Residential Schools

Since the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, new information about residential schools in Canada continues to be made available.

National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation

The key resource for viewing available records is The National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation (NCTR). Of interest to most family history researchers will be the Quarterly Returns for the residential school attendance records. There is an excellent tutorial video for locating these records.

Instructions from that video are:

1. Go to NCTR records.
2. Either scroll down the alphabetical list of school names, or enter the school name in the “search authority record” search box (i.e. not the one at the top of the page).
3. Select the school name. This will take you to the school’s page, including a brief description of its history, and all public records available.
4. On the left of the page, just under the Creator of heading, click on “Browse ### results”. That will give you the full list of available records.
5. Filter those results by going back to the left side of the page, click on the Subject drop-down menu and the Genre drop-down menu. If the Quarterly Returns for attendance records are available for that school, they will be on one of those drop-down lists. (If they do not appear, check back at a later date.)
6. Click on the Quarterly Returns link and the list of Quarterly Returns records will appear on the right, listed by date. Browse the list to select the date of interest.

Residential Schools Locations

The NCTR website also provides an interactive map of residential schools in Canada, with links to each school’s archival records. If using this tool to locate records, locate the school and then continue from step 3 above.

Other sources for residential schools’ locations are:

• The Canadian Encyclopedia
• UBC Library

Residential Schools Memorial Register

The NCTR website also has a memorial register of children who died while at residential schools. This register is searchable by name and is updated as new information is available.

Residential Schools Records from Church Organizations

Church organizations often operated residential schools, and they are also making many their records available for researchers by submitting them to the NCTR. For information about these records, other available records, and to contact the churches regarding records that were not submitted to the NCTR, see the following:

• Catholic Church of Canada:
  At time of writing, access to Catholic Church records from residential schools is pending.
• United Church of Canada:
  (The Methodist Church of Canada was merged into the United Church in 1925)
• Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate:
  The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (Catholic) administered ten residential schools in BC. These records are held at the BC Archives and access to them is still under review. Generally, if a representative from a Nation represented in the records requests access to them, the archives will provide access to those specific records. The contact to request access is: access@royalbcmuseum.bc.ca.
• Catholic Archdiocese of Grouard-McLellan, Northern Alberta:
  Provides photo galleries of over 3,000 images from the missions and residential schools that operated in that region: 
• Sisters of Saint Ann (SSA)) Archives:
  An order of Catholic nuns that ran four residential schools in British Columbia -- Kamloops, Kuper Island (near Chemainus), St. Mary’s (Mission), and Lower Power (just south of the BC-Yukon border). The order is working with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) to have the records submitted to the NCTR. Any updates to that process can be found on the SSA website.
• Anglican Church of Canada
• Presbyterian Church of Canada:
  (See also United Church, per merger in 1925)

Census Records for Residential Schools

Residential schools are included in most census records. Because Indigenous names were changed, anglicized, limited to first names only, or misspelled in different ways, searching for someone by name is difficult if not impossible. Searching for the school by name (e.g. keyword in Ancestry) is rarely successful. However, census records were conducted by electoral enumeration districts, so it may be necessary to first determine in which electoral enumeration district the residential school is included, and then scroll through that district’s records to find the school. Electoral districts changed from one census to another.
 

Census Records - To find the electoral districts by province for each census, then select which census year from the column on the left. Once at the page for that census year, select “Districts and Subdistricts” from the list on the left for a list of district names.

While this Library and Archives Canada site provides microfilm numbers (available in our Family History Department) the census can be searched through Ancestry. In Ancestry, select “Search Census” from the main page, then select the census year from the bottom part of the next page. Once on the census search page, go to the column on the right “Browse this Collection”, select the province, then the district name from the list.

Another approach would be to find the school information and obtain the name of a teacher, minister, or priest that worked at the school, then try a census search for that name.