Queen Elizabeth II Did Not Abduct Indigenous Children in Canada

Misbar investigated the circulating claim and found it to be fake. The claim is baseless as there is no evidence to consolidate it. 

Misbar had previously investigated a similar claim in 2021 and found it to be fake.

Did Queen Elizabeth II visit Kamloops?

Misbar's team thoroughly searched for Queen Elizabeth II’s historical visits to Canada and found no evidence that the Queen visited Kamloops in 1964, as the claim purports. 

Misbar found that Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip had visited the city of Kamloops in 1959, during the Queen’s royal tour of Canada. 

Photo Description: The Queen’s 1959 royal tour of Canada.

The Queen visited Kamloops again in 1983 after the Kamloops Indian Residential School had closed. 

The details from both visits do not mention a picnic with school children. 

The Kamloops Indian Residential School

In 2021, Unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 children were found at a former residential school established to assimilate indigenous people in Canada.

The remains belonged to pupils at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. 

At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the discovery as a reminder of a “shameful chapter” from Canada’s history.

As the BBC reported, the chief of the community in British Columbia's city of Kamloops, at the time, Rosanne Casimir, said that the remains belonged to missing children whose death was not documented. “Some were as young as three years old,” added Casimir.

Photo Description: The Kamloops School Memorial (Getty Images).

Canada’s Assimilation Schools 

The residential schools were established to assimilate indigenous children in Canada. Over 150,000 indigenous children were placed in these schools between 1863 and 1998.

The children were often denied the right to speak their language or practice their culture, and many were mistreated and abused.

A large number of indigenous children never returned to their home communities, according to the findings of a 2008 commission. The Canadian government formally apologized for the system in 2008. In 2015, the landmark Truth and Reconciliation report described the policy as a “cultural genocide.”

The claim purporting that Queen Elizabeth II was involved in the disappearance of indigenous children has been debunked by several fact-checking platforms over the past years, including Misbar, Snopes, AFP, Reuters and Full Fact. However, the claim continues to be shared and believed to be true by many.

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