Map retrieved from Indigenous Services Canada
DIFFICULT CONTENT WARNING: Some of the content below deals with sensitive and difficult subject matters relating to violence
For more than 150 years, First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and required to attend church and government-run institutions often far from their homes. More than 150,000 children attended these residential schools. Thousands never returned. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) characterized these institutions as cultural genocide. Each residential school was a site of significant human rights violation.
The primary goal of these institutions was the forced assimilation of Indigenous children into western European cultures, religions and identities. The distinct cultures, traditions, languages and knowledge systems of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples were attacked. Children were harshly punished for speaking their own languages. Tens of thousands of students suffered serious physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. Staff were not held accountable for how they treated the children.
For a great many Survivors, talking about their experiences in residential schools means reliving the traumas they experienced. Despite the difficulties, thousands of Survivors found the strength, courage and ability to speak truth to power through the courts, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and through various forms of media. The combined strength of Survivors and the power of truth telling has created significant change across Canada and beyond.
Dates of Operation: October 1, 1904 - January 26, 1940
The Ahousaht School was located on Flores Island, on the western side of Vancouver Island, BC. Originally a Presbyterian-run day school, it received federal government funding starting in 1904. It was taken over by the United Church in 1925. It was “an offence to speak either Chinook or Siwash” at the school. An inspector’s report from 1936 noted that every staff member carried a strap and that the children “never learned to work without punishment.” When the school was destroyed by fire in 1940, a decision was made to replace it with a United Church day school that
opened in June of that year. In 2021, a GoFundMe campaign was created, and has raised more than $150,000 to use ground-penetrating radar to search for unmarked graves around the site of the former school.
Home Communities of Students: Ahousaht and Ehatishat
Sources
Government of Canada litigation narrative via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Schedule E and Requests List; Independent Assessment Process Guide v3.3 (2018)
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/ahousaht-first-nation-receives-75-000-to-search-for-graves-atresidential-
schools-1.5513580
Dates of Operation: July 1, 1900 - August 31, 1973
In 1893, the Presbyterian Church built the Alberni Girls Home on Vancouver Island a few miles outside Port Alberni, BC. It was taken over by the United Church in 1925. The school was destroyed by fire in 1917, 1937 and 1941 and rebuilt following each fire. The West Coast Council of Indian Chiefs campaigned for the school’s closing in the 1960s, charging that children in need of care were being dumped into the school. The school was eventually closed in 1973. In 1995, Arthur Henry Plint, a former dorm supervisor at the school from 1948 to 1968 was convicted of 18 counts of indecent assault against students and sentenced to 11 years in jail. Two years later, Plint confessed to 10 more counts of indecent assault and three counts of assault causing bodily harm. In October 2003, Donald Bruce Haddock pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault which occurred at Alberni Indian Residential School (IRS) between 1948 and 1954. In November 2003, Michael Dennis Flynn and David Henry Forde were charged in connection with the allegations of sexual abuse at Alberni IRS.
Sources
Government of Canada litigation narrative via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation;
Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Schedule E and Requests List; Independent Assessment Process Guide v3.3 (2018)
The Christie Roman Catholic school opened in 1900 on Meares Island, BC. Overcrowding was commonly reported throughout the duration of its operation. Five children died of tubercular meningitis between 1939 and 1941. Over a period of years in the 1950s, a school maintenance worker sexually abused a student. Chief Greg Louie recalls that “The first moment I was brought to residential school, my Ahousaht identity was taken away,” Louie said. “I was literally stripped… take those clothes off, they said. They cut my hair and divided the boys and girls. I seldom saw my sister after that.” Three generations of his family attended this school. In 1971, the school was closed and students moved to the Christie Student Residence in Tofino. In 1974 the residence was transferred to the West Coast District Council of Indian Chiefs, closing in 1983.
Sources
Government of Canada litigation narrative via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Schedule E and Requests List; Independent Assessment Process Guide v3.3 (2018)
Dates of Operation: July 23, 1890 - June 30, 1975
The Kuper Island School on Penelakut Island (formerly Kuper Island) near Chemainus, Vancouver Island, BC opened in 1889. Students set fire to the school in 1896 when holidays were cancelled. A survey carried out in 1916 showed that of 264 former students 107 had died. Two sisters
drowned while trying to escape the school in 1959 and another student committed suicide in 1966. Glen William Doughty, a former religious brother with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who was at Kuper Island Indian Residential School (IRS) in the capacity of a child care worker
between approximately 1967 and 1969 and in 1972, pleaded guilty, in October 2002, to eleven counts of indecent assault and one count of buggery of children at Kuper Island IRS and Williams Lake IRS. Numerous reports of sexual, physical and emotional abuse took place at Kuper Island School throughout the duration of its existence. Throughout the history of the school, there are recorded occurrences of students suffering from mumps, measles, whooping cough, smallpox, chicken pox, paratyphoid B infection, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, skin disease, lice, impetigo,
jaundice and dysentery (shigellosis). The federal government took over the administration of the school in 1969 and closed it in 1975. In 1995 a former employee pled guilty to three charges of indecent assault and gross indecency. Kuper Island (2022) is a CBC podcast which relies heavily on survivor testimony to investigate in detail events that took place at the school.
Sources
Government of Canada litigation narrative via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Schedule E and Requests List; Independent Assessment Process Guide v3.3 (2018)
Dates of Operation: 1893-1974
The Anglican Church established a day school at its mission in Alert Bay, BC in 1878. It opened a small boarding school there in 1882 and an industrial school in 1894. Throughout the duration of its operation, St. Michael’s was funded by the Government of Canada and the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (MSCC). The school was known for the arts and crafts produced by the students and the two large Kwakiutl Totem Poles in front of the school building. In 1947, two dozen children ran away from the school. That same year, a student wrote home to her father describing physical abuse and psychological torment. The subsequent investigation into conditions at the school led to the resignation of both the principal and the vice-principal. William Peniston Starr, Physical Education Instructor at St. Michael’s IRS hired in 1956, was convicted in 1992 of 13 counts of sexual and indecent assault of children at Gordon’s Indian Residential School (IRS) in Saskatchewan between the years 1968 and 1983. By 1969, when the federal government assumed administration of the school, all residents were attending local schools. The residence closed in 1974.
Sources
Government of Canada litigation narrative via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Schedule E and Requests List; Independent Assessment Process Guide v3.3 (2018)
Final Report
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All Reports (2022-2024)
The survivors speak : a report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The sleeping giant awakens : genocide, Indian residential schools, and the challenge of conciliation
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A Knock on the Door : The Essential History of Residential Schools From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
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Truth and Indignation : Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools
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Picking Up the Pieces: Residential School Memories and the Making of the Witness Blanket
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UVic Libraries has an entire library guide on the history of residential schools in Canada, check it out here. Below are a few short videos to view if you are just starting to learn about this history.
This guide has extensive sections on Truth and Reconciliation resources and Residential School resources.
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