An Ontario coroner’s investigation has identified 220 additional deaths linked to Indian residential schools in the province — deaths that were previously unknown to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR).
The NCTR’s memorial register lists 436 documented deaths at Ontario residential schools, so the confirmation of 220 more would bring the combined total of known deaths in the province to 656, and counting.
The Residential Schools Death Investigation Team, assembled by Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner in 2021, confirmed the details mainly through line-by-line analysis of public and protected records complemented by extensive archival research.
Both my parents attended residential school in northern Ontario and I have relatives that attended schools here in the north including the infamous St Anne’s in Fort Albany.
Talk to any of them and they will share with you so many stories of killed, murdered, disappeared and lost children from their time in these schools. There are also many legendary and almost mythical stories that are either true or exaggerated but all are shared by large groups of people of stories like Charlie Wenjack, children who tried to run away home. Some people know stories of children that made it to their home but there are many stories of children who did run away but never made it home … and in many instances, the families of those same children that disappeared have also died out and there is no one left to confirm or deny the story.
Whatever the total number of dead are … the truth is always the same … Canada actively tried to remove Indigenous people because they saw them as less than human and not worthy of saving, helping, assisting or supporting. In fact, Canada saw us as a hindrance to development for their corporate owners who wanted the land for development, the rock underneath for wealth, the trees in the forest to harvest and the rivers that they could dam and make money from. We stood in their way and we still stand in their way … which is why they have always wanted to find ever more creative ways of removing us from the equation.