Michael Higgins: Teacher fired for speaking truth on Kamloops gets day in court

For refusing to jump on the Kamloops “mass graves” narrative bandwagon, high school teacher Jim McMurtry was sacked by educational authorities, abandoned by his union and refused a hearing before a labour relations board.

Now, five years after first being walked out of a classroom as Indian residential school hysteria swept Canada, McMurtry is heading to B.C. Supreme Court in a case that he hopes will expose the truth about Kamloops.

McMurtry’s case illustrates how those in power were quickly captured by the ideology surrounding Kamloops, were eager to punish those who presented a different — although truthful — account and were determined to alienate dissenters.

At issue in the judicial review before the B.C. Supreme Court will be McMurtry’s fundamental right to free expression. But the teacher with almost 40 years of experience, as well as a doctorate in the philosophy of education with a specialty in Indigenous history, hopes it will also restore a basic freedom to all teachers.

“What I’m hoping for is not money,” said McMurtry in an interview with National Post. “It’s not realistically my job back. I’d like that, but at 67 I just don’t think that’s going to happen. What I would like is for teachers to regain what they had, which was professional rights, particularly the professional or the basic Charter protected right to be able to talk freely once again.”

It is a travesty of justice that anyone in Canada should be deprived of their livelihood for speaking the truth, as opposed to any current and fashionable ideology, and then be denied even the semblance of procedural fairness.

In the last five years, McMurtry’s only chance to challenge authorities was 20 minutes at a hearing before the Abbotsford District School Board, and even then, he said, “they had obviously made-up their minds.”

But McMurtry’s lone battle has come to an end with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) agreeing to fight his case in B.C. Supreme Court.

McMurtry is almost certainly the first victim of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) hysteria.

On May 27, 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation issued a  statement  which it said “confirms” that ground-penetrating radar had found the remains of 215 children at KIRS.

A shocked nation reeled and schools across the country scrambled to decide how best to present this news to students. It was a time when truth was sidelined in favour of “beliefs,” accuracy relegated for “compassion” and honesty wasn’t in the game at all.

Four days after that momentous announcement, McMurtry held a classroom discussion. According to the JCCF petition to the court, McMurtry invited students to consider whether “mass murder” was appropriate since no investigation had been completed; spoke about historical causes of deaths in residential schools and said that forced assimilation at the schools was a crime.

“He then invited (students) to not be complacent but work towards a better world,” says the petition.

For such heresy, McMurtry was marched out of class later that morning. The next day, he was suspended. In 2023, he was fired.

“Contrary to the Employer’s point of view, Mr. McMurtry’s comments were not ‘inflammatory, inappropriate, insensitive, and contrary to the (Employer’s) message of condolences and reconciliation,’” says the petition. “Rather, they were rational, reasonable, defensible and made in a good faith effort on Mr. McMurtry’s part, as an educator, to discuss the announcement — as requested by the principal — with students in a respectful, free and frank manner.”

His union, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, filed a grievance on McMurtry’s behalf in September 2025, but a month later dropped the case. “The Union’s counsel sent an e-mail to Mr. McMurtry, stating that ‘further efforts to negotiate a mediated resolve to your grievance would be futile,’” according to the petition.

McMurtry protested to the Labour Relations Board that the union “breached its duty of fair representation because its decision not to proceed to arbitration was arbitrary, discriminatory, and made in bad faith.” The board refused to hear the case and later denied an appeal of its decision.

The JCCF is arguing that the board and the union both failed to consider McMurtry’s right to free expression. The JCCF is asking for the case to be referred back to the board for a hearing.

In a statement, JCCF constitutional lawyer Hatim Kheir said, “For our constitutional rights to be meaningful, we must also be able to obtain a remedy. Under the status quo, Canadians who work for government institutions may be thwarted in seeking relief for violations of their rights if their unions decide not to take the case.”

The case before the court will be about Charter rights, but McMurtry sees a bigger issue; that the story of mass graves and mass murder was false.

“And there hasn’t been any reckoning. There hasn’t been any sort of institutional apology, not just by my employer, but across the board, by the federal government, for example.

“There needs to be an accounting,” he said.

It would be astonishing, although entirely appropriate, if McMurtry gets his day of reckoning. But the fact that he will have his day in court at all is testament to one man’s resilience.

National Post