Frances Widdowson is a political analyst and former professor at Mount Royal University. She has been on a relentless pursuit of truth about what happened in Kamloops, and has experienced one closed door after another. Today, she will recount her investigation to date, so Canadians can decide for themselves what really happened there.
00:00:00.000Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.
00:00:21.840I'm Jen Hodson, filling in for Nigel Hannaford while he's away on holiday.
00:00:26.280It's Thursday, July 10th, 2025, and my guest today is Frances Widdowson, political analyst and wrongfully terminated professor at Mount Royal University.
00:00:41.120Frances and her team released a documentary called What Remains, where they went to Kamloops, where 215 bodies were alleged to be found.
00:00:50.380However, to this day, no bodies have been found and no remains reported to be excavated.
00:00:58.500Frances has been on a relentless pursuit of truth about what happened in Kamloops and has experienced one closed door after another.
00:01:06.720Today, she will recount her investigation to date so Canadians can decide for themselves what really happened in Kamloops and with all of these alleged remains of children from Indigenous schools from the last century or more.
00:01:23.280So, Frances, thank you for joining us today in the studio.
00:01:29.340So, let's just go back to the beginning and talk about what inspired you to go on this journey of investigating what actually did happen in Kamloops.
00:01:40.760We know that allegations came out from mainstream media, which the Trudeau Liberals at the time, they jumped on this.
00:01:49.960Federal flags, Canadian flags were raised to half mass that summer.
00:01:54.620For several months, Justin Trudeau made a public outcry about it.
00:02:00.780The Pope came and made a formal apology.
00:02:03.940So, what is it that struck you that something wasn't right?
00:02:12.180So, when I was a professor at Mount Royal University, one of the reasons why I got pushed out of Mount Royal was because of my stance on the residential schools and my opposition to the argument that the residential schools were genocidal.
00:02:27.680So, I was busy criticizing this position, which had become official policy at Mount Royal University.
00:02:34.780The general faculty's council had voted to declare that the residential schools were genocidal.
00:02:44.000So, I had been studying this for quite some time since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Report.
00:02:50.000So, when the announcement was made, because of my awareness of the kinds of fabrications that often were going on with respect to this issue, I was a bit skeptical about this announcement.
00:03:03.700And I wasn't sure what to think of it.
00:03:07.240I thought perhaps it was an abandoned cemetery.
00:03:10.540That's often the case, that there are many cemeteries in Canada where the grave markers have deteriorated.
00:03:17.860And you see these, in fact, on Aboriginal reserves.
00:03:21.280And in the case of the Kamloops Reserve, there is a cemetery on that reserve and many of the markers are no longer there.
00:03:30.400So, I held an event with Brian Giesbrecht and Rod Clifton and Paul Viminitz in, I believe it was July 10th, 2021.
00:03:42.760Yes, called, Can We Discuss Those Unmarked Graves?
00:03:46.840And, you know, the answer was, well, we're discussing them right now, but you do so at your peril because you will be attacked and you'll be told that you're a racist and you are a person who doesn't care about Aboriginal people.
00:04:01.680And that was the kind of thing that was happening until I eventually was pushed out of Mount Royal University.
00:04:07.720So, I've been fighting for the truth with respect to Aboriginal policy and other issues, which would be characterized as woke, which is identity politics that has become totalitarian.
00:04:22.520And with respect to this issue, we are now four years in and the time is now.
00:04:29.040$12.1 million have been allocated to do the excavations at Kamloops.
00:04:35.060Many people think that the excavations have been done, but they have not.
00:04:40.240And we do not have one parent who has said that their child never came home from the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
00:04:47.140So, if there are remains in that apple orchard, who would those remains belong to?
00:04:54.800Who would the people who have been murdered or some kind of foul play that has gone on, that has resulted in those remains being there?
00:05:02.100Because there is a cemetery on the Kamloops Reserve, so any remains that would be in that apple orchard would be clandestine burials.
00:05:11.440And we need to find out if there are actually people buried in that apple orchard.
00:05:18.360Now, so these claims were made early on by first Indigenous groups, picked up by media, picked up by politicians, until it became like a whole machine that became dangerous to speak out against.
00:05:36.240So, your job was threatened, and you've had all kinds of different experiences of resistance around this.
00:07:49.460And Leah Gazan, when she gave a talk in Pell River, which is, you know, the What Remains documentary is looking at how the Kamloops claim played out in Pell River.
00:08:00.740She said that she could think of nothing more violent than a person who was a residential school student saying,
00:08:11.320this is what they think happened, and you would tell them that you disagreed with them and did not think that what they were claiming was true.
00:08:18.540She said that that was the most violent thing that she could even imagine, which is shocking,
00:08:25.180because, of course, we know of many, many terribly violent acts that have happened in human history,
00:08:32.440the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the death squads in Latin America, all sorts of wars,
00:08:39.800and for someone like Leah Gazan, who's a member of Parliament, to be making this kind of claim is just absolutely absurd.
00:09:05.360You know, some people might say, well, follow the money.
00:09:07.560And so Indigenous groups have been allocated, I think you said $12.1 million, to perform these evacuations,
00:09:18.720but yet very few excavations have been done, and nothing has been found.
00:09:29.060So wouldn't it serve the case of those that are perpetuating this unmarked graves claim that they could actually find some remains?
00:09:37.660So why aren't we seeing more work being done about that?
00:09:41.020Yes. So there's been massive amounts of funds that have been distributed.
00:09:45.340I believe it was $320 million for across Canada for groups to pursue trying to find what they call missing children.
00:09:57.020And Kimberly Murray, who's a special interlocutor, who, again, millions of dollars spent to have her be, you know, investigating this matter.
00:10:07.540She said in 2023, in a committee meeting, that there are no missing children, that the children are in cemeteries.
00:10:18.320So what you have is you have children in cemeteries where people don't exactly know where in that cemetery that child was buried.
00:12:17.480And so before we get any further into the issue, why don't we talk about this documentary, What Remains?
00:12:23.840So you went to Kamloops, you were at Thompson Rivers University there.
00:12:29.580Why don't you tell us about your experience?
00:12:31.540Our viewers might be interested to know a little background about the documentary before they check it out,
00:12:36.280and we will link beneath this video so people can easily access that documentary.
00:12:42.600So why don't you give us some background?
00:12:44.180What Remains is sort of the first installment of probably it's going to be a series.
00:12:49.940So What Remains was looking at the case of Powell River.
00:12:53.580So what happened is that the Kamloops announcement was made in May 2021.
00:13:00.840Immediately there was a demand that the name of Powell River be changed and a lot of other kinds of initiatives were pushed through.
00:13:07.420So what happened is that Simon Haregott, who's the incredible videographer who did the videography for What Remains,
00:13:16.540he and I traveled to Powell River and we just covered a talk that I gave about the Kamloops case and the lack of evidence for the claim that the remains of 215 children have been found.
00:13:30.660And also did interviews in Powell River and looked at things like this sign that they have the Tlaman Nation, which is the Aboriginal group.
00:13:42.640There has this sign which says 10,068.
00:13:46.200So we were investigating what this meant, this number 10,068.
00:13:52.140We also went and because the newspaper of Powell River, which is called The Peak, the publisher of that newspaper, Kelly Keel, refused to carry the advertisement for the talk that I was going to be giving in Powell River,
00:14:08.960but had actually done a, you know, sort of an overview of the talk that Leah Gazan gave in January.
00:14:18.160And when Kelly Keel was asked to explain the difference, she said that the book Grave Error, which the talk was going to be relating to, was full of misinformation.
00:14:28.920And her paper did not, you know, give an audience, they would not give credence to all this misinformation that would be provided in the talk that I was giving, which is completely factually based.
00:14:41.620So he went to The Peak and tried to ask questions about that.
00:14:44.320So there's a lot of kinds of episodes where we're going around trying to, you know, investigate what happened in Powell River.
00:14:50.860So what remains is the first installment.
00:14:54.140And then in May of this year, which is 2025, Simon, who's from Kamloops and actually was a journalist who got fired from Global News for sort of resisting the kinds of propagandistic coverage that was occurring.
00:15:11.880He's been very interested in the Kamloops case and thought that it didn't make sense at the time, the claim,
00:15:18.160but his employer was not interested whatsoever in having a critical view on this.
00:15:23.600We went to a number of different areas in Kamloops to try to develop a fuller picture of why there was this massive institutional failure that happened with respect to the perpetuation of this deception.
00:15:40.500Because I really do see it was a deception.
00:15:44.140It just is seeming more and more that it wasn't just an accident that these claims were being made,
00:15:50.620that in fact there was an orchestrated effort to try to deceive the Canadian public.
00:15:57.260And so one of the most fascinating things that happened was because Thompson Rivers University, which is the university in Kamloops,
00:16:08.420has been actively involved in perpetuating this falsehood.
00:16:13.060In fact, as recently as 2024, so that's not that long ago, we've known since July 2021 that there were no remains found.
00:16:22.840It was at the presentation by Sarah Bollier where she actually stated this.
00:16:28.680But Thompson Rivers University has continued to say that children's bodies have been found at Kamloops.
00:16:36.860So we decided on the anniversary to go into Thompson Rivers University and do a Spectrum Street epistemology session on the claim
00:16:45.580the remains of 215 children have been found.
00:16:48.820And when we went into that university, we were met by four members of the safety division who told us that because we were on the house of the to-come-whoops,
00:17:01.420that we should not be having this discussion take place at Thompson Rivers University.
00:17:07.020And we said to them, well, we're staying.
00:17:10.420You have been perpetuating this information.
00:17:27.540So their attempt to stifle this information, actually, it works against them in the long run because, and this goes back to, I'm, and I'll ask you in a moment about tours that you've done in the East, in Ontario,
00:17:40.740and also about what happened at Mount Royal University, where you were employed, I believe, with tenure?
00:18:41.580So wokeism, which is what has sort of taken hold in many universities in Canada, which is identity politics that has become totalitarian.
00:18:51.340So it's not really associated with what would have traditionally have been considered to be the left,
00:18:57.980which is like something which is concerned about economic equality.
00:19:02.420It's about these subjective identities, such as men who believe that they're women,
00:19:08.480or in the case of Aboriginal policy, the genocide survivor identity.
00:19:14.680So, so Aboriginal people who believe that they are survivors of genocide.
00:19:19.520The idea of wokeism in universities is that you must affirm that identity, even if you believe it's not true.
00:19:30.880So if you don't believe that a man can become a woman and you say so,
00:19:36.080you will be subjected to all sorts of harassment investigations and perhaps a human rights investigation.
00:19:43.900And then the same thing to do with the Aboriginal policy and the whole idea of the residential schools being genocidal is that questioning that will be seen as harassment and will be seen as making Aboriginal scholars and students not feel safe.
00:20:03.000And in order for those members of what's considered to feel that they belong at a university, people who question them have to be removed.
00:20:16.360And that's basically what happened to me.
00:20:17.880And it's still being argued that I should not be reinstated because I claim that there are only two sexes and I am critical of the view that there's such a thing as Indigenous science.
00:20:31.840This was revealed at the arbitration hearing as to why I cannot be reinstated because there's this friction that exists between me and my colleagues.
00:20:41.800But the friction is that my colleagues cannot tolerate, some of my colleagues cannot tolerate views that are critical of theirs.
00:20:51.840And that is the huge kinds of issue that's going on.
00:20:54.500And so what happens is I've been trying to give talks on academic freedom in my case and also the Kamloops, the grave error at Kamloops.
00:21:06.340And when I try to give these talks, what happens is that in University of Regina and the University of Lethbridge, my talks were cancelled because it was claimed that they would cause harm to people in the university.
00:21:21.980And in Regina, it was that it was a safety and security threat.
00:21:27.000And so if you don't mind me just interrupting, what is this harm?
00:21:32.880You mentioned it a few moments ago, too, that these safety teams are approaching you and saying that we can't have you speaking out about these things.
00:21:43.920When did, especially in the university setting, when did words become a weapon and when did the university stop becoming a beacon of liberty and free speech and open discourse?
00:22:01.520Well, it started about, you really noticed the change in 2014.
00:22:07.120And there is a social scientist whose name is Jonathan Haidt.
00:22:13.540He and Greg Lucchiano wrote a book called The Coddling of the American Mind.
00:22:19.700And they're talking about this safetyism kind of mentality, which is connected to a particular kind of parenting style.
00:22:28.100But what you find is that it's not safety, this psychological safety, so that people should be protected from hearing views that are upsetting to them, that they find offensive, these sorts of things.
00:22:44.060Like, that's kind of the key issue is that not everyone, it's argued that should be made to feel safe.
00:22:51.440So, for example, if I'm putting forth a critical viewpoint and so on about Aboriginal policy or trans activism, no one cares about whether I feel safe or not.
00:23:03.080They care about the people who are putting forward the views about trans activism or that the Aboriginal residential schools were genocidal.
00:23:11.580So, it's tied up with the whole woke mentality, which is the argument that in order for Aboriginal people, trans people you identify as trans, to empower themselves, they need to have people affirm who they are.
00:23:33.580And that's going to be what is going to empower them to overcome their oppression.
00:23:37.400So, there's a lot of arguments that you'll see in the universities that are really oriented towards trying to stop people from critically analyzing the views of these selected groups.
00:23:52.560And that really came into existence in, you know, beginning around 2010 and then getting worse and worse and worse until 2020.
00:24:01.700And then it just became completely authoritarian and you're not allowed to crush anything anymore.
00:24:08.520And our former Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been a great perpetrator of these issues, like the woke issues.
00:24:16.760We see him, you know, coming out with all of this dismay about the so-called remains that were found, even though remains were never found, this emotional support that we see for the trans crowd and the pride crowd and everything like this.
00:24:34.300And I think reasonable Canadians, they love and accept Indigenous people and people of different gender identities.
00:25:10.080For the last few weekends, we've seen pride parades in city streets with grown men walking around essentially naked.
00:25:18.360In terms of the Indigenous stuff, the land acknowledgments before hockey games or any kind of civil event and not just land acknowledgments now, but prayers and drum circles that is quite expected to be accepted by common Canadians.
00:25:42.420And taken on as their own, which further undermines the identity of Canadians.
00:25:49.840So many of these micro-compromises need to take place.
00:25:56.180So, how do you see things progressing in the next five years or so?
00:26:01.820Like, what needs to happen for Canada to get its roots down again and to not be so offended over these ideas and that people can really focus on what matters, like individual identity and freedom and family and faith, whatever people's faith might be.
00:26:22.880What needs to happen in order to see a return to that kind of saneness in Canada?
00:26:27.400And it's a widespread, it's a very, very deeply entrenched problem because it's not just the Liberals and Trudeau that were responsible for this.
00:26:37.100For example, with the genocide claim, all members of the House of Commons declared that the residential schools were genocidal.
00:26:47.980No, and so it seems to be something that is really deeply ensconced within the political and legal fabric.
00:26:54.600In terms of fighting against it, you know, Mia Hughes, who is, I spent some time with her in Ottawa, you know, talking about the trans issue.
00:27:03.940And we actually went to Parliament Hill and during the pride flag raising ceremony and made all sorts of criticisms of it there and did some Spectrum Street epistemology there.
00:27:14.420She said that she was hoping for a social contagion of courage amongst people.
00:27:20.840And Catherine Cronus about the land acknowledgements just did something very simple, just made the school board take note that she did not agree with this practice.
00:27:32.040And so people can do those sorts of things, just let it be known that you don't, you don't have to be nasty or disruptive or anything.
00:27:41.540You just let people know and courage begets courage, cowardice begets cowardice.
00:27:46.380And so if you're able to find space to just make it be known that you don't agree, other people will be watching and they might take some courage from that.
00:27:56.520In terms of the university, the weapon, because they cancel talks, they seem to be allowed to do that because they have control over their space.
00:28:06.020The weapon in universities is what's called Spectrum Street epistemology.
00:28:12.080You just take in these seven mats, disagree, agree, neutral.
00:28:17.600You lay those mats out and you have claims like we did at Thompson Rivers University, which is the remains of 215 children have been found.
00:28:31.340And we had Jenna, who was a person who taught international students there.
00:28:36.520She was in strong agreement because she thought excavations had been done.
00:28:41.460Hal was in strong disagreement because he was saying that there's only been ground penetrating radar that's been done.
00:28:47.600And that's not an indication of remains.
00:28:50.100And so we had this incredible conversation between Jenna and Hal with me moderating, which allowed all of us to come to a better understanding.
00:29:00.700And we reached the conclusion that what was needed was excavations at the Kamloops site to come to an understanding of whether remains were actually there or not.
00:29:12.120So every single professor who's concerned about this, every student who's concerned about this in universities, just get out those Spectrum Street epistemology mats and start talking about these claims, which are now, you know, not being discussed because of the terrible climate of self-censorship that exists at universities.
00:29:34.120And most people, I do not think rational people agree that a university should be an area where everyone's afraid to state what they think is true, because if we can't do it at the university, we're not going to be able to do it anywhere in Canada.
00:29:48.720And we will lose the liberal democratic features that have made our country able to function so well in the past.
00:29:57.100How disappointing if that would be the case.
00:30:27.780So what are you looking to focus on in the next one?
00:30:31.440And maybe you can also just let us know about what's happening with Mount Royale University, the appeals process, before we wrap it up today.
00:30:47.500We have a whole bunch of footage that we took in Kamloops.
00:30:50.260And so we're currently sifting through that footage, trying to shape it into different stories.
00:30:55.760One of them, of course, is about the university and how this was a major factor in the perpetuation of the falsehood, Thompson Rivers University.
00:31:06.500But we also have the school board and the role that the school board played.
00:31:10.200We have the media, which played a terrible role in Kamloops.
00:31:15.300And there's been no retractions, no apologies, and they published it as though it were fact.
00:31:35.720And Kamloops, CFJC, that's the outlet, got the scoop to announce this claim.
00:31:42.180They, the James Peters, who is the person who got the scoop, he's continued to say things like being skeptical.
00:31:49.940There's only one reason that people are skeptical is because they're racist, these kinds of claims.
00:31:54.720So that would be good to do the media, a segment on the media.
00:31:58.460And so we're going to, is the coverage to some extent is going to shape that.
00:32:01.960But we're hoping to have a series of, you know, the instances of institutional failure that allowed this falsehood to be perpetuated.
00:32:11.360And in terms of my case, it's being appealed to the Alberta Labor Relations Board and Mount Royal University will be held to account for what it did with respect to my case.
00:32:25.300And even if we are not successful, I would like it to go as far as the Supreme Court of Canada and to have all these judges put down their reasoning as to why that was an acceptable outcome.
00:32:41.920To push a tenured professor out of that institution, who was just asking questions and trying to pursue the truth.
00:32:49.120But because those questions were disliked by various scholar activists in that institutions, I can no longer be able to return to Mount Royal University.
00:32:59.640And if that case, if my case is not successful, universities are over in Canada.
00:33:05.220It would just be an absolutely terrible precedent.
00:33:08.200So we have to do everything that we can to make sure that I can get reinstated at Mount Royal University.
00:33:13.880I can return to that university tomorrow and completely be functional doing my teaching and my research.
00:33:21.200And that because of these scholars who say they feel unsafe when I'm there, they're claiming that that cannot happen.