Mark Carney is being warned by indigenous activists that he must denounce his late father, Robert Carney, as a “residential school denialist.” The latest such warning came from the taxpayer-funded Winnipeg Free Press.The writer, Nigaan Sinclair, (son of the late Murray Sinclair) accuses the late Robert Carney — and by implication anyone else who says anything positive about residential schools — of being a 'denialist' for claiming that the positive, as well as the negative aspects of residential schooling, should be recognized. The article ends with both a warning to Mark Carney that he must throw his father under a bus, and a direct accusation that Robert Carney, and others who worked in the residential school system, were guilty of “eradicating indigenous people.”These are strong words. So, who are these terrible people who worked in the residential school system?.Actually, they are just the same teachers who taught our parents and neighbours, and the same janitors and cooks, who worked at our schools and hospitals.As I previously wrote in The Western Standard on March 17, 2025, (see below) Robert Carney, father of Prime Minister Mark Carney, was intimately involved in both the operation and planning of northern Indian residential schools..GIESBRECHT: Carney's father taught in the indigenous school system.He was just was one of the tens of thousands of Canadians who taught at, worked in, or administered a residential school system that operated from 1883 until the last residential school closed in 1998.There was nothing unusual about any of these people. In fact, many of the teachers who taught in residential schools were exactly the same teachers who also taught at other Canadian schools. It was not unusual for a newly graduated teacher to take a job teaching at a residential school, and then move to a town or city when a teaching job became available there.Nor was it unusual for a teacher who had recently retired to take a job teaching at a residential school for a year or two to supplement their pension income. Similarly, it wasn’t unusual for a nun to teach at a Catholic residential school, and then move on to a different assignment. I knew some of these people personally. They were good people..Similarly, a maintenance worker, dormitory supervisor, or kitchen worker at any of Canada’s 134 or so residential schools might work at the school for a while, and then move on to a different job elsewhere.In short, the people employed in various capacities at residential schools were no different from Canadians who worked elsewhere. In many cases, they were exactly the same people. They were certainly not monsters who committed atrocities on children, or buried them in secrecy in apple orchards. They were just regular Canadians doing their jobs.That is one reason why so many of these people were shocked and saddened when they heard claims about horrific conditions at the schools they had worked at. They knew from personal experience that these stories were not true. One such teacher was Bernice Logan. She said this, in an interview:“I have talked to over 100 (former) staff and I feel the staff have been unfairly targeted,” said Ms. Logan. “We don’t feel the church did anything wrong by taking these children and educating them. These schools were partly orphanages. Children with terrible home lives and children whose parents wanted them to come went to the schools.”But how much worse would Bernice Logan feel today, when she and her fellow workers are not only accused of cruelty and abuse, but of committing genocide on the children they dedicated their lives to teaching?.Were there some bad apples in the bunch? Of course there were. The residential schooling system consisted of at least 134 schools. An estimated 150,000 students ate, slept and went to classes at those schools for more than a hundred years. Of course there were some bad teachers, and some pedophiles. There are occasional bad apples like this in any large system. However, there is no evidence that the numbers of such people were any higher in that system than in any other.The numbers of those “bad apples” — residential school teachers and workers convicted of offences between 1883 and 1998 — is surprisingly small, a list of a few dozen people in total. A complete list of those convicted people is found in the Truth and Reconciliation Report..For example, for all of the stories about priests sexually abusing students, there is exactly one priest and one Christian lay brother convicted of crimes between 1883 and 1918. For all the stories about mean nuns, exactly two nuns — both indigenous — were convicted of petty offences such as being too aggressive in administering cod liver oil, and having children eat their porridge. The rest of the people on the conviction list are mainly dormitory supervisors, most indigenous, who committed a variety of sexual offences. The only serial pedophile was the notorious Arthur Plint, a maintenance worker of limited intelligence .This is not to excuse the crimes of any of those convicted. They were punished, and they deserved their punishment. Their victims deserved the compensation they received. The point is that the list of “bad apples” is not a long one. The stories that the schools were filled with pedophiles, sadists and criminals, are simply not borne out by the facts. They are not true.So the vast majority of those working within the residential school system were — like Robert Carney — decent Canadians, doing a useful and necessary job..And that is basically what Robert Carney said — and what the Winnipeg Free Press thinks he should be vilified for.In his submission to the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) Robert Carney takes the commissioners to task for ignoring all of the good work done by the people working within the residential schools system, and emphasizing only the negative aspects of residential schools. He certainly doesn’t “deny” that there were negatives. He simply wants the many positives to be acknowledged.In his submission to the earlier Hawthorn Commission he asks that the Oblates, who did the lion’s share of work in the Catholic IRS system get credit for the good work they did, as well as criticism for the mistakes that they made along the way.The fact is that Robert Carney is not a “denialist.” He is a realist. He recognized that the history of residential schools is a very complicated one. The education of people who had no experience with reading and writing, and who came from an entirely different culture, could not possibly all be smooth sailing. Many mistakes were made. Many children were hurt by their experiences at the schools. For that they were fully deserving of the generous compensation they received. Robert Carney denied none of that. He simply wanted the positive aspects to be noted as well..But Robert Carney’s common sense seems to be out of fashion these days. Instead of common sense, we hear increasingly unhinged claims about residential schools. The most extreme are that children were actually murdered and their corpses buried by evil priests in secrecy, with the forced help of six year olds — and similar nuttiness.In fact, the Free Press writer is quite clear that anyone who does not accept the baseless claim that 215 children were secretly buried at Kamloops is a “denialist.” He clearly believes this anti-Catholic bilge, as did Murray Sinclair, who went even further into the realm of conspiracy theories with his bizarre claim that there were “25,000 or more missing children” just like the Kamloops 215.Those are crazy claims, with absolutely no evidence to support them. How dare these genocide hustlers condemn and blackmail anyone who doesn’t believe them — perhaps 90% of the Canadian population — as “denialists," and perpetrators of genocide!No, the people who worked in the residential school system were ordinary Canadians, doing a necessary job. They certainly don’t deserve to be called insulting names, or to be accused of crimes they didn’t commit.I have very deliberately placed at the beginning of this article a photo of the beautiful swimming pool that faced the impressive Kamloops Residential School stone building to show how preposterous the allegations are. We are asked to believe that at the same time that indigenous students were enjoying this pool, and being taught by competent and caring indigenous and non-indigenous teachers students were being murdered, dragged down the hallways late at night, and buried by evil priests, who forced 6 year olds to dig the graves. These things didn’t happen, and the people claiming that they did are the “denialists.” They deny history, they deny the facts, and they deny reality.Yes, KIRS really had what is a beautiful, Olympic-sized swimming pool paid for by caring Canadians. It is probably the only publicly funded school in Canada to have such a large, expensive pool. And it was at this time that genocide hustlers, like Sinclair, are trying to tell us that their indigenous teachers participated in a plot to murder and secretly bury the children. No, the children were being cared for and taught by ordinary, decent Canadians. They were not criminals.And if you want to learn more about the operation of that school in the 1960s watch this 1962 CBC documentary, The Eyes of the Children. You will see nuns (yes, there was an indigenous nun from that school) and indigenous teachers (one of whom was also a chief of his community) interacting with the children. CBC has now — hilariously — slapped a warning at the beginning of the documentary, in case you become upset watching happy, healthy indigenous children go about their regular school day. They were not being subjected to “atrocities” and buried in secrecy. They were healthy, happy children splashing in a swimming pool, and going about their regular school day in a modern, Canadian school.So, what were the people who actually attended those schools saying about their school years before the residential school issue became incredibly lucrative?The fact is that while residential schools were still in operation, the reviews from those who had attended the schools were quite evenly mixed. Roughly half reported negative experiences, while the other half reported positive experiences. In an investigative piece that appeared in Alberta Report in 1998, dozens of former residential school students speak freely about their experiences at the schools. There are at least as many positive as negative accounts.It is also a fact that although only a small percentage of indigenous people attended residential schools, a disproportionate number of Canada’s indigenous leaders were graduates of residential schools. Canada’s leading residential school historian, J.R. Miller, in The “Irony of Residential School Education” points out this fact.And for a complete and unbiased view of Canada’s residential schools from an internationally respected ethicist and historian, Lord Nigel Biggar, please read his recent National Post essay, entitled “Residential Schools Were No Atrocity — Just Look At the Evidence.”It is an essay that could have been written by Robert Carney. Yes, Robert Carney was right!To sum up, Robert Carney is in distinguished company when he points to the positive, as well as the negative parts of residential schooling. And he has no need to apologize for the important role he played in that system. Nor does his son have any need to make excuses for his father. Robert Carney was an honourable Canadian.And so were the overwhelming majority of the fine people who worked at Canada’s residential schools.Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba judge,and a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
