Canada's Holocaust

Much has been written about Canada’s residential schools for aboriginals. They are universally considered a very bad thing—indeed, the residential school system has been characterized as “Canada’s genocide.” Or “The Canadian Holocaust.”


The federal government and the churches that ran the schools have offered those who attended compensation in the order of $1.9 billion. Some Catholic orders and Anglican dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy by the settlement. A federal website on "Indian Residential Schools Resolution" begins with a pop-up warning that merely looking at the site may “cause some readers to trigger (suffer trauma caused by remembering or reliving past abuse),” and refers sufferers to a help line.

But how terrible were the residential schools, really?

Let’s look at the claims against them, one by one:


They tried to assimilate the Indians to the mainstream culture. This is “genocide.”

Maybe it was wrong; but it was not thought of as wrong at the time. And calling it “genocide” is the worst kind of false moral equivalence. It seemed perfectly logical, and still does. Indian cultures, at first contact, were still in the Stone Age, and had not discovered the wheel. Realistically, it is hard to see how they could be preserved in their pristine state in the modern world, or how trying to do this would in any way be to the advantage of Indians. It seemed, and seems, perfectly reasonable to teach Indian children a better way, for the same reason that we seek to educate any child.

Remember too that, as recently as the Sixties and Seventies, assimilation was exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King was fighting for; what Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were fighting for in South Africa. Were they wrong? Were Ian Smith, F.W. DeKlerk, and Bull Connor right? Were those of us who listened to King and embraced his message actually committing “cultural genocide” against African-Americans?

And remember too that this is more or less what the Indian leadership itself wanted and called for, at the time of the residential schools. They demanded such education in their treaties.

At least some schools also made genuine attempts to preserve any elements of Indian tradition that did not seem to hinder the students’ ability to make their way in the wider culture. Some, for example, had clubs teaching Indian dance.


Learning how to read and write may have been beneficial for the children; but the schools also forced Christianity on them. This showed disrespect for native Indian spirituality.

The residential schools showed up “as early as the 1840s” in Ontario, and in Western Canada in 1883-84. Appearing at this late date, it is hard to see how they could have forced anyone to become a Christian. The Mohawks of Ontario were already devout Anglicans when they arrived just after the American Revolution; in Quebec, they had been Catholic since the 17th century. In Western Canada, one who has read the story of the Riel Rebellion must know that the Metis and Indians were already overwhelmingly Catholics in 1884. The Oblates were in Northern Alberta by 1844.

Nor was forced conversion ever necessary—or legal, in Church doctrine. Christianity swept through Canadian Indian culture soon after first contact, more like a knife through butter than a sword through massed troops; just as it had earlier swept quickly though European paganism. Spiritual as they were, the Indians recognized a superior spiritual technology.

The missionaries were involved in the residential schools, not because they needed to convert any more Indians, or found any difficulty in doing so, but because at the time they were the only ones who cared about educating Indians. They were already running all the Indian schools when the government decided to take some responsibility—and donate some of the cost.


The schools destroyed the Indian family. They forcibly took children away from their families (some sources say "kidnapped"). The schools were deliberately set up far from the reserves.

As above, the Indian leaders themselves generally sought this. It is true enough that individual families could not opt out—but the same is true for everyone else. Education is compulsory—we must send our children to school, and we must accept what education the state sees fit. If this is wrong for Indians, it is wrong for all. And, for any number of immigrant groups, just as for the Indians, this means some loss of their original culture.

As to separating children from their families, there does not seem to have been any general policy to do this, although quotes can be found from various officials suggesting that it might be a good idea. First, most Indian children never went to residential schools—most stayed with their families and attended public schools like the rest of us. “Department of Indian Affairs reports... show that between 1890 and 1965 an average of 7,100 native students attended residential schools, compared to 11,400 who attended day schools in the same period." Barring truly spectacular bureaucratic incompetence, this must mean that there was no systematic policy to break up families.

Nor were the residential schools, as claimed, built deliberately far from the reserves. Most were built on the reserves, or very near them. But many reserves were small, remote, and widely dispersed; so children from other reserves were often boarded. This seems to have been only a practical measure in order to allow them to attend school.

Being boarded away from their families, even if done only in cases of need, is often portrayed as a great hardship. But if so, it is a hardship the British, Canadian, and American upper class actively seeks for their own children, and is ready to pay dearly for. Residential schools are the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon upper classes.

Indeed, in many other countries, missionary residential schools essentially identical to those provided to the aboriginals of Canada, and run by the same orders, have become the preferred educational option for the upper classes: notably, in India and Pakistan. My Pakistani first wife was immensely proud to have graduated from St. Mary’s, which she insisted was the best school in Pakistan. A Pakistani engineer I met a few years ago made the same claim for his missionary school.


A high proportion of the students attending these schools claim to have been abused. Surely they deserve compensation?

The current settlement is for everyone who attended, not just those claiming abuse.

No doubt some abuse did occur at these schools—although many claims seem to be over no more than old-fashioned school discipline, “taught to the tune of a hickory stick.”

But what is our control? Do we have any clear idea whether it was worse than at other residential schools? Do we have any evidence that it was worse, even, than at public schools of the time? We do not.

We do know, however, that child abuse even today is much more common on Indian reserves than in the general population: Health Canada claims that 40% of children in aboriginal communities are victims of abuse. A 1998 study found that half of aboriginal females, and one third of aboriginal males, had been abused, usually by someone in their extended family.

This being so, while it does not forgive any abuse that went on in the residential schools, it does make it quite possible that, on balance, sending aboriginal children to residential schools reduced their risk of being abused, not increased it. Indian home life was often blighted by severe alcoholism, violence, and extreme poverty—just the sort of conditions that, even today, can prompt a social worker to seek to separate a child from his or her birth family.

Figures suggest that thirty percent of the children who attended the schools died there. Surely that’s real genocide?

There is indeed a 1907 report, by Dr. Peter Bryce, an Indian Department medical inspector, which draws attention to a mortality rate of 30% in the schools. Some claim a cover up—though his report made the front page of the Ottawa papers at the time.

Bryce pointed out that this was almost entirely from tuberculosis:

“It suffices for us to know … that of a total of 1,537 pupils reported upon, nearly 25 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable cause of death given is tuberculosis."

In 1907, there was no effective treatment for tuberculosis, and it was fatal. So it is a bit of a stretch to blame the residential schools for not curing it. Throwing students together in residential halls may have helped the disease to spread; but would their situation really have been less crowded in a poor home on an aboriginal reserve? Let alone in a traditional aboriginal longhouse?

Perhaps not. Tuberculosis rates on reserves at the time were, according to Health Canada, among “the highest ever reported in a human population.”

Tuberculosis is now curable. My wife comes from the Philippines, though, and she still has a great fear of it. For, even if a cure exists, in the Philippines, few can afford the medical care.

And what is the resulting mortality rate, among children? My wife is one of six surviving children in her family—out of nine. A mortality rate of 33%--a little worse than Bryce observed in the residential schools. She believes this is typical, for the Philippines today.

If this was a deliberate attempt to infect aboriginal children, in order to commit genocide, the authorities of the day should have been able to do better than random chance.

And if this is the darkest skeleton in the Canadian closet, we need never fear spring cleaning.