Opinion
From mass graves to mass hysteria
The grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, where some believe Indigenous students may be buried — though there have not been any excavations. – Reuters
The Opposition with Dan Knight
A Canadian Teacher Fired for Challenging the Narrative on Residential Schools—Where’s the Evidence, Where’s the Justice?
I am a teacher buffeted daily by the chill winds of political indoctrination, censorship, conformity, and anti-education in schools.
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The New York Post reported this month that “after two years of horror stories about the alleged mass graves of Indigenous children at residential schools across Canada, a series of recent excavations at suspected sites has turned up no human remains.” In July 2021 the Assembly of First Nations claimed the “mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School was proof of a “pattern of genocide against Indigenous Peoples that must be thoroughly examined.”
Yet the Canadian government already examined residential schools from 2008-15 through The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with Commission Chair Murray Sinclair telling the media the number of missing children “could be in the 15-25,000 range, and maybe even more.” To date there has not been a single missing child identified, and not a single document from a parent or chief indicating a child was missing from any of the almost 150 schools over almost 150 years.
I’m not ignorant of the subject of our past as I am informed on the subject of Indian Residential Schools as I am a member of the pan-Canadian Indian Residential Schools Research Group. I also did a Master’s degree in Educational History with specialization in Indian Educational Policy under the supervision of Dr. Robert Carney, who was once the leading expert on the schools. I also obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto where I argued A Case Against Censorship in Literature Education. Professionally, I have taught in high schools, elementary schools, and colleges and was for a time Principal of Neuchâtel Junior College in Switzerland. My last position was in Abbotsford as a senior French Immersion History teacher. It is to Abbotsford that I now turn, for that is where I was fired.
One fateful day in May 2021 I was teaching Calculus 12 at a high school named after the painter Robert Bateman where news was feverishly spread about the discovery of the remains of 215 children in a mass grave at the site of the long-shuttered Kamloops Indian Residential School. The principal used the PA system to ask teachers to stop their regular instruction to navigate the upsetting news with students. In this context, I spoke about the history of residential schools, the dislocation and despair of prairie First Nations (most residential schools being located in the Canadian west), the Indian Act (1876) and its authors’ intentions to support its most marginalized communities, the role of the church as teachers and proselytizers, and the reports of abuse and neglect.
As it was a math class, some of the students were uninterested or bored by my history soliloquy, but one girl spoke up to say the schools represented “cultural genocide.” I agreed with her by saying that modern western schooling was mandatory for indigenous children after 1920, and a third of these children were placed in residential schools (another third attending day schools, and the final third receiving no education at all).
I considered the discussion to be like any other, with some students engaged and others on their phone or quietly doing equations, until a second student, flush with anger and indignancy, reacted to my comment that children who died tragically while enrolled in residential schools did so mostly from disease. She said the Christian teachers in Kamloops (Oblate priests and brothers as well as nuns from the Catholic order The Sisters of St. Ann) were “murderers who tortured students to death by leaving them out in the snow to die.”
I didn’t say anything more, for I feared an argument, and directed students to return to their Calculus work. The class was given a break a few minutes later, and unbeknownst to me the girl complained to a counsellor, who told the principal, who told the district, and before class was over that day, I had a visit from two male administrators who commanded me in front of my students to gather my things and leave. While being frog-marched through the corridor I repeatedly asked what I had done wrong, but they wouldn’t answer. When I was close to the front door I turned to them and said I wouldn’t be leaving without hearing from the principal what I had done. This request was granted, but all the principal would say to me was that it was something I said.
My suspension ended after eight months when the district released its investigator’s report, to which senior management appended a charge of professional misconduct, as the following excerpts show:
“While acting as a TOC for a Calculus 12 class, Mr. McMurtry…inferring [sic] that many of the deaths were due to disease was in opinion inflammatory, inappropriate, insensitive, and contrary to the district’s message of condolences and reconciliation.”
“He left students with the impression some or all of the deaths could be contributed to ‘natural causes’ and that the deaths could not be called murder.”
“Both Mr. McMurtry and student accounts had some students passionately saying the deaths were murder, [and] the graves were mass graves.”
“[We] consider this to be extremely serious professional misconduct.”
While on suspension I dug into the grave story of murdered children and found I was right. Indeed, there was no discovery at all at the residential school in Kamloops in the middle of the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc reserve. No graves. No bodies. No murder weapons. No police investigation. No historical record or documentation from a parent or tribal leader of a missing child. Nonetheless, prime minister Justin Trudeau unilaterally ordered that our country lower its flag from coast to coast and in our embassies around the world for over five months, though all that Culture/Media professor Sarah Beaulieu (the sole source of the story) found, using ground-penetrating radar in an abandoned apple orchard on the reserve, were soil anomalies, likely sewage trenches or tiles from 1924. My judgment day was February 21, 2023. The Abbotsford School District trustees had to pronounce on a recommendation for termination from management. That very day I saw that the National Post featured my story on Page 1. I was suddenly under a deluge of support from many media platforms, especially Rebel News which sent a reporter to cover the disciplinary hearing. I boldly predicted in front of supporters that my case was strong and the tide in Canada was turning against cancel culture and its witch hunts, but I was wrong. I was fired and will likely never teach again. Canadian historian Marcel Trudel wrote:
“There is nothing more dangerous than history used as a defense; or history used for preaching; history used as a tool is no longer history.”
I would add that there is nothing more dangerous, in these times, than teaching history truthfully.
In my termination letter this February the case against me changed again, this time it was no longer about what I said but only my “inflammatory, inappropriate, and insensitive tone” that one day two years ago. Then this August I received a letter from the regulatory body for teachers, called the Teaching Regulation Branch (formerly the BC College of Teachers), which changed the case against me again. Now I am accused of “falsely suggesting that student deaths at the schools were comparable to the general child mortality rate and not the result of a government strategy of cultural genocide.” In the same letter the TRB calls for the cancellation of my teaching certificate for life… before my case has arrived at arbitration, before an arbitrator has been chosen or dates have even been set, and long before the merits of my case have been fairly determined.
In Kafka’s play The Trial there is a familiar quotation:
“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.”
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Dan McTeague
Carney launches his crusade against the oilpatch
Well, he finally did it.
After literally years of rumours that he was preparing to run for parliament and being groomed as Justin Trudeau’s successor.
After he, reportedly, agreed to take over Chrystia Freeland’s job as Finance Minister in December, only to then, reportedly, pull back once her very public and pointed resignation made the job too toxic for someone with his ambitions.
After he even began telegraphing, through surrogates, an openness to joining a Conservative government, likely hoping to preserve some of his beloved environmentalist achievements if and when Pierre Poilievre leads his party into government.
After all that, Mark Carney has finally thrown his hat into the ring for the position of Liberal leader and prime minister of our beloved and beleaguered country.
And, as I’ve been predicting, the whole gang of Trudeau apologists are out in force, jumping for joy and saying this is the best thing since sliced bread. Carney is a breath of fresh air, a man who can finally turn the page on a difficult era in our history, a fighter, and — of all things! — an outsider.
Hogwash!
This narrative conveniently ignores the fact that Carney has been a key Trudeau confidant for years. As Pierre Poilievre pointed out on Twitter/X, he remains listed on the Liberal Party’s website as an advisor to the Prime Minister. He’s godfather to Chrystia Freeland’s son, for heaven’s sake!
Outsider?! This man is an insider’s insider.
But, more importantly, Carney has been a passionate supporter and promoter of the Trudeau government’s agenda, with the job-killing, economy-hobbling Net Zero program right at its heart. The Carbon Tax? He was for it before he was against it, which is to say, before it was clear the popular opposition to it isn’t going away, especially now that we all see what a bite it’s taken out of our household budgets.
Even his course correction was half-hearted. In Carney’s words, the Carbon Tax “served a purpose up until now.” What on earth does that even mean?
Meanwhile, EV mandates, Emission Caps, the War on Pipelines, tax dollars for so-called renewables, and all of the other policies designed to stifle our natural resources imposed on us by the activists in the Trudeau government? They’re right up Carney’s ally.
Plus his record at the Banks of Canada and England, his role as the U.N.’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, and his passion projects like the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), and its subgroup the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), point to a concerning willingness to achieve his ideological goals by even the most sneaky, underhanded routes.
Take, for instance, the question of whether we need to “phase out” Canada’s oil and gas industry. Politicians who want real power can’t just come out and endorse that position without experiencing major blowback, as Justin Trudeau found out back in 2017. Despite years of activist propaganda, Canadians still recognize that hydrocarbon energy is the backbone of our economy.
But what if oil and gas companies started having trouble getting loans or attracting investment, no matter how profitable they are? Over time they, and the jobs and other economic benefits they provide, would simply disappear.
That is, in essence, the goal of GFANZ. It’s what they mean when they require their members – including Canadian banks like BMO, TD, CIBC, Scotiabank and RBC – to commit to “align[ing] their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century or sooner.”
And Mark Carney is their founder and chairman. GFANZ is Mark Carney’s baby.
In truth, Mark Carney is less an outsider than he is the man behind the curtain, the man pulling the strings and poking the levers of power. Not that he will put it this way, but his campaign pitch can be boiled down to, “Trudeau, but without the scandals or baggage.” Well, relatively speaking.
But the thing is, it wasn’t those scandals – as much of an embarrassment as they were — which has brought an unceremonious end to Justin Trudeau’s political career. What laid him low, in the end, was bad policy and governmental mismanagement.
To choose Mark Carney would be to ask for more of the same. Thanks, but no thanks.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Daily Caller
Opinion: Trump Making ‘Sex’ Great Again On Day One Of Presidency
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Megan Brock
One day into his presidency, Trump has taken significant executive action to preserve the integrity of the sexes and root out gender ideology from the federal government.
Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to affirm the unique distinctions of the two sexes, male and female, and reverse the spread of gender ideology that was pushed during the Biden administration. Trump kept that promise Monday by signing an executive order (EO) titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” which defends the integrity of the sexes by mandating the federal government apply “clear and accurate language” that includes requiring the use of the term “sex” over “gender.”
“My Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male,” the EO states.
“When administering or enforcing sex-based distinctions, every agency and all Federal employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ in all applicable Federal policies and documents.”
Trump’s order defines male and female as “immutable biological” classifications, noting that “sex” is not synonymous with the term “gender identity.”
“‘Sex’ shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. ‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity’,” the EO states.
“Gender Identity” is a term used by transgender activists to describe an individual’s imagined sex. Transgender activists believe a person’s imagined sex is as real as their physical sex, and should hold equal weight in society and law.
For example, in April 2024 the Biden administration expanded Title IX regulations, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, to include “gender identity,” giving men claiming to have a female “gender identity” full legal access to women’s sports and private spaces. A federal judge recently struck down the expanded Title IX regulations in a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration by six states, including Tennessee.
Transgender activists often use the terms “gender” and “gender identity” interchangeably.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) described how these terms are used synonymously in their gender medical guidance, called the Standards of Care version 8 (SOC 8), which is routinely used by medical associations, governments, and insurance companies in the U.S. and abroad to create policy driven by gender ideology.
“Depending on the context, gender may reference gender identity, gender expression, and/or social gender role, including understandings and expectations culturally tied to people who were assigned male or female at birth,” the SOC 8 states.
“Gender identities other than those of men and women (who can be either cisgender or transgender) include transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender neutral, agender, gender fluid, and “third” gender, among others; many other genders are recognized around the world.”
This muddying of language is found throughout medical institutions including The National Institutes of Health who define gender as “A multidimensional construct that encompasses gender identity and expression, as well as social and cultural expectations about status, characteristics, and behavior as they are associated with certain sex traits.”
The Trump administration acknowledged how the corruption of language by transgender activists has had an “corrosive impact” on American society, stating: “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system,” in the EO. “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
The term “gender identity” was popularized in the 1960s by controversial sexologist John Money, whose most high-profile experiment involved advising parents of a boy whose penis was damaged in a botched circumcision to cut the rest of it off and raise him as a girl. At age 15, the boy — who was raised as “Brenda” — discovered the truth and rejected further hormone treatments. He eventually committed suicide at age 38.
Gender ideology believes a person’s sex can differ from their “gender identity,” rejecting the long-established scientific understanding of biology that there are only two sexes based on the fact there are only two types of reproductive cells — sperm and ova.
The very concept of “gender identity” creates the possibility of changing one’s sex — a biological impossibility — through medical interventions, therefore creating a demand for medical sex reassignment interventions.
WPATH defines “gender identity” in the SOC 8 as “a person’s deeply felt, internal, intrinsic sense of their own gender,” whereas the Trump administration defines it as “A fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.”
The EO further explains that because “gender identity” is wholly subjective to the individual, it cannot be used to replace the objective reality of sex.
“‘Gender identity’ reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex,” Trump’s EO states.
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