On September 19, I was honored to attend the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom (JCCF) Awards event in Calgary, where Dr. Frances Widdowson received the George Jonas Freedom Award. In opening remarks, John Carpay, founder and President of the JCCF, explained that George Jonas, a Canadian journalist, originally from Hungary, had experienced the worst of Stalinist communism and also the pro-Nazi Hungarian fascism during World War II. He was a quirky and outspoken journalist, author, and poet in Canada who passed away in 2016.The award is meant to honor those with similar defiance to compliance and devotion for evidence-based truth.Widdowson has been an advocate for empirical evidence related to the May 27, 2021, claim of the Kamloops First Nation that 215 children’s bodies were found in the apple orchard near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. She is a contributor to the best-selling book “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools).” To date, no empirical evidence of a clandestine mass grave has been presented, and there is no list of names of children said to be missing. This is a phantom genocide. .MacLEOD: Is it time for Alberta’s independence referendum?.For Widdowson’s demand for evidence, she has been labelled a “residential school denier” by people like her nemesis, Sean Carleton, a “settler scholar” and Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba. Full disclosure, on December 17, 2024, I participated in one of Dr. Widdowson’s webinars, presenting my PowerPoint “Debunking Sean Carleton on Denialism.”At the JCCF event, Widdowson spoke of her experience of being wrongfully terminated from Mount Royal University. She denounced the infiltration of woke ideology into academia, pointing out that universities are now graduating doctors and engineers who are compelled to learn counterfactual concepts and apply them in their professions.Ominously, she told us that there will be consequences for society. .Widdowson vowed that she would be taking her “Spectrum Street Epistemology” debate platform to universities across Canada.Last week, she took it to Winnipeg.“Spectrum Street Epistemology” is an interactive method for exploring beliefs. Widdowson has several mats that she puts on the ground in a semi-circle with phrases in the spectrum of “Strongly Disagree … to Strongly Agree” and all in between. Participants begin “to play” by standing on the mat labelled “Neutral,” indicating their stance at the moment the question or proposition is posed by the moderator (Widdowson). After which, they move to a mat that represents their position. Then, as the question is probed and evidence provided, the individual(s) may or may not choose to change their position. The purpose is to foster civil, public debate..LAFRAMBOISE: The persecution of Canada’s ‘other’ Freedom Convoy truckers.At the University of Manitoba, reportedly, the first session went over without much ado and reportedly with good discourse. The theme was “The ‘Grave Error’ at Kamloops Was a Hoax.” Sean Carleton had a chance to debate with Widdowson, but he did not show up. Widdowson posed the following proposition at a subsequent event at the University of Winnipeg: “Residential School Denialism is a Barrier to Reconciliation.”Winnipeg blogger and author Michael Melanson was there. His Substack article “Orange is the New Brown Shirt” is a frightening account of a sudden societal descent into chaos..Widdowson was mobbed by indigenous women in orange shirts and ribbon skirts who screamed in her face, incessantly beat a drum, and shook a rattle by her head. Her mats were defaced and thrown in the garbage. Soda was dumped on her head; water was dumped on her sound system. A collection of burly indigenous guys hovered, some with brass knuckles in evidence. Her friend and professorial colleague, Daniel Paige, who was there to record the session, was punched in the face. Michael Melanson himself was encircled by the thugs and was under threat of physical attack.Widdowson stood firm and defiant, so the group of women joined arms and tried to shuffle her off campus. She lay down on the ground. And waited them out..TOKEN LEFTY: The UCP manufactured teacher’s strike.Campus security did nothing. The police were called but did not arrive.The upshot of what Widdowson had predicted at the JCCF George Jonas Freedom Awards banquet was evident at the University of Winnipeg. .The Indian Residential School narrative of genocide is untrue. No one has ever been charged or convicted for genocide in relation to residential schools in Canada. And in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), we have only heard unverified recollections from 4% of the students who attended, and who were children then.Tomson Highway reported in the HuffPost in 2015 that you’ve heard the 7,000 sad stories from the TRC, but you have not heard the 7,000 happy ones, like his. Perhaps that is because the TRC process intentionally cut a selection of testimony from former workers who would have provided the necessary, nuanced adult perspective. As Ronald Niezen reported in his book “Truth and Indignation,” the TRC “missing children” project was begun in secret without authorization. It has now grown into its own monster exacerbated by the Kamloops claim of the phantom genocide and mass graves. Widdowson shows this ripple effect in her film “What Remains.” .THOMSON: Canada’s silent war: Losing to terrorists without a fight.The Kamloops claim is central to this angry rift created in Canadian society; it also thrust the contentious UNDRIP legislation through the House of Commons in less than a month, after it had been stalled for months by six premiers and several First Nations who opposed it. UNDRIP is now turning Canadian laws upside down.Taxpayers have been shamed and guilted out of billions based on atrocity propaganda that is not substantiated by evidence, and few have the guts to ask questions. Widdowson has. You must find that fortitude as well if you ever want a country that again enjoys peace, order, and good government, and open, civil debate.
