Attempted arson at Siksika Nation Anglican Church (AB)

Early on Tuesday, 29 June 2021, RCMP officers were called at about 7 a.m. to the Siksika Anglican Church, in the Map 4 area of Siksika Nation east of Calgary, after a report of a fire. When investigators arrived they found a broken window and signs that someone had deliberately tried to start a fire inside the church but had failed; according to Global News, a singed curtain was visible protruding from the broken glass. Any suspect had already left the scene before police arrived, and fire crews were not called, indicating the blaze did not take hold. The building was left largely intact, with the damage centred on the broken window and a contained, failed attempt to ignite the interior.

This was the second fire at a church on Siksika Nation within roughly 24 hours. The community's Catholic church had been damaged in an earlier fire reported in the early hours of 28 June 2021, which RCMP also treated as deliberately set. The incidents formed part of a wider series of fires and acts of vandalism affecting churches on First Nations and elsewhere in Canada during the summer of 2021. Gleichen RCMP asked anyone with information to contact them or Crime Stoppers. Police later charged a man over separate grass fires set on Siksika land around 1 July, but stated there was no discernible link between that arson and the earlier church fires.

This is a domestic Canadian incident, not connected to foreign or hybrid-warfare activity. It occurred during a wave of church fires and vandalism across Canada in mid-2021, widely understood as reactions to the reported discovery of unmarked graves at former Indian residential school sites. The Anglican church fire was an attempted arson that failed to spread, leaving the structure largely intact. RCMP investigated it as arson; available reporting does not indicate that anyone has been charged specifically for the Anglican or Catholic church fires, and a separate arson charge for nearby grass fires was explicitly not linked to them.