06:44.240 that you believe this and if you don't believe it you're called a denialist but we're not denying

00:06:50.480 anything we're just saying show us the evidence so that's a big part of the book is looking at these

00:06:54.880 claims about unmarked graves now related to that is the claim about missing children uh this is a

00:07:02.080 related claim these unmarked graves supposedly hold the the bodies of of the missing children but just

00:07:09.920 as there are no unmarked graves uh there are no missing children uh the children were all carefully

00:07:16.000 accounted for in the schools they had to be because the government was paying a um per capita uh payment to

00:07:23.600 the uh religious bodies that ran the schools and the government was wasn't going to fork over money

00:07:29.920 without some evidence that the kids were there so and the the churches weren't going to let the kids

00:07:36.800 go missing because they needed to uh proffer the evidence so they could continue to get the money

00:07:42.720 so there are no missing children again these these allegations have been made

00:07:48.240 excuse me andrew i'm getting over a cold and it's not the greatest but i'm doing the best i can

00:07:52.400 um did children die at schools uh well absolutely um most of this took place before there was a cure

00:08:02.000 for tuberculosis and tuberculosis was rampant not only well in all of canada actually but particularly

00:08:10.880 in native communities uh was probably worse on the reserves than in the schools but it was bad enough 0.99

00:08:18.160 in the schools and yes kids died but there are there are death certificates um you can get from the

00:08:25.280 department of uh vital records of the provinces you know and they show cause of death and where the

00:08:30.800 child is buried so you know there are no missing children now there are some records that are missing in

00:08:36.800 the sense that over the course of 150 years sometimes not everything gets kept but basically you can see

00:08:44.960 what was going on and uh once streptomycin was discovered then the death rate cratered phenomenally

00:08:55.360 now sadly occasionally a kid would die there'd be accidents you know skating on thin ice uh different

00:09:02.080 things can happen over the course of you know 150 schools over 150 years there's going to be some

00:09:09.360 tragic accidents but there's no mass disappearance of uh of children so much of the book is you know

00:09:15.920 kind of prosaic looking at the documentary evidence about these claims of unmarked graves and missing

00:09:22.800 children another claim is that children were forced to attend well again this doesn't hold water um

00:09:31.280 indian children were not required to attend any school

00:09:34.560 until 1920 uh amendment to the indian act at that time uh prior to that all attendance was voluntary

00:09:43.280 and uh after 1920 attendance at a residential school was required only if there was no day school

00:09:51.440 convenient in a convenient location um just just just to bring it back tom to the

00:10:00.160 to the issues that sort of have come from you raising these points is that people are not willing to

00:10:06.640 engage in a debate on the facts they're not willing to engage on a debate engage in a debate on the

00:10:12.400 merits because i mean you're a political scientist by by training and you have quite a lengthy career in

00:10:17.040 academia i mean i would assume that your hope would be that you put a book like this out and if people

00:10:21.920 dispute it they publish their own book they publish their own response and and we're seeing now

00:10:26.160 increasingly that people don't want to do that instead they say you know how dare you and and

00:10:30.960 without actually arguing with a single premise or conclusion yeah very true it's sad the the

00:10:38.480 contributors to the book are uh excuse me um people whose careers involve dealing with facts uh retired

00:10:49.840 professors in various fields like history or political science or sociology um lawyers judges

00:10:58.320 journalists uh that's the common denominator for almost all the contributors is uh a focus on fact

00:11:05.760 and that's what we've tried to do in the book but what's happening at cornell is a refusal to look

00:11:11.200 at facts and just try and shout down the book before anybody gets a chance to read it

00:11:15.920 so well i'm glad i'm glad that it's been beneficial on the sales front at least so a bit of a i i don't

00:11:23.120 know maybe a bit of a pyrrhic victory for the council in winning there well i appreciate you straining your

00:11:30.720 voice to join us today tom always good to talk to you drink some uh drink some nice uh honey and lemon

00:11:35.360 tea or something and hopefully you recover but appreciate your time as always thanks bye-bye thanks for

00:11:40.400 listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - March 29, 2024

B.C. city councillors suppress book challenging residential school narrative

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