Paul Tuns:

I have a “Houses of Worship” column in the Wall Street Journal about “The Burning of Canada’s Churches.” It begins:

It has been a difficult summer for Canada’s Christians. Over five days in late June, four Catholic churches and an Anglican church were burned to the ground, the first churches to be set ablaze or vandalized to begin a summer of such desecration. Suspicious fires then broke out across the country. In all, at least 56 churches have been set aflame or vandalized, according to the True North Centre, which is mapping attacks on churches.

This is unquestionably a crisis, but you wouldn’t think it from observing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s response. Although the first suspected arson happened June 21, he didn’t speak out on the issue until July 1. Worse, after dozens of the incidents across seven different provinces and territories, there has been only one arrest. “Am I wrong,” asked Aaron Wudrick of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, “or have more people been arrested in Canada this year for going inside a church to worship than for burning one down?”

Please read the full column at the Wall Street Journal. I note the Prime Minister took his sweet time condemning the attacks and point out that some bigots actually celebrated (Harsha ‘Burn it all down’ Walia), but I conclude on a decidedly non-political note: that these attacks rob many indigenous people of a place of worship and solace.

I don’t get into Indian Residential Schools except to explain them to an American audience. I direct you to Candice Malcolm’s excellent True North essay “Six Things the Media Got Wrong About the Graves Found Near Residential Schools,” about how the mainstream media narrative has created a moral panic: Indian Residential Schools did not have mass graves and probably didn’t have unmarked graves; they did not kill indigenous children – many of the children in their care passed away from various maladies that affected society at large and especially institutions such as residential schools; some gravesites might have been community cemeteries).