{"id":14259,"date":"2025-12-03T01:19:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T04:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/03\/1-arrest-at-unsanctioned-onebc-event-on-uvic-campus\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T01:19:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T04:19:19","slug":"1-arrest-at-unsanctioned-onebc-event-on-uvic-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/03\/1-arrest-at-unsanctioned-onebc-event-on-uvic-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"1 arrest at unsanctioned OneBC event on UVic campus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>British Columbia\u00b7NewSupporters of the OneBC party gathered on the University of Victoria (UVic) campus Tuesday for an unsanctioned event \u2014 condemned by Indigenous groups for spreading residential school denialism rhetoric \u2014 that ended when police arrested one of the speakers for trespassing.The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs condemned the eventEmily Fagan  \u00b7 CBC News  \u00b7 Posted: Dec 02, 2025 9:02 PM EST | Last Updated: 28 minutes agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Tim Thielmann, OneBC chief of staff, was escorted off the University of Victoria campus by security and Saanich police. (Ethan Barkley)Supporters of the OneBC party gathered on the University of Victoria (UVic) campus Tuesday for an unsanctioned event \u2014 condemned by Indigenous groups for spreading residential school denialism rhetoric \u2014 that ended when police arrested one of the speakers for trespassing.OneBC Leader Dallas Brodie and supporters, including former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson, gathered on campus after not asking for the university\u2019s permission and the university explicitly warning them the event was unsanctioned.A UVic official told OneBC members they were trespassing and asked them to leave, according to a statement from Saanich Police Department spokesperson Jason Hallman.The majority of them decided to leave, and were escorted off campus by police. However, one person was arrested under the Trespass Act, Saanich police say, and has since been released.Tim Thielmann, OneBC chief of staff, identified Widdowson as the person arrested by police.On Tuesday morning, UVic\u2019s acting president Qwul\u2019sih\u2019yah\u2019maht, Robina Thomas released a statement saying that OneBC didn\u2019t submit a request to host the event on campus, and didn\u2019t tell the university of its plans.\u201cAs such, this event is not sanctioned by our university and is not authorized to take place on our campus,\u201d she wrote.Thomas said members of the community \u201care experiencing harm\u201d as a result of the event, and the university honours children who died at residential schools, survivors of residential schools, their families, and Indigenous communities.Jim McMurtry, who was fired from his job as a teacher for his comments about residential schools and is now a member of OneBC, was escorted off UVic campus by police. (Ethan Barkley)Brodie told reporters earlier that day that she, Widdowson and Jim McMurtry intended to speak on campus despite not being authorized by the university.\u201cThey issued a notice saying you\u2019re not permitted to come here, but we\u2019re going anyway,\u201d Brodie said.\u201cI think it\u2019s actually really good when we\u2019re engaging people directly, it\u2019s a positive thing for universities to have these things going on.\u201dShe said that Widdowson intended to talk in a \u201cstreet epistemology\u201d style to tell students \u201cthat there\u2019s another side to this story and that they need to understand that there have not been 215 bodies found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.\u201dAt the event, OneBC supporters were met by protesters.Thielmann says several smoke bombs were thrown at them and one of the party\u2019s volunteers holding a camera was \u201cpunched.\u201d When reached Tuesday afternoon by CBC News, the Saanich Police Department said no incidents of assault had been reported.Brodie and fellow OneBC MLA Tara Armstrong have proposed controversial legislation, including removing Truth and Reconciliation Day as a holiday, banning those with publicly funded roles from making land acknowledgments, and banning gender-affirming care.Smoke bombs from protesters opposed to an unsanctioned event by OneBC held at UVic\u2019s campus Tuesday. (Ethan Barkley)In a statement ahead of the event, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs said it was \u201cdeeply concerned that this event, under the guise of freedom of speech, will promote residential school denialism.\u201d\u201cCalls to exhume physical remains of children are a red herring and blatantly disregard the abundance of well-documented archaeological, archival and testimonial evidence which demonstrate that First Nations children died under abusive conditions at Residential Schools across Canada,\u201d the statement said.\u201cThis is not a matter of semantics or political debate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British Columbia\u00b7NewSupporters of the OneBC party gathered on the University of Victoria (UVic) campus Tuesday for an unsanctioned event \u2014 condemned by Indigenous groups for spreading residential school denialism rhetoric \u2014 that ended when police arrested one of the speakers for trespassing.The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs condemned the eventEmily Fagan \u00b7 CBC News \u00b7 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,118,1],"tags":[120,116],"class_list":["post-14259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-british-columbia","category-indigenous","category-uncategorized","tag-british-columbia","tag-indigenous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}