No room on board for unchastened apologist

“Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”

— Duncan Campbell Scott, who oversaw the operation of Indian Residential Schools between 1913 and 1932.

History does not take kindly to apologists.

The views of those who would seek to excuse and deny the sins and failures of our society are often rejected because their primary goal is defence, rather than speaking the truth.

The Puritans in colonial America had Cotton Mather, a prominent New England minister who attempted to justify and promote the 1672 Salem Witch Trials.

The Nazis had David Irving, a discredited author who wrote books like “Hitler’s Way” in an attempt to minimize the Fuhrer’s role in the Holocaust and shift blame for the Second World War onto Allied leaders.

And here in Canada, everyone from newspaper owners, to politicians like Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and his government defended a federal policy that led to the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, arguing that it was necessary for the country’s national security and to protect Japanese Canadians from public anger. That policy ultimately stripped 22,000 innocent people of their property and their freedom.

In each of these cases — and so many more — there was always an attempted explanation for bad behaviour, a counter argument, a rationalization that “not all the actions or participants were bad,” or worse, they were “just following orders.”

More recently, in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s final report that recounted in detail the harms and abuses that were done to thousands of innocent Indigenous children through the Indian Residential Schools, there have arisen certain Canadian voices seeking to temper the impact of that report.

And some who outright deny its findings.

They have been called Indian Residential School deniers — not because they deny the existence of the schools, but rather because they downplay stories of systemic abuse within the system and the intent of the schools from the point of their creation, and publicly question the deaths of students who were forced to attend.

Instead, they play up the good, telling stories of Indigenous individuals who enjoyed their time at Indian Residential Schools, and of the well-intentioned teachers who did their best to educate young minds and prepare them for Canadian society. And yes these people exist too.

They will tell you that history should not be judged by modern ideals, and that good intentions should be praised, rather than vilified. Never mind the fact that government-appointed inspectors repeatedly tried to alert officials to the life-threatening conditions inside Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

The reality is that there is simply not enough good to come out of Indian Residential Schools to ever justify the harm that so many others have experienced. The erasure of cultures and languages of entire races of people should not be merely rubber-stamped by our society as an accomplishment worth celebrating, but rather seen as a stain on our country that should never be repeated.

But the deniers persist. And the problem remains that at least a few of these voices are well-respected individuals in our community, some of whom have spent a great deal of time both in public service or as elected officials.

One such individual is former Manitoba justice minister and former City of Brandon councillor Jim McCrae, who has spent the last several years trying to tell positive stories about Indian Residential Schools by penning columns through the right-wing think tank, Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

McCrae has unapologetically bristled at the claim by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Canada’s attempt to “kill the Indian, save the man” — the mindset that underpinned the Indian Residential School system — amounted to cultural genocide.

In May 2023, McCrae was appointed by the then-Stefanson government as a civilian member to the province’s masters appointment committee that helps select people to work as judicial officers in the Court of King’s Bench. He abruptly resigned from that judicial panel after his views on residential schools were publicized in mainstream media circles and his appointment questioned.

But he was unchastened. Later that year, McCrae appeared before Brandon City Council to oppose a resolution that would have recognized Canadian Indian Residential Schools as genocide, and questioned the applicability of the term.

In short, his views on Indian Residential Schools have cost him dearly in the court of public opinion.

And now he has decided to run for a spot as a trustee for the Brandon School Division in the upcoming municipal election. He has even gained the public support of longtime Brandon School Division trustee Jim Murray, who has decided not to run again this fall.

“Best of luck Brother! I kept a seat warm for you!” wrote Murray on McCrae’s recent Facebook post, where he announced his intention to run.

We applaud anyone for putting their name forward for elected office — that is a right every Canadian should feel free to exercise.

But we must question the wisdom of trusting the continued education of our children to an individual who has gone to great lengths to downplay the harms caused by the Indian Residential School system.

There should be no room around the school board table for such apologists.