Trigger warning: This article may be upsetting to some readers.
A coroner’s investigation that has so far uncovered dozens of previously unknown deaths linked to residential schools in Ontario is in the preliminary stages of looking into Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie.
The Residential Schools Death Investigation Team — which was brought together by Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner — has so far found 220 additional deaths that have yet to be included in the memorial register at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which currently lists 436 documented deaths at residential schools in the province.
Team lead Mark Mackisoc, who is also a sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police, said the findings are the culmination of roughly three years of work.
“This has been a gradual thing,” Mackisoc told SooToday last week. “We’ve been making these findings kind of regularly over that period of time.”
Mackisoc said the starting point for the team was looking at the names on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) memorial register and seeking out information on those deaths.
“Even on the wall, it indicates the date of birth and the date of death is not known for some of them, so I was hoping just to be able to fill in some of those missing pieces of the puzzle,” he said.
The Residential Schools Death Investigation Team has access to what Mackisoc believes is every single Indian Affairs document that’s still in existence today, as well as the NCTR internal database and Crown-Indigenous Relations documents that have been handed over to the national centre. It also utilizes quarterly reports that residential schools in Ontario had to file every three months with the Indian agent.
The team goes through those files and documents thoroughly from start to finish to see if anything got missed such as “files that weren’t indexed properly, or a name that wasn’t turning up.”
“We literally have to read every line on every document — and that’s when you typically find the additional deaths,” Mackisoc said.
Infectious diseases of the day, such as tuberculosis and the Spanish flu, were the main causes of death in the additional 220 deaths that have so far been identified by the team. The second leading cause of death was drowning.
Mackisoc has been to Sault Ste. Marie twice over the last few months, meeting with survivors of Shingwauk Indian Residential School and those responsible for leading the search for unmarked graves at the former Shingwauk site, which sits on the present-day campus of Algoma University.
The Shingwauk school was a government-funded residential school that was operated by the Anglican Church between 1874 and 1970, bringing in Indigenous children from more than 80 communities in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec with the goal of stripping them of their language and culture.
There are 120 recorded burials in the Shingwauk Cemetery, which includes 73 children who died while attending the institution.
“Those survivors have specifically asked our team to help them — like we’ve done for other schools — determine who died at their school, and where they’re buried,” Mackisoc said.
Right now, the team is in the early stages of investigating the deaths of two unknown boys that apparently drowned in a pond behind the Shingwauk school in 1914. The pond in the city’s east end was filled in by the municipality decades ago and has since been repurposed as Snowdown Park.
“That one is a bit puzzling,” said Mackisoc. “It’s very unique in that regard, too. I can’t think of any other situation like that at any of the schools, where there was a specific incident of death, but there was no indication of who it was.
“There’s lot of circumstances where the bodies weren’t recovered, especially children that ran away from the school. But to have two drownings that are widely reported, but nobody knows who they are? I’m not sure what’s happening with that.”
The Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association (CSAA) told SooToday that the survivor-led group has not "engaged actively with the Ontario coroner's team with respect to the Shingwauk Indian Residential School site.”
“Our work on our site continues, and we are focused on that and look forward to sharing more at the appropriate time,” CSAA said in a brief email last week.
When asked for clarification, Mackisoc referred SooToday to Shingwauk Residential School Site Search Waa-Naadmaaged (project manager) Tara Burrell, who he has met with a number of times in person. Burrell did not respond to a request for an interview made by SooToday last week.
The Children of Shingwauk received $2,356,277 in funding through the federal government’s Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund between 2021 and 2024. The federal government launched the fund in 2021, following an announcement by Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation that it had identified “anomalies” via ground-penetrating radar believed to be the remains of 215 children at the former site of Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
Stakeholders of the Shingwauk site began a search for potential unmarked burials using ground-penetrating radar in September 2021. The current status of the search is unknown.
In February 2023, Garden River First Nation announced the launch of Sahkahjewaosa: Bigii Weh Wok – They are Coming Home, a project dedicated to searching the former grounds of both Shingwauk and the Wawanosh Home, a residential school for girls that once operated on the present-day grounds of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25.
The project was also intended to create a historical record for each survivor while contributing to the public education on the legacy of the two institutions. Garden River First Nation has received $1,052,268 from the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund to date.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final report on residential schools in 2015. The nearly 4,000-page account details the harsh mistreatment inflicted on Indigenous children at the institutions, where at least 3,200 children died amid abuse and neglect.
Resources
A national residential school crisis line has been established to provide support to former students and their families. The 24-hour line can be accessed at 1-866-925-4419.
The Hope for Wellness Helpline is also available to offer immediate support and crisis intervention for Indigenous Peoples across Canada. Call the toll-free Helpline at 1-855-242-3310 or connect to the online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
The Community Assistance Program (CAP) can be accessed by Anishinabek Nation member first nation citizens by calling 1-800-663-1142.
- with files from The Canadian Press