BC residential school demolition, Ontario eases COVID rules : In The News for June 30

In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of June 30 …

What we are watching in Canada …

The deputy chief of the Daylu Dena Council in northern British Columbia says survivors of a former residential school have given the community strength and courage to keep pushing in a decades-long fight to demolish the building.

“(Today) and every day is for them,” Harlan Schilling said in an interview ahead of a gathering Wednesday to mark the demolition of the former school in Lower Post, a community of about 175 people near the Yukon boundary.

Continuing the fight to tear down the building where children suffered abuse has been a message passed from chief to chief for nearly 40 years, Schilling said.

The institution operated from 1951 to 1975 and at one point housed more than 600 students from northern B.C., Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Children from Lower Post were sent elsewhere, Schilling added. 

“The goal from the government and the church at the time was to separate them from who they are, which meant separating them from their families.”

Wednesday marks 46 years to the day since the school closed and Schilling said its demolition will begin healing for the community. The building had been used as the Daylu Dena Council band office, post office and employment centre.

With strict COVID-19 safety measures in place, survivors and supporters are to gather for a ceremonial burning of parts of the building, which has been stripped down to its frame and foundation.

Demolition started months ago with the removal of hazards like lead and asbestos. It may be another week or two until it’s fully torn down, said Schilling.

A group of people walking from Whitehorse to Kamloops, B.C., to honour survivors and those who died in Canada’s residential school system is expected to stop in Lower Post on its way. Schilling said he was honoured to participate when the Warriors Walk for Healing Nations began earlier this week. 

The walk was spurred by an announcement last month from Tk’emlups te Secwepemc that ground-penetrating radar had detected what are believed to be the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in Kamloops. The Cowessess First Nation in southeastern Saskatchewan said last week the same technology had found 751 unmarked graves at the site of another former school.

Once the building in Lower Post is torn down, Schilling said the community will decide what it wants for the site, such as a memorial. And it will follow up on horrible stories about what happened there.

“How do we figure out and find the horrible things that happened here? And, you know, with the young spirits that didn’t make it home, how do we get those families closure? How do we let them know that their young one was here?”

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Also this …

Ontario has moved into the second step of its economic reopening plan, further easing COVID-19 public health restrictions on businesses and gatherings.

As of 12:01 a.m., hair salons and similar facilities can open with masking rules, and retail stores can have more people inside.

Groups of up to 25 people can gather outdoors and five people can gather indoors.

Outdoor attractions and events like performances can open with capacity rules. 

The changes are taking effect a few days ahead of schedule due to strong vaccination rates and other public health indicators.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

WASHINGTON — The House has approved a bill to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol. 

The bill calls for the removal of statues such as those of Jefferson Davis. It would also remove the bust of Roger Taney, the U.S. chief justice who wrote an infamous pro-slavery decision. 

A similar bill last year failed to gain traction in the Senate, but backers are hoping for a different outcome now that President Joe Biden is in the White House and Democrats control the Senate. 

Republicans note that some states are already working to replace the statues that would be removed and the process should be improved to accommodate them.

The bill passed by a vote of 285-120. Democrats were unanimous in their support for the bill and were joined by 67 Republicans. 

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said the Confederate statues send a message to Black people that their lives are not valued because those being honoured “stood for the proposition that you were less than human.”

“It’s personally an affront to me as a Black man to walk around and look at these figures and see them standing tall, looking out as if they were visionaries and they did something that was great. No, they did something that was very hurtful to humanity,” Johnson said.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

BERLIN — Germany’s defense minister says the country’s last troops have left Afghanistan after a nearly 20-year deployment in the country. 

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer tweeted that the last Bundeswehr soldiers “left Afghanistan safely” on Tuesday evening as she thanked the more than 150,000 troops who have served there since 2001.

The German military said that the last troops were on their way home via Tbilisi, Georgia, and that the last commander of the German contingent was on board an Airbus A400M aircraft bringing them home.

NATO agreed in April to withdraw its roughly 7,000 non-American forces from Afghanistan to match U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pull all American troops from the country starting May 1. At the time, Germany had around 1,100 troops there.

Germany’s contingent, which focused on northern Afghanistan, was the second biggest in the current Resolute Support mission after the United States’. Its last bases were in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul.

“A historic chapter is coming to an end, an intense deployment that was exacting for the Bundeswehr and marked it, in which the Bundeswehr proved itself in battle,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said.

Fifty-nine German troops died in Afghan missions over the years.

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On this day in 1987 …

The Bank of Canada stopped issuing $1 bills. They were replaced with $1 coins that came to be known as loonies. The $2 coin, the toonie, was introduced a few years later.

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In entertainment …

TORONTO—  “Canada’s Drag Race” has some new faces on its main judging panel for season 2, with actor Amanda Brugel, fashion personality Brad Goreski and CTV’s “etalk” senior correspondent Traci Melchor joining Brooke Lynn Hytes to critique the drag-queen contestants.

Brugel, Goreski and Melchor replace two previous resident judges — actor and activist Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and supermodel Stacey McKenzie, who were on season 1 with Hytes.

The show’s Twitter account said this week McKenzie “won’t be able to return for Season 2 due to COVID-related challenges.”

And Hytes and McKenzie announced on Instagram in March that Bowyer-Chapman wouldn’t return because of a scheduling conflict with his role in the upcoming Disney-Plus series “Doogie Kameāloha, M.D.” 

Like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the Toronto-shot version sees drag artists compete in a series of challenges for the title of the Next Drag Superstar and a grand prize of $100,000.

Melchor was also on season 1 helping the queens in a role dubbed Canada’s Squirrel Friend.

Crave says Melchor and Brugel will appear throughout the season premiering later this year but won’t be in every episode, while Hytes and Goreski will be on each episode.

The show won five Canadian Screen Awards in May, including best reality/competition program or series and best host or presenter for Hytes, Bowyer-Chapman and McKenzie.

Bell Media has said the series is one of Crave’s top performers.

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ICYMI …

OTTAWA —  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bet on the Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup final against the Tampa Bay Lightning has been accepted by U.S. president Joe Biden.

The stakes of the bet were not clear, but Trudeau suggested they may be sandwich-based, saying in French during a virtual chat with the head of Quebec’s chamber of commerce Tuesday that he has “every confidence that I won’t have to buy a few pounds of smoked meat to send him.”

The odds have shifted since Trudeau’s late-evening tweet — posted with the Canadiens already down by at least a goal  — after the Lightning dominated Montreal to win 5-1 in the first game of the series Monday night.

The second game in the best-of-seven series goes Wednesday night.

During the Sochi Olympics in 2014, then-president Barack Obama wound up owing former prime minister Stephen Harper two cases of beer when the Canadian women’s and men’s hockey teams triumphed over their American counterparts.

After the Washington Capitals glided over the Ottawa Senators in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 1998, a humbled prime minister Jean Chretien paid off a bet to Bill Clinton during the G8 economic summit, donning a Capitals jersey presented to him by the U.S. president.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2021

The Canadian Press