OTTAWA, Ontario, July 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Hundreds of people gathered to celebrate Canada Day at a freedom rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa this year.
The rally was organized by the Forum for Canadian Sovereignty, an organization dedicated to “vehemently opposing Globalism and the destructive globalist agenda.” The event featured speakers including pro-life MP Derek Sloan, Ontario MP Randy Hillier, leader of People's Party of Canada Maxime Bernier, and anti-lockdown campaigner Chris Sky.
The rally was aimed at regaining lost freedoms. The organizers’ description of the event noted, “Never in our history has the government quarantined healthy people, shut down businesses en mass, forbidden people from visiting their family, or banned people from worshiping in their religious communities.”
Catholic and pro-life MP Derek Sloan spoke at the event.
“This is our home and native land. Our history is a rich tapestry of wisdom so we can grow as a country,” Sloan said. “God bless you. God bless Canada. Never stop fighting!”
Some wanted to ‘Cancel Canada Day’
This rally was held contrary to a growing call leading up to Canada Day to cancel celebrations. At another rally, also held on Parliament Hill on July 1, many called to “Cancel Canada Day” after the discovery of graves at various Indigenous residential schools, despite evidence that these graves were neither unmarked nor hidden.
However, there have been numerous reports to show that media accounts, which tend to attack the Catholic Church as to blame, have been grossly overexaggerated. Most mainstream media reports neglect to mention the excessively high rates of tuberculosis among Indigenous children and the substantial lack of proper financial support from the Canadian government, which forced Indigenous children into those schools in the first place. Some Indigenous people have come forward to reveal that they benefited from and are grateful for the residential schools.
Although the residential school system was founded by the secular government in the 19th century, and then woefully underfunded by the state, and although different religious groups were asked to run the schools, the Catholic Church has borne the brunt of recent criticism.
Once the government mandated attendance at the schools in the 1920s, children were forcibly removed from their families and parents threatened with prison if they did not comply. Upon arrival at the school, children rarely saw their families, with many disappearing or never seeing their families again.
Catholic author Michael O’Brien, who attended residential schools and testified gave testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has previously told LifeSiteNews that the chief underlying issue in the residential school saga was the institutional abuse of children being removed from their families by the state authorities, and then taken to the schools, noting the “long-term psychological and social effects of this.”
Other elements to the residential school narrative often ignored by mainstream media are that, citing cost reasons, the Department of Indian Affairs refused to ship home the bodies of children who died at the government-mandated schools, meaning they had to buried there; high death rates and child mortality rates during the early 1900s; and that the Canadian government ignored an inspector’s warning in 1907 of that residential schools were home to “prime conditions” for “outbreak of epidemics.” (The inspector described the schools as being in a “defective sanitary condition” that included irregular exercise, insufficient ventilation – which was often closed during the winter for budget savings – and the admittance of students “already infected with contagious diseases.”)
Mortality rates for children under the age of five record 296.75 deaths per 1,000 births in 1900. That figure only dropped beneath 100 deaths per 1,000 births in 1935, with high rates of child mortality consistently seen from 1910 through 1920.
“Any discussion of death in childhood and the experience of children and families living with life-threatening medical problems has to be put in the context of child health as it has improved during the last century,” wrote the National Center for Biotechnology Information. As an example of this change in demographic mortality, in 1900, 30% of all deaths in the U.S were of children aged less than five years old, compared to just 1.9% in 1999.
In fact, such was the concern about Canada’s national infant mortality that Ontario politician Newton Rowell raised the matter before the House of Commons in 1919. Indeed, the First Nations people themselves have historically been noted to be less resilient against infectious diseases, such as influenza epidemics, measles, and smallpox.
While the rally attempting to cancel Canada Day was publicized on mainstream news outlets, those outlets failed to mention the freedom rally in support of patriotism and regaining lost rights.
In the U.S., leftists have engaged in similar efforts to minimize, cancel, or disparage Independence Day (July 4), citing claims that America is racist.