SHAMEFUL BEHAVIOUR OF CANADIAN GOVERNMENTS

Today's Waterloo Region Record carries an Opinion piece from Luisa D'Amato titled "Read this and weep: The ugly truth about residential schools". It is a description from survivors at the residential school in Brantford, Ontario that closed in 1970. These schools forcibly took native children from their parents and put them into these schools to live and learn white ways versus Indian ways. The descriptions of the treatment of children are positively chilling and disgusting. Most importantly it was our government who committed cultural genocide and are culpable in the child abuse that occurred within those schools.

If there is one thing I've learned over the last thirty years it is that rarely does a whistleblower unearth something that the authorities don't already know. Usally illegal and improper activities are fully known and conveniently ignored by both local authorities as well as those higher up the food chain. They are ignored because somebody powerful wants them ignored. Here in Elmira it's all about either ignoring or covering up the extent of damage done by powerful polluters. I expect that there were persons involved in the residential schools with something to gain by hushing up conditions within these schools from 1870 until the very last one was closed in 1996. The coverup only lasted until those culpable were in the clear and gone.