A BC Town Confronts Residential School Denialism

In a packed room at the Powell River Public Library, Frances Widdowson is warning about “wokeism.” She accuses two city councillors of destroying democracy in the town, proclaims that trans people don’t actually exist and complains that no one except linguists knows how to pronounce Indigenous names.

Widdowson is a contributor to a book called Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) that calls into question whether graves of Indigenous children actually have been found at residential schools.

The book makes the incorrect claim that survivors’ stories about residential schools are “either totally false or grossly exaggerated.” The schools were federal institutions that Indigenous children were forced to attend, separated from their families and culture. Children were abused and died at high rates as a result of overcrowding, malnutrition and disease.

Widdowson is a former professor in the department of economics, justice and policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

She was fired in 2022, in part because of her comments praising the educational value of residential school. She is challenging her firing.

At the July 8 talk at the library, Widdowson said people like her are being labelled residential school denialists. Then she warned that if people who hold similar views are silenced, it’s a sign that Canada is becoming a totalitarian state, just like Nazi Germany.

Powell River is a town of 13,000 on the northern tip of B.C.’s Sunshine Coast. Like many communities in this province, the town has a painful past rooted in British Columbia’s colonial history.

As part of a suite of reconciliation actions, the Tla’amin Nation has proposed that the town’s name be changed. The nation’s main community is just outside the city. Its main village was on the city site until they were forced out.

The town is named after Israel Wood Powell, who served as the superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs for B.C. from 1872 to 1889. He promoted colonial policies, pushing for the first residential schools in the province, outlawing the potlatch and taking ceremonial objects to become part of museum collections.

The proposal has been divisive, including disagreement over whether the town should hold a referendum on the name change.

That debate spurred the invitation to Frances Widdowson to speak at the library.

Residential school denialism has rocked other small towns in B.C. In Quesnel, city councillors called on Mayor Ron Paull to resign after the mother of an Indigenous council member whose grandfather is a residential school survivor revealed that Paull’s wife distributed Grave Error.

Residential school survivors spoke to council about their painful experiences, and Paull was censured by city council, which he is now fighting in court.

Hegus John Hackett of the Tla’amin Nation told The Tyee that it’s become common to hear some Powell River residents say they’d like to “go back to the way things were, the good old days when we all got along.”

“But in the ‘good old days’ Tla’amin people didn’t have human rights, our kids weren’t allowed in public schools, our families were put in a segregated section of the movie theatre,” he wrote to The Tyee in an email. (“Hegus” means “Chief” in the Sliammon language.)

“We received substandard health care and were treated as second-class citizens on our own lands.”

Sean Carleton is a professor in the departments of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba who frequently writes about residential school denialism. He said there’s a formula to denialist events, which are often promoted on fringe right-wing news sites or Facebook pages.

“They use those outlets to promote events, and when those events happen they use those outlets to generate more controversy and attention,” Carleton said.

“They hope that then local residents will slip up and make a [factual] mistake so they can say, ‘See, look the public library is trying to cancel us.’ It whips up into this financially viable tornado of misinformation, and that is very dangerous for people who want to build better relationships.”

Carleton spoke at the Powell River library in February, explaining his research into Israel Wood Powell’s role in creating Canada’s unified federal residential school system.

Before federal involvement in that system in the 1880s, Carleton said, schools for Indigenous children were run by various religious denominations.

During Powell’s time as superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs for B.C., he suggested “a cost-sharing agreement between church and state” to provide federal funding for residential schools across Canada.

“And this becomes the financial framework for the residential school system,” Carleton said. That system continued from the 1880s throughout the 20th century; the last residential school closed in 1996. Starting in 1920, families were compelled by law to send their children to the schools.

Between 2007 and 2015, survivors of residential schools testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about their experiences of physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the schools. The purpose of the institutions was to separate Indigenous children from their families and culture, and they left a legacy of broken family relationships that continues to reverberate today.

As far back as 1907, Canada’s chief officer of medical health warned about the high rates of child deaths in the institutions from diseases like tuberculosis. In the 1940s and ’50s, the Canadian government used several schools for nutritional experiments, which involved giving some students less food and less nutritious food.

And initial investigations of unmarked grave sites at multiple former residential school sites have found hundreds of possible graves.

Although the preliminary nature of the searches has fuelled denialists’ claims — some have tried to break into sites and dig up graves — researchers and First Nations have identified lists of students who died at the schools or nearby in Indian hospitals when they fell ill.

“Those were children. We need to remind the world that those were just children,” Chief Wahmeesh, the elected Chief of Tseshaht First Nation, said during a 2023 presentation of preliminary findings at Alberni Indian Residential School. “There should never be cemeteries at schools.”

The 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada estimated that more than 4,000 children died at residential schools, a number that has since been increased to more than 6,000 — and likely higher, according to TRC chair Murray Sinclair.

Carleton said Powell wasn’t as brutal as other figures in British Columbia’s past, such as Joseph Trutch, who reduced the size of reserves, refused to recognize Indigenous land rights and had “a really extreme version of the attitudes of the time in terms of thinking that native people were non-people,” according to author Michael Kluckner.

“Some might be thinking, ‘Powell was a lot more sympathetic than a lot of his contemporaries,’” Carleton said during his talk at the library in February.

“Then this logic gets used to suggest that Powell is thus being unfairly targeted, and it gets extended to ‘The city shouldn’t be considering this name change, he wasn’t as racist as some other people.’”

Carleton said Powell wanted to avoid outright conflict with Indigenous people and was in favour of a “soft” colonial power that included schooling as a way to assimilate Indigenous people into the colony.

Carleton gave examples of Powell’s comments in letters describing Indigenous cultural practices as “barbarism” and saying that children need to be isolated from “the corrupting influences of family and community.”

Powell also wrote that schools for Indigenous children would “interfere materially with irregular habits and customs incident to life in the wigwam, the destruction of which is so necessary ere the much desired higher life can be obtained.”

“While some defend Powell’s approach to reserve allocation as being more enlightened than some of his contemporaries, his end goal of settler capitalism for Canada’s benefit is very clear,” Carleton said.

Speaking of Indigenous communities, Powell wrote: “There is no doubt where everything is held in common, aspiration and thrift have no reward. Individual progress is hampered if not rendered impossible; barbarous customs which destroy individuality are still encouraged, and the labour and expense of inducing them to cultivate their lands are generally bestowed in vain.”

Carleton and Daniel Heath Justice have identified eight common residential school denialist talking points and how to refute them.

Powell River’s mayor, Ron Woznow, attended the July 8 panel. He said he went to the talk to listen and told The Tyee he didn’t know enough about the subjects being discussed to have an opinion on what he heard.

People need to take a “holistic” view, he said.

“Do I think that there was abuse at residential schools? Yes. Was there abuse for Catholic altar boys? Yes,” said Woznow, explaining that he had suffered abuse from “pedophile” priests.

“Was there good that came out of that? I would say yes, because Father Mike McCaffery and I were friends until he passed away a couple of years ago. That was totally unrelated to the abuse that I had suffered within the Catholic Church. And I've talked with a lot of Indigenous people that went through residential schools and it was a net positive result for them.”

Levi Mymko is an archeologist who works with Indigenous communities and supports the name change. Mymko also attended the talk to hear what was said.

“One of the reasons why I went into archeology is because I think that Indigenous history is really important and that [Indigenous] knowledge is valid,” Mymko told The Tyee. “It’s something that needs to be respected, and I just don’t think the history is being respected. I think people are looking for a reason to not have to participate in reconciliation.”

Hackett is urging B.C. residents to listen to Indigenous people.

“We are happy to have the ‘good old days’ behind us. We can’t and won’t ever go back. The reality is that society marches on,” he wrote to The Tyee.

“The last two decades have been an era of truth telling; this has been hard, it has been hurtful, and it has been healing. Our Elders came forward and spoke about painful and long-buried experiences. They did this even though there were no consequences for the abusers, no charges laid, no jail time. They did it so that future generations of Tla’amin people would not carry this burden.

“I think, at the most human level, residential school denialism is rooted in some people’s disbelief that their ancestors could have been so cruel or blissfully ignorant. That the people who raised them with care and compassion saw no such humanity in their neighbours or their children.

“But it’s never too late to restore relations. My advice though is that you probably won’t find the truth on YouTube, and you certainly won’t hear it come from [Widdowson]; you’ll hear it from our Elders and Tla’amin families who have been through it and still live with the effects to today.”

With files from Amanda Follett Hosgood.