Although I don’t feel qualified to speak to the ongoing revelations of life and death at Canada’s residential schools, I would still like to weigh in, and to express my sorrow.

There are some days it is harder than others to get up the energy, and indeed the courage to make the trip downtown to the Church on the Street, and this was one of them.

Forgive me for regarding with a somewhat dry eye my fellow Canadians’ umbrage gusting to apoplexy over the infamy of Indian Residential Schools, and Catholic blame for same.

‘Bowdlerized’ reality

The horrific news of the residential schools grave sites created such an avalanche of rancour against the Catholic Church that factual information was either deliberately ignored or distorted. 

There will be more … more unmarked graves, more grief, more anger, more shame.

We ought to be feeling pretty good about ourselves.

I have thought a lot about euthanasia over the years. I have thought about it too much.

I was recently inspired by Venezuelan goalkeeper Wuilker Faríñez. My jaw dropped as he saved shot after shot in a 0-0 draw against heavily favoured Colombia in the COPA America football tournament, currently being played in Brazil.

Although the last Indian residential school in Canada closed 25 years ago, new revelations will continue coming to light for many years. The existence of the schools is a national scandal which cannot be wiped from our memories.

The shortest night of the year allows only a few hours of darkness in which to set churches on fire. It was time enough for two Catholic churches to be burned to the ground before dawn on June 21, 2021, National Indigenous Peoples Day.