North of Polite | Opinion and analysis
October 2, 2026

“Show me the evidence.”

Four words that should belong comfortably in any newsroom. At North of Polite, asking for evidence is part of the job.

But an honest request carries a responsibility: when evidence is available, you have to examine it.

According to local reporting, Sooke Brewing Company co-owner and head brewer John Adair wore a shirt bearing those words while working on September 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The brewery subsequently apologized and announced his termination. As of our October 2 publication check, we had found no public explanation from Adair of the shirt’s intended meaning. Whether his termination also ends his ownership interest remains unclear.

We cannot claim to know his intention. We can ask him a straightforward question:

Mr. Adair, what evidence are you asking for—and which of the existing records have you read?

If the message concerned residential schools, there is an extensive historical record available to examine.

The children’s suffering did not begin with a recent headline. Neither did the evidence.

The record existed before the headlines

On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized on behalf of Canada for the residential school system.

The apology acknowledged the separation of more than 150,000 Indigenous children from their families and communities. It described forced removals, inadequate food and housing, suppression of languages and cultural practices, and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It acknowledged that children died and others never returned home.

That acknowledgement matters. But nobody needs to accept the history simply because a prime minister delivered a speech.

There are records to read.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission examined government and church documents alongside testimony. Its 2015 report on missing children and unmarked burials identified 3,200 deaths in its registers of confirmed student deaths. In roughly one-third of those cases, the student’s name had not been recorded. In almost half, the cause of death was missing.

Pause there.

A child died. The institutions responsible sometimes left records so incomplete that researchers could establish a death without recovering a name.

Incomplete recordkeeping does not make that child imaginary. It raises further questions about the institutions entrusted with their care.

Research has continued. A 2025 guide hosted by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation reported more than 4,000 confirmed deaths in the residential school system. It described causes including disease, malnutrition, neglect, accidents and violence, and families often receiving neither their child’s body nor notification of the death.

Those findings do not mean every child died in identical circumstances, or that every death was a murder. Accuracy requires us to say that.

Accuracy also requires us to acknowledge what has been established.

Mr. Adair, if your shirt concerned this history, which finding do you dispute? What evidence supports your objection?

Those questions leave room for an explanation. They also make the discussion more useful than a slogan ever could.

Questions about graves require precision

A particular burial investigation can involve unresolved questions. Journalists have a responsibility to explain them.

Ground-penetrating radar detects underground features that specialists interpret alongside other evidence. It does not produce a photograph of human remains. University of Alberta guidance explains that it can detect features consistent with grave shafts, but cannot establish the presence of a grave with complete certainty. Identifying a particular child requires forensic investigation.

Potential burials, probable graves and confirmed human remains should be described accurately. Where reporting has overstated a finding, it should be corrected.

But uncertainty about one underground feature cannot erase a documented death, an account of abuse, or the policy that separated children from their families.

The TRC had already documented student deaths and neglected cemeteries years before the burial-search headlines of 2021.

A question about one site is not an answer to the entire history.

Correcting an inaccurate headline strengthens the record. Using that correction to dismiss everything else disregards it.

Mr. Adair, imagine it happening to your child today

Imagine receiving notice that your child must leave home for a distant institution. You have no meaningful choice. Authorities have decided that your family’s language, culture and way of life must be replaced.

Now imagine RCMP officers arriving to take your child away.

The RCMP itself acknowledges that its officers assisted Indian Agents in removing children from their homes and bringing them to residential schools, sometimes forcibly. The circumstances of children’s removals varied, but police participation is documented.

Imagine learning that your child is punished for speaking the language you taught them. They are inadequately fed. Someone entrusted with their care physically or sexually abuses them.

Then imagine your child dying there—and you are not told, or their body is not returned to you.

These circumstances are part of the documented residential school history acknowledged by Canada and examined by the TRC. Experiences varied, but these harms were real.

Now imagine such a system operating today, taking children from families across Canada, regardless of ancestry.

Would Canadians accept it as education? Would you, Mr. Adair? Would parents quietly accept the loss of their children while officials defended the policy? Would grieving families welcome a public demand for evidence from someone who had not examined the available records?

We would demand urgent protection for children, independent investigations and accountability.

Indigenous families were entitled to those things, too. The documented failures show how profoundly those obligations were betrayed.

So here are questions for Mr. Adair—and for anyone treating this history as something easily waved away:

If this happened to your child, what would you demand from the authorities?

If your child told you they had been abused, would you want their account taken seriously and investigated?

If records documented children’s deaths, would uncertainty about a particular burial site make those deaths cease to matter?

What standard of care and respect would you expect for your family—and why should Indigenous families have received any less?

First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were never worth less than the children we would rush to protect today.

Their families did not need this to happen to everyone for it to be wrong. Imagining it happening to your own family should help you recognize the humanity of theirs.

Survivors are witnesses

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation records that thousands of students suffered physical and sexual abuse. It explains that speaking about those experiences can mean reliving trauma, and that many survivors remained silent for years.

That deserves consideration before this subject becomes another entertaining fight online.

Survivor testimony is evidence. Individual accounts can be assessed carefully, with attention to corroboration and circumstances. They should not be discarded because the subject makes someone uncomfortable.

For a person who endured abuse, public dismissal can carry a cruel message: your suffering remains negotiable until strangers decide otherwise.

Nobody owes the internet a public account of their most painful experiences merely to earn basic respect.

The calendar moves on. The consequences remain.

September 30 is a day of public remembrance. It is not a boundary around survivors’ suffering.

We understand this when we observe Remembrance Day. A veteran’s memories do not begin on November 11 and disappear on November 12. The public ceremony takes place on a date; the person carries their experiences beyond it.

Military service and residential school abuse are different experiences. The comparison concerns something we should readily understand: remembrance follows a calendar, but trauma does not.

The NCTR describes the lasting damage inflicted by residential schools and the difficulty many survivors face in recounting their experiences.

A survivor does not owe anyone the details of how that harm enters their daily life. Nor should they have to reopen their most painful memories whenever someone publicly questions whether the suffering was real.

That is why the anger deserves to be understood.

It can come from having endured the harm, found the courage to speak, and then encountered another demand to prove what the historical record already establishes.

For the person dismissing that history, the exchange may end when they close an app. For the survivor reading it, it may reach into something they have spent years trying to live with.

The day of remembrance ends. The responsibility to take survivors seriously does not.

An honest question must leave room for an answer

Canadians can question investigations, government policy and public spending. Reconciliation should withstand scrutiny.

But meaningful scrutiny requires a specific claim, an examination of the evidence and a willingness to reconsider.

Which records have you read? What do you believe they establish? Where do you think they fall short? What finding would change your mind?

Those are fair questions for anyone demanding evidence—including North of Polite.

If every document is dismissed, every witness discredited and every unresolved detail used to reject established findings, no amount of research can satisfy the demand.

Criticism must also remain accurate. Reporting says the unrelated Sooke Oceanside Brewery was caught in the backlash and had to clarify that it had no affiliation with Sooke Brewing Company. That business and its staff should not be made targets through mistaken identity.

Anger at the dismissal of abuse does not excuse directing harm at uninvolved people. It should sharpen our insistence on truth.

The purpose of this article is to put the record before readers and ask that it be confronted honestly.

Mr. Adair can explain what he meant. Readers can examine the sources. Journalists can correct mistakes without abandoning established facts.

And survivors deserve to see their testimony treated with the seriousness it warrants—every day of the year.

Mr. Adair, “show me the evidence” is a fair request. The evidence is available. Read it.

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