A mayor in British Columbia has had his travel budget removed and been banned from committees after allegedly distributing a book on residential schools that is critical of media response to alleged unmarked graves linked to residential schools in Kamloops and elsewhere.
Quesnel Mayor Ron Paull was accused of attempting to hand out copies of the book “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)” by Thomas Flanagan and C.P. Champion. The book, which contains a series of essays, examines the media’s response to the May 2021 announcement of the alleged grave site discovery.
Councillor Scott Elliott was behind the motion to censure the mayor on April 30, saying that Mr. Paull had harmed the city’s reputation. “This should never have happened,” Mr. Elliott said. “We’ve had elders sit in here and explain what happened at residential schools, and having their children taken away, and then what took place there, and I just can’t fathom that we have to go back to this.”
Mr. Paull, meanwhile, denied the allegations that he had tried to hand out copies of the book during the April 30 meeting. He said he had brought a copy of the book belonging to his wife to a regional district meeting and showed it to two colleagues. He claimed he asked if the local library might do something with the book.
Despite the mayor’s apology for bringing the book to the regional district meeting, the Quesnel city council voted to remove Mr. Paull from committees and suspend his conference travel budget.
The Lhtako Dene Nation, a nearby First Nation, has also banned Mr. Paull from its territory unless formally invited and stated that it will not work with him but would work with other members of city council.
The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Paull for comment but his executive assistant said the mayor is not answering questions from media.
Mr. Flanagan, one of the book’s authors, said people are making claims about the book without appearing to have read it.
“I wish the Quesnel city council had read the book before voting to condemn it,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, said most child deaths while attending residential schools were from diseases like tuberculosis and there is no evidence of children being murdered in the schools.
“Not a single child burial has been found anywhere in connection with a residential school. Ground penetrating radar shows only soil disturbances and does not demonstrate a burial. In several cases where such soil disturbances have been tested by excavation, nothing has been found.”
He added that all the attention has boosted sales of the book.
“Attempts to condemn a book have the opposite effect. As of this morning, ‘Grave Error’ is Amazon’s No. 2 bestseller among all books that it sells in Canada,” he said on May 3.
