Frances Widdowson is a political analyst and wrongfully terminated 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.
00:00:21.920I'm Jen Hodson, filling in for Nigel Hannaford while he's away on holiday.
00:00:26.260It's Thursday, July 10th, 2025, and my guest today is Frances Widdowson, political analyst and wrongfully terminated professor at Mount Royale University.
00:01:28.720So 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.
00:01:40.860We know that allegations came out from mainstream media, which the Trudeau Liberals at the time, they jumped on this.
00:01:50.080Federal flags, Canadian flags were raised to half mass that summer for several months.
00:01:55.960Justin Trudeau made a public outcry about it. The Pope came and made a formal apology. So
00:02:04.140what is it that struck you that something wasn't right? And tell us how you got started.
00:02:11.920Yes. So when I was a professor at Mount Royal University, one of the reasons why I got pushed
00:02:17.180out of Mount Royal was because of my stance on the residential schools and my opposition to
00:02:23.920the argument that the residential schools were genocidal. So I was busy criticizing this position
00:02:31.720which had become official policy at Mount Royal University. General Faculty's Council had voted
00:02:37.260to declare that the residential schools were genocidal. I was very opposed to this so I had0.97
00:02:44.460been studying this for quite some time since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Report.
00:02:49.980So 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 and I wasn't sure what to think of it.
00:03:07.140I thought perhaps it was an abandoned cemetery. That's often the case, that there are many
00:03:13.100cemeteries in Canada where the grave markers have deteriorated. And you see these, in fact,
00:03:19.260on Aboriginal reserves. And in the case of the Kamloops Reserve, there is a cemetery on that
00:03:26.520reserve and many of the markers are no longer there. So I held an event with Brian Giesbrecht
00:03:34.900and rod clifton and paul viminitz in i believe it was july 10th 2021 right at the beginning yes
00:03:43.240called can we discuss those unmarked graves and you know the answer was well we're discussing
00:03:49.580them right now but you do so at your peril because you will be attacked and you'll be
00:03:56.980told that you're a racist and you are a person who doesn't care about aboriginal people
00:04:01.460And that was the kind of thing that was happening until I eventually was pushed out of Mount Royal University.
00:04:07.880So 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.0.91
00:04:21.500And 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.
00:04:35.340Many people think that the excavations have been done, but they have not.
00:04:40.020And we do not have one parent who has said that their child never came home from the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
00:04:46.440so if there are remains in that apple orchard who would those remains belong to who would the people
00:04:55.780who have been murdered or some kind of foul play that has gone on that has resulted in those
00:05:01.320remains being there because there is a cemetery on the Kamloops reserve so any remains that would
00:05:08.300be in that apple orchard would be clandestine burials and we need to find out if there are
00:05:14.880actually people buried in that apple orchard now so these claims were made early on by first
00:05:23.560indigenous groups picked up by media picked up by politicians until it became like a whole machine0.79
00:05:30.780that became uh dangerous to speak out again so your job was threatened and you've had all kinds
00:05:40.060of different experiences of resistance around this.
00:05:44.220So maybe my question is, is too faceted, is too faceted.
00:05:49.780So, so at what point did it become this claim that couldn't be refuted?
00:05:55.480And what is it that continues to drive it?
00:05:58.600And what do you think it is that sets you apart from so many other people that just
00:06:04.240go along with what they have heard that, you know, your receptacles went up and you realize
00:06:11.000that something's not right here. There's some lie going on. So how do you interpret that system that
00:06:18.440you're up against? Well, I think it's always been very difficult to challenge the claims that are
00:06:25.520being made by what would be called the aboriginal industry and the associated neotribal elites who0.84
00:06:31.960or the aboriginal leaders that are associated with the aboriginal industry.
00:06:36.300But it became much, much worse in 2020.
00:06:41.500That's when we saw the real sort of authoritarian push start to, you know,
00:06:47.300take hold in universities, beginning with the George Floyd situation.
00:06:55.440And then, of course, COVID made things much more difficult
00:06:59.340in terms of people not being present in person.
00:07:25.260by what's called residential school survivors
00:07:28.080And even that language is very loaded. You should be charged. You should be criminally charged and receive up to two years in prison for making, you know, counterclaims and demanding evidence.
00:07:46.220Yeah, even questioning, asking questions. And Leah Gazan, when she gave a talk in Powell River, which is, you know, the What Remains documentary is looking at how the Kamloops claim played out in Powell River.
00:07:59.840she said that she could think of nothing more violent than a person who was a residential1.00
00:08:07.740school student saying this is what they think happened and you would tell them that you
00:08:14.860disagreed with them and did not think that what they were claiming was true she said that that
00:08:19.900was the most violent thing that she could even imagine which is shocking because of course we
00:08:26.480know of many many terribly violent acts that have happened in human history the holocaust the0.98
00:08:33.640the rwandan genocide the death squads in latin america all sorts of wars and for someone like
00:08:40.680leah gazan who's a member of parliament to be making this kind of claim is just absolutely
00:08:45.340absurd absolutely to to enshrine it into law that you can't ask questions about something and it
00:08:53.760just makes one wonder where is this coming from and what is the motive is it based off of some
00:08:59.880kind of faux compassion or is it something more sinister you know some people might say well
00:09:06.660follow the money and so indigenous groups have been allocated I think you said 12.1 million
00:09:13.160to perform these evacuations, but yet very few excavations have been done and nothing has been
00:09:28.580found. So wouldn't it serve the case of those that are perpetuating this unmarked graves claim
00:09:35.420that they could actually find some remains? So 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. I believe it was $320 million for across Canada for groups to pursue trying to find what they call missing children.
00:09:57.040And Kimberly Murray, who's a special interlocutor who, again, millions of dollars spent to have her be, you know, investigating this matter.
00:10:07.560She said in 2023 in a committee meeting that there are no missing children, that the children are in cemeteries.
00:10:18.300So what you have is you have children in cemeteries where people don't exactly know where in that cemetery that child was buried.
00:10:30.780And it could be because the grave markers have disappeared.
00:10:33.860It could be because the record keeping wasn't as accurate as we would like.
00:10:38.640But that's a completely different scenario than saying that children were murdered and they just went missing and we have no idea what happened to those children.
00:10:49.180So I think that's a big confusion that is happening with respect to this issue.
00:10:54.320But because of the money that's involved, obviously, if it's found that in the case of Kamloops, there are no remains there, it's going to open up to question all the other kinds of ground penetrating radar searches that have been happening across the country.
00:11:15.540As well, there was a whole bunch of lawsuits that got fast-tracked because of the Kamloops claim in Powell River, which is what remains, was investigating the fallout, the impact in that case.
00:11:30.780There was a demand that the name of Powell River be changed because of the Kamloops case.
00:11:36.640The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the federal legislation got fast-tracked because of the Kamloops case.
00:11:46.340So there's all sorts of Aboriginal industry initiatives that people were sort of resisting and were questioning whether they should go ahead.
00:11:56.480When the Kamloops claim was announced, that just pushed aside all opposition.
00:12:03.420And now we have a completely different policy regime with respect to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations, which is going to have massive consequences for Canada as a country.
00:12:17.540And so before we get any further into the issue, why don't we talk about this documentary, What Remains?
00:12:23.680So you went to Kamloops. You were at Thompson Rivers University there. Why don't you tell us about your experience? Our viewers might be interested to know a little background about the documentary before they check it out. And we will link beneath this video so people can easily access that documentary. So 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.
00:12:53.560So what happened is that the Kamloops announcement was made in May 2021.
00:13:00.820Immediately, 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, he 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 had been found.
00:13:30.640and also did interviews in Powell River and looked at things like this sign that they have,
00:13:40.680the Tlaman Nation, which is the Aboriginal group there, has this sign which says 10,068.
00:13:46.640So we were investigating what this meant, this number 10,068.
00:13:52.120We also went and because the newspaper of Powell River, which is called The Peak,
00:13:58.460the publisher of that newspaper, Kelly Keel, refused to carry the advertisement for the talk
00:14:06.720that I was going to be giving in Powell River, but had actually done a, you know, sort of an
00:14:12.620overview of the talk that Leah Gazan gave in January. And when Kelly Keel was asked to explain
00:14:20.980the difference, she said that the book Grave Error, which the talk was going to be relating to,
00:14:27.180was full of misinformation and her paper did not, you know, give an audience, they would not
00:14:34.660give credence to all this misinformation that would be provided in the talk that I was giving,
00:14:39.820which was completely factually based. So 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
00:14:49.780happened in Powell River. So what remains is the first installment. And then in May of this year,
00:14:56.660which is 2025. Simon, who's from Kamloops and actually was a journalist who got fired from
00:15:04.020Global News for sort of resisting the kinds of propagandistic coverage that was occurring,
00:15:11.940he's been very interested in the Kamloops case and thought that it didn't make sense at the time,
00:15:17.640the claim, but his employer was not interested whatsoever in having a critical view on this.
00:15:23.000We 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. It just is seeming more and more that it wasn't just an accident that these claims were being made, that in fact there was an orchestrated effort to try to deceive the Canadian public.
00:15:57.240And so one of the most fascinating things that happened was because of Thompson Rivers University, which is the university in Kamloops, has been actively involved in perpetuating this falsehood.
00:16:12.480In fact, as recently as 2024, so that's not that long ago, we've known since July 2021 that there were no remains found.
00:16:22.900It was at the presentation by Sarah Bollier where she actually stated this.
00:16:28.660But Thompson Rivers University has continued to say that children's bodies have been found at Kamloops.
00:16:36.680So we decided on the anniversary to go into Thompson Rivers University and do a Spectrum Street Epistemology session on the claim the remains of 215 children have been found.
00:16:48.800And 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, that we should not be having this discussion take place at Thompson Rivers University.
00:17:06.800And we said to them, well, we're staying. You have been perpetuating this information. Your president has been doing it. And we it is in the public interest that this discussion takes place. So you do what you have to do. But we're going to stay here and we're going to do this event. And they just disappeared. Wow. These administrators.
00:17:27.520So their attempt to stifle this information, actually, it works against them in the long run because, and this goes back to, and I'll ask you in a moment about tours that you've done in the East, in Ontario, and also about what happened at Mount Royale University where you were employed, I believe, with tenure?
00:17:48.300Wow. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience going and doing these speaking tours, raising awareness about the fact that actually no remains have been found and the stifling of your speech and your pursuit for truth at Mount Royale.
00:18:08.260And maybe then we can get into a bit more of an analysis on what is going on here with this stifling of speech. Like what is this systematic machine that, you know, apparently driven by the woke left in order to have their say?
00:18:27.340And this, of course, pours out into other issues like the trans issues and all kinds of different facets in our society.
00:18:37.180So maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit more for context for our viewers.
00:18:41.160Yes. So wokeism, which is what has sort of taken hold in many universities in Canada, which is identity politics that has become totalitarian.
00:18:51.320And so it's not really associated with what would have traditionally have been considered to be the left, which is like something which is concerned about economic equality.
00:19:02.360It's about these subjective identities such as men who believe that they're women or in the case of Aboriginal policy, the genocide survivor identity.
00:19:14.680So Aboriginal people who believe that they are survivors of genocide.
00:19:19.500the idea of wokeism in universities is that you must affirm that identity even if you believe it's
00:19:29.580not true so if you don't believe that a man can become a woman and you say so you will be subjected
00:19:37.180to all sorts of harassment investigations and perhaps a human rights investigation and then
00:19:44.860the same thing to do with the aboriginal policy and the whole idea of the residential schools
00:19:50.020being genocidal, is that questioning that will be seen as harassment and will be seen
00:19:57.820as making aboriginal scholars and students not feel safe and in order for those members
00:20:06.660of what's considered to be oppressed groups to feel that they belong at a university,
00:20:13.340who question them have to be removed. And that's basically what happened to me. And it's still
00:20:18.740being argued that I should not be reinstated because I claim that there are only two sexes
00:20:26.080and I am critical of the view that there's such a thing as Indigenous science. This was revealed at0.96
00:20:33.200the arbitration hearing as to why I cannot be reinstated because there's this friction that
00:20:39.360exists between me and my colleagues. But the friction is that my colleagues cannot tolerate,
00:20:46.020some of my colleagues cannot tolerate views that are critical of theirs. And that is the huge kinds
00:20:53.340of issue that's going on. So what happens is I've been trying to give talks on academic freedom in
00:20:59.860my case, and also the Kamloops, the grave error at Kamloops. That was the other talk. And when I try
00:21:07.360to give these talks, what happens is that in University of Regina and the University of
00:21:12.780Lathbridge, my talks were cancelled because it was claimed that they would cause harm
00:21:19.320to people in the university. And in Regina, it was that it was a safety and security threat.
00:21:26.980And so let me, if you don't mind me just interrupting, so what is this harm? What is
00:21:31.700a safety threat? You mentioned it a few moments ago too, that these safety teams are approaching
00:21:38.800you and saying that we can't have you speaking out about these things. When did, especially in
00:21:46.180the university setting, when did words become a weapon and when did the university stop becoming
00:21:54.200a beacon of liberty and free speech and open discourse. Yes. Well, it started about,
00:22:03.140you really noticed the change in 2014. So, and that's, and there's, is a social scientist whose
00:22:11.560name is Jonathan Haidt. He and Greg Lukianoff wrote a book called The Coddling of the American
00:22:19.180mind and they're talking about this safetyism kind of mentality which is connected to a particular
00:22:26.180kind of parenting style but what you find is that it's not safety this psychological safety
00:22:33.060so that people should be protected from hearing views that they that are upsetting to them that
00:22:39.920they find offensive these sorts of things but it's not everyone like that's kind of the key issue is
00:22:45.920that not everyone it's are you that should be made to feel safe so for example if I'm putting
00:22:53.240forth a critical viewpoint and and so on about aboriginal policy or trans activism no one cares
00:23:00.680about whether I feel safe or not exactly they care about the people who are putting forward
00:23:06.000the views about trans activism or that the aboriginal residential schools were genocidal
00:23:11.560So 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.
00:23:33.460And that's going to be what is going to empower them to overcome their oppression. So 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.
00:23:52.000And that really came into existence in, you know, beginning around 2010 and then getting worse and worse and worse until 2020.
00:24:01.980And then it just became completely authoritarian and you're not allowed to question anything anymore.
00:24:07.840And our former Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been a great perpetrator of these issues, like the woke issues. We 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.
00:24:26.240this emotional support that we see for the trans crowd and the pride crowd and everything like
00:24:33.960this. And I think reasonable Canadians, they love and accept indigenous people and people of
00:24:42.700different gender identities. That's not really the issue. You mentioned that the issue is that
00:24:48.580these people need to be affirmed and so I think that I think that's a very fascinating
00:24:56.580seed to pick apart because you see it being infiltrated more and more into our society
00:25:05.480so schools have the pride flags we have for the last few weekends we've seen a pride parades in
00:25:13.900city streets with grown men walking around essentially naked uh in terms of the indigenous0.89
00:25:21.260stuff the land acknowledgements before hockey games or any kind of civil event and not just
00:25:29.100land acknowledgements now but prayers and drum circles that is quite expected to be um to be
00:25:38.380except accepted by common Canadians and taken on as their own, which further undermines
00:25:46.780the identity of Canadians. So many of these micro compromises need to take place. Yes.
00:25:56.140So how do you see things progressing in the next five years or so? Like what needs to happen for
00:26:03.600Canada to to get its roots down again and not be so offended over these ideas and that people can
00:26:13.460really focus on what matters like individual identity and freedom and family and faith whatever
00:26:20.540people's faith might be what what needs to happen in order to see a return to that kind of saneness0.92
00:26:26.640in Canada and it's it's a widespread it's a very very deeply entrenched problem
00:26:31.640because it's not just the Liberals and Trudeau that were responsible for this.
00:27:29.620did not agree with this practice. And so people can do those sorts of things. Just let it be known
00:27:36.320that you don't, you don't have to be nasty or disruptive or anything. You just let people know
00:27:42.600and courage begets courage, cowardice begets cowardice. And so if you're able to find space
00:27:48.760to just make it be known that you don't agree, other people will be watching and they might
00:27:54.840take some courage from that. In terms of the university, the weapon, because they cancel talks,
00:28:01.280they seem to be allowed to do that because they have control over their space. The weapon in
00:28:07.060universities is what's called Spectrum Street Epistemology. You don't need space. You just
00:28:12.540take in these seven mats, disagree, agree, neutral. You lay those mats out and you have claims like we
00:28:21.080did at Thompson Rivers University, which is the remains of 215 children have been found. That was
00:28:27.220the claim. Do you strongly agree with that? Do you strongly disagree with that? And we had Jenna,
00:28:32.500who was a person who taught international students there. She was in strong agreement because she
00:28:39.040thought excavations had been done. Hal was in strong disagreement because he was saying that
00:28:44.880there's only been ground penetrating radar that's been done, and that's not an indication of remains.
00:28:50.080And 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.
00:29:12.100So 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.
00:29:34.100And 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.
00:29:44.320Because if we can't do it at the university, we're not going to be able to do it anywhere in Canada.
00:29:48.680And we will lose the liberal democratic features that have made our country able to function so well in the past.
00:29:57.580How disappointing if that would be the case.
00:29:59.620Yes. Well, you know, you also offer a story of hope that there is a way for Canadians to start being honest with one another. And it's a terrible story that was told about these alleged remains, but it's still just a story as it is now. So unfortunately, we do have to wrap up soon. We could talk about this all evening, I'm sure. But first, before we let you go, why don't you just let me know what people can expect? You said that this was a series of documentaries.
00:30:27.400Yes. So what are you looking to focus on in the next one? And 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.
00:30:39.400Yes. So the second documentary is going to be actually on what happened in Kamloops. We have a whole bunch of footage that we took in Kamloops. And so we're currently sifting through that footage, trying to shape it into different stories.
00:30:55.260One of them, of course, is about the university and how this was a major factor in the perpetuation of the falsehood, Thompson Rivers University.
00:31:06.480But we also have the school board and the role that the school board played.
00:31:10.240We have the media, which played a terrible role in Kamloops.
00:31:15.600And there's been no retractions, no apologies, and they published it as though it were fact.
00:31:22.020And that is a huge blow to journalistic integrity and other publications, and not just in Canada, but across the world, picked up on this big scandal that turns out to be baseless.
00:31:35.340Yes. And Kamloops, CFJC, that's the outlet, got the scoop to announce this claim.
00:31:43.980James 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.
00:31:54.780So that would be good to do a segment on the media.
00:31:58.800And so the coverage to some extent is going to shape that.
00:32:01.940But we're hoping to have a series of instances of institutional failure that allowed this falsehood to be perpetuated.
00:32:12.060And in terms of my case, it's being appealed to the Alberta Labor Relations Board.
00:32:18.600And Mount Royal University will be held to account for what it did with respect to my case.
00:32:25.280And 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 to push a tenured professor out of that institution who was just asking questions and trying to pursue the truth.
00:32:49.100But because those questions were disliked by various scholar activists in that institutions, I can no longer be able to return to Mount Royal University.
00:32:59.620And if that case, if my case is not successful, universities are over in Canada.
00:33:05.720It would just be an absolutely terrible precedent.
00:33:08.540So we have to do everything that we can to make sure that I can get reinstated at Mount Royal University.
00:33:13.640I 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.
00:33:28.580Wow. What a what a case for our times.
00:33:32.720So all the best to you on that, Frances.
00:33:35.780And we look forward to following up with you as things progress and when the next segment of your documentary comes out.
00:33:42.140So thanks so much for joining us in the studio, speaking with us about what's going on with all of this.
00:33:47.760And we look forward to having you back again soon.