Startling events took place recently in the small city of Quesnel, British Columbia, when the city council voted to condemn a book that none of its council members had read and asked for the mayor’s resignation because his wife had given a few copies of the book to friends. You would think a city council has better things to do than to tell citizens what not to read.
The book shows that not a single unmarked grave has been discovered at Kamloops, B.C., or in connection with any other former Indian Residential School or Indian hospital; that there are no “missing children,” though some may have been forgotten by their relatives; that attendance at the residential schools was mainly voluntary and typically required written consent from parents or guardians; and that health conditions at the schools were probably better than on reserves.
Pat Morton is the wife of the mayor of Quesnel, Ron Paull. She read and liked “Grave Error,” so she bought 10 copies to give to people she thought would be interested. Fatefully, she gave a copy to Connie Goulet, the mother of Tony Goulet, a local Métis politician.
There was an even more raucous council meeting on April 2. “We can’t have a community that hands out hate literature and expect people to listen to us and to take it seriously,” said Lhtako Dene Chief Clifford Lebrun, who also warned that his organization would cease to work with Quesnel and its council. Nazko First Nation Chief Leah Stump, for her part, was choking back tears when she declared, “We deserve better than having to come here to prove we went to residential school, to prove that we were hurt and broken.”
Frances Widdowson, a contributor to “Grave Error,” had driven out to attend the meeting and address council, but she was given only three minutes to do so. Instead, one councillor told her, “You really have no place here. We really don’t want to hear from you.” Morton was likewise given only three minutes to explain what she had done.
A new political agenda also appeared at this meeting, with calls for the mayor to resign. Paull and Morton think previous political opponents were behind this, hoping to get Paull to vacate the mayor’s chair for a new election. Paull, however, has insisted he is staying put.
Despite the controversy surrounding the book, the media made no attempt to find out what is actually in it, either by reading it or by contacting the editors and authors. Instead, articles misrepresented the book’s contents or accused it of circulating “disinformation.”
Nice words. But the CBC and other legacy media are propounding an entirely one-sided view of the former Indian Residential Schools. “Grave Error” contains all sorts of documented evidence on these questions. Ignoring that evidence is a disservice to the Canadian public.
So it is no mystery why journalists latch on so uncritically to the Kamloops narrative of unmarked graves and other fables about residential schools. It’s simple confirmation bias, because to the left-leaning media all these stories have an immediate ring of truth. But even as the CBC acknowledges—at least in theory—reporting only one side of a story is media malpractice. If only the media would live up to their own professed ideals.
