Robert Sibley, an award-winning journalist and author, holds a PhD in political science.There’s a story from the French Revolution about an aristocrat who, as he stood before the guillotine, asked plaintively why the peasants wanted to chop off his head. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Is it because I’m an aristocrat?”“No,” replied the executioner, “it’s because you did not conduct yourself as a true aristocrat.”The story may be apocryphal, but it serves as a cautionary message to our contemporary aristocracy — politicians, judges, academics, journalists, etc. — who so readily succumbed to the “unmarked graves” hysteria that gripped Canada five years ago.The topic has certainly not gone away. This week in Montreal, an “independent opinion tribunal” — the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal — is holding sessions, according to a news release cited by the CBC, to examine Canada’s responsibility for the residential school system and “the human rights violations associated with it, including ‘forced and coercive sterilizations, the disappearances and unmarked burials of Indigenous children, and intergenerational trauma linked to the loss of language, culture, and identity.’”Given the obvious assumptions embedded in the CBC story, I won’t be surprised if the tribunal’s conclusions about “unmarked burials” echo those of five years ago.On May 27, 2021, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc in British Columbia reported that ground-penetrating radar had detected “soil disturbances” near a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops. She concluded the finding was evidence that the remains of 215 indigenous children were buried in unmarked graves..Moral panic ensued as Canada’s elites led the country in a “mass pilgrimage of self-flagellation,” to borrow Conrad Black’s felicitous phrase. Then prime minster Justin Trudeau was the lead flagellator. He issued an abject apology for children “whose lives were taken” and ordered the national flag to be lowered to half-mast, where it would remain for six months. He then rushed to take a knee and lay a teddy bear at a small flag in a field at a former residential school site in Saskatchewan.The legacy media laid on the whip. For example, a Globe and Mail headline for May 28, 2021, read: “Discovery of children’s remains at Kamloops residential school ‘stark example of violence’ inflicted upon Indigenous peoples.” The New York Times somehow turned “unmarked graves” into “mass grave” in its May 28 edition with the headline: “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada.” Even the Global Times, a newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, took the opportunity to describe Canada as “morally unfit” to lecture other countries about human rights.No surprise, the story went around the world. Pope Francis was dismayed at “the shocking discovery of the remains of 215 children.” He eventually apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.Back in Canada, the summer of 2021 saw a slew of stories about other “discoveries” of unmarked graves — about 1,300 by one count. Dozens of churches across the country were set ablaze. Vandals pulled down statues of historical “settler” figures, Canada’s founding prime minister John A. Macdonald among them.The problem was — and still is — no concrete evidence existed to warrant such self-laceration. Certainly, indigenous children suffered violence and died while attending residential schools; that’s historically documented. But no unmarked graves with human remains have been recovered at former residential schools despite millions in taxpayer dollars being doled out for excavation efforts.“No persuasive evidence has yet been offered by anyone for the existence of unmarked graves, missing children, murder, or genocide in residential schools,” says Tom Flanagan, a former University of Calgary political science professor and co-editor with C.P. Champion of a collection of essays, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)..Jonathan Kay, one of the few journalists with the courage to challenge the unmarked-graves orthodoxy, concludes that Canada’s power elite were in the grip of a secularized religious fervour. “From the start of the social panic, these (unidentified) children were cast as sacred martyrs, and their grim fate was attested to by (equally sacred) Indigenous elders who’d claimed to have experienced some kind of mystical ‘knowing,’” he writes in the May 23 edition of the online journal Quillette. “The whole movement quickly became an ersatz religious movement for Canada’s upper middle-class lawn-sign set.”Both he and Flanagan regard the knee-jerk response to the unmasked graves calumny as evidence of moral panic.The concept of moral panic was introduced by British sociologist Stanley Cohen. Writing in the 1970s, he examined how societies can respond to perceived dangers with inflated expressions of fear or anger disproportionate to the reality of the situation. Authority figures and the media play a key role in amplifying moral panic, he argued. If they fulfill that role badly, the social consequences can be significant, including the stigmatizing of certain groups, the implementation of social controls, and the reinforcement of prejudices.Is that not what we saw in the summer of 2021? Those who wanted evidence were denounced as “denialists.” Some activists even called for the criminalization of denialism. Lowering flags to half-mast was an attempt at social control as well as the promotion of a particular ideological narrative.Perhaps, though, the deeper consequence of Canada’s moral panic over “unmarked graves” is the weakening of public trust.The fundamental political task of any institutional order is to determine and maintain the proper relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. In a coherent political order, this relationship is maintained through mutual trust. As political theorist Francis Fukuyama says: “A nation’s well-being … is conditioned by a single, pervasive characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.” In a society possessing a healthy level of trust, people can be reasonably confident that those with wealth, power, and influence will act with due regard for the good of the whole..When it came to the unmarked-graves narrative, too many with power and influence proved less than trustworthy.There were exceptions. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre risked demonization by the Liberals in early 2024 when he called for a “full investigation into the potential remains at residential schools” to establish “historical accuracy.”Indigenous band chief Aaron Pete defied the prevailing consensus when he said more evidence was necessary before the unmarked-graves narrative could be accepted. “This is the challenge for all of us,” he said in an August 2025 YouTube podcast. “Tell the truth, the whole truth, not just the parts that feel good or are convenient … That's how we earn trust.”Such responses are aristocratic, if you understand the word in its original Greek meaning. The term aristocracy derives from the words aristos, meaning “the best” or “most excellent,” and kratos, meaning “rule.” Aristocracy is the rule of excellence.Aristotle thought those possessed of excellence had the capacity to transcend self-interest and act for the greater good. And in a worthy aristocracy, those with excellence could be trusted to govern well.The French Revolution was an extreme example of what happens when mutual trust between the governed and the governors breaks down. Canada is not facing a revolution, but given the crucial issues confronting the country — from relations with the United States to the possibility of Alberta independence — any loss of trust in those charged with maintaining our political and social institutions augurs ill for the future. Robert Sibley, an award-winning journalist and author, holds a PhD in political science.
