Credit: Dolores Gladstone/Facebook
With video surfacing of a masked man lighting a fire at the Blessed Sacrament Parish in Regina, Saskatchewan, this was the hundredth church that has been set on fire or vandalized in Canada since 2021, according to calculations by True North.
“The attack at the Regina church was the 46th arson attempt on a church,” writes True North reporter Harrison Faulkner. “Since True North began tracking church attacks in 2021, at least 33 have been completely burned to the ground.”
Though the historic building was damaged, the city of Regina’s fire department successfully put out the fire before the 118-year-old church was completely destroyed.
The arson attempt was caught by the church’s security cameras.
The National Post adds that over the past two months, at least six churches across Canada have reported “suspicious fires.”
The vandalism against churches started in 2021 after reports surfaced of unmarked graves at former residential schools across Canada, which were run primarily by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and United Churches.
“But nearly three years later, none of the 2021 discoveries have been confirmed as the previously unknown graves of Indian Residential School fatalities,” writes National Post columnist Tristin Hopper
However, there is no question that residential schools suffered significantly higher than normal death rates due to outbreaks of tuberculous and influenza at the schools.
In 1894, the Canadian federal government mandated that all school aged-indigenous children must attend school and if none were available in their area, they were forced to leave their families and attend residential schools. Religious organizations were contracted to run many of the residential schools, which the government often woefully underfunded.
Meanwhile, the politics of church burning:
OpentheWord.org 
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