Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Did the CBC prove in 1962 that no children are buried at Kamloops?
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Nina Green
The inclusion of extensive footage from the CBC’s 1962 documentary The Eyes of Children establishes that the CBC has proved that nothing nefarious was happening at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in the early 1960s
The new documentary Sugarcane uses extensive footage from the CBC documentary, The Eyes of Children, filmed in late 1962 at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The CBC film crew had access to the entire school and grounds for an extensive period of time, filming girls flocking to walk with the principal, Father Dunlop, senior and junior classes in session, playground activities, bedtime routines, religious services, Christmas preparations, children staying behind at the school during the holiday season because they had no home to go to, and much more.
All these activities at the school are featured in shots and video clips in the new documentary Sugarcane, including a clip of Indigenous teacher Mabel Caron teaching a senior class about telephone manners. In fact there were three Indigenous teachers at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in late 1962 – Mabel Caron, Benjamin Paul, and Joe Stanley Michel, the first graduate of the Kamloops Indian Residential School who returned there to teach and lived with his wife, Anna Soule, another graduate of the school, and their children in a teacherage on the school grounds.
The reason for using extensive footage from The Eyes of Children is not explained in Sugarcane, and is obviously confusing to viewers as Sugarcane is ostensibly about events which occurred at St Joseph’s Indian Residential School in Williams Lake. Why a film about a residential school in Williams Lake includes extensive footage from a decades-old CBC documentary about the Kamloops Indian Residential School is a mystery.
But leaving that mystery aside for explanation by the people who made Sugarcane, the inclusion of extensive footage from the CBC’s 1962 documentary The Eyes of Children establishes that the CBC has proved that nothing nefarious was happening at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in the early 1960s at a time when Canadians are now led to believe 215 children were being murdered and clandestinely buried by fellow students in the apple orchard.
In fact what was happening at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in the early 1960s, in addition to the regular school activities filmed by the CBC, was integration. A residence had been built for senior students, and they were being bussed into downtown Kamloops to attend St Ann’s Academy.
Obviously, the CBC knew all this in 1962 and knows it now.
Is the CBC implying by its silence that three Indigenous teachers and their families at the Kamloops Indian Residential School covered up the murder and clandestine burial in the apple orchard of 215 children? Did the CBC itself cover up these murders and secret burials in 1962?
Or did the CBC know in 1962 and now that nothing of the kind ever happened?
Nina Green is an independent researcher who lives in British Columbia.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Valiant Effort to Overthrow Communist Rule
Civilians wave Hungary’s national flag from a captured Soviet tank in Budapest’s main square during the anti-communist uprising of October 1956. AP Photo
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Gerry Bowler
For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev.
After World War II ended in the summer of 1945, the Soviet Red Army found itself to be in possession of Eastern Europe. In the next few years, the USSR extinguished the young democracies in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, while imposing Stalinist governments on autocracies such as Bulgaria and Hungary. With Marxist regimes taking over in eastern Germany, and Albania and Yugoslavia as well, Winston Churchill spoke truly when he said that “from Stettin the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
In many of these countries, there was considerable resentment over the Russian occupation. In the Baltic republics, Romania, Croatia, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine, doomed anti-Soviet guerilla movements with names like the “Forest Brothers,” the “Cursed Soldiers,” or “Crusaders,” fought underground wars that\ lasted for years. In June 1953 in East Berlin, workers rose up in protests against their communist masters, sparking a short-lived rebellion that spread to hundreds of towns before being crushed by Russian tanks. The most serious of these insurrections was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. By 1956, there were stirrings of discontent in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Under the state control of industry, forced agricultural collectivization, and the shipping of produce to the Soviet Union, the economy was in bad shape. The supply of consumer goods was low and standards of living were dropping. Secret police surveillance of the population was harsh, while many Hungarians resented the suppression of religion and the mandatory instruction of the Russian language in schools. As news leaked out about Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech,” hopes grew that reform of the communist system was possible.
Marxist intellectuals began to form study circles to discuss a new path for Hungarian socialism, but their cautious proposals were suddenly overtaken by demands for change by young people. On Oct. 22, 1956, students at the Technical University of Budapest drew up a list of demands for change known as the “Sixteen Points.” They included free elections, a withdrawal of Soviet troops, free speech, and an improvement in economic conditions.
On the afternoon of the next day, these points were read out to a crowd of 20,000 who had gathered at the statue of a leader of the Hungarian rebellion of 1848. By 6 p.m., when the students marched on the Parliament Building, the crowd had grown to around 200,000 people. This alarmed the government, and later that evening Communist Party leader Erno Gero took to the radio to condemn the Sixteen Points. In reaction, mobs tore down an enormous statue of Stalin.
People surround the decapitated head of a huge statue of Josef Stalin in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Daniel Sego (second L), who cut off the head, is spitting on the statue. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
On the night of Oct. 23, crowds gathered outside the state broadcaster, Radio Budapest, to demand that the Sixteen Points be sent out over the air. The secret police fired on the protesters, killing a number of them. This enraged the demonstrators who set fire to police cars and seized arms from military depots. Army units ordered to support the secret police rebelled and joined the protest. The government floundered; on the one hand, they called Soviet tanks into Budapest; on the other hand, they appointed Imre Nagy, seen as a popular reformer, as prime minister.
As barricades were being erected by protesters and shots were being exchanged with secret police units, Nagy was negotiating with the Soviets who agreed that they would withdraw their tanks from the capital. Over the next few days, the rebellion spread; factories were seized, Communist Party newspapers and headquarters were attacked, and known communists and secret police agents were murdered. The new prime minister released political prisoners and promised the establishment of democracy, with freedom of speech and religion.
For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev. Fearing the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc, he made plans for an invasion of Hungary. By Nov. 3, the Red Army had surrounded Budapest, and the next day heavy fighting erupted as armoured columns entered the city. Some units of the Hungarian army fought back, joined by thousands of civilians, but the end was predictable. After a week of battles, with over 20,000 dead and wounded, resistance crumbled. A new Soviet-approved government under János Kádár purged the army and Communist Party, arrested thousands, and executed rebel leaders including Nagy.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled, many of them settling in Canada and the United States. World condemnation of the USSR was strong; critics of the Soviets included many communists in the West who resigned their party membership. Not until the collapse of the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe in 1989 did Hungarians get another taste of freedom.
Published in the Epoch Times.
Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Judging by Manitoba’s growing deficit, math doesn’t appear to be the government’s strong suit. Now the government seems to want all Manitobans to have equally poor math skills.
Last month, the province quietly removed all subject requirements for entry into a Bachelor of Education program. No longer will prospective teachers need to complete a prescribed number of courses in “teachable” subjects; in fact, they won’t even have to take a single math or English course.
This means that a candidate who took a three-year bachelor’s degree in gender studies and then completed a two-year teacher education degree is considered just as qualified to become a teacher as a candidate who completed an honours degree in mathematics, physics, or chemistry. No wonder people are worried.
For example, University of Winnipeg math professor Anna Stokke has long raised the alarm about the declining math skills of Manitoba students. In fact, Stokke played a key role in convincing the previous NDP government to increase the required number of math courses for prospective teachers from one to two in 2015.
Now the current government is moving in the opposite direction by cutting the required math courses from two to zero. I’m no mathematician but that looks like a decrease to me.
Sadly, some education professors are completely on board with this change. Martha Koch, an education professor at the University of Manitoba, publicly claimed that requiring students to complete more undergraduate courses in math “sometimes results in worse teachers in early and middle years mathematics.”
This comment is a prime example of the anti-knowledge bias pervading North American education faculties. The last thing faculties of education want is for teachers to be the primary source of knowledge in the classroom.
That is why we cannot trust education faculties. Having taken many undergraduate and graduate education courses myself, I can safely say that most of them are worse than useless. In fact, you get stupider because of taking them.
Don’t just take my word for it. Ask any teacher how they felt about their Bachelor of Education program. Chances are they will praise their teaching practicum where they worked in real classrooms with real students, but they will dismiss most of their required education courses as useless theories.
I shudder to think about prospective teachers taking undergraduate degrees in narrow and esoteric fields such as gender studies and then completing a Bachelor of Education program with courses that promote all the wrong ideas about how students learn. While those teachers will be ready for social justice activism, they won’t have a foggy clue about how to teach real subjects such as math, science, or history.
The reality is that teachers must know the subjects they teach well. Since there is a high probability that early and middle school teachers will teach math at some point, they should complete at least one or two math courses before they are admitted into a faculty of education.
As for high school teachers, it makes sense to expect them to complete a major and a minor in subjects that are taught in schools. This shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Lowering teacher education standards might get more bodies into school classrooms, but it won’t help raise student achievement.
Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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