Last week, McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg held a launch for a newly published book co-edited by Niigaan Sinclair and Sean Carleton, Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism. Being one of the people branded as a denialist, I decided to attend the launch along with Frances Widdowson, who has become the face of residential school denialism.
We discussed attending the book launch beforehand including the risk of being assaulted again like she was last year at the University of Winnipeg. Undaunted, Frances decided she was going to try and confront Carleton and Sinclair at the event. Isn’t confronting us what they want to do?
I advised Frances to dissemble her intentions on social media for her own safety. The Orange Shirts were likely to jump her and beat her up or worse if given half a chance. However, word got out that Frances would be trying to attend the launch. A wave of fear and loathing swiftly rushed through Graverland,[1] prompting a massive mobilization of police and security forces.
Winnipeg Police Service outside of the bookstore displaying their partiality (Facebook).
Grant Park Mall, where the bookstore is located, closed the mall doors to the store at 3:00 PM, hours before the launch because they were worried about security. Security personnel escorted guests and invited activists through the mall. In front of the store’s doors to the parking lot, I spotted about a dozen uniformed constables and several squad cars and unmarked police cars. In addition to the police, there were private security personnel and a phalanx of Orange Shirts guarding the entrance and screening people as they entered the store.
Both Frances and I were emailed peremptory trespass notices from the bookstore’s executive manager, Angela Torgersen (Frances was permanently banned from the store).
“McNally regrets that this measure is necessary. However, McNally is responsible for maintaining a safe and respectful environment at the Book Launch and has determined that your attendance would be inconsistent with that obligation.”
Of course, I asked Torgersen just how McNally determined that. I am still waiting for her response.
Unable to enter the store, Frances stood outside for several minutes with a supporter, Gary Cummings, who was also assaulted at the U of W last year. The WPS received eight 911 calls that day (Sept. 26, 2025) and did not respond. Police usually prioritize calls where people are in imminent danger of being harmed so questions have been raised about executive decisions to let a mob have its way that day. Numerous assaults were committed against Frances and several of her supporters. Several of the known assailants were in attendance at the book launch being feted by Carleton and Sinclair.
On the left, Viv Ketchum and next to her, Geraldine ‘Gramma’ Shingoose. Both were caught on video assaulting Widdowson on Sept. 26, 2025 at the University of Winnipeg (Facebook).
Anyone spotted conversing with Frances in the parking lot (even for twenty seconds) who then entered the store was quickly asked to leave under police escort.
At far right: Kent spotted by police speaking briefly to Widdowson and a supporter. That got him escorted out from the launch.
Earlier in the day, Frances and Cummings visited the University of Winnipeg to do a review of the events of Sept. 26, 2025. She was met by 11 campus security staff including the supervisor, Josh, who permitted last year’s assaults to take place. Several uniformed Winnipeg Police Service constables soon appeared to enforce a trespass notice issued against her last year by Josh after the mobbing subsided. Frances was fined.
During breakfast with Frances and others the day after the book launch, she received a phone call from the WPS liaison officer who meekly asked what was her itinerary for the day and when exactly was she leaving Winnipeg. She demurred, of course and went to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, which she had last visited on Sept. 25, 2026.
Knowing that the notorious Widdowson was in town, the U of M erected temporary wire fencing around the NCTR and assigned extra security. The fence was removed once the authorities were certain that Public Enemy #1 had left the province.
The outsized police reaction to Frances’s presence is probably attributable to the new Winnipeg police chief, Gene Bowers, who has fully signed on to the Reconciliation zeitgeist, and Sheila North, the first external Indigenous Relations Advisor (yes, the WPS also has an internal advisor) who was appointed three weeks before the Sept. 25 melee at U of W.
Sheila North and WPS Chief Gene Bowers.
Anyone who is trying to preserve the narrative of Indian Residential Schools (IRS) as a genocide. Frances is a formidable and ethical scholar whose intellectual prowess threatens the proponents of the IRS genocide narrative.
Why would they fear that? For activists like Ketchum and Shingoose, it’s because absolute victimhood breeds absolute entitlement and genocide is absolute victimhood. They don’t want to lose the prestige and perks of being feted as ‘Survivors’. For bad actors like Carleton and Sinclair, it’s the fear of having their many years of personal investment in a decolonial narrative flushed down the drain. For the careerists like Bowers and North, it’s the fear of having their ticket on the Graver train canceled.
[1] ‘Graverland’ is my extended euphemism for the ‘Gravers’: people who want or need to insist that there are missing and murdered Indian Residential School students buried in secret graves all over Canada despite the absence of any tangible evidence.
