There can be no Reconciliation, without Truth – My reflections on the 5th annual Truth & Reconciliation Day

Makeshift memorial at Barrie’s Spirit Catcher, June 2021. Photo: Bruce Forsyth.

September 2025

An absence of balance. That’s what I see with much of the talk regarding the Indian Residential Schools. A recent article written by Sean Carleton, associate professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, and Benjamin Kucher, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, suffers from an absence of balance.

Let’s get one thing straight first off: I’m not a residential school denier. I want the truth, no matter how good or bad.

There is no such thing as “my truth,” or “your truth.” There is only “The Truth.” What many mistake for “their truth” is actually their interpretation. That’s not to say they are wrong, but people can perceive an event differently, even if they all saw exactly the same thing. This is why witness testimony is the most unreliable form of evidence that can be presented in a court of law. Sometimes, that’s all you have, so you go with it.

One of the things I learned very early in my career as a police officer was that the truth really doesn’t matter. It only matters what you can prove.

There is no doubt that bad things, regrettable things, happened at Indian Residential Schools. What is in doubt is the alleged murder and clandestine burials of Indigenous students by Priests and Nuns at these schools. Some infants were allegedly thrown into furnaces by Priests seeking to hide the rapes of students. As of today, all we actually have are “anomalies” found by ground penetrating radar. That’s it.

There have been very few excavations of these “anomalies” to determine if there is actually a child buried in spots identified by these anomalies, such as at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Of the sites that have been excavated, like the Pine Creek Residential School in Manitoba, nothing has been found to indicate that children were secretly murdered and buried. So, is it denialism to ask why no bodies have been found? Of course not.

You would think that the fact that no bodies have been found would be a great relief, seeing as that could mean no children were murdered and clandestinely buried. Instead, it appears there is too much money and power involved in keeping the murder narrative going. If children were indeed murdered, we need to find the truth, even if those responsible are long dead and will never see the inside of a courtroom.

I want to know the truth and I should hope that all First Nations across Canada want the truth too, no matter what the truth turns out to be. Carleton and Kucher get a little inflammatory in their column, belittling those who dare to “…demand impossible ‘proof,’ discredit survivor and expert testimony and attack the reputations of researchers. Denialists often present themselves as ‘skeptics’ or ‘truth seekers,’ cloaking harmful narratives in the language of free speech and rational inquiry. They cast survivor testimony as unreliable, ’emotional’ or politically or financially motivated.” I find that statement incredibly insulting.

Like many Canadians back in 2021, I mourned the children “discovered” at Kamloops. I took my daughter to the makeshift memorial that popped up in my city, where we reflected on this horrible tragedy, while standing near the sacred fire that had been lit. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

I even took the time to visit the former Spanish Residential School, west of Sudbury, where I left a note repeating a phrase I heard that touched me to my soul: “…and a small voice whispers, ‘They found us.’” I was proud to have been included in a smudging ceremony that took place while I was visiting the remains of the former school.

I did find it a little troubling that some public figures and media outlets continually referred to the “found graves” as a “mass grave,” which has a drastically different connotation than an unmarked grave. Most of these accounts have since been corrected to reflect this misrepresentation.

Memorial to children who died at the Spanish Indian Residential School, in Spanish, Ontario, July 2021. Photo: Bruce Forsyth.

I’m not in any way saying that nothing bad happened at residential schools, including criminal acts, because there is objective evidence confirming such incidents, but as of today, there is nothing to substantiate that clandestine murders and burials in mass graves occurred. Evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, is the standard for our courts of law. It shouldn’t be different when it comes to what happened, or didn’t happen, at the residential schools.

If any First Nation across Canada has records of children who went to a residential school and simply vanished, I urge those Nations to speak up. It’s true that many students and adults died at the residential schools from influenza, tuberculosis, or from the many diseases that killed many people before our current medical advances, who for a variety of reasons, were not repatriated to their Nations for burial. How many of those students were buried locally, in proper graves that once had a marker, and recorded in church or municipal records?

There are some, who have attempted to answer these questions, like Candace Malcolm of Juno News, author and historian Dr. Tom Flanagan, chair of the Indian Residential Schools Research Group in the book he co-edited “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (And the Truth about Residential Schools),” and Rebel News reporters Drea Humphrey, an Indigenous woman, and Matt Brevner in their documentary “Kamloops: The Buried Truth,” only to be told they are Residential School deniers and perpetuating lies. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. The truth is, we don’t know the truth.

As of today, all we have are unverified allegations that have been used to incorrectly paint Canada as a genocidal nation. I say it’s more important to find the truth. As author K.A. Tucker pointed out in her book, Burying Water, “…the truth is like that water: it doesn’t matter how hard you try to bury it; it’ll always find some way back to the surface. It’s resilient.”

Now, Prime Minister Mark Carney, where are we on thing like the poverty, housing and clean water issues on First Nation communities across Canada? Are there any updates you wish to share with us?