To see what Simon Hergott and I can produce, you can watch our preliminary documentary "WHAT REMAINS: Exposing the Kamloops Mass Grave Deception's Impact on Powell River". This looks at the deception through the lens of the demands to change the town's name and to push the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
On May 27, 2021, the Kamloops Indian Band announced "the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School", asserting that some of these children "were as young as three years old". This resulted in a national outpouring of grief, and Canadian flags were flown at half-mast across the country. Dozens of churches were burned and Canadians were convinced that this was evidence that Canada had committed genocide against the indigenous population. Canadian politicians defended the arson as "understandable".
A month and a half later, on July 15, 2021, the Band organized a presentation by Sarah Beaulieu, the Ground Penetrating Radar expert, who had surveyed the site. In this presentation, Dr. Beaulieu noted that no remains had been found, and that only excavation could "conclusively determine" if children's bodies were buried in the old apple orchard.
Although it first appeared as if the original announcement by Chief Rosanne Casimir was a mistake, a number of factors show that there has been a concerted effort to deceive the public. And, in spite of 9.2. million dollars being requested for "ancestral remains excavation", not one shovel has been put in the ground. Furthermore, the absence of excavations has not prevented neotribal eiltes such as Casimir from continuing to claim that the remains of children have been found on the former residential school site.
The circumstances surrounding the deception will form the basis of an investigative documentary by Frances Widdowson and Simon Hergott. Widdowson and Hergott, along with their assistant Kathy Drake, will travel to Kamloops, Abbotsford, Victoria, and Simon Fraser University to examine the different factors that have resulted in the encouragement of the false belief that children's remains are buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential school.
Widdowson and Hergott have already shot footage in Powell River, British Columbia, to document how the "grave error" at Kamloops was one of the factors that resulted in the local indigenous group, the Tla'amin Nation, demanding that the town's name be changed. Widdowson and Hergott will also be investigating how the Kamloops deception resulted in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples being pushed through Parliament.
As Widdowson, Hergott and Drake are completely independent, they require donations from the public to produce this documentary. This will ensure that they will be able to tell the truth as they see it, and not be subject to the pressures that accompany applying for government grants. The funding is required for travel costs for the various shooting locations (Kamloops, Abbotsford, Vancouver, and Victoria), as well as the expenses and two months of labour needed to edit the documentary.
Please contribute to our campaign, and share our story with others on social media. The false claims that have continued for four years need to be exposed, as we must first have truth before we can have reconciliation.
About the Team
(From left to right, Kathy Drake, Frances Widdowson, and Simon Hergott)
Frances Widdowson was a tenured professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary until 2021 when she was wrongfully terminated for challenging "woke" ideas (i.e. totalitarian identity politics). One of the reasons given for Widdowson's employment relationship being unviable was that she argued that, while the residential schools had numerous problems, they were not genocidal and provided educational benefits that were not otherwise available. All the circumstances surrounding Widdowson's firing can be read about on the website www.wokeacademy.info.
Simon Hergott was a journalist with the mainstream media for 10 years before he was fired for challenging narratives that were being pushed by his employer. Since then, Hergott has been working as a freelance journalist to tell stories that corporate media outlets do not want to tell. When Hergott first heard about the Kamloops case, he thought it sounded suspicious but this was not a story that the establishment was interested in. You can see Hergott's videos on his YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/SimonHergott.
Kathy Drake was a student at Mount Royal University until she was forced to drop out because Mount Royal University hired a lawyer to investigate her for personal social media comments and a private conversation that she had in a bar. You can follow Drake on X @nulamoonsnail (https://x.com/nulamoonsnail).
