The Same/Other Canada: The Town That's Deadly For First Nations People

Even before the 45th president of the United States took office, Canada had a reputation for being... nice. Polite, well-mannered, well-run. In the months since November 2016 Canada has emerged as a shining beacon of the North, a counter to the USA's increasing white nationalism and billionaire protectivism. Led by a young, handsome and eloquent Justin Trudeau, Canada is a country that provides healthcare, welcomes immigrants, all of the things Trumpland seemingly tries to legislate against.

Except, of course, there is a Canada beyond the Instagram- and Meme-friendly veneers. There are deep fissures, particularly when it comes to how the country is (or is not) dealing with its fraught and violent colonial past, which has persisted into its present. This was exposed but glossed over by many media during the recent Canada 150 celebrations – 150 years of the confederation called Canada, erasing the First Nations people who had been living in exactly the same geographical space for thousands of years before.

Canada's apathy towards its First Nations people often twists into something worse: antagonism and brutality that seem like something out of the last century, except they're still happening in 2017. In this investigation, published by Canadian magazine The Walrus, their writer visits the Ontario City of Thunder Bay (population 120,000) where the murder rate of First Nations people is three times higher than the entire province of Quebec – despite having 12 times fewer First Nations people – and is second only to Winnipeg (population 728,000) in raw numbers.

The story offers no answers for the multiple unsolved deaths of First Nations people across Thunder Bay, but does provide shocking insight into the racism that might have motivated them, drawing accurate and eerie parallels between these deaths and the lynching of Emmett Till in the American South more than half a century before.