“B.C. history teacher Jim McMurtry (@James_Walter01) told his students most residential school deaths were caused by disease (a fact). He was promptly walked out of his classroom—in front of his students— and suspended…”
https://twitter.com/ChanLPfa/status/1589512337148760065
Interview:
“Jim McMurtry, son of retired chief justice of Ontario Roy McMurtry and an award-winning educator of nearly 40 years, says his “non-conformist teaching which sometimes combats the political indoctrination of school” has been met with him being suspended twice, his pay docked, and him now facing a recommendation for termination by the Abbotsford School District.”
–‘Canadian teacher gets cancelled for teaching truth about residential school deaths’,
Rebel News Canada, Nov. 6, 2022
“Who’d be a high school teacher in these woke times? Not me. It’s a “feelings” minefield in classrooms: all too easy for a student to take offence where none was intended, and all too easy to act on it at a teacher’s expense.
“A hostile student — uncommitted, grudge-nurturing, frequently expecting higher marks than he or she gets — may allege that a teacher said terrible things in class: say, that he wished his cancer-stricken wife would die so he could find a new one; or that he described Paul Bernardo’s sex crimes in detail. Chances are good such charges will be taken at the student’s word, not the teacher’s.
“Those false allegations were levelled at Jim McMurtry, an Abbotsford, B.C., high school teacher in October 2019 and March 2020, respectively. McMurtry maintains that one of his accusers was a known-to-be hostile student, the other a known-to-be volatile student. Both outlandish allegations went unchallenged.
“McMurtry was punished with a suspension and a “re-education” session for the “cancer” incident. An internal investigation eventually found that allegation to be unsubstantiated, but found McMurtry guilty of inappropriate conduct for even mentioning Bernardo (McMurtry had, he says, only answered a student’s question about how Bernardo was apprehended.)
“Son of the distinguished Roy McMurtry, former attorney general and chief justice of Ontario’s court system under the late premier Bill Davis, McMurtry is unusually credentialed for a high school teacher, holding a master’s degree in the history of education and a PhD in the philosophy of education, with a specialty in ‘Indigenous’ {sic} history. He was a school principal for several years in Neuchatel, Switzerland, has won several teaching and writing awards and has, over four decades, amassed many warm tributes from former students.
“Since his embittering false-allegation experience, McMurtry has been a target for other complaints launched by both students and his superiors.
“Some are based in truth, but are hardly earth-shattering: he revealed the name of a student who had tested positive for COVID; he offered public support for an anti-mask trustee’s right to freedom of expression; and he has a penchant for lame humour. (For example, while discussing the history of the Olympics, McMurtry told his class that the ancient Greeks competed naked, then added, “Sort of like women’s beach volleyball today”. A student complained this was “sexualized” content.)
“These and numerous other aspersions on McMurtry’s personality and behaviour are all contained in a January 2022 report to the board of education tabled by Abbotsford School District human resources director Michele Radomski, which called for McMurtry’s dismissal at a scheduled Jan. 25 disciplinary hearing.
“Her recommendation was grounded in a report by an outside party, commissioned to conduct a second investigation into McMurtry’s conduct, which highlights what Radomski considers to be McMurtry’s most egregious transgression: he disregarded his principal’s directive to endorse an emotive, hate-inciting falsehood to his class, and instead communicated a historically objective fact.
“Shortly after it was announced on May 27, 2021, that 215 probable unmarked graves had been found at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS), McMurtry found himself in a Grade 12 calculus class as a teacher on call, a status he says he had chosen in order to avoid further contact with one of his student tormentors the principal had refused to transfer to another class.
“The students, he told me, were extremely upset by what they believed to have been a mass murder of children at the hands of the KIRS nuns and priests. Some of the girls, he said, were sobbing. As it happened, the previous day, McMurtry had reviewed the ‘Truth’ and Reconciliation Commission report, which said nothing about foul play at the schools.
“So, he told me, when one girl said, “The priests murdered the (215) children by torturing them and leaving them out in the snow to die”, he sought to alleviate her and others’ distress by telling the class that, although tragic, “most residential-school deaths were from disease”.
“An offended student immediately complained to a guidance counsellor, who informed the principal, who informed the school district. The following day, McMurtry was ignominiously marched out of his classroom and suspended. (Taken together, McMurtry has been suspended for 15 of the last 22 months.)
“In her above-mentioned report, Radomski concluded that, “regardless of Mr. McMurtry’s intent”, his expressed opinion that the deaths were due to disease was “inflammatory, inappropriate, insensitive and contrary to the district’s message of condolences and reconciliation”.
“Indeed, she found it inculpating that, “He left students with the impression some or all of the deaths could be contributed (sic) to ‘natural causes’ and that the deaths could not be called murder”. Her finding, therefore, was that McMurtry was guilty of “extremely serious professional misconduct”. Most unjustly.
“Even though the school may understandably have accepted the idea that the remains of schoolchildren had been unearthed at KIRS in May 2021, Radomski’s January 2022 report was written when the “mass grave” narrative was widely contested.
“McMurtry told the class a statement of fact, which he was well placed from his educational background to assert with confidence. As Terry Glavin’s exhaustive May article on the graves issue in these pages would eventually make clear,
there is not a shred of actual evidence that any of the probable gravesites found at residential schools contain the bodies of murdered children.
“Delaying tactics on both sides have kept McMurtry nominally still employed. A third investigation was launched in mid-November following McMurtry’s interview about his case with Rebel News. He expects it will ultimately result in his dismissal.”
–‘As this B.C. teacher found out, even speaking the truth in class is enough to get an educator cancelled’,
Barbara Kay, National Post, Nov. 27, 2022
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Most of those children died of disease, just like most other Canadian children…
“In Ontario alone, 36,000 children died from diphtheria between 1880 and 1929… It wasn’t until the early 20th century that “immunization against smallpox and diphtheria had begun in Ontario schools“.
“Public health activities accelerated when Canadian soldiers returned home from the First World War, bringing with them the Spanish influenza of 1918-1919. An estimated 40 to 50 million people were killed worldwide by the pandemic, including approximately 50,000 Canadians. Once on Canada’s shores, the virus spread quickly across the country, even to remote communities…”
–‘Chapter 2: The Chief Public Health Officer’s report on the state of public health in Canada 2008 – Canada’s public health history’,
Public Health Agency of Canada
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/cphorsphc-respcacsp/2008/fr-rc/cphorsphc-respcacsp05b-eng.php
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“Some children had serious illnesses—TB, chronic ear infections, and ruptured appendices, for example—that were diagnosed and treated only because they attended residential schools. In fact, a number of the children arrived at Stringer Hall with seriously infected bug bites in their scalps that required having their hair washed, cut, and topical antibiotics applied. Some children arrived with serious ear infections, and residential supervisors often provided the appropriate medical treatment. Importantly, a young nurse was on staff at Stringer Hall, and doctors and dentists were on call to treat children, something that probably would not have happened if they were out on the land, hunting and fishing with their parents.”
–‘Truth, Reconciliation, and Aboriginal Residential Schools: A Reply to Michael Ignatieff’,
Rodney A. Clifton, V2 Journal, June 19, 2009
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“It is estimated that in the long history of Aboriginal education, approximately 150,000 children attended residential schools. According to the Royal Commission, this number represents only about 20% of the total number of Aboriginal school-aged children over this time period…
“The {Partial} Truth and Reconciliation Commission has estimated that more than 4,100 students died while attending residential schools…
“Undoubtedly, during the same period many children who attended public schools also died, but they rarely died while at school because most of them were sent home or to a hospital. Residential schools, on the other hand, had infirmaries for sick children, so it understandable that some of the students died at school.
“Did more residential school students die in numbers grossly disproportionate to public school students? Did residential school students routinely die of abuse and neglect? Are there mass graves of unnamed Aboriginal children while non-Aboriginal children were buried in separate, marked plots? It has become conventional wisdom that the answer to all these questions is ‘yes’. The truth is, there’s no evidence to support any of these conclusions…”
–‘Some Other Truths About Indian Residential Schools’,
Rodney A. Clifton, C2Journal, May 19, 2015
http://www.c2cjournal.ca/2015/05/some-other-truths-about-indian-residential-schools/
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“Most aboriginal children did not attend residential schools. According to the ‘Report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC) a total of 150,000 children attended the schools from 1800 to 1970. Although more children attended in some years than in others, this is an average of less than 1,000 per year. That is a small number in relation to the millions of aboriginal people who lived during that time period.”
–‘Residential schools legacy: The numbers don’t support the narrative’,
BRIAN GIESBRECHT, The Rebel, February 23, 2016
https://www.therebel.media/residential_schools_legacy_the_numbers
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“At least 3,000 children…are now known to have died while they were attending Canada’s aboriginal residential schools, according to new unpublished research… The largest single killer, by far, was disease. For decades starting in about 1910, tuberculosis was a consistent killer — in part because of widespread ignorance over how diseases were spread.”
–CBC, Feb.18, 2013
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/02/18/residential-schools-student-deaths.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“The Spanish flu epidemic in 1918-1919 also took a devastating toll on students — and in some cases, staff… While a statistical analysis has yet to be done, the records examined over the past few years also show children also died of malnutrition or accidents. Schools consistently burned down, killing students and staff. Drownings or exposure were another cause…”
–Huffington Post, Feb.18, 2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/02/18/residential-school-deaths-canada_n_2711087.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
–‘‘Biggest fake news story in Canada’: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics’,
Dana Kennedy, New York Post, May 27, 2022
https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-biggest-fake-news-in-canada/
See also:
‘B.C. Schools Now Re-education Camps’ {Oct.13, 2022}:
This is coercion. Stop shoving this down people’s throats! And if it’s about “education”, stop using the misnomer “Indigenous”. Canadian Aboriginals are ‘Indigenous’ to Mongolia and Siberia:
“The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the ‘First Nations’ Education Steering Committee (FNESC), is implementing a new graduation requirement. Expected to take effect in the 2023-24 school year, this requirement will ensure all secondary students complete ‘Indigenous’-focused coursework before they graduate from B.C.’s K-12 education system.”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2022/10/13/b-c-schools-now-re-education-camps/
‘An Issue of Freedom of Speech‘ (Aboriginal Issues) {Feb.20, 2021}:
“At any given moment there is a sort of self-prevailing orthodoxy, a tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact.”
– George Orwell
“The Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal establishments, for their own sometimes-selfish purposes — contrary to one of the most fundamental values of democracy: free and open debate on important public issues — have in effect declared a ban on free speech around this profound human rights issue…”
https://canadiansforlegalequality.wordpress.com/2021/02/20/an-issue-of-freedom-of-speech/
‘Tossed Out Of The Sandbox’ {August 21, 2018}:
“I have been driven over the edge by the systematic campaign over the last few years to blacken the reputation of our first and best prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, a campaign in which prominent aboriginals and some of their white ‘liberal’ fan club have played the predominant part.“
“Brock University has stripped a retired political science professor of his status as a ‘professor emeritus’, after he posted “intemperate and offensive” comments on social media deriding {some} ‘indigenous’ {actually, ‘aboriginal’} people…”
https://endracebasedlaw.ca/2018/08/21/tossed-out-of-the-sandbox/
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END RACE BASED LAW Daily News Canada 
This is a terrible example of irrationality impacting our human rights, rights of our profession and freedom of speech. I stand with Mr.McMurtry and anyone else dealing with non fact based abuse.
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