Ten churches in Alberta were vandalised in a single day as Canada continues to see churches, primarily Roman Catholic, burned to the ground in several provinces over the past month.
More than ten churches in the province of Alberta were vandalised on Canada’s national holiday of Canada Day, or Dominion Day, on Thursday, with most being vandalised with red paint in an apparent protest against the Roman Catholic church’s role in the Canadian residential school system.
According to a report from the BBC, at least one of the churches vandalised was an African Evangelical church that primarily catered to African refugees who had fled their home countries, often due to churches being burned down and anti-Christian persecution.
“These folks came to Canada with the hope that they could practise their faith peacefully,” Alberta conservative Premier Jason Kenney said, adding: “Some of them are traumatised by such attacks.”
Calgary Police also commented on the various acts of vandalism, noting that one of the churches had a window smashed and that paint that been thrown inside the church as well.
The vandalism attacks come after a wave of churches, some a century or more old, being burned to the ground in suspicious fires in several Canadian provinces. Just days prior to the acts of vandalism, a church in Morinville, Alberta, caught fire and was reduced to ruins. Local police have stated that they are treating the incident as a suspected arson attack.
Premier Kenney later attended the scene of the suspected arson and stated that it “appears to have been a criminal act of hate-inspired violence.”
On June 14th, the 204-year-old St. John’s Anglican Church caught fire on the Six Nations First Nations reserve in Ontario, with a local linking the inferno to protests over the graves discovered in Kamloops.
The Sacred Heart Church in Penticton and St Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Band lands, both more than 100 years old, were immolated just weeks later, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) disclosing that both fires were suspicious.
Earlier this week, RCMP reported that two more churches, St. Ann’s Catholic Church on the Upper Similkameen Indian Band and the Chopaka Catholic Church on the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, had been destroyed by fire.
Another church, St. Paul’s Anglican Church on the Gitwangak Indian Band’s land in northwestern British Columbia, also caught fire last Saturday, becoming the fifth church in the province to go up in flames in just a week.
In southern Alberta, police reported that the Siksika First Nation Catholic Church had caught fire in a suspected arson attack. The local fire department extinguished the fire before it caused extensive damage.
Mobs have also ripped down statues of Queen Elizabeth II and her ancestor Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature in recent days, and destroyed a statue of British explorer Captain Cook — all with no obvious interference from the authorities.
The incidents are thought by some to be related to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at residential school sites over the last several weeks.
Some news outlets have erroneously described the unmarked graves as “mass graves”, although the BBC conceded that, in fact, at least some “Burial plots used to be marked with wooden crosses that crumbled over the years”.
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