More than a half-dozen churches across the country, including those built on Indigenous land, have been vandalized or burned which PM Trudeau has denounced and said, “This is not the way to go,” he said. “The destruction of places of worship is unacceptable and it must stop.”
Canada celebrated its national day under a somber mood on Thursday (July 1) as the country is still coming to grips with the discoveries of bodies of children who supposedly died after being abused by priests and nuns of the Catholic Church-run schools.
There is fury and grief after more than 1,000 unmarked graves were again discovered on or near the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children who were forcibly taken away from their families in order ‘to be civilized’ and more importantly ‘saved’ from a biblical sense so they could stop being heathens.
Several communities in Canada have decided not celebrate this important event, however, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resisted calls to cancel virtual celebrations. He said the Canadian flag on the Peace Tower in Ottawa would remain at half-staff.
In a statement on Thursday, Trudeau acknowledged that “for some, Canada Day is not yet a day of celebration.”
“We, as Canadians, must be honest with ourselves about our history because in order to chart a new and better path forward, we have to recognize the terrible mistakes of the past. The truth is we’ve got a long way to go to make things right with Indigenous peoples.” he said.
The holiday comes as the indigenous Canadians remain horrified by crimes committed by the Church as another unmarked grave was discovered at or near a former school for Indigenous children. This is reportedly the third such find since late May.
The Lower Kootenay Band, part of the Ktunaxa First Nation, said they used ground-penetrating radar that revealed 182 human remains in unmarked graves and some in shallow graves as deep as three feet near the grounds of the former St. Eugene’s Mission School in British Columbia which was operated by a Catholic group until it closed in the 1970s.
“It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa nation, neighboring First Nations communities, & the [local] community of aqam,” the Lower Kootenay Band said in a statement.
“This is the beginning of these discoveries,” tweeted Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, on Wednesday.
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and most of them were run by the church as boarding schools with the intent to ‘assimilate’ them to so-called modern Western society and in that process young children were were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at these schools run by the Catholic Church and the Chruch carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.
As this news became public, Pope Francis had expressed sorrow over the graves but he did not apologize for the Catholic Church’s role.
However, the Canadian government and some Catholic groups, as well as the country’s Presbyterian, Anglican and United churches, which also ran the schools, have apologized for their roles in the abuse.
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