Unrepentant: Disrobing the Emperor

by Kevin Daniel Annett

In 1992, Kevin Annett an ordained minister with the United Church of Canada in Port Alberni on British Columbia's Vancouver Island a logging town half populated with native Indians, discovered a history of abuse and atrocities ranging from torture sodomy and rape to murder suggesting genocide among the native children in the church's residential school which had taken place for more than a century. It later was revealed that such was the case in more than 140 schools run by the major churches with the complicity of the Canadian government. Refusing to remain silent he was defrocked by his Presbytery. For 15 years he has conducted a one man campaign for justice and the revision of colonial laws for a race of subjugated people.

202 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2011

Reviews

[Ann Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Annett is many things, but definitely not a quitter. This is a follow-up to his autobiographical memoir, Love and Death in the Valley (2004). I found it just as absorbing and thought-provoking, in its depiction of what can happen to a whistle-blower who attempts to expose the truth behind Canada's humanitarian facade. This is a great, true story that deserves to be retold over and over, until it sinks in with the general public.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A harrowing tale. While the David and Goliath narrative is a little over the top at times, and honestly some of the suffering Annett faces seems to be taken straight from the plights of Job (therefore making it seem like it rings a little false, and his character perhaps a little messianic and over the top) admittedly, the story more than makes up for it.

Besides, it wouldn't be as strong a yarn, even a nonfiction yarn, without some dramatic license.