Fires destroy two more Catholic churches in Canada’s Indigenous communities
- Authorities consider the fires suspicious and are looking to determine any possible connection to church fires in the towns of Penticton and Oliver last week
- The destruction of the churches comes after discoveries of hundreds of bodies buried at former Catholic schools for Indigenous children
Fires on Saturday destroyed two more Catholic churches in Indigenous communities in western Canada, following grim discoveries at former church-run indigenous residential schools of nearly 1,000 unmarked graves.
St Ann’s Catholic Church on the Upper Similkameen Indian Band and the Chopaka Catholic Church on the Lower Similkameen Indian Band were set ablaze less than an hour apart in the early morning, federal police said.
“Both churches have been destroyed,” Sergeant Jason Bayda of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
Authorities consider the two fires “suspicious, and are looking to determine any possible connection to the church fires in both Penticton and Oliver on June 21, 2021,” he said.
The Penticton and Oliver fires are still under investigation.
The destruction of the four churches comes at a raw time for many of Canada’s Indigenous peoples still struggling with the discovery, using ground-penetrating radar mapping, of the remains of 215 schoolchildren at a former residential school in Kamloops last month, and 751 more unmarked graves at another school in Marieval this week.