OTTAWA — Federal police said Monday that they were investigating “suspicious” fires that destroyed two Catholic churches built around 1910 in indigenous communities in western Canada.
The Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band lands and St. Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Bandlands in the Oliver areaof British Columbia province, went up in flames at around the same time, between 1 am and 3 am local time.
Their destruction comes weeks after unmarked graves of 215 children were found in nearby Kamloops at one of many boarding schools set up a century ago to forcibly assimilate Canada’s indigenous peoples.
The discovery at the Kamloops Indian Residential School shocked Ca…
Keep on reading: Two century-old churches go up in flames in Canada indigenous communities