ROTHENBURGER – OneBC ‘town hall’ was lively but it was nothing to fear
Click on images to enlarge. (Images: Mel Rothenburger)
IT WAS LIVELY but well-behaved, at least for the most part.
That, I think, sums up Sunday night’s (June 7, 2026) much ballyhooed ‘town hall’ featuring MLA Dallas Brodie of OneBC. Actually, there was no hall, since the City cancelled a rental permit for the Kia Lounge after demanding more than $7,000 to provide security.
Instead, Brodie spoke in front of a hundred people at a fenced lot on Victoria Street West not far from City Hall. Not nearly as many as had registered but three times the number of anti-Brodie protesters across the street.
The new location wasn’t revealed until Saturday night, when those who had registered received an email.
Four RCMP members and at least two or three Community Service Officers were there, along with their parked vehicles, lights flashing, to ensure order.
At no time was there a hint of anything unsafe, which the City had said was the concern that prompted the big security bill.
After some introductory remarks by party chief of staff Wyatt Claypool, who ridiculed the “clowns” at City Hall for demanding the extra payment, and gleefully pointed out that the event didn’t pay a dime for rental or security at the parking lot, Brodie got right down to business.
She said “lies” about unmarked graves had created an impression that Canada is “heartless” and caused “a sense of shame about our country.”
Brodie said the federal government should demand that excavations be done to answer the question of whether unmarked graves exist at residential schools. She denied accusations of racism and denialism: “We’re being told we’re not entitled to the proof…. We can’t be the advocates for errors or lies.”
MLAs Peter Milobar and Ward Stamer came in for criticism for helping “promote the hoax.”
The demographic of those who attended was diverse, from teens to seniors and an apparent range of ethnicities, including indigenous. At least a couple of the latter were there to support Brodie, one telling her “we love you and we love OneBC” and another telling her she’s doing the right thing.
A third, however, wasn’t impressed, yelling during the Question and Answer session, “This is all Indian land, every single fucking part of it,” at which point a couple of OneBC guys tried to wrest the microphone from her.
Brodie told them to let her speak but, instead, the woman turned on her heels, raised her hand in a one-fingered salute, and marched off.
“Oh, that’s nice,” said Brodie, adding that such people “are destructive. They are not builders.”
Meanwhile, the 35 placard wavers and flag bearers across the street seemed to be enjoying themselves, drumming and heckling and chanting, “Hey, ho, OneBC has got to go!” “Dallas you suck!” and “Why, why Dallas why do you deny it’s genocide?”
(Video: Mel Rothenburger)
They waved signs with slogans such as “Honor the 215,” “All children deserve love and respect” and “Every child matters.”
It wasn’t all so polite. Many of the motorists passing by hit their horns in response to a placard that read, “Honk if you hate racists.” One of the protesters shouted “fucking liar” at Brodie. At one point the police and a CSO quickly strode across Victoria Street West to the protesters. I didn’t catch the start of it but it appeared to be a response to a few of them straying off the sidewalk onto the asphalt. They obeyed the officers and nothing came of it.
The noise from the protesters was supplemented by the silent threat of rain and the rumbling of trains passing by behind Brodie but none of it interrupted the flow of the event.
One of the interested attendees was Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, who received a round of applause when he introduced himself and briefly took the mike during the Q&A with some comments about street disorder.
(I asked him why he was there and his response was, “This is a democracy and I’m the mayor and I’m here to listen,” adding that those who committed crimes at residential schools need to be held accountable.)
The Q&A, which went on for more than an hour, ranged from land acknowledgements in schools (Brodie called them “corrosive”), ostrich farming, DRIPA and UNDRIP, data centres, and federal payments to First Nations in connection with unmarked-graves claims.
To the latter, she said the Kamloops band should repay the millions it has received, and Kúkwpi7 Rosanne Casimir “needs to step down.” (Casimir has previously demanded that Brodie resign.)
(Video: Mel Rothenburger)
Attempts at the federal level to make denialism a crime also came up, to which Brodie responded, “I’m not gonna stop. If I have to go to jail, I’ll go to jail.” On a similar note, she told the crowd to applause, “We need to have a marketplace of ideas in this country,” not a place where people are branded with insulting labels for speaking out.
When it wrapped up an hour and 40 minutes after it began, Brodie stayed to answer some questions one-to-one, and the merch table did a brisk business selling OneBC T-shirts and ball caps and signing up volunteers.
Was this the sort of gathering that promoted a reconciliation of ideas and interests? Well, no, the “town hall” on one side of the street and the counter protest on the other was anything but a dialogue. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t threatening and there were certainly no hints of violence or physical confrontation. It was, all in all, a safe venue and nobody got wildly out of line.
In other words, there was nothing to fear from it. When the talking (and shouting from the other side of the road) came to a close, everyone simply went home.
Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Here’s an idea: how about a formal debate with a moderator?
Someone who will call out the rhetoric, faulty logic and the veracity of evidence of those advancing their positions.
Examples of debate topics:
Whether or not government policies and actions amounted to a genocide. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has concluded that treatment of indigenous people in Canada has amounted to a cultural genocide. Debate can be also include the meaning of the term genocide and how that meaning may or may not contribute to truth and reconciliation.
Whether or not children were abused, suffered and died in numbers vastly exceeding other children in schools in Canada during the residential school period.
It appears to me that Dallas Brodie and others have seized primarily on the assertion that the anomolies found buried in Kamloops amount to a firm number of 215 unmarked graves of children. Is an accurate number really the issue here?
Ms. Brodie has also called the efforts at reconciliation an “industry” and that somehow there is a small group of people benefiting disproportionately from taxpayer dollars intended to alleviate the issues faced by Indigenous peoples in Canada. How about debating this topic?
I nominate Wab Kinew as the person to debate Dallas Brodie. There are many others, including Kúkpi7 Rosanne Casimir. How about Leonard Marchand, Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia and Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal of Yukon? Grand Chief Stewart Phillip?
Mel, maybe you can moderate?
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Hi Mel,
From the photos I’ve seen, it didn’t look like even 100 people attended this denialfest. But maybe you had to be there. I am disappointed in those who took part in this racist charade.
Dallas Brodie denied that she is a denier, but then she outright calls TteS Kukpi7 Roseanne Casimir a liar. Which is her essentially denying what Casimir has been saying about the missing 215.
Tk’emlúps is our neighbour, our friend and we are part of each others’ communities. Calling them liars and minimalizing the deaths of their children is despicable. How do we build relationships and work toward reconciliation when there are people who not only think this, but promote it with a megaphone?
The missing children were not given proper burials in tiny caskets with small markers or headstones. There is little of them left, which is why the ground-penetrating radar found anomalies, not skeletons. And Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is following their own cultural protocols while they work through records and documents to investigate further into who these children were and who their families are. They want to be respectful of the remains, not get out a backhoe to turn them up.
If you replace Brodie’s references to Indigenous children with Jews during the Second World War, how would that sound to you?
She and her supporters are demanding the children’s remains be dug up as proof. We all know that children were abused — and worse — in Canada’s residential schools. It’s common knowledge, with or without the bones. It’s an atrocious and shameful part of our history.
Several years ago, in Winnipeg, an Indigenous woman went missing and the evidence pointed to her being dumped in a landfill. At that time, it was her loved ones who called for digging to be done to confirm and to find any remains. And the white people in government rejected the request.
It took an Indigenous premier to get it done and give her loved ones peace of mind.
So when Indigenous people actually want digging to be done to find the remains of a loved one, they are refused. When white people want digging done — not to find remains, but to prove that claims of buried Indigenous children is a lie — then there are rallies and outcries.
I am saddened by this brazen, disrespectful farce.
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It was a hundred – I did a pretty accurate count.
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It was an atrocious and shameful part of our history but there was no holocaust. The perpetrating colonizers are dead. Their descendants have apologized profusely and are paying millions upon millions to build their stuff, share the prosperity of the land and share the knowledge of science with our native neighbours. When is the victimization going to stop? When is the accountability on their part going to start?
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One correction is that I, Wyatt Claypool, am the Communications Director of OneBC and no the Chief of Staff.Minor different but just mentioning that for accuracy.
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Thanks for the clarification. You are variously identified in sources as the chief of staff (interim?), communications director, and “advisor.”
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Sad to see Mel fail so badly in his research and his observation of events. In fact the RCMP had to cross the street 3 times during the event, but it was not to address the protesters. It was to follow OneBC “research director” Masha Kleiner, who continually crossed in attempts to provoke responses from the protestors. If Mel had done any research on Masha, Wyatt, and the rest of OneBC’s staff he would see that this is a pattern for these people, particularly with minorities. They lie, twist the truth, and they love to get into personal space in attempts to make physical contact which they will then portray as some kind of assault.
They are as divisive and insipid a group as can be, and in Dallas Brodie they have finally found a reliable source of income (which includes our taxes). Even leaving aside Dallas’ mockery of victims of residential school abuse, her choice in staffers should tell anyone all they need to know about her. But, like Mel, people remain oblivious to how OneBC staff operates and always has.
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Thanks for the additional observations, Marshall. I admit it was a bit of a challenge tracking the nuances of everything that was going on at the same time on both sides of the street. I also didn’t observe the mayor crossing the street to talk with the protesters after things wrapped up. Point is, though, nothing untoward happened; at the same time, rather than being a dialogue between opposing sides, it was a demonstration that two diametrically opposing views have not found a way to communicate respectfully. In a sense, the street that separated the two groups was symbolic of the divide.
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Yeah the mayor thing did not go over too well on my side of the street, I was like “uh oh, I’m going to have to stick up for Reid here” but the other protestors didn’t seem too mad at me for that. Just like 2 of the 3 people who were there for OneBC that I know were also benevolent.
This is what really worries me. Most people can live with disagreements, but the people behind One BC are always looking to exploit divides for personal gain, not for the good of others. Dallas is not only an awful person who picks on those abused at residential schools, she deliberately leaves out a host of information when she speaks. And her staffers are outrage farmers who now have taxpayer money supporting their antics.
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I tagged you in a video that the “research director” of One BC, Masha Kleiner, posted today so you could have a look. It was just one of the incidents when she was told by police to get off of the road. She is an immigrant with a history of targeting immigrants and Canadian minorities, often deliberately trying to bait them so she can play the victim. I know you can’t rewrite this piece or anything, but it’s worth knowing who the staff at One BC really are. They are a disaster which keeps happening and is also waiting to happen. Plus it’s kind of interesting; they are like a group of cartoon villains.
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