Dear Senior Editors at the National Post,

I have been a subscriber to the National Post forever. It is a primary source for the reporting of truth in Canada. You have first rate columnists.

I trust the Post.

 

I write to report an untruth that two of your columnists have recently reported and refused to  correct. I urge you to correct the record.

On May 27, 2021 Chief Casimir of the Kamloops Indian Band, on the basis of a ground radar survey reporting soil anomalies, announced “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children.”  She claimed “knowledge keepers” had been aware of this.

The claim metastasized into a claim of a “mass grave”. Trudeau believed the claim, took a knee and flew the flag at half mast for six months. Canada was denounced world wide as a genocidal nation.

The House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution that Indian residential schools were a “genocide”.

Other Indian bands made announcements that they suspected mass graves near their reserves. Trudeau contributed millions of dollars for excavations to any Indian band who wanted to search for bodies.

One hundred churches were torched.Trudeau said this was “understandable”.

On the first anniversary of Casimir’s announcement the Post became the first mainstream media to question the veracity of the claim of a mass grave. On May 26, 2022 Terry Glavin wrote a courageous article that denied a mass grave.

Where excavations have been performed (none at Kamloops despite the band receiving millions of dollars from Trudeau for that specific purpose), no bodies were discovered.

Following the third anniversary of the infamous claim by Chief Casimir, the Post has published a series of columns which report that there are no graves, much less a mass grave, at Kamloops. On June 1, Raymond de Souza’s column acknowledged how the book, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us, has exposed the false narrative. The book proves that the soil anomalies were the result of septic works on the site decades earlier. The junior anthropologist who performed the ground radar survey had not done any investigation of the history of the site. Had she done her homework, as she clearly ought to have done, she never would have claimed that the soil anomalies were evidence of graves.

On July 12 Chris Selley wrote a similar piece. Both of these distinguished journalists, along with Jonathan Kay’s recent article, quite properly take the mainstream media to task for deceiving Canadians on this very important question. I applaud these eminent journalists for contributing to the correction of the historical record.

So what is the problem?

The problem is that both Selley and de Souza exonerate the Indians themselves for their role in perpetrating this monstrous blood libel.

De Souza states, “No one ever claimed that remains had been found”. Note to Father de Souza (copied with this email), that is exactly what Casimir claimed in her May 27 announcement. She expressly asserted the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children had been found. How could you possibly assert otherwise?

De Souza also asserted, “The blame does not fall on Indian leaders”.

Selley claimed, “Casimir never used the term mass grave” and that Casimir “ and other First Nation leaders never stopped clarifying”.

These statements are demonstrably untrue. I am attaching the text of resolutions Casimir put forward to the Annual General Assembly of First Nations on July 6, 2021 (that is, about six weeks after Casimir announced the discovery of the remains of 215 children). Casimir proposed that in view of the fact that Canada “has not acknowledged or recognized that (the Residential School System) was a genocide” the Assembly should “stand in solidarity with all survivors of the Residential School System and their families and assert that the mass grave discovered at the fromer Kamloops Indian Residential School reveals Crown Conduct reflecting a pattern of genocide against Indigenous Peoples.

 

Note to Mr. Selley (copied with this email), Casimir not only expressly used the term “mass grave”, she proposed the term be adopted by the Assembly. How could you possibly assert otherwise?

Casimir’s resolution was passed and thereby became the official position of the Indigenous people of Canada, to wit, there was a mass grave at Kamloops and Canada committed genocide.

Neither Casimir nor the Assembly have ever officially withdrawn or gainsaid this proclamation. While Casimir, on the third anniversary of her infamous announcement, changed her website so it now states that  the radar discovered  “anomalies” rather than “bodies”, that is a wholly inadequate correction of the blood libel she pronounced against Canada in her resolution to the Assembly.

I suppose it might be possible that de Souza and Selley were unaware of Casimir’s resolution to the Assembly when they wrote their recent columns. However, following their recent columns emails were sent to both, attaching the resolution and no response has been received. No correction has been published.

I wrote to the Post’s “letters to the editor” about this. My letter remains unpublished.

If the Post is to have credibility on this issue these false statements by two of your columnists must be corrected. While it is certainly true that the media and Trudeau grossly misled the Canadian people on the Kamloops issue, it is absolutely true that the Indians were responsible for the original allegation of the discovery of the remains of 215 children and it is absolutely true that the Indians have officially resolved there is a mass grave at Kamloops and Canada is genocidal. They have never recanted from this falsehood. They must be held to account for these monstrous untruths. How can there ever be reconciliation without truth?

I am circulating this email to a very long list of Canadians who share my concern. We await your response.

I am also copying two of your most renowned columnists, Barbara Kay and Conrad Black. Your founder wrote the forward to Grave Error, and Kay wrote a favourable review which is included in the book. They have both written extensively on untruths told in respect to Canadian treatment of the Indigenous. I expect that both of them are aghast at the untruths reported by de Souza and Selley as to the responsibility of Casimir personally and the Assembly of First Nations, generally, for the most heinous blood libel ever to be proclaimed against our nation.

Were any other newspaper to have contained these falsehoods, I would not bother to respond. But this is The National Post for goodness sake. Surely you will correct the record you have allowed to be created and which at this point stands uncorrected.

Before closing, I want to invite Selley and de Souza to respond to this email if they think I have misstated anything or if they think there is context I have missed.

Respectfully,

Barry Kirkham KC

Vancouver, BC.