Christopher Dummitt: Terry Glavin's critics

are shredding their own credibility

The allegation he is a residential school 'denialist' is bogus

Author of the article:

Christopher Dummitt, Special to National Post
Publishing date:
Jun 15, 2022 • 16 hours ago • 5 minute read •
231 Comments

The Kuper Island Indian Residential School on Penelakut Island, near Chemainus, B.C., is
pictured on June 13, 1913. Photo by Courtesy the Royal BC Museum/Royal Commission on
Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia/Handout via Reuters

Article content
Some of Canada’s leading institutions of culture and learning seem oblivious to how they are
undermining their credibility. That is the lesson we learn from the punishment being meted out
on National Post columnist Terry Glavin, who had the temerity to write the most detailed,
balanced and compassionate investigation into what many in the media got right — but mostly
what they got wrong — about the discoveries of unmarked graves at the sites of former
residential schools.

Hang on a minute: Inflation is actually good for some people

A year after the story garnered international headlines, Glavin found that much of the original
reporting was misleading. Journalists exaggerated claims, going well beyond anything said by
local Indigenous leaders, mischaracterized probable burial sites as mass graves, failed to
acknowledge that many of the “discoveries” were found in known cemeteries where grave
markers had been removed or deteriorated over time and gave credence to the fantastical
accounts of a known conspiracy theorist.

Yet Glavin also wrote feelingly about the horrors of the residential school system, of the abuse
students suffered and of the very real trauma the system inflicted upon them. This shouldn’t be a
surprise. Glavin is the co-author of a history of one residential school, which he co-wrote with
some of its former students. He’s also the author of a book on the Delgamuukw decision —
perhaps the most important land claims case in recent Canadian history. One Indigenous activist,
in commenting on Glavin’s previous work, was so impressed with Glavin’s sympathetic
treatment of her people that she found herself moved to tears.

None of this was enough. For the last two weeks, a cadre of Twitter activists have launched
attack after attack against Glavin. He is said to be an insensitive racist. He is criticized for
causing harm by asking questions when he should just shut up and listen. Most gallingly, he is
accused of being “a residential school denialist.”

This concept is both bogus and clever. It’s clever because it immediately evokes the idea of
Holocaust deniers. It’s bogus, though, because it draws an entirely false equivalence between the
two events. We all know that genocide and the Holocaust are bad, and we all know that
residential schools were bad. So, the crude logic here asserts, why not imply that they are
essentially the same thing?

By ignoring all of the many and profound differences between the Holocaust and the residential
school system, you can discredit anyone who dares to fact-check even the most outlandish claims
about residential schools. It shouldn’t need to be pointed out that, by using this same kind of
blunt moral thinking, you could treat drunk driving as always equivalent to mass murder. Why
even distinguish between manslaughter and first-degree murder? Why investigate the crime
scene at all or hold legal trials? If you already know the truth, why worry about pesky things like
nuance and detail?

It’s one thing for random Twitter activists to attack a journalist, but then mainstream institutions
stepped in. The chair of the Canada Council for the Arts tried to get a major media podcast not to
interview Glavin. Why not? In this case, as always these days when someone wants to shut down
a discussion, we’re told that giving Glavin airtime would be harmful. Hasn’t he already done
enough?

Then, the Canadian Archaeological Association and other academic organizations issued a
statement that talked right past most of what Glavin wrote in the article and focused instead on
the emotional harm of asking tough questions and suggesting that actual evidence is needed to
corroborate the claims that were being made. The statement also criticized the way Glavin’s
piece supposedly promotes — you guessed it — “residential school denialism.” The statement
was given further credence when Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller approvingly
tweeted it to his 26,000 followers.

Glavin does what good journalists should do. He wants details. He checks facts. What graves
were found and where? Were these known cemeteries or mass graves? Who is buried there and
how did they die? For this he should be commended, but is instead being accused of being a
danger to Canada.

Instead of admitting that some of the reporting surrounding residential school graves was
misleading and that a fundamental component of truth and reconciliation is finding out the truth,
government ministers, archeological associations and other prominent people are going on the
attack. In the short term, their likes and retweets will add up. But they might want to consider the
damage they are doing to their own credibility.

Others will see through the posturing. They will know what kind of journalist Glavin is, and how
well-equipped he was to write this story. And they will read his piece with an open mind and
notice that his critics are ignoring most of what he is actually saying.

It would be one thing if this were a one-off, but it’s not. The furor over Glavin’s piece is just one
of many such incidents, in which blue-check Twitter accounts insist they know better; that their
moral and higher truth is worth more than any literal truth.

Again and again, everyday Canadians are being told by mainstream institutions that the experts
know better. And time after time, the mask slips, only to reveal the naked self-interest or political
partisanship that lies underneath. Canada’s chattering class lost their minds when the trucker
convoy took over Ottawa, for example, but seemed to have little negative to say when gangs of
activists tore down statues and burned churches in the summer of 2021.

It’s possible that many editors are privately happy to see Glavin’s piece. They knew that the
initial media response to the graves stories contained far too much hyperbole. But who would
dare to admit this? The consequences — as Glavin is now discovering — are just too severe.

But resentment will grow. In communist eastern European countries, there used to be two truths:
what you said in public, and what you privately knew to be true but weren’t safe to say out loud.
Contemporary Canada is, luckily, not so devoid of liberty as eastern Europe was under
communism. We are, however, increasingly living in a world where there is a public truth and a
private truth — an official narrative of what you are supposed to believe, and the real world. This
is the petri dish of cynicism. It saps at the trust in our institutions.
Canada’s elites are living in a house whose foundations are sinking into a giant mud hole of
distrust and cynicism, but they seem oblivious to the danger. Terry Glavin is the neighbour who
notices what’s happening and bravely climbs up to the second-floor bedroom window to wake
them up. Yet they only want to complain about the break-in. Doesn’t he know that someone
could get hurt when he crashes through the window? Doesn’t he have any sense of decency?
Meanwhile, the house is sinking.

National Post

Christopher Dummitt is a historian of Canadian culture and politics at Trent University.