Protesters target churches, statues
Dawn was fast approaching when Greg Gabriel, chief of the Penticton Indian Band, was roused by an employee and told the church was on fire.
‘‘By the time I got there the church was pretty much burnt to the ground,’’ Gabriel, 69, told The Times. ‘‘There’s a lot of mixed emotions. The church was a fixture in our community since 1911.’’
The Sacred Heart in southern British Columbia is one of at least eight churches in Canada to go up in flames in the past two weeks, following the discoveries of hundreds of children’s bodies at former church-run indigenous residential schools.
As the country marked Canada Day on Thursday (local time), protesters in Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba, toppled a statue of Queen Victoria, who was on the throne at the time of Canadian confederation, as they chanted ‘‘no pride in genocide’’. A smaller statue of the present Queen near by was also toppled. One man was arrested.
Ten churches were vandalised in Calgary on the same day. Handprints and the number ‘‘215’’ were daubed on the buildings – the number of bodies found last month in a mass grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Between 1867 and 1996, about 150,000 indigenous children were sent to the schools in a policy of forced assimilation. Sexual, physical and emotional abuse was rife, leaving generations of people with lifelong trauma.
Two hours after the fire at Sacred Heart in Penticton, a second was reported 40 kilometres away at St Gregory’s church near Oliver. Liquid accelerants were discovered. This week, two more
Catholic churches in rural British Columbia burnt down, as did a disused Anglican church.
Fires have also destroyed churches in the Northwest Territories and the eastern province of Nova Scotia. All the blazes were on indigenous land until Thursday, when the St Jean Baptiste Catholic Church, north of Edmonton in Alberta, was engulfed by flames.
‘‘The destruction of places of worship is unacceptable and it must stop,’’ Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, said. The Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, called the Edmonton fire a ‘‘violent hate crime targeting the Catholic community’’.
The discovery at Kamloops tore open old wounds and prompted a reckoning on mistreatment of indigenous people. Last week the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan unearthed 751 unmarked graves at the Marieval Residential School and on Wednesday, another tribe in British Columbia made the third such discovery, finding 182.
‘‘I truly believe that they were deliberately set and it could be out of the anger that some people are experiencing because of the horrific finds of those children’s graves,’’ said Gabriel, who called the blazes an ‘‘irresponsible act’’ that put homes ‘‘at extreme risk’’.
The church has refused to apologise, although the Pope will meet survivors at the Vatican in December. Trudeau has apologised and pledged C$27 million (NZ$31m) to help find other remains. For many, however, contrition is not enough. They want something done. Many indigenous people lack clean drinking water, while addiction on reserves is at high levels. ‘‘To find these graves and to think of the horrific end to these children’s lives, that absolutely angers me,’’ Gabriel said. ‘‘I won’t accept an apology. I want action.’’
A police spokeswoman said the force was ‘‘alive to the possibility’’ that the fires were connected to the graves. ‘‘We would not want to see somebody be held criminally responsible for trying to have their voice heard,’’ she said. ‘‘So vigilantism is not the means by which to have your loudest voice.’’
The Times