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'Thunder Bay' series on Crave seeks truth in deaths of Indigenous people in 'murder capital of Canada'

"We were welcomed with open arms by the community itself. Those in power, not so much," Anishinaabe journalist and award-winning writer Ryan McMahon says

Following the success of the Thunder Bay podcast for Canadaland, Anishinaabe journalist and award-winning writer Ryan McMahon brings the investigation to the screen in a four-part documentary series on the deaths of Indigenous people in Thunder Bay, Ont., (first two episodes available to stream on Crave Feb. 17).

This series, also titled Thunder Bay, begins by establishing that after making the podcast, more questions continued to rise about why Indigenous people, including teens, continued to die in "the murder capital of Canada."

That led McMahon back to the northern Ontario city for a second season of the podcast and this docuseries, calling out racism and other issues in the community, the police service and the police board. This includes looking at the deaths of Barbara Kentner, and seven First Nations high school students in Thunder Bay, which were documented in Tanya Talaga's book Seven Fallen Feathers.

In terms of transitioning the approach from audio to an on-screen series, McMahon was actually shocked that there was so much interest in people coming on camera.

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“People were so desperate in their calls for change inside the city, they would do anything, including talk to me on camera, so I was surprised.” McMahon told Yahoo Canada.

“We were welcomed with open arms by the community itself. Those in power, not so much.”

Ryan McMahon in
Ryan McMahon in "Thunder Bay" series on Crave

'Nobody wanted to talk'

Notably, those people in power who were not welcoming include the Thunder Bay Police Service. McMahon stated that he's been "begging" the police service to give him half and hour of their time since 2017.

That's not where this tension ends. In January, journalist Jon Thompson shared internal communication from Thunder Bay police leaders on social media. It states that officers should not "waste" their time and should "fight the urge" to watch the docuseries, citing "too many potential triggers."

"Like so many things we read on social media, this series is biased, and only includes the people who can forward a vile rhetoric," the communication shared by Thompson reads.

McMahon stressed that Thunder Bay police leadership was given the opportunity to be included in the series.

“We gave leadership inside of the Thunder Bay Police Service every opportunity to come and say whatever they wanted, to make their claims about the work they're doing to change the culture inside the service,” McMahon said. “We gave the Thunder Bay Police Service Board the same opportunity, we gave the municipality and the mayor's office the same opportunity. Nobody wanted to talk.”

“When you don't speak to the media when you are facing particular problems, rumours become the truth. My fear in Thunder Bay is that rumours have become the truth there, that the record doesn't exist yet. We tried. We tried to be fair, the same way we were with anyone else that sat with us. We didn't have a trick up our sleeve. There was no secret ‘gotcha’ moment that we had planned. But they failed to talk to us and so, if I had a magic wand, they would have sat down and answered our questions.”

Episode 1 of
Episode 1 of "Thunder Bay" series on Crave

As part of this investigation, McMahon talks to individuals in Thunder Bay whose family members died suddenly, too soon and often under unknown circumstances, with limited resources and supports to seek justice. McMahon said it was "heartbreaking" to have these particularly emotional conversations.

“Grief is unexpressed love, that's what grief is, and when people are grieving so deeply they're willing to sit in front of a camera and talk to a stranger," McMahon said. "It's because they have unexpressed love for their loved one that was taken too soon, that died suspiciously and whose death wasn't honoured with a proper investigation."

"Having the privilege to sift through those stories and to gather those stories, so as to better understand how to tell the story, is fundamental."

McMahon stressed that throughout the production, each person who participated was provided with specific cultural care, including smudging, medicines, counselling and other supports before and after interviews.

Episode 2 of
Episode 2 of "Thunder Bay" series on Crave

'We can't live in a post-truth society where there is no truth'

While speaking about the Thunder Bay podcast with APTN in 2019, McMahon highlighted that the podcast tackles the question of whether the system is "broken" or whether it's working the way it's supposed to, in a way that fails Indigenous communities.

“It still stands that if systems fail particular communities and particular groups of people, and if those systems are deemed to be systemically racist, by the measures we use inside the systems themselves, then they are systemically racist. They are failing,” McMahon said. “The reports that we got in 2018 from the OIPRD [Office of the Independent Police Review Director] and the OCPC [Ontario Civilian Police Commission] said that there was an abject failure on behalf of these systems.”

“It's not my opinion that they aren't working. The system reports on itself and it said so. So people can be p-ssed off at me about me saying it, but who's mad at the OCPC for reporting on the police services board itself in the way it did? At some point we have to agree on there being a statement of facts or some truth. We can't live in a post-truth society where there is no truth, it's all fake news, nothing's real. … In these particular systems, the system itself said it wasn't doing a good job.”

One thing that journalist Jon Thompson says in the first episode of the Thunder Bay docuseries is that most often, deaths of Indigenous people in Canada end up being just a "blip" in a newspaper and as they continue to happen it "continues to be socially acceptable not to believe that there’s any sort of pattern to this."

In reference to this point, McMahon believes that, "premature Indigenous deaths in Canada is accepted as an outcome to life as an Indigenous person.”

“It's not to say that it's not complex and difficult, finding the answers that work for communities, but it is to say that we ought to be holding those institutions, those organizations, those governments responsible for ensuring that we're at least trying to make our communities safe for everybody," he said. "That we're at least trying to move the social and political responsibility question forward in Canada."

"I don't even give a sh-t about reconciliation. I'm not talking about not being mean to Indigenous people on the bus anymore. I'm talking about expecting these organizations and institutions to work for everybody, because that's what our tax dollars do, because that's what these institutions are meant to do. When they're not working for a specific group, because of who they are, that's a problem.”

Episode 1 of
Episode 1 of "Thunder Bay" series on Crave

For anyone who watches this series, McMahon hopes that, with the understanding that Thunder Bay is a "microcosm" of a broader story in Canada and beyond, that it can become a "global phenomenon."

“My hope is that this becomes a bit of a global phenomenon, [not just] because I want the show to be successful for my own reasons, but because I think that the conversation about safety in our communities is a live one,” McMahon said. “There's not a city in America where this conversation isn't happening. There's not a city in Canada where the conversation about police and public safety isn't happening.”

“We're not making a judgement in the TV series. We're not telling you to defund or abolish your local police service, but we are showing you the effects of the failures of these systems, and it'll be up for viewers to decide what their own community looks like in this regard, and what needs to be done.”

Thunder Bay debuts on Crave on Feb. 17 with the first two episodes, followed by the final two episodes on Feb. 24.