This is a bit much

So now we have the headline-desperate, Perry Bellgarde, calling the tragic deaths at residential schools "genocide".  Please

Genocide?  Really!?  Even Justin Trudeau would not use the term because he correctly said it had a very narrow definition.  In fact, genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a race, or ethnic group, but what happened to the children in these schools was not deliberate and it was not killing.  It was disease.  Many children -- indigenous and non -- were dying of pneumonia, influenza, yellow fever, cholera, smallpox and typhus.  In fact more non-indigenous children died of these diseases than indigenous.  I have blogged this before (see "A Must Read"), but Bellgarde's elevating it to a genocide will amount to yet another cash grab, not helped by Murray Sinclair's financially-ruinous chorus of "every grave must be exhumed and all remains identified".  To what end?  He's just dredging up old and painful memories for families whose people went through this.  

As we know, many families willingly sent their children to these schools because they were dying of starvation and they hoped they would have a better chance in care.  They also hoped their children would get an education, which they did.  

So, let's stop being hysterical.  And while you're at it, do a little research to learn what really went on.  As a former journalist, I find it disgraceful that the media just slaps things out there without looking into the facts.  In fact, an off-reserve status native friend of mine here in Calgary said her mother and aunts went to a residential school and have many happy memories of life there.  Why not look into a few positive stories?  In my years as a journeyman scribbler in Toronto, my editors would never in a million years have let anything pass I hadn't backed up with hard evidence.