Morning Mix

Two Catholic churches on Canadian Indigenous land destroyed in ‘suspicious’ fires, police say

By Andrea Salcedo
June 22, 2021 at 8:01 a.m. EDT

Greg Gabriel was fast asleep early Monday when a staff member called to report that the Sacred Heart Church on First Nations reserves in Canada’s British Columbia was engulfed in flames.

By the time Gabriel, the Penticton Indian Band chief, arrived at the Catholic church minutes later, the historic wooden structure was already gone, he told the Vancouver Sun.

About two hours later, someone called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to report a nearly identical incident about 25 miles away: St. Gregory’s Church on the Osoyoos Indian Band reserve was also burning.

The fires, which authorities are calling “suspicious,” erupted about a month after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia — a discovery that has led to renewed outcry over one of Canada’s darkest chapters, when nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and sent to government-funded, church-run residential schools in an attempt to assimilate them.

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By Andrea Salcedo
Andrea Salcedo is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Before joining The Post in 2020, she covered breaking news and features for the New York Times metro desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/andreapsalcedo