On May 30th, W.J. Mouat Secondary School in Abbotsford doubled as a powerful free speech stand by former teacher Jim McMurtry, who was fired in 2021 for challenging a now widely debunked discovery claim about Canada's residential school history.

McMurtry, a longtime history teacher with a PhD, lost his job for what he calls the thought crime, or the education crime, of teaching—days after the Kamloops band government released the false claim to have discovered 215 children's remains at their Kamloops Indian Residential School—that if the discovery was true, those children would most likely have died from diseases like tuberculosis—not murder.

While the statement was grounded in accurate history, and we now know McMurtry's skepticism regarding the band's debunked claim was warranted, McMurtry was frog-marched out of the classroom as though he were a threat to his students.

W.J. Mouat and the Abbotsford School District refused to tolerate any dissent from the narrative, even if it could have relieved some of the students of the misguided grief they were experiencing from the claim. McMurtry was then suspended, investigated, and ultimately fired last year.

"Everybody wanted to play up the finding of 215 dead kids at the Kamloops residential school, even though there were no findings," McMurtry told Rebel News at a book launch event he set up directly across the Abbotsford school that he was fired from four years prior.

Now, he’s speaking out through his book The Scarlet Lesson, a personal response to the ordeal he's endured. The title is a play on Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," the classic novel in which a woman is forced to wear a red "A" for adultery as a public shaming.

"Ever since I said that kids in residential schools were not murdered, I've been wearing my own letter. So it's my side of the story," he said.

McMurtry said he found it painful to be ostracized, and that he felt it all over again at the book signing, when officials and police showed up as if he were a threat.

"To present to children residential schools as houses of horror where, in Kamloops, for example, 215 children were murdered by their teachers—if it's not true, then kids should know that," he said. "But the school district—and not just here in Abbotsford, but everywhere in Canada—they're far more interested, I think, in making Canada out to be this terrible, racist country with an awful past, and not getting the truth."

"I did my best to get at this with my book, so it's not just about me, it's about where education took a wrong turn."

Rebel News was on-site at the event and captured exclusive interviews with McMurtry and his supporters.

To help more people find out the truth about the Kamloops false 215 discovery claim, you can watch and share our Kamloops: The Buried Truth documentary here.