At Calgary city hall, crowds of people gathered at a memorial filled with children's shoes dedicated to the First Nation Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc who announced in 2021 that radar had detected "215 graves" at a residential school in Kamloops.The event took place on Friday morning, with speakers including the mayor, Jeromy Farkas.Also in attendance was Frances Widdowson, who had spoken up on the lack of evidence regarding the Kamloops graves.The city states the ceremony was supposed to have the children's shoes moved from city hall to The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland, which used to be called Fort Calgary.There, a memorial site called, called The Wandering Spirit, is where they stated they would move the shoes ..Widdowson was spoken to by police prior to the event beginning, as Widdoswson told the Western Standard about the encounter:"The Calgary police — I've never seen such a professional police force in all of my dealings with these kinds of protests," stated Widdowson. "We discussed what I was all about.""I'm not disrupting, I'm not protesting, I'm just asking this question because of the falsehoods that are being spread and I'm going to be apart of this event and I want people to be aware of this dissenting position.".The Calgary police stated to Widdowson they would intervene if any violence were to occur.One of the event's supporters, Nicole Johnson, stated she disagrees with what Widdowson is doing because it "perpetrates harm against our [indigenous] people.""Because what follows her?" stated Johnson."Nothing but negativity and racism — then that puts harm upon our people.""I don't know what her intentions are, or why she's even here — the truth is always going to be the truth.".Another person present at the event, John Serafini, says he supports Widdowson not necessarily for her message, but for her ability to say it."The reason I'm here, I want to talk to people, I want to witness what's going on with Frances and engage in free dialogue with people," stated Serafini."I think that's important — if we lose that, there's something sacred that's lost."To watch the full clip of what the Western Standard got up to at the event, click here.
