Article by Rebel News staff

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A Grande Prairie, Alta., social studies teacher is being paid to stay home after refusing to delete a social media post questioning the claim of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Amy Davidson, in her fifth year teaching at St. John Paul II Catholic School, shared a post from People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier on Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, saying no bodies had been found at Kamloops. She added two words: “Hear, hear.”

Davidson told Rebel News reporter Lise Merle that the school division’s HR deputy superintendent then came to her school with a letter of discipline and directed her to take the post down. “I told him that I wasn’t going to,” she said.

On the evening of Thanksgiving Monday, she received an email saying she had been unassigned from teaching duties. “I’m currently being paid but not teaching,” she said.

The next day, about 120 students and supporters walked out in protest, CBC reported. Some carried signs saying the Kamloops mass graves are real. Another read, “Don’t let the uneducated educate us.”

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Davidson says there has never been a complaint about anything she has said or taught in her classroom. An earlier complaint, two years ago, concerned a post in which she corrected a claim that every Indigenous person, or their parents or grandparents, attended residential school. At the system’s peak, she noted, roughly a third of Indigenous children attended.

According to CBC, the division’s superintendent sent staff a letter on Oct. 3 stating that “residential school denialism is unacceptable.” The division does not comment publicly on personnel matters.

Davidson, who is represented by her union, says she has had a disciplinary meeting and is still waiting to learn whether she will keep her job.

“I definitely don’t think that I should be muzzled in my personal life, but I also think that facts need to be in the classroom,” she said.

She says she has no problem with students staging a walkout, but hopes they “know what they’re protesting.” If evidence of a mass grave at Kamloops ever emerges, she said, she would be the first to admit she was wrong.

In her report, Lise compared the walkout to Mao’s Red Guards, the students who were turned against their own teachers during China’s Cultural Revolution. She also noted that Alberta’s new law protecting professionals’ off-duty speech will not cover teachers until January.

Ground-penetrating radar results announced in May 2021 only identified 'potential' burial sites at Kamloops. No excavation has been carried out.

“I want to be back in my classroom teaching my students and just living a quiet, simple life,” Davidson said.

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