Canadian Politics: Is that a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

[Fragile Bird]

More unmarked graves have been found at the site of a former residential school, Marieval, in Saskatchewan. The news just broke, and the only detail right now is that unmarked graves numbering in the hundreds have been found so far, using ground penetrating radar, more than those found in Kamloops. There already was a cemetery there, with the graves of children who died of illness, and whose parents knew of their deaths. These are in addition to those graves.

The federal government gave the money for the search two years ago, but because of Covid-19 the search was postponed. This was another school run by the Catholic Church, from 1899 to the 1970s, when it was taken over by the Cowessess First Nation, who ran it until the mid-90s. The school was torn down and replaced with a day school.

There will be a press conference with more details tomorrow.

Each and every residential school has to be investigated, because every school has stories about children who mysteriously disappeared.
 

[Zorral]

The story made the Washington Post today, as well.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/23/canada-cowessess-residential-school-graves/

751 graves are, well, a lot.

Quote

TORONTO — A First Nation in Canada says it has found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, at least the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country again confronts one of the darkest chapters of its history. . . .

Not that the US can claim any innocence about any matters that in which it has treated Native populations either.

[JGP]

17 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The story made the Washington Post today, as well.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/23/canada-cowessess-residential-school-graves/

751 graves are, well, a lot.

Not that the US can claim any innocence about any matters that in which it has treated Native populations either.

I watched the press conference this morning and currently subsequent reporting and interviews. It’s heartbreaking, rage inducing, but most definitely not surprising. 

Canada has been moving in the right direction, but too slow [I’m still pissed at the Trudeau govt fighting survivors in court] at this point I’d personally welcome international involvement, and consequence, to move forward with truth and reconciliation, reparations, whatever.

I feel… sick.    

[Zorral]

6 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I feel… sick.  

Which is why Those sorts (They need not be described here) are fighting so hard to control the teaching of our (USA) history.  They don't want us to know.

[TrueMetis]

41 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I watched the press conference this morning and currently subsequent reporting and interviews. It’s heartbreaking, rage inducing, but most definitely not surprising. 

Canada has been moving in the right direction, but too slow [I’m still pissed at the Trudeau govt fighting survivors in court] at this point I’d personally welcome international involvement, and consequence, to move forward with truth and reconciliation, reparations, whatever.

I feel… sick.    

Not to be defending that too much, but calling that court case fighting survivors in court isn't exactly correct per my understanding. People with a better understanding of it then me have told me it's about 2 things, making sure the government has enough time to actually sort out who gets compensation because the initial ruling didn't give much time for that and clarifying whether the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal actually had the authority to make the ruling they did.

I don't really give a shit about the second, but I think the first is important and the government case isn't arguing they shouldn't have to pay compensation, they've agreed to that.

[JGP]

Yeah, I know it’s complicated.

Thing for me, however, being that one of the disputes is about [iirc] whether or not to compensate urban survivors and children of survivors, which is bullshit if true; and also, disputing the CHRT’s authority is something else as well. I’ve yet to see clarity on which particular section of the ruling the Govt thinks is beyond the CHRT’s purview. It may be the cynic in me, but I suspect the Govt is concerned more about setting a precedent.     

[Fragile Bird]

What TrueMetis said. Also, setting precedents is pretty damn important as well.

I heard Marc Miller talk about the suits and he impressed me as a competent minister who is getting things done.

I missed the press conference but I’m sure I’ll catch up later today. I was at the dentists getting a filling and heard the radio in the background, and I thought, 751? I must have misheard that, surely it wasn’t 751.

Lots of Catholics are getting pretty pissed off that more isn’t being done by the church with regard to the release of records. Shit happened, confess, we’re taught about the power of confession, the need to express sorrow and the asking and giving of forgiveness. So get on with it. Lost in the news has been the fact that the Oblates did a lot of that back in the 90s, the order that ran many of the schools, including the Kamloops school, but they haven’t done enough about the records.

But after hearing about 751 unmarked graves I’m really getting pissed off, and the rising anger isn’t at the church, it’s switched focus back to the federal and provincial governments now. I need to look at the Truth and Reconciliation report to see if the details I want to know about are there. I read stories about the witness statements, about the terrible things that happened, but I don’t remember reading the details about how things were run. 
 

I say this because of two sets of facts I know for sure. First, Catholic schools everywhere, except maybe Quebec, were underfunded by provincial governments, sometimes by quite a lot. Man, I took night school classes at public high schools and I was just blown away by the equipment they hand, the rooms full of sewing machines and cooking equipment, the computers, the swimming pools, the well equipped gyms. It was a damn different world to a kid who attended a Catholic school. We got so much less money than the public schools got, and that was for white kids in the mainstream world. Second, schools, hospitals and everything else for indigenous people got way less money than the Catholics got. That’s part of the lawsuits that have been brought against the federal government. Serious underfunding. 
 

As I’ve been hearing stories about the residential schools a common theme has been malnutrition of kids, about hungry, lonely children. I bet the residential schools were given substantially lower amounts of money than schools for non-native children. After all, they’ve been getting less money in recent years. That would make them more susceptible to dying if the flu came around, or, as has repeatedly been testified, they were beaten and abused. And if deaths weren’t reported, I’m getting less and less surprised, dead kids would mean a reduction in the money the school would get and would mean more dead kids. That’s in no way to excuse the horrible behavior we’ve all heard about, but it makes sense. And unmarked graves? Did the government even give money for grave markers?

So back to the government - where the hell were the school inspectors? Did no one notice there were dead children? Did no one care? Did they tell the school administrators not to worry about it because native children died easily? Trudeau said the Catholic Church had to step up more, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s still too much cover-up going on by both levels of government. Shove the kids in schools, get clergy to run them, underfund them and let them take the blame. Even worse to me was the fact that this happened in Saskatchewan, the land of Tommy Douglas, the most respected political figure in Canadian history. Where the hell was he while this was happening in his province? I know he had a lot of work to do in the province when he was elected, there were almost no paved roads outside of cities, there was no electric grid outside of cities, but did he think lifting up the citizens of the province didn’t include native citizens?

I am so sick and tired of hearing terrible stories, of seeing crying women and choked up men, I want to scream out loud and just rage, why hasn’t this stopped?

 

[Fragile Bird]

Update 

June       18Fr  19Sa 20Su  21Mo  22Tu 23We  24Th  25Fr

BC           109     94      90      45      56      87       75     72 

AB           124   127    100      60      57      92       73     81 

SK             98     55      60      48      36      32       52     56

MB          189   151      93      74      69    123     106     85

ON          345   355    318    270    296    255     296   256

PQ           127   160    103      90     84     127      96      88

NB              3        5       2        0        1        1        2       1

NS             11       6       2        0        2        0        5      16

PE               0        0       0        0        0        0        0        0

NL               1        0       0        0        1       0        0        0

North          0      42       0       30       8       4       18      22

Total       1006   995   768     612    610   721    705     696

Just a quick note - our Friday to Friday average dropped from 1056 cases a day to 729. The Yukon is having a real third wave, actually a wave, period, since they really didn't have one before, even with just under 90% of the eligible population vaccinated with one dose and 78% fully vaccinated. That should give us all pause for thought. We need to be vaccinated.

Alberta had data problems on Friday and initially gave a guesstimate of 100 cases, so I decided to wait to post. No figures were given until today. BC doesn't report on the weekend and Quebec didn't either, I guess this is a holiday in honor of Ste. Jean de Baptiste Day. Going forward I'll switch to the Atlantic 4.

Toronto set a North American record for vaccinations at one location with vaccination day at Scotiabank Arena, with 26,771 doses administered, beating a record set in Texas of 17,000. Nevertheless, we were down on Sunday overall, I think too many people were at the cottage for the weekend or something.

I looked at the 7-day number of cases in the US, since a number of states no longer report every day, and they had 88,236 cases, up 4,000 cases from the previous week, 12,605 cases a day. Our cases from the last 7 days numbered 4,527, down from 6,322, 646 cases a day. That would be like the US having 5,652 cases a day. With the nasty third wave we've had our numbers were higher than the US number for quite a while. It's a relief to be way below the US once again. But the Yukon is at the top of the per capita list, with their outbreak and their tiny population. Even Manitoba would still place 8th if it was a US state. The top 7 US states are Missouri, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, Florida and Colorado. Saskatchewan would be 18th, right behind Alabama,  and Ontario would be 35th, behind South Carolina. I'll be a lot happier when we get back down to where we were for such a long time, all below 51. Six provinces and territories are below #51, Vermont, right now, the Atlantic 4 and the NWT and Nunavut.

[Paxter]

Some researchers are using excess deaths data to call BS on Canada's claim that 80% of COVID deaths were in long-term care settings:

Quote

The new peer-reviewed analysis casts doubt on the widely accepted assumption that 80 per cent of Canada’s deaths due to COVID-19 occurred among older adult residents of long-term care homes.

Instead, it says at least two-thirds of deaths caused by COVID-19 in communities outside of long-term care may have been missed. That would put the proportion of deaths in long-term care at around 45 per cent, much closer to the average of 40 per cent reported by peer countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The conclusion is based on a review of reports of excess deaths across Canada, the pattern of COVID-19 fatalities during the pandemic and cremation data showing a significant spike in deaths at homes versus hospitals in 2020. It also relies on antibody surveillance testing that collectively unmasked the likely broad scope of undetected COVID-19 infections.

I have always raised my eyebrows on this data point, so I'm glad that some research is being performed on this. 

This isn't to excuse the standard of long-term care in Canada, more just to show that there are a ton of uncounted COVID deaths in this country. 

@L'oiseau français: That's a low bar comparing us to the US! With 1 of 2 Americans unvaccinated, I don't think we have to worry about that comparison, Yukon notwithstanding!

[Fragile Bird]

28 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Some researchers are using excess deaths data to call BS on Canada's claim that 80% of COVID deaths were in long-term care settings:

I have always raised my eyebrows on this data point, so I'm glad that some research is being performed on this. 

This isn't to excuse the standard of long-term care in Canada, more just to show that there are a ton of uncounted COVID deaths in this country. 

@L'oiseau français: That's a low bar comparing us to the US! With 1 of 2 Americans unvaccinated, I don't think we have to worry about that comparison, Yukon notwithstanding!

I think a lot of provinces are doing data reviews right now. For example, Ontario’s new case number today is 299, but 90 cases are from last year, 209 from yesterday, and 25 deaths were reported, but 19 were from last year. There was a data correction last week as well, one of the days included 80 or 90 cases from last year, and we had a shocking number of deaths reported (about 25 as well, iirc correctly) and most of the deaths were updated too. I suspect it will take a year or two to review all deaths.

The US is a low bar but it’s the measuring stick we use in this country. It’s unavoidable when you’re a mouse sleeping beside an elephant!

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, L'oiseau français said:

The US is a low bar but it’s the measuring stick we use in this country. It’s unavoidable when you’re a mouse sleeping beside an elephant!

True, NZers do the same with us. Always tricky to do country comparisons no matter which cross-section you look at. 

[kairparavel]

Red paint and toppling statues - go for it. It's time for white Canada to start reflecting on the history of colonization and what it's done and continues to do to a wide swath of it's people.

No it won't bring all those indigenous children back, it won't save all the murdered and missing indigenous women, but it's time to stop immortalizing people because they were a head of state, or a fierce general or whatever, and to reflect on the past- the ugly and bruised past. What exactly do we celebrate and why? That needs a deeper look and some unlearning coupled with new learning on what's happened here for the past 150+ years.

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

Red paint and toppling statues - go for it. It's time for white Canada to start reflecting on the history of colonization and what it's done and continues to do to a wide swath of it's people.

No it won't bring all those indigenous children back, it won't save all the murdered and missing indigenous women, but it's time to stop immortalizing people because they were a head of state, or a fierce general or whatever, and to reflect on the past- the ugly and bruised past. What exactly do we celebrate and why? That needs a deeper look and some unlearning coupled with new learning on what's happened here for the past 150+ years.

I agree. I’ve been thinking about that as I read all the attacks against the Catholic Church. I want to say, hey guys, go look in the bloody mirror. The government at all levels, all the churches, just reflected what the majority of the people of Canada have always been like. The fact is most Canadians looked down on or just plain despised native people. They didn’t give a damn about underfunded schools and brutal assaults on children.

When the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women was on I’d read the stories the CBC posted and would respond to comments. Somebody would almost always come back and say something like, “you people in Toronto, buncha Liberals, you know eff all about what it’s like to live with those people, why don’t you just shut up”. That was a mild comment, many were very vile. Most of the comments seemed to come from out west. It got so bad the CBC banned all comments on any stories about native people for quite a while, a year, two years, something like that.

A lot of the anger out west was about pipelines, and victim blaming. Sickening. 
 

Maybe having a good whipping boy like the church will help things along. Of course the federal government destroyed almost all their records, so the fact that the churches still seem to have archives will direct anger at them. 

Last night I had a visit with friends, the fellow who I mentioned elsewhere is undergoing chemo for his lymphoma. (And after two sessions, doing well) He’s from the NWT, and he was saying the first school he and his brothers and sister attended was run by nuns from an order the name of which he can’t remember, and they were absolutely vicious to the children. Corporal punishment was the rule of the day. His youngest brother was terrified to go to school, he was treated so badly. The nuns told his mother he was sub-normal. His dad got a new job and they moved to Great Slave Lake, where the school was run by the Grey Nuns, in a totally different fashion. By Christmas his “sub-normal” brother was at the top of his class. This was the 60s.

[kairparavel]

With the changes for entry re: citizens and vaccinations I am 99.9% going to be visiting my family in a month. Flights are not optimum and expensive but I'm just going with it. Just need to confirm my work schedule and book it, Danno.

My nieces are now fully vaccinated and it's just their  brother who is months away from being old enough. I did remind my mom and sisters to remember that though we're all vaccinated, I am from way outside their bubble. I did commit to being a homebody more or less in the weeks before visiting but even then,  MC is out in the world for his job. Still so complicated, but I'm excited to see them for the first time in 2 years.

[Lord of Oop North]

Really happy for you kairparavel, that's wonderful. Must be so exciting to finally be so close to that moment.

Cheers

[kairparavel]

On 7/12/2021 at 12:26 PM, Lord of Oop North said:

Really happy for you kairparavel, that's wonderful. Must be so exciting to finally be so close to that moment.

Cheers

Thanks Limer.

Unfortunately when the time came to book a flight my family got cold feet. I am quite outside their bubble, after all. Anyways, maybe next year.

[Fragile Bird]

10 hours ago, kairparavel said:

Thanks Limer.

Unfortunately when the time came to book a flight my family got cold feet. I am quite outside their bubble, after all. Anyways, maybe next year.

Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.

[Fragile Bird]

Tornado with ‘catastrophic’ damages being caused touched down in Barrie.

[SerHaHa]

Quote

Last night I had a visit with friends, the fellow who I mentioned elsewhere is undergoing chemo for his lymphoma. (And after two sessions, doing well) He’s from the NWT, and he was saying the first school he and his brothers and sister attended was run by nuns from an order the name of which he can’t remember, and they were absolutely vicious to the children. Corporal punishment was the rule of the day. His youngest brother was terrified to go to school, he was treated so badly. The nuns told his mother he was sub-normal. His dad got a new job and they moved to Great Slave Lake, where the school was run by the Grey Nuns, in a totally different fashion. By Christmas his “sub-normal” brother was at the top of his class. This was the 60s.

These events of finding the gravesites has been a hot topic in our family.  I haven't posted much personal info - my fiance Jess is a card holding status native from the Gitxsan people in BC, although she only spent a few early years living there.  My aunt in Saskatchewan is a former deputy minister of Native/Metix/Northern Peoples/etc affairs as well.  She's been livid over this.

So far as me, of course I'm supportive of my fiancé more than anything, but even if we'd never met, I'd have been outraged.  The Catholic church....unreal.

My mother taught at various air force bases while I was a child, and my father was with the RCMP and worked on the national ERT team which was responsible for national hostage rescue and a pile of other missions before it was handed over to the military in 1993.  IE I was put into the care of various relatives 1/2 the time, and was unfortunately placed into a Catholic/separate school system for French Immersion.  This wasn't the 60s, it was the mid/late 70s to early 80s, as I escaped into the public school system in 1985, thank god.

My father wasn't big on church, and would have legendary clashes with my teachers (when we was able to be around), about them forcing religion on me, instead of language, which is why he signed me up in the first place.  The teachers began hating him, and then me as a result.  But it wasn't just me.

The Catholic sisters, fathers/priests/whatever, and teachers were all extremely brutal when it came to discipline, hence the quote from Fragile Bird.  They would visibly get satisfaction from torturing us students,  Before anyone thinks this is an exaggerated term, let me explain.  Having students stand with arms outstretched with 2 heavy bibles on them in front of the class.  Doesn't sound too bad right? Well the point was, you had to CRY in pain, ie TEARS had to flow, before the punishment ended.  Refused to put your arms out because they couldn't hold the bibles any longer?  You got whipped with a 1 meter ruler stick, again, until tears, in front of all your peers.

That's just for starters, one sister had nails like razors, and would regularly dig them into children's arms by grabbing hard, and several ended up in the hospital over a couple years to get stiches and treatment.  My father tried having charges pressed on one occasion, the base commander's daughter from one of the CFB bases I was near, got a bunch of wounds that required stitches from this.  It all got 'settled' outside of the court system, but I know my pops was very pissed that time, and it wasn't even me.

They would regularly wrap duct tape, at a furious/hating pace, their arms a blur, around students heads, and then make a small breathing hole they could breath out of, and that was for talking out of turn.  That happened several times to my best friend in school then, who is now one of the highest rated oncology docs in Western Canada.  Also happened to another friend, who just retired as a Col. in the Royal Canadian Air Force, having flown 40 types of aircraft as a test pilot school grad, and 3000 hours in the CF18 hornet, lots of that time in combat.

Sitting on your knees in a school desk chair, and doing the entire rosery (I didn't even know wtf I was doing with that stupid thing), that was a low level punishment, that still make you nearly crippled for the day, with numbed/pained legs, knees, ankles, etc.

Chalk and brushes were regularly thrown, a friend of mine got hit in the eye with chalk, and you guessed it, another hospital trip where nothing happened to the teacher that threw it.

I could go on endlessly with all the crazy things that our Catholic rulers would subject us to, instead, this is my worst personal experience - a girl 1 year younger than me accidentally stepped on my hands in winter on the climbing bars, and it hurt like hell. I said something like "ow, SOB that hurt". She ran in and "told" on me for saying "son of a bitch".  I got called into the office, with this younger female student in the office, I said she was telling the truth - principal pulled my pants down, in front of her, gave me the strap.  Then after I stopped crying, he made me kiss her and apologize.  Tell me what would happen today if this happened to a child in school?  I never told my father until a years later, as I'd feared what would happen, but the girl this happened with talked to my father about this incident when we were both adults later, and was word for word with what I'd told him.

My friends, and the person I had my worst experience with,  and I who endured this still talk about it today, we've been tempted to write a book or even just post something up somewhere on social media regarding this, as I'm sure we weren't the only school (non Native school I should say) where the Catholic system employed brutal, ILLEGAL punishments and treatment of children.  In order to understand how systemic the attitudes of these teachers/leaders was, even in more recent memory (ie mine),  and how it even more greatly -again, exponentially - affected the First Nations children, I feel that all this information should be public for their sakes. 

 

My point is that if enough non First Nations people come forward, it takes away any "outs" the Church has, in terms of being able to say "it was just a few people who didn't understand Native culture" or some other BS excuse they might come up with.  No, their culture was to inflict pain, tears, and sorrow on all kinds of students far more frequently than they would have the public believe, across the board IMO, and the First Nations kids were subject to that brutality in an even more focused way.

Now I try to imagine what it was like for the First Nations children.  I'm sure they'd read my post here today, and tell me what a little bitch I'm being, as their treatment and punishments were quite obviously, SO much worse, exponentially so...you know, all the graves and stuff.  This is why I've posted a few examples of what I and others I know went through at the hands of the Catholic church, as my/our experiences were "bad", but NOTHING compared to the First Nations children for generations.

It's unreal to me that the Catholic Church, Pope, Bishops, whoever, aren't on their knees to the First Nations people, begging for forgiveness for this.  Nope, standing pat is their position so far.

I'm not one to supporting looting, rioting, and general mayhem in our streets, for ANY cause or reason, but seeing the churches burn, and statues topple...I'll admit I'm getting satisfaction, a bit (okay, a lot) of hypocrisy, and I know if Jess asked me to make her a molotov, it'd take me a few minutes to talk not just her, but myself out of it right now.

[maarsen]

I grew up in the 60s and heard stories about the kids in the Catholic school system. I guess that was one reason they didn't get funded as well as the public system.  They would then be under the same standards regarding corporal punishment and teacher qualifications. I was an atheist before my teen years so I really am glad I went through the public system.