Western Standard - March 20, 2026


Memorial for Kamloops 'graves' takes place at Fort Calgary


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

139.39394

Word count

920

Sentence count

62

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Western Standard's Leah Muschek and I were at the Walk With Us Ceremony in Calgary this morning. We interviewed some of the speakers and protesters involved in the event, including Frances Widowson and the "Open the Hearts for Kindness and Love" protest.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello everyone, my name is Leah Musche for the Western Standard. We're here today at the Walk
00:00:04.640 With Us ceremony that was held this morning at City Hall in Calgary. We saw a bunch of people
00:00:11.280 speaking. Now there was already a ceremonial walk that you'll get to see a little bit. We
00:00:16.540 interviewed some people including Frances Widowson as well as protests involving her.
00:00:30.000 Open the hearts for kindness and love.
00:00:33.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:00:34.000 That's what it is.
00:00:36.000 Yeah, you can do it over there.
00:00:38.000 You can do it over there.
00:00:40.000 You're perpetrating harm against our people.
00:00:43.000 You can do it over there. 1.00
00:00:45.000 Don't even ask a stupid question like that. 1.00
00:00:48.000 You're bringing marshmallows over there. 1.00
00:00:51.000 Don't stand over there.
00:01:00.000 I am going to say that that's not going to happen anymore.
00:01:30.000 So you were obviously very visibly upset at Frances's demonstration over there.
00:01:40.040 What is it that's so upsetting to you about what she's saying?
00:01:43.100 It's not about what she says or what she's doing.
00:01:46.680 It's about bringing and perpetrating harm against our people.
00:01:50.800 Because what follows her? Nothing but negativity and racism. 1.00
00:01:54.040 So then that puts harm upon our people.
00:01:59.120 So I don't know what her intentions are or why she's even here.
00:02:04.500 You know, the truth is always going to be the truth. 1.00
00:02:29.120 your piece is a shit your piece is a shit you're hurting people and you come out to do it anyways 1.00
00:02:35.420 no but she does you came to talk to me i was talking to her 1.00
00:02:40.500 you came to talk to me you asked me is it not 0.99
00:02:47.060 in favor that's bullshit bullshit because you're hurting people free speech comes with responsibility 1.00
00:02:57.960 Free space comes with responsibility. 0.99
00:02:59.680 And you're not going to deny that you're hurting all of these people here?
00:03:03.660 I don't want you in my community.
00:03:06.640 I don't want to listen to what he has to say.
00:03:08.720 What he has to say is irrelevant.
00:03:12.880 The reason I'm here is I want to talk to people.
00:03:15.960 I want to help people or witness what's going on with Francis
00:03:20.300 and then engage in free dialogue with people.
00:03:22.520 And I think that that's important.
00:03:23.620 If we lose that in society, that there's something sacred that's lost.
00:03:29.620 It doesn't allow us to operate as a society very well.
00:03:35.020 So you see you're more here as just a freedom of speech advocate
00:03:37.700 rather than supportive of anything that Francis is promoting?
00:03:41.180 Or would you say that you are in agreement?
00:03:43.080 I mean, insofar as we're having this conversation,
00:03:46.220 the primary reason for me being here is for free speech.
00:03:52.140 That's what I'm focused on.
00:03:53.420 And whether I agree or disagree with Francis, it's irrelevant to that point, right?
00:03:58.180 Okay, yeah.
00:03:58.940 Yeah, so that's what I'm focused on, is just, you know, supporting people's ability to speak freely.
00:04:05.220 And I think that that's really important.
00:04:09.700 I'm here to draw attention to the falsehoods that have been perpetuated by this sign
00:04:15.020 and are going to be continuing with this march,
00:04:17.460 which is that the remains of 215 children have been confirmed
00:04:21.800 at the former Kamloops Senior Residential School, which is not true.
00:04:25.980 And you've done, like, a lot of work on this.
00:04:28.220 You were even fired from Mount Royal because of the fact that you said
00:04:32.420 that there was no graves and stuff like that.
00:04:35.980 So why don't you talk a little bit, I guess,
00:04:37.880 about why you think this is such an important issue to protest about.
00:04:42.940 Sorry. First of all, I should say I wasn't fired because of the claim about the...
00:04:46.640 It was about satirizing the idea that the residential schools were genocidal.
00:04:52.820 It's related.
00:04:53.960 That was certainly an unpopular thing for me to be saying.
00:04:56.680 Sorry, could you just repeat the question?
00:04:58.160 So why do you think it's such an important issue to protest about?
00:05:01.400 Because I think that in a democratic society, it's important to be able to state facts.
00:05:06.800 And this is a fact that we cannot state.
00:05:09.060 And if you're unable to state facts, then we are heading towards a totalitarian society.
00:05:15.060 As George Orwell said, 2 plus 2 make 4. Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 plus 2 make 4. If that is granted, all else follows. We cannot say that 2 plus 2 make 4 right now.
00:05:28.160 And also the police were talking to you prior to the event, before it started. So why don't you tell me a little bit about what they were telling you?
00:05:35.800 So the Calgary police, I have never seen such a professional police force
00:05:41.020 in all of my dealings with these kinds of protests.
00:05:45.020 They have been working for a few days just to make sure
00:05:47.500 that there was a kind of agreeable solution to all parties.
00:05:52.500 And so we discussed what I was all about.
00:05:55.200 And I was saying, I'm not disrupting, I'm not protesting.
00:05:58.020 I'm just asking this question because of the falsehoods that are being spread.
00:06:02.300 and I'm going to just stand, I want to be part of this event
00:06:05.340 in that I want people to be aware of me having this dissenting position
00:06:10.980 and I'm not going to disrupt and they said fine
00:06:14.200 and they were going to intervene if there was any hint of violence that might happen.
00:06:21.380 And it came a little bit close sometimes
00:06:24.400 but it was nothing that was too much.
00:06:30.260 but one time a guy was screaming in my face and so they came and told him to just move away.